Maze Runner: The Death Cure

Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Sangster, Kaya Scodelario, & Ki Hong Lee

Director: Wes Ball - Rating: PG-13 - Score: 4 Stars

The Maze Runner series was one of the best book series I've read in the last few years. I obviously get excited when something I've read hits the big screen, even though I know the film usually won't be as good as the book was. I have found that when film makers try to stick to the original story, as they did in The Hunger Games, the films are terrific. When they just take pieces and basically write their own story, it's usually an epic failure, i.e. Allegiant. In the first installment of Maze Runner, the film diverged and was disappointing, but the second film followed the book to a tee, and was terrific, what would happen in the third? Right off the bat, as I feared, the story is completely different and very few elements from the book are even used in the film, however, in the rarest of rare cases, the way the film makers re-wrote the story, actually improved upon it! Dylan O'Brien returns as Thomas and this is the film where his character really broke out and came to life as the hero we see in the novels. I honestly didn't see him as Thomas until I watched this film, he was that good. As for his other half, AKA Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), she was in a completely different role than in the novel, but likewise gave a much stronger performance than she did in the other two films. The final standout was Thomas Sangster, who I've spoke about before. He is fantastic in everything he does, but he doesn't do a whole lot! I really would like to see him do more and break out, it's a mystery to me why he doesn't. As a whole, The Death Cure was not the best in the book series, but it was the best in the film series. Many critics complained that it was too long, but I say take a look at what they did with the last book of the Divergent series. Alligiant was split into two and how well did that turn out? The only knock on this film is that one of my favorite actors, Jacob Lofland, didn't have more screen time as Aries, but aside from that this was a perfect conclusion to the film series, and a better ending than the one that was originally written for this franchise.