By Jennifer Trend, Staff Writer
“The Death Cure”, the third installment of “The Maze Runner” series written by James Dashner and directed by Wes Ball has recently hit theaters, where fans of the movie and book have been eagerly waiting for it’s delayed arrival. Thoughts on the movie have been across the board, and both positive and negative reviews are rolling in.
Honestly, watching it from a cinematic point of view, it was a phenomenal movie. Yes, parts did seem slow or unnecessary or just there to provide transition or satisfy Hollywood, but the good greatly outweighs the bad. Characters developed beautifully, the story reeled me in, keeping me there and I was left wanting to see more of the setting, the characters, and the story.
Now, judging the film on its accuracy of the source material… that’s where things start to go downhill. There was virtually nothing that was the same as the book. Yes, there were some main events shown to continue the story, but it was so loosely related to the book that you could argue they followed two completely different storylines.
Take one of the most well known scene in the series- something readers know as page 250- Newt’s death- as an example. Yes, it did happen, but it happened in such a different way from the book that it didn’t evoke the emotions I felt while reading the book.
In the book, Thomas and the rest of the Gladers are left in WICKED for more testing, before Thomas and a few others escape and make it to Denver, where they meet with the Right Arm. Action takes place, the book goes on, Thomas returns to WICKED to destroy them and ends up getting to a paradise that Ava Paige had created as a backup plan if there really was no cure.
Meanwhile, in the movie, things happened much more differently. At the end of The Scorch Trials, the second installment, we are left with Thomas promising that he will rescue Minho and end WICKD. And this is what drives him to save other test subjects of other mazes, and leads him to ‘the last city’, where WICKD has rebuilt a new life for immunes and those who haven’t gotten sick. He gets help from the Right Arm, an organization against WICKD and ends up saving Minho and getting to a paradise where no disease or WICKD will find them, even if they lost a few good friends and family.
See any similarities? If you do, the movie portrays it much more differently than it does in the book. Sometimes it even felt like they gave a face to a character but completely rewrote the backstory and personality.
The whole Maze Runner series as movies did amazing, but not so well as book to movie adaptations. “The Maze Runner” stayed true to the first book, but it felt as if the movie took its own, different path after the first movie.
If you do go watch the movie, go in with a very open mind, and remind yourself not to expect anything to be the same as the book. It is a very great movie to watch, but if you go as a fan of the books, be prepared.
