The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Adults are just the absolute worst in “The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials“, yet another tween-targeting science-fiction film that posits grown-ups as the root cause of adolescents’ every problem. The Gladers and Aris stage a daring jailbreak and escape into “the Scorch“, the sun-baked desert landscape that has overtaken the world’s cities.

Fun, if programmatic, for the better part of its nearly two hours, The Maze Runner distinguished itself from its YA brethren through its largely self-contained locale and discursive action. They’re a cabal known as the World in Catastrophe Killzone Department (WCKD, pronounced “Wicked”), even if it’s not always obvious who they are.

Some cast members were in town this week to talk about the film, which opens Friday. The characters must decide where their allegiances lie.

He says, “We filmed in New Mexico, in Albuquerque in these mountains, it was this ancient Indian burial ground and it hadn’t been used for filming before”. Nonetheless, thinking too hard about the ethicality of these heroes and villains’ actions is to pretend that the filmmakers have done likewise, rather than – as is the case here – merely regurgitated stock formulas and conventions for a new generation of moviegoers.

Beyond the 15- to 17-hour work days, the group played plenty of rounds of Mario Kart.

Dylan O’Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and Kaya Scodelario showed up fully ready to party. When Saturday Night Live parodied it and other fantasy-adventure movies last fall (the drab costumes, the impenetrable jargon, the needlessly obscure mysteries within mysteries), I figured that was the death blow.

The Maze Runner, released previous year, featured a young adult dystopian future that combined thrills, angst and drama, proving it was not just another Hunger Games rehash.

The teenagers flee into the sun-scorched wilderness where they come face-to-face with the Cranks and forge an uneasy alliance with a gung-ho girl called Brenda (Rosa Salazar) and her surrogate father (Giancarlo Esposito).

The story of the movie revolves in the lives of identical twin gangsters, Ronnie and Reggie Kray who were the most notorious criminals in British history.