Whether to blame Ball, Dashner, or Nowlin for the unfulfilling finale is up for debate. The actors’ performance of the affectionate, complicated connection between the three main characters, Thomas, Teresa, and Brenda, is unconvincing. In the final installment, the “Gladers” now must break into “The Last City” - which turns out to be yet another maze - and find a cure for “the Flare.” While it would not be fair to spell out the cure, it should be noted that - after all the machinations, struggles, and intrigue of surviving the maze, battling “cranks,” traveling hundreds of miles, losing numerous friends, and fighting a tyrannical and literally “WCKD” organization - the solution was disappointingly within reach from the very beginning.Īnd while filmmakers gave plenty of attention to special effects, set design, and makeup, they skimped on character development, and they offered only a perfunctory love triangle added emotionlessly into the storyline as though by assignment. In the series’ first film, we meet a group of teenage boys (“Gladers,” in the local parlance) whose memories have been swiped struggling to escape from a deadly labyrinth filled with monstrous “Grievers.” In the sequel, “The Scorch Trials,” the surviving “Gladers” find themselves in a catastrophic world outside the maze where the disease, “the Flare,” has killed thousands and turned thousands more into “Cranks” - or zombies. Santa Barbara residents need not spend ten dollars, not to mention two hours and twenty-three minutes, watching “The Death Cure” for its surgical-face-masked characters when they have already lived through the Thomas Fire.

In that extra year, not only have fans of the original 2009 book matured beyond the peak Young Adult demographic, but also the Dystopian Future Fever - during which time franchises like “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” made household names of Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Shailene Woodley - has subsided.įurthermore, the escapist thrill of watching a distant apocalyptic struggle is less amusing when one can merely turn on the news and see raging wildfires, strangling mudslides, or a government bent on destroying itself from the inside. Also returning is Dylan O’Brien of course, and he injured himself early during filming which caused over a year’s delay in the film’s production.

Wes Ball returns as director, and he continues to provide a high-energy realization of T.S. However, it ultimately disappoints viewers with too many questions, improbabilities, deus-ex-machina resolutions, and an anti-climatic climax.

Reuniting a familiar cast backed by a familiar team into a new-but-somehow-familiar dystopian setting, “The Death Cure” serves up plenty of action and familiar themes. “The Death Cure,” the delayed final installment to the popular “The Maze Runner” trilogy, premiered in theaters Thursday, January 25.

The death cure setting