Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018) Dir: Wes Ball

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I approached this film; the third of Wes Ball's trilogy of young adult sci-fi films, based on the books by James Dashner, with extremely low expectations, mainly because of how poor the second film had been. The general consensus seems to be that this one is better than its predecessor, at least, albeit reviews aren't much kinder than that, generally speaking. Regardless, I thought it best not to get my hopes up for anything better.

From a visual perspective, this was a very mild improvement upon the second film, helped mainly by the city-scapes, which at least gave the film something different to work with. Honestly, the franchise needed a big swing away from the ugliness of 'The Scorch Trials', so the more defined urban environment, even if it felt very typical in its dystopian style, was a welcome change. I do want to have a quick moan about believability for a second, because I found it laughable that these kids, who have spent months and even years in an artificial maze, can fire guns as accurately as trained soldiers.

The writing was definitely better than 'The Scorch Trials', although, in fairness, the bar was extremely low. It still had a number of problems. My main issue was that, much like in that aforementioned second film, characters made a myriad of dumb and pointless decisions. It made for frustrating viewing. The action did at least kept me interested, but that's not to say any of it was overly exciting. The story diverged even more from the books, but, for the story it was telling, it was fine, I suppose.

Dylan O'Brien had a similar turn of it as he had done in the sequel, which is to say, he was okay, but not great. He still lacked the screen presence to feel like a certifiable lead, and suffered because of it. I don't dislike O'Brien as an actor, but he just did not work for me in this role. The writing of his character didn't help his case, but even so, he looked like he was trying way too hard to be more than he was, which is a real shame.

The rest of the cast suffer greatly from not being the main character, in that, they all have 'boring sidekick syndrome' except for Kaya Scodelario, whose character does at least have something going on. Beyond that, one could interchange just about any of the supporting characters with any of the others in any given scene and it would make very little difference. Thomas Brodie-Sangster has a couple of good moments, but only in the climactic scenes of the film, whilst the likes of Ki Hong Lee, Dexter Darden, Rosa Salazar, and Giancarlo Esposito, never stood a chance, considering the writing.

I will give some credit where it's due, I thought that both Will Poulter and Walton Goggins made a distinctly positive impact on the film. The only problem was how little they featured. On the other side of the coin, I felt like Aidan Gillan, Patricia Clarkson, and Barry Pepper, could all have done substantially more with what they had, especially Gillan, whose antagonist has to be one of the most generic and forgettable villains I've seen in a very long time. He was so dull.

Overall, I think it would be fair to say that this film sits resolutely in the middle of its two predecessors, in terms of quality. It was never going to compete with the first film, which had a much stronger and more defined concept, but it recovered the trilogy a little from the disaster that had been the sequel. Disney's adaptation of Dashner's fourth 'Maze Runner' book; a prequel called 'The Kill Order' is apparently in development, but who knows when that will actually happen, or how good it will actually be.