Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 17, 2015

Some viewers may feel themselves in somewhat the same predicament as Thomas (Dylan O’Thomas) did at the beginning of The Maze Runner as that film’s sequel Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials gets underway, thrusting the audience into a noisy, confusing environment where not a lot seems to be making sense. This second entry in the Maze Runner franchise is stuffed to the gills in its early going with all sorts of specific verbiage like Gladers, Cranks, Flare and WCKD (pronounced “Wicked”, just in case anyone was wondering, in just one indication of the franchise’s lack of subtlety), which may leave some audience heads spinning as they attempt to either figure things out in media res or perhaps reacquaint themselves with Thomas and his band of merry (?) maze runners. In one way, the film’s opening is deliberately chaotic, amply documenting the kids’ confusion as they find themselves in an alien environment after having escaped the rigors of the labyrinth. Screenwriter T.S. Nowlin (adapting James Dashner’s Young Adult skewed novels) and director Wes Ball (both repeating their roles from the first film) actually begin the film with a dream sequence which seems perhaps intentionally reminiscent of wintertime concentration camp scenes offered up in another famous franchise, X-Men: The Complete Collection. That turns out to be a memory of Thomas’ which provides a bit of a clue as to his past, while also all too obviously pointing the way forward to what will ultimately be a bookending scene which offers a “callback” to this very sequence. That structural artifice is perhaps the best indication of how rote Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials often is. The film is still viscerally exciting at times, but it takes quite a long time to actually kick into high gear, and even then the story tends to progress in fits and starts, very much like a maze runner desperately trying to get from point A to point B without having much of a clue as to how exactly that should be accomplished.

It’s basically out of the fire and into the frying pan for Thomas and his bunch of comrades (which includes a character named Frypan) as Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials gets underway, and that’s even before the group of youngsters is thrust out into a barren, sun soaked wasteland that contains the remains of a once vibrant cityscape. Before that section of the film arrives, Thomas finds himself in a kind of industrial lair which is being managed by the apparently kindly Mr. Janson (Aidan Gillen), though any armchair scenarist is going to see right through that “apparently” from virtually the first moment Janson appears on screen. Janson is supposedly offering temporary shelter to not just Thomas’ crew, but a whole host of other refugees from a bunch of other mazes (one of several plot points the film never addresses is how exactly all of these maze runners broke out of their confinement at more or less the same moment). Janson assures the kids that they’ll soon be transported to safety at some sylvan paradise somewhere, though (again) prescient viewers will sense that something a bit more nefarious is up as little groups of teens are called by Janson to prepare for their exit from their metallic fortress to an ostensible life of freedom and sunshine.

This whole section of the film is overly drawn out, taking up over a half hour of the proceedings, when it’s obvious from a very early point that Thomas and his friends are not in the arms of safety and have in fact probably wandered directly into a WCKD holding cell of a certain type. There’s an oddly languorous rhythm to this opening act, especially after a knock your socks off first couple of minutes as Thomas awakens from his dream to find himself literally pulled into a maelstrom involving invading Cranks (the zombie like victims of the virus known as Flare). The “reveal” that’s offered shortly before Thomas and his gang break out into the “real” world is creepy enough, but is also fairly predictable, and seems downright derivative of any number of other films like Coma or even Soylent Green which exploit certain “harvesting” tendencies.

The film’s energy level receives a much needed jolt of adrenaline once Thomas and the rest of the former Gladers get out into the Scorch, where they have to deal not just with the detritus of the planet’s former centers of civilization, but with more “mundane” threats like Cranks and the more technologically dangerous forces of WCKD who are pursuing the kids for aims which are not immediately clear even if they’re at least fairly discernable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some characters fall victim to the teethy Cranks, while Thomas manages to figure out that there may indeed be remnants of an actual society roaming around the hills, as evidenced by gruff but lovable Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito) and his acolyte Brenda (Rosa Salazar).

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials clocks in at over two hours, and the film often feels bloated and unnecessarily burdened with sidebars. It also suffers from having to rely on silly moments like the climactic appearance of Jorge just when Thomas seems to have no other option than to take himself and a bunch of other Gladers out of commission (as in permanently out of commission) in order to stop the supposedly villainous activities of Ava (Patricia Clarkson). In fact the character of Ava is a distillation of what tends to suck some of the emotional energy out of this franchise—there’s absolutely no nuance to the plight of this ostensibly well intentioned if ultimately devious woman, when a bit of subtlety in how the character is presented might have helped to establish the “hard choices” various power groups had to make to ensure the survival of Mankind. Instead, everything is boiled down to what basically amounts to White Hats vs. Black Hats, and while that may suffice at a gut level (perhaps especially for that all important Young Adult audience), it keeps the film from ever seeming like much more than a live action cartoon.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Shot digitally with the Arri Alexa XT Plus, the film has undergone the traditional color grading treatment, with large swaths bathed alternately in blue and yellow (though there are occasional forays courtesy of actual lighting into more purple tones, as evidenced by screenshot 12). Detail emerges largely unscathed from these shifts in hue, even when some of the blue tones are virtually slathered on, especially early in the film. Once the kids break out into the Scorch, lighting and color grading are at least relatively more natural looking, and it's here that the film really starts to offer commendable sharpness, clarity and abundant fine detail. Contrast is slightly uneven, leading to a very minor amount of murk in some of the dimmer sequences. The location photography in and around New Mexico's wilderness regions offers some substantial depth of field, a tendency which is echoed with a bit of added softness in some of the CGI laden vistas of devastated urban environments.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the first Blu-ray release of this franchise, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials offers a blisteringly effective DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix which is rife with all the "bells and whistles" (and other sound effects) which audiophiles tend to desire in their action adventure blockbusters. There's a wealth of LFE courtesy not just of booming effects but also some of the lower registers of John Paesano's bombastic score, and several set pieces are awash in copious amounts of discrete channelization and cross channel effects like panning. Fidelity is superb throughout the presentation, offering excellent prioritization even in the most cacophonous sequences. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly, and there are no issues of any kind to mention in this review.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Janson's Report (Classified) (1080p; 4:57) is a set of faux "confessionals" supposedly caught by closed circuit cameras.


• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p; 17:58) feature optional commentary by Wes Ball, T.S. Nowlin, Joe Hartwick, Jr. and Dan Zimmerman.


• Secrets of The Scorch (1080p; 52:15) is a set of featurettes which offer some appealing behind the scenes footage and good interviews with the cast and crew.


• Gag Reel (1080p; 15:02)


• Visual Effects

  Visual Effects Breakdown (1080p; 1:06) features optional commentary by Wes Ball.

  Visual Effects Reel (1080p; 29:55)

• Audio Commentary by Wes Ball, T.S. Nowlin, Joe Hartwick, Jr. and Dan Zimmerman.


• Galleries (1080p)

  Concept Art

  Storyboards

• Theatrical Trailers (1080p; 4:55)

Additionally, a Maze Runner comic book is included.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The problem with running a maze is—one wrong turn, and you're right back where you started. The same might be said of this very franchise, for as I mentioned in the The Maze Runner Blu-ray review, some audience members may feel they've run this particular gauntlet without ever really getting anywhere. The film could have been judiciously trimmed by at least 15-20 minutes, and the first act considerably tightened, both of which might have helped to achieve a bit more dramatic momentum as things progressed into the Scorch. A silly and overly hyperbolic final few minutes also don't help much, but the film is at least buoyed by impressive production design and some artfully staged set pieces, as well as by an expected professionalism on the part of the large (and frequently quite young) cast. Fans of the franchise will probably be willing to overlook this second outing's shortcomings, but the third film had better finally offer a route to resolution, rather than rehashing the same old conflicts over and over again. Technical merits are very strong, the supplemental package nicely varied, and (with caveats noted) Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials comes Recommended.