They’re out of the maze but still running in The Scorch Trials.
The maze gives way to a blazing apocalypse in colossal sequel Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. Total Film heads on set to find out how they’re expanding the end of the world on one of Hollywood’s tightest deadlines.
Yo, bitch!” No sooner has Total Film stepped off the plane in Albuquerque, we’re met with a rather, erm, informal greeting. Whether emblazoned across t-shirts, beanies or cooking aprons, Aaron Paul’s infamous catchphrase screams at you from the windows of every souvenir shop from arrivals to exit – a not-so-subtle reminder of the sleepy New Mexico town’s biggest export to date, Breaking Bad. ABQ has made a whole industry around its most famous calling card; that could all be about to change, though, thanks to its latest claim to fame. Yep, there’s a new production in town, and this one’s courting a whole new army of devoted fans… Last September, post-apocalyptic teen thriller
The Maze Runner became one of the year’s biggest sleeper hits. Based on the novel by James Dashner and seen as something of a Young Adult underdog, the film went on to earn 10 times its (relatively) meagre $34m budget as it became the latest pretender to The Hunger Games’ throne. And so here we are, not three months later, visiting the set of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials – a follow-up that’s bigger, bolder and more ambitious in every respect. It’s December 2014, one week before the Christmas break, and cast and crew are already on day 34 of a hectic 55-day shooting schedule in the midst of the New Mexico desert.
“It feels like I was doing press for the first movie yesterday and we’re almost halfway through the sequel!” says returning director Wes Ball, a man who looks surprisingly calm for someone who’s wrangling his second blockbuster in the space of a year. “It’s nuts. It didn’t feel like I left, really – we just jumped right into the next one and tried to keep the momentum going.” Officially greenlit just days after The Maze
Runner opened in cinemas (though producer Wick Godfrey – no stranger to YA adaps after shepherding the Twilight saga – had persuaded the studio to start prepping earlier in the summer, urging them to “bet on success”), The Scorch Trials’ lightningfast turnaround has been a huge challenge for Ball. This is, after all, only his second feature, and is, perhaps unsurprisingly, much larger in scope. He’s taking it all in his stride, though.
“I didn’t know it was going to be so damn cold,” he jokes of the very sunny but very chilly new location, which – ironically given what it’s doubling for – just happens to be experiencing one of its coldest winters in years. “But what’s fun is it gives us the opportunity to be really different, visually. The last one was filmed in the hot, humid swamps of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the colours and textures were all green overgrowth and grey concrete. Here we’re out in this vast expanse with clear skies and horizon lines. It’s been a lot of fun just to expand that world and make it feel more rich and real. I love location work: it gives a life to things that you can’t really fabricate on set.”
As glimpsed at the end of The Maze Runner, that vast expanse is otherwise known as “the Scorch” – the Earth reduced to one big, arid wasteland thanks to some kind of ravaging, apocalyptic disaster. It’s this world that our heroes Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) and co are now trying to navigate, having escaped the maze and the clutches of sinister organization WCKD (see what they did there). Hunted by their former captors at every turn, the ‘Gladers’ are forced into a desperate search for answers (What is their purpose? Who exactly are WCKD?) across an increasingly unforgiving landscape.
“It’s going to look like a completely different franchise,” says a scruffed-up, sandblasted O’Brien, excitedly. “The whole world opens up. Where we were in the first one was very much a confined,
“it’s going to look like a completely different franchise” dylan o’brien
constructed environment. Here we have the Scorch, we have WCKD, we have this mansion… We’re in a new location every week, so there’s a lot more variety. Everything has looked insane so far and we joke each week that we’re shooting an entirely different movie.”
Ah yes, the mansion. Located in the heart of the city, today’s location is a looming, incongruous-looking building known as ‘The Castle’ – an imposing, turreted house made of grey stone speckled with gargoyles and stainedglass windows. Flanked by huge iron railings, it looks like the type of place The Addams Family might have summered in.
Hundreds of crew scurry around the building while nonplussed locals sip their morning brews in a low-key coffee shop across the road. Inside, the ornate halls have been carefully distressed to look suitably dilapidated – singed sofas, smashed chandeliers, torn curtains and dust, lots of dust. It’s far from deserted, though. Loads of punk-inspired extras mill about waiting for filming to begin, while the set dressers layer the finishing touches to their masterwork: graffiti on the walls; fairy lights; a glitterball strung from the fixtures; tatty garments, and jars half full of colourful liquids strewn about the place. If we’re not mistaken, it looks like there’s quite the post-apocalyptic celebration going on.
“This is a section in the movie where Thomas, who’s been separated from his friends, is lured into this party,” confirms Godfrey as he guides us around the set. “It’s here you really get to see what society is like in a world ravaged by the elements and disease. The scene reminded me of Pleasure Island in Pinocchio, when they get lost in that world and start to grow donkey ears
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and tails. Thomas is given this drink and trips out – and there’s that part of him that wants to stay. But ultimately the people who run this party [ led by a shady Alan Tudyk, kitted out in a red velvet smoking jacket and looking like a Hugh Hefner-type
who’s partied way too hard] have ill intentions…” So, why exactly would Thomas want to remain in this den of iniquity? “After the ordeal in the maze he thought it would be over,” O’Brien explains, “and I think finding out that what he’s led his friends into could be even worse is weighing heavily on him. He feels responsible for this group and the fact that they’ve lost some of their own. What lies ahead is not at all what he thought it would be, which has made him fragile. It’s a whole new world now.”
Luckily, he’s not alone. Accompanying him on his quest to rejoin the Gladers is one of the sequel’s major new characters – Scorch survivor Brenda. Played by Insurgent’s Rosa Salazar, she’s a powerful new ally for the maze escapee – and having lived through the apocalypse, she’s picked up a few tips along the way. “She’s very ‘no bullshit’,” says Salazar in a refreshing case of life imitating art. (“How was I?” she asks with a cheeky grin when TF informs her we’ve been watching her day’s work from the playback monitor.)
“There’s immediately an attraction between Brenda and Thomas, but it’s not like he’s saving the damsel in distress,” she says. “Brenda’s been in the Scorch being chased by zombies and collecting her food and generally being a badass out there. They’re equals and they challenge each other and I think that’s really hot. Joining the cast has been very easy and from the moment I met Dylan it made sense. I was like, ‘Oh, we can spar!’”
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Salazar quotes Sigourney Weaver’s alien-proof badass Ellen Ripley as a major inspiration.
Disease.” “Zombies.” Sounds like it won’t just be WCKD that Thomas and the gang will be battling in the Scorch. Suddenly, we’re confronted by a familiar yet horrifying sight: actors Ki Hong Lee and Thomas Brodie-Sangster – returning as Gladers Minho and Newt – have arrived on set ready for the afternoon’s filming, and they’re looking a bit peaky. All sallow skin, bloodshot eyes and rotting teeth, and both covered in big, blue, tendril-like protrusions. It’s a somewhat unnerving experience as TF shakes their hands.
“Looks pretty gnarly, huh?” laughs Lee. “It took about three hours in make-up. Isn’t it weird? Touch this right here,” he says, pointing us to a nasty-looking silicone thread on his arm. “That’s my favourite part – it feels like a real vein!”
TF touches, flinches. “Yeah,” he laughs, “it is really gross.” “It’s a shame it’s not Halloween, because this would be amazing,” chuckles Brodie-Sangster.
So, why exactly are these two made up to look this hideous? “We’re shooting this scene where Thomas is tripping out a little bit,” Lee explains. “He has these hallucinations about all the characters and kind of sees what we might look like if we were Cranks.”
One of the aces up The Maze Runner’s sleeve was its intense, surprisingly scary set-pieces, which saw the Gladers hounded by giant mechanical spider-wasp-thingys known as Grievers. Not to be outdone, The Scorch Trials offers up an even more terrifying breed of creature to terrorise our heroes – one-time humans infected with a zombie-like virus called ‘the flare’.
“The Cranks are going to be very scary,” assures Godfrey. “They’re not really zombies in that they still have an element of their intellect in there, but they’re also completely mad and will rip you limb from limb. Visually, the cool thing that Wes is creating with [ WETA is the
“the set-pieces are bigger... we’re trying hard to up the ante” wes ball
idea that the more lost you are to the disease, the more of these growths there are coming out of you – to the point where you cease to look human. So we have two stages – real performers with prosthetics, and then fully CG characters. It’s intense, and I think that’s what will separate it from a lot of the other YA things out there. We have to be careful not to cross into R-rated territory – that would be totally self-defeating – but we’re trying to walk the line.”
In case you’re worried about CG overload, fear not – despite increasing the scale as any good sequel should, Ball reveals there’s actually a “couple of hundred” fewer VFX shots in this movie than there were in The Maze Runner. “The problem is the shots we do have are 10 times more difficult,” he laughs. “We’re still on a tight budget but our M.O. is to try and reach as far as we possibly can, squeeze the budget and put all the money on screen. The set-pieces are bigger and more fun, too – they remind me of Spielberg setpieces in that they just keep on unfolding; they’re not these little 2-3 minute sequences that I was limited by in the first movie. We’re trying really hard to up the ante on all those levels.”
“It’s been a lot more physical than The Maze Runner,” agrees Scodelario, the British actress playing Thomas’ tormented best mate, Teresa. “I wasn’t very well prepared. They got us here and they were like, ‘OK, we’re at really high altitude and it’s the middle of the desert and you’re gonna be running every day.’ I was like, ‘Oh shit, I don’t run!’ We trained out in the desert with the stunt guys who were amazing and have somehow managed to get me to a point where I haven’t passed out yet. It’s a lot more work than the first movie – we’ve been running up sand dunes and climbing mountains. Luckily none of us are super fit so we’re all in it together. I always thought that was important – these kids aren’t superheroes, they’re not in top form. So that made it easier. We didn’t have to pretend too much!”
Despite the tight schedule, tight budget and tight hamstrings, one thing that’s clear on set is the entire cast and crew are determined to put out the best adaptation of The Scorch Trials they possibly can, as much to repay the love shown to the first film as laying the groundwork for the planned trilogy closer, The Death Cure (currently scheduled, much to Ball’s relief, to shoot early next year to give the filmmakers a bit of a breather). “None of us expected [ the success of the first film],” Scodelario admits. “We were very aware that a lot of other YA adaptations hadn’t worked, but we didn’t want to make the usual love-triangle YA film – we just wanted to make a cool action sci-fi movie. The fans have been incredible. They’re in every corner of the world. We’ve already seen a few down here in New Mexico. It’s very cool.” Something tells us they’ll be the first of a whole new generation making the pilgrimage to Albuquerque. Expect a host of “I survived the Scorch” t-shirts taking over the departures lounge any time soon... Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials opens on 11 September.