The Maze Runner Movies- a review of the series

The Maze Runner movies- a review by Sean Chandler:

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So this week in the third and final movie in the Maze Runner trilogy came out, and that means it’s time to stop and rank all three Maze Runner movies from the worst to the best. Now, before I get started going, tell me down below in the comments section, how do you rank the Maze Runner movies? What do you think about the franchise in general and have you read the books? How do they compare all that fun stuff that makes for nice, lively discussions? Also, I’m trying something different. I put a pull right up here up in that little card section. Tell me what you think is the best movie in the Maze Runner franchise. I’d love to get your thoughts, objectively speaking, from my pull up there. With that said, let’s look what the critics had to say. And this is how they rank on Rotten Tomatoes in last place with forty five percent. Is Maze Runner the death cure in second place? Just a little bit above it is Maze Runner, the scorch trials with forty six percent. That could change as more reviews come in for Death Cure. And in first place is the original the maze runner with sixty five percent. So that’s what the critics had to say. Here’s my take on it. Coming in in third place is Maze Runner, the scorch trials. The word that comes to mind with this movie is exhausting, like right out of the gate. They’re on the run and they keep running places and then they think they’re safe and then they’re on the run again.

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The whole movie, it’s just place to place to place. And by the end of it, it was loud, noisy, and I just kind of felt tired. I wasn’t excited by it. I just felt kind of exhausted. I will say this for I felt it got better as it went along. At first it just felt like, OK, we’re running and running, which ties into the title pretty well. But I like just wasn’t invested because there wasn’t enough character, there wasn’t enough plot, it was just running, running, running. And towards the end of it, when they meet the chicken man from Breaking Bad, they start making new allies along the way. That kind of help them, especially as you move into the third act and there’s some big twists reveals someone’s discovered to be their true motives in all of this. They start to get a little bit better towards the end of it. That’s normally a good sign when movies get better as they go along. At the same time, it just wasn’t a particularly fun ride for me because it was just so loud and so frantic throughout and I just couldn’t get connected to it as it was going along. And so for me, this movie just felt like the middle block. Bridging between this intriguing set up and the fascinating conclusion in this one was just that middle thing were just loud, noisy stuff happened. And I felt this movie had just the wrong amount of zombies in it, because if you want a zombie movie, it doesn’t have enough.

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And if you don’t like zombies, it’s got to it’s so when we were watching this movie and then the zombies started showing up, my wife freaked out. She doesn’t do zombies. So she was kind of like, Wow is a zombie movie. It turned off the movie, got a freaked out a little bit when it went full zombies for a little bit. And so it feels like it’s the weird mix of its different influences at times. And so this was a little bit frustrating in that regard. So for me, pretty definitively in third place is the scorch trail coming in? In second place for me is Maze Runner, The Death Cure. Now, this one is probably the most frustrating movie on the list for me, because it was the most, I think, purely entertaining of the movies, the one that just had the most stuff that I was like, oh, man, this is a really cool sequence. Like it kicks off with this rescue mission, with the train in these dune buggies coming out of nowhere. And in that I thought it was a great sequence with like practical effects or if this was not practical, it looked amazing. It looked real. And given the budget was so far under a hundred million dollars, this director knows how to, like, put his budget on the screen. So it kicks off this great sequence. That’s exciting. The conclusion is like forty five minute long final battle or you kind of get the war breaking out in this city.

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You’ve got a rescue going on, you’ve got the stakes with our lead characters. So lots of stuff kind of going on with all of that. And then the movie was also just jam packed with contrivances, coincidences, last minute rescues that just kept pulling me out of the movie every time I would get in and be like, oh, all right, man, this is actually this is really good. I’m really digging this. Something would have been where I’d be like what? I mean, like there’s a sequence in that opening rescue mission I talked about where a guy is in a shootout with people and he jumps in front of the train that the bad guys with machine guns are shooting at. Like he jumps right in front of the line of fire, pulls out his pistol and starts shooting at them. And he takes out the bad guys with machine guns. And so I was watching. I was like, what? Like he could have gone to the side. Either side would add a little bit of cover. He jumped in front of it. So he should have been killed instantly. And instead he’s able to take guys out with his pistol and things like that happen throughout the entire movie. It repeats certain motifs where people are rescued from transport vehicles by being lifted by a crane up into the sky like it. It repeats the exact same thing multiple times in the movies. And every time that our characters are in danger, it pauses.

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And then someone shows up to rescue them, and so the movie, it felt like maybe with one rewrite of the script or if they had a little bit more time to develop things, they could have crafted a better movie. And given this movie was actually delayed a year because Dylan O’Brien got injured making the movie product because they were doing a lot of practical effect them. They had the time to iron some of this out because it’s all stupid stuff. It wasn’t like the big plot. I actually thought the world building here was the best of any of the movies because it actually kind of gives answers on things and it makes this dystopian world where there’s just a little bit of civilization left and a lot of anarchy and you see all the factions. And so you start getting really intrigued by this world. It does a lot of things better. And all the small details as you’re watching it being executed. I just kept going. What? Well, it’s the same thing happening again. How did they know where to find him? What are the odds they would run into each other? And so just so much coincidence, so much lazy, sloppy writing happening. And at the same time, like you said, it’s the was the most one that had the most entertaining elements to it, the best action sequences to it. So a very frustrating movie because I wanted to like it so much more and I liked some of the parts so much more than the whole.

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And going in in first place is the Maze Runner, the original one, which takes a lot of different elements of sci fi, a lot of other story, kind of classic type of sci fi stories, dystopian stories of postapocalyptic stories, kind of combines them into this one package in the young adult genre. As you know, the original books were an interesting little take on it, the sort of idea that you got a little bit of Lord of the Flies with these guys trapped in the woods. And then you’ve got it reminded me of this movie called Kube that came out like 20 years ago where people are put in a trap. They’re trying to figure out or put in a well, a cube, and that has death traps in it. They have to try and figure out how it works. And it kind of reminds me a little bit of that. And then as you kind of figure out what’s going on, it ties into a whole bunch of other postapocalyptic type of things in their disease virus, which you see in a lot of sci fi. It’s what brings a whole bunch of ideas together in an idea that gives you a lot of just real fast paced forward motion in this idea that there’s a maze that they’re running through, which naturally, when you’re in a maze running through Maze, it just gives an opportunity for things to move really quickly. And once again, like I mentioned on the death cure, the budget is all on the screen here because this movie did not have a huge budget.

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But you just see these gigantic buildings, walls, mazes, bug creatures running after them. And it looks a lot more expensive than the movie actually was. And as long as we’re talking about the original one, Dylan O’Brien’s nice little find. I’ve really enjoyed him in the movies I’ve seen him in recently. And I’m new to the Maze Runner franchise. He was an American assassin last year is when his guys won. Yeah, I think this guy’s going to make it. This guy is going places and it’s not like, you know, this is like Oscar caliber stuff or just a screaming star power. But you can tell that he just has a charm and charisma to him, that you like to see him on screen. You can kind of see a little bit what he’s thinking as he’s trying to figure out what’s going on all around him and pull off the physicality of it. So a movie that just pride some nice, exciting entertainment while being some film familiar in the genre because it’s pulling from a lot of different influences at the same time putting a new spin twist on it all with an exciting fun adventure that’s forward moving with some nice reveals as you go through the story. So it comes in first place. So we saw what the critics had to say about it. That was my take on it. Here’s what some of you guys had to say about it.

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Over on Stardust. I’m actually really happy you picked the Maze Runner because it is my favorite movie. And so I was kind of anxious to watch this movie, but I actually really liked it. I thought I had a good premise and I thought it was just pretty well done. My expectations for this film was low, but it actually was pretty decent. And the my biggest problem with it is there was a few sequences inside of this bar, which I thought were kind of just I came out of it kind of disappointed, didn’t really enjoy it. And so for me, the Maze Runner, the Scorch Trials, is a poor continuation from the previous film. And that is exactly how you conclude a really solid trilogy. Yet again, this movie has great action sequences from start to finish. It opens with a great ten minute action sequence, but it’s still enjoyable. There’s some really cool action pieces that are highly entertaining. Dylan O’Brien does a good job and I’m glad to see that his injuries weren’t too bad. And his back when I first saw the death, I thought it was absolutely incredible. I still think it’s really good, but there were a few mistakes. Now, as I look back on it, like the characters being saved at the last second by some incredible coincidence. But all right, guys, that just got back from the theater from seeing Maze Runner, The Death Cure, this movie might be better than the previous two Maze Runner movies. So there you have it, a whole bunch.

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A different opinion on the Masrani movies hate the beginning of the month, I said I was going to do a giveaway on my Maze Runner breaking video. So here we are, a bunch. You guys submitted your different reviews over on Stardust’s. I watched them put your names in a hat based off the people who put stuff out here. The winner of our final giveaway for the month of January is going to be do we have guy go? I really like you. I really watched it multiple times and enjoyed it every single time. I love to cast the concept is amazing and I actually got the entire series of books. So can I go if you can message me down below, tell me where I can find you on the Internet and email, Facebook account or something like that, where I can message you with the digital code for the movie of your choice. And if you’re new to my channel, please consider clicking that subscribe button or do movie reviews, TV reviews, ranking videos like the one you’re watching right now. But the key thing is, I don’t want to just talk about movies. I want to talk about movies with you said join me down in the comments section. Click on that voting thing up there. I guess I’m up here in this corner, too, so click right here to get that vote to come down. Tell me what you think is the best of the Maze Runner movies. And thank you for watching.