It’s been almost three years since the last Maze Runner movie. The Scorch Trials came and went and, frankly, I completely forgot about the franchise. When the original premiered in 2014, I was shocked by how much I enjoyed it as a fun, two-hour escape. It was smaller in scale than, say, The Hunger Games, and its minimal cast made it a rather tight story. And, when the second one came out a year later, I was legitimately intrigued … until I actually watched the train wreck.
And so … this brings us to Maze Runner 3: Still Running.
Clocking in at 2 hours and 23 minutes, Maze Runner: The Death Cure is the definition of a slog of a movie. The story is all over the place, filled with way too many characters that I don’t care about. Blatant foreshadowing caused me to legitimately roll my eyes, while the fluff of nearly fifty minutes cause it to drag almost impossibly. Really, if this movie had been edited down to 90 minutes, there might have been an opportunity for something fun and unique. Instead we are left with … this.
The action really is not bad. The movie (almost smartly) to start off with a rip-off of Fury Road’s opening scene, transitioning quickly into several rip-offs of The Fast and Furious franchise. (I guess if you are going to rip-off scenes … do it from franchises that work.) The rest of the film feels like they used leftover CGI from the Resident Evil movies, with mindless villains who never quite know when they should shoot shoot their damn guns. There are multiple times that they have CLEAR SHOTS AND DON’T ATTACK. It’s fine. I’m fine.
I really should have known better after seeing the second installment but, hey, it’s January … what else am I going to see besides Oscar bait and a third screening of The Last Jedi?
Photo credit: Joe Alblas – TM & © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Not for sale or duplication.
