Thomas and the other Gladers have escaped their prison, learned about the terrible pandemic that turns almost every human being into a deranged and violent lunatic, and about WCKD, the organisation that has been systematically torturing them in pursuit of a cure. Or so WCKD's agents claim, anyway. Frankly, given the extravagant resources they've invested in lethal booby traps and nightmarish prisons, I can't blame (most of) the Gladers for being sceptical.
Betrayed by one of their own, the Gladers are now torn between trying to rescue captured friends and to get a small community of 'immunes' to an isolated location where they can rebuild civilisation, away from the infected.
There will come a time when I can talk about the Maze Runner films without mentioning the mind-boggling stupidity of the books they're based on. Today is not that day.
The first and second films did a fine job of turning James Dashner's drivel into tolerably entertaining action movie nonsense. This one, alas, can't quite make us three for three. Just like the characters are torn between multiple goals, the script feels like it is being pulled in multiple directions and to support too many possibilities. Maybe WCKD really do want to save the world! Maybe they might even succeed! Maybe not, though! This creates a movie where there's a lot of stuff happening, but not much sense that it's effective stuff. Spectacle over substance, which can work when the spectacle is really smart (*cough* the Fast and the Furious franchise *cough*), but which this script doesn't really manage.
At 150 minutes, it also outstays its welcome a bit, I think.
I've given this a Qualified Recommendation, but the qualification is "only watch this if you have seen the first two films and are invested in the characters' fates". If that's not the case, I'd say give the whole trilogy a miss.
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