The Scorch Trials movie review

My first time actually seeing a book to movie adaptation in the theatre. It had to happen at some point, but I could've never seen coming that I would see it with my mother.

Title: Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
Genre: Action, Sci-fi, Thriller
Director: Wes Ball
Based on: The Scorch Trials by James Dashner
IMDb rating: 7,0/10
Rotten tomatoes rating: 50%
My rating: 8,5/10

I believe there are three kinds of YA book to movie adaptations at the moment:
1. We copy the book, but add some cool sh!t and leave some sh!t out.
2. We keep the characters and the general direction of the story line, but change a lot more and alter the plot.
3. We change everything except for the characters and a small bass of the story line.
In other words:
1. Mockingjay part 1.
2. Insurgent.
3. The Scorch Trials.

Guys, this is soooooo different from the book. I still really liked the movie, though, and I loved the experience I had by going to this movie with my mother.



This movie got me laughing, almost crying, and made me jump. But above all, it got me very stressed about what my mother would think.

The changes from the book are bigger than I've ever seen before. This is basically me watching the movie:
"Okay, it's different, but they can still fix it."
"Oh. Well, if they throw it around a little, they can still fix it."
"Right?"
"RIGHT?!"
"Please?"
"**** it."
The acting is good and the chasings got me at the edge of my seat. There were actually some parts that really scared me. The clichés are pretty terrible, though. This movie also suffers from incredibly convenient timing.
"Hello, group of people who are bound on not getting any infected cranks into their clan."
"Wow, my friend has chosen just this moment to fall down into the sand even though five seconds ago she was completely fine. What an awful coincidence."

I will go into details now. Consider yourself warned.

Imagine you're sitting in the movie theatre with your not-so-violence-and-post-apocalypse-loving mother. And blood-gurgling cranks turn out a little more like zombies than you hoped they would.
The cranks in the movie are a lot more zombie-like than in the book. So I sat in my chair, wanting to talk very badly, and trying to send brainwaves to my mom: "This was not in the book. This was not in the book. This was not in the book." I did not like their zombieness at first, but then I thought about certain events in the Death Cure and how this will make them even more haunting.

A personal problem I had with this movie: names. I apparently pronounced both Minho's and Jorge's name wrong. Oops.

As I've said to many times already now, the changes are uncountable. I knew it would be different from the start, since, you know, how different the first movie was, and from the trailer, and angry YouTube comments. *Sighs* So many angry YouTube comments. But no matter how much of an adaptation critique I am when it comes to changes, I found myself still enjoying this thrill ride. Why? I hated how changed Insurgent was, but that was because it had changed for the worse. This is a good movie. Yes, plot holes that I could dump Bill Gates' money in in one dollar bills. I mean, if it's just about blood now, why was the whole crazy maze even necessary? Either I missed something, or Hollywood did. Still, this movie is enjoyable. and that's why I can make peace with the changes.

The ending, though. I'm really curious to how they're going to solve that in the next movie. We're not even at WICKED!? So we're gonna save Minho, but why would they still tell us who's immune and who's not? How will we - *realizes she's about to spoil the Death Cure*. Never mind. So now we'll just kill Ava Paige. I found myself more interested in her than I did in the book by the way, and I don't really want her to die. (Death Cure might have helped with that...) But what's Thomas gonna do? Go all President Snow on her? I hope not.

I really liked Teresa's story about her mom. It's actually still playing in the back of my mind. We got all this background information from her and some from Thomas at the beginning. And it was nice. Except... I just couldn't get around the incorrectness of some of the how-Thomas-got-send-to-the-maze crap. I just could NOT do it. I'm also worried for the next movie. Change is a risky thing. Do not throw it around. Books provide solid material to base your story on. The Scorch Trials had the Maze Runner to rely on for backstory. The backstory for the Death cure has been destroyed and rebuilt. And that's scary.

I liked that Jorge provided some humor. When he was torturing this guy and he said, "We need Bertha," and this guy's car popped up, I burst out laughing. Also, props to the guy who thought of 'the song'. I did not see it coming and it was hilarious.

The experience and my surroundings

Watching this movie was actually a really cool experience in itself. My mom, once the biggest hater of YA dystopian and fantasy, watched it with me. The Sunday after, my friend finished the book, and my brother is reading the first book right now.

My mother:

If you didn't know yet, my mother hated/hates YA dystopias with a passion. She forbade me to read the Hunger Games and has never liked anything with magic or fantasy or science fiction. Harry Potter was a banned book in our home, as well as all other paper things that contained violence, magic, or 'scary things'. We all know how well I sticked to these rules, and my mom has changed her mind on a lot of things in the past year.
You see, we didn't have many strict rules in our house. We never got punished for things, we had free access to the candy closet, and were always allowed to ask anything we wanted to know. The one thing that was censored was our media use. No TV shows with magic, no movies with scary things, no books with darker elements. You can imagine what a story about 24 murderous kids made my mom think. I read the books in secret and once I told her what I thought of them, it was okay. But she still didn't like the whole dystopian, sci-fi, or fantasy turn my taste had shifted towards.
Long story short: Our local cinema had this deal were people with a V, an A, or a K could go to a movie for 1 Euro (about $1,-) in September. I wanted to go with a friend, but she hadn't finished the book yet, so I planned on going alone. My mom pitied me and since she does everything for her children, she decided it would be better to go with me. She liked it. Quite a lot.

It was probably the most unexpected thing in history after her approval of the reading of Harry Potter in our house.

I was very much looking forward to the trailers, because a.) I wanted to see my mom react to the Mockingjay part 2 trailer and b.) I wanted to see whether or not the 5th Wave trailer would be there. Sadly, no 5th Wave trailer, but my mother's reaction was genius. I had already seen the trailer, but I still had to hold my hands together to stop them from trembling. As soon as my mom realized what it was, she groaned. Then she said: "Are there aliens in the one we're going to see? Because I really hate those." I said there weren't any aliens, silently worrying about the tubes in the trailer and the zombies from the book. And then she said, pointing at the screen: "There are aliens in this one, right?" I knew you were poorly informed, mom, but I didn't realize it was THIS bad.

While we were watching the movie, I couldn't really talk to her. Which stressed me out, because at some point HE WAS SHOWERING. That was the first thing I panicked about. Then, the zombies came. My everything-even-slightly-similar-to-horror-hating mom was forced to listen to the guttural sounds of zombies. So, naturally I thought, okay, this is where she gives up on this movie and genre altogether and we're going to have terrible conversations about whether or not the content of my books are age-appropriate. Great. And, of course, just when I'd silently told my mom that those zombies were not in the book my easily scared little brother is reading the prequel to, a character had to go shoot himself. But we ended up having a great time. She jumped even more than me, she laughed at the right moments (my mom loves comedy), and in the end, she still made references about the movie the next day.

My friend:

When I arrived at school the next Monday, the first thing she asked was: "What did they change from the book!?" No hello, no how did you like the movie. Of course, we can't blame her. My emotional state after finishing the book wasn't stable either. But when I responded: "A better question would be what they haven't changed." This launched her into a crazy rant about how they should never change the book, while I tried to calmly explain that it wasn't a bad movie, just a different one. I ended up pissing her off by saying that the movie wasn't necessarily worse than the book. Well, better have a passionate semi-fangirl for a friend than nothing, right?

My brother:

If, you haven't finished the Death Cure yet, you can leave now.

After we got back home, the whole Maze Runner subject was inescapable. So somehow, my brother asked me if there was a lot of romance in the first book. I said there wasn't. The second book? In the second book it's mostly very complicated. Anyway, with the third one we reached that spoiler stalemate. He asked me something about whether or not Teresa died, but he didn't want me to spoil it. So it was like, "Well, then I better not answer your question..." And my brother was like, "So she dies!?" And then my mother chimed in, "But she deserves it after what she's done --" "NO SPOILERS! NO SPOILERS!" my brother yelled loudly. And since I forgive Teresa for her betrayal both in the book and the movies, I had already started to defend her. Sigh. My mom is one of those people.

Death Cure moments (so that obviously means SPOILERS!)

Newt: I almost cried when he gave Winston the gun. That was so sad. (Meanwhile, I was glancing around at the crowd to see who else was a dedicated fan and tearing up.) When Thomas saw him as a zombie, I freaked out a little, but it was okay because it wasn't real. Yet...
How the E are they going to make this ending work with the next movie? I have no clue, but I'm happy I don't have to figure it out. So let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for a more spectacular death for Teresa than dropping a gigantic rock on her.