‘MAZE RUNNER: THE DEATH CURE’
PG-13 2:21
The third time isn’t quite the charm for “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” the third installment in the movie franchise based on author James Dashner’s sci-fi trilogy for young adults.
Despite a strong cast, striking locations and slick digital effects, the overlong movie lurches from chase to battle to soul-searching quietude — and then back again — in frustratingly generic action-movie style. It’s just one darn thing after another.
Director Wes Ball, who also worked on the first two films, brings a strong continuity of vision, testifying to his respect for the books. But “The Maze Runner” and its follow-up, “The Scorch Trials,” conjured unique worlds and situations. “The Death Cure,” on the other hand, offers up a whole tasting menu of dystopian spectacle borrowed from such films as “World War Z.” Somehow, that makes it less special.
Still, critical quibbles may seem petty to teenage fans of the books and movies. For them, this finale is not likely to disappoint. The protagonists and villains who have survived into the final chapter remain complex characters, with varying motivations. The one exception is the steadfast hero, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), who, over the series, has never given up the fight or betrayed a trust.
For those who missed the earlier films, a recap is in order: We first meet Thomas after he has been dropped into a mysterious, verdant prison yard called the Glade — home to a band of teenage boys and one late-arriving girl, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), who wins Thomas’ heart.
High walls surround the Glade, and beyond them is a deadly mechanical maze, through which Thomas leads a group to a desert, known as the Scorch, to their apparent rescue.
But in the second film, their rescuers were revealed to be the same fascistic organization, World Catastrophe Killzone Department, or WCKD, that had walled up the kids in the first place.
That group’s top scientist, Ava (Patricia Clarkson, in a delicately shaded portrait of depravity), explains that a virus nearly wiped out humankind, turning people into zombies. Thomas and others with immunity were to be guinea pigs in her search for a cure.
This brings us to “The Death Cure,” in which Thomas — his heart still broken by Teresa’s betrayal at the end of the last film — joins with the resistance The 7-year-old Billy (Abby Ryder Fortson); Liam, a fledgling country star (Alex Roe); and dreamgirl Josie (Jessica Rothe) in a by-the-book redemption story for a guy who hardly deserves it.
group that he and his friends have met in the desert, taking on WCKD in its walled citadel of skyscrapers and black-clad troopers.
Outside those walls, the city is ringed by angry, starving people and underground bands of zombies. Revolution looms, but before that, Thomas, with the help of some unlikely new allies, must rescue a friend from the first two films (Ki Hong Lee), who’s being subjected to experiments that amount to torture in Ava’s lab.
Triumphs and tragedies collide, along with idealism and disillusionment — and zombies — in a climactic battle, replete with explosions and collapsing buildings. Despite the weight of its moral stakes and all that came before it, the saga’s resolution
— only partly mitigated by a life-affirming epilogue that attempts to sweep away some of the emotional debris — feels not just derivative, but, most sadly, pedestrian.
Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Ki Hong Lee and Kaya Scodelario. (Contains blood and gore, gun battles and coarse language)
— Jane Horwitz, Washington Post
OK, fine, they’re not all bad.
Billy (Abby Ryder Fortson) in “Forever My Girl” certainly falls on the annoying end of the spectrum; she is the wise-beyondher-years 7-year-old who spouts off stats about the dangers of riding in convertibles and teaches herself to play the guitar without ever hitting a false note.
That character is hardly the movie’s only offense — the romantic drama is painfully contrived and insistently predictable — but it may be the most difficult to overlook.
Written and directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf, “Forever My Girl” actually begins before Billy’s birth, as Josie (Jessica Rothe) is getting ready to marry her high school sweetheart, the fledgling country music star Liam (Alex Roe).
Just as she’s decked out in her wedding dress and touching up her lipstick one last time, she receives word that Liam’s a no-show. He’s left their tiny Louisiana town to start his life of superstardom, so marriage is a bit inconvenient at the moment.
Cut to eight years later, Liam is onstage in a packed arena, sweaty and singing “Don’t water down my whiskey” while adoring fans mouth the words. When he finishes, they chant his name, and his manager sends a flirtatious blonde from the front row up to his hotel room. This was worth giving up Josie for, right? Of course not.
Don’t worry: Liam finds an excuse to return to his hometown, where he inevitably comes faceto-face with the one who got away (if you can call someone who still lives in her childhood home “getting away”).
She promptly punches him in the stomach, then introduces him to her daughter, Billy. Liam may not be a math wiz, but it dawns on him fairly quickly that Billy’s his.
So begins a by-the-book redemption story for a guy who hardly deserves it. Besides the fact that Liam ditched his fiance without explanation, he acts like a spoiled brat most of the time. He is the type of guy who drinks himself silly on a hotel rooftop, then throws his empty cans to the street below. It is bad enough to litter, but endangering innocent pedestrians? Come on, man.
Josie, meanwhile, is one of those one-dimensional dreamgirls, magically devoid of flaws. Sweet but not entirely spineless, she is a churchgoing single mom who owns a flower shop and does not even get exasperated when little old ladies spend hours paying for their bouquets, one coin at a time.
She deserves better than Liam but is bound to the rules of outdated romance movies, which means she has to wait around for a guy she fell in love with when she was a teenager to grow up.
Of course, the way to her heart is by watching him bond with his newly discovered child genius.
You have to wonder if Liam would be so all-in about self-actualization if, say, Billy were less selfsufficient or more prone to tantrums. But “Forever My Girl” isn’t going there — that would be far too interesting.
This is a movie that is content sticking to a tired script about a kid who’s exhausting.
Starring: Alex Roe, Jessica Rothe and John Benjamin Hickey. (Strong language and mature thematic elements, including drinking) — Stephanie Merry,
Washington Post