With Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials being released just around the corner (September 18th), we must be prepared. Being told it has a ‘horror vibe’ by the director himself, and the introduction of new characters, means that we must be more emotionally ready for the relationships that’ll be tested and the choices that our brave Gladers will have to make. So, in order for us to be ready to go out into the emotional-equivalent of The Scorch, here’re 20 hot things you should know in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.
1) It’s a much bigger movie than the first- The first movie was contained set-wise, with the Gladers only able to access The Maze and The Glade, but now they have to discover the dangerous outside world.
“It’s really about discovering the outside world. Everything they wanted to know in the first movie, they start to discover in this movie and it gets much bigger so, by its very nature, there are many more locations, there’s a bigger cast.”- Wyck Godfrey, producer
2) The movie’s bigger than the book- Director Wes Ball has wanted to show things that aren’t exactly in the book, due to his view of how he wants the outside world to look. The way we’ve imagined The Scorch to look will definitely broaden thanks to what Wes has envisioned. Also, thanks to the big setting, the cast needs to be bigger too, which is where Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, and Aiden Gillen come in.
3) It will be a more mature movie than The Maze Runner-
“It’s cool because we get to have more adults in this movie, and they’re not all just the evil adults either. They’re adults that can actually help.” He continued, “It goes with that thing of just making the movie feel [like]more than just a kids movie now, you know? It’s becoming more and more mature, more sophisticated and all that stuff.”- Wes Ball, director
4) The Scorch Trials is primarily based on the second book, but material from The Death Cure will be present- Ball is reported to have said that it’s difficult to just turn a book into a movie without pulling detail from anywhere else, hence their plan is to take the rest of Dashner‘s saga and find the two movies in that. He also revealed that two of the characters from The Death Cure make an early appearance in The Scorch Trials– ‘Mary’, who’s to be played by Lili Taylor (Hemlock Grove, The Conjuring), and ‘Vince’, who is portrayed by Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile).
5) One monster is replaced by another- A little while after sun flares decimated the region between the two Tropical regions of the earth, a virus called ‘The Flare’ began to eat away at the brains of the human population, turning them into ravenous zombie mutants. Ball‘s more-graphic idea of what The Flare does to you is said to be ‘truly terrifying’
….*cue nightmares*
6) But the original evil hasn’t disappeared completely…- During a little scene that isn’t featured in the book, Thomas catches a glimpse of Griever. The team thought the whole Griever-concept had been dropped too quickly, therefore it was Wes’ decision to bring them back
7) ‘”It’s not sacrilege to say you can improve upon the book'”-
“I think when I read the books I kind of go, ‘What was WCKD really doing with the Grievers? What did that have to do with anything?’ And the truth is, you can talk to James sometimes and he’s like, ‘Guys, I’m a writer. I spent 10 years on the first book and then I had a due date for the second and the third one.’” He continued, “I think most of the writers are having to kind of scramble and continue to invent and make things up, and that’s why a lot of times they’re all like, ‘Guys, it’s not sacrilege to say you can improve upon the book because I myself, had I taken 10 years to write each of the subsequent books, probably would have been able to write them better.’”- Wyck Godfrey
8) We need to know more about Teresa!- Teresa is very much a mystery in the first movie, but in the second, she spends a lot more time with the boys than she does in the book, but she’s also very much alone. Kaya Scodelario has commented that a reason she wanted to do the movies was to see how Teresa’s character progresses
9) Lonellyyyy….-
“She’s on the journey with them, but her mind is elsewhere and her thought process and what she wants to do is very different from them all, and she doesn’t really have anyone to share that with, none of them do. These kids have been kind of thrust together. As an actor it’s been a lot lonelier, but I like to play with that, you know? Life isn’t rainbows and fairy tales.”- Kaya Scodelario
10) Bring on Brenda- Salazar likes to think of Brenda as Jorge’s protégé, as he’s the one who takes her in when he finds her wandering the Scorch when she was very young. She also thinks Brenda breaks her own rules and her own impenetrable armour when she lets Thomas in “in this really beautiful way that is sort of messed up”
Read the rest of the points right here!
