This is a middle movie and it’s a great one. Because the plot thickens and deepens and it tries to prepare you for the huge finale that is coming up. We get characterization and plot and backstory and the stakes get higher and higher. There aren’t many slow spots in this film at all.
The cold opening here where we see Thomas as a kid and then him dreaming about the Box and then Minho shaking him awake. The disorientation as they go from the copter to the base and it’s jarring for you, the viewer, to make you sympathize more with the kids. We also get some very valuable information here – that Thomas was given up to WKCD by his mother when he was very young, presumably because WKCD promised that whatever Immunes were given up to them would be safe, would be cared for and protected. Given that we see him and Ava Paige on a train with several other children, we can extrapolate that this is how WKCD got most of their subjects and that this program, whatever it is, has been going on for a long time. That’s important to know. This was not a hasty slapdash operation slung together from whatever was left of the infrastructure after the Scorch. This operation has taken money and personnel and above all else, *time.*
So the ‘copter lands and they have to go right now because there’s a swarm and they are all rushed into something that looks a hell of a lot like an old oil drilling platform, only there’s no water around it. Another visual clue for just how different the world has become for the audience if they are paying attention.
Enter Jansen.
Jansen is the boss of this set up here and he encourages them to think of it as a “waystation” just a stop over place before they get them over to the safe haven.
And it’s some of the only time that Jansen tells the whole truth, when he tells them that the world outside is hanging on by a very thin thread and that the fact that “you kids” can survive the Flare virus is humanity’s best hope.
Jansen separates Thomas out from the rest of them for a private chat that really consists of Jansen asking him what he (Thomas) remembers about WKCD and straight out asks him who’s side is he on. It’s highly suspicious and it makes you really wonder about how much Jansen already knows and what he’s really after. This is where we first hear about this “refuge.”
Teresa is also separated out from the group. There are red flags going up all over the place. This place seems too good to be true. The voice over the speakers “always being monitored” which is a direct contrast to the Maze where they didn’t know until the end that they were being surveilled.
We meet Aris who has similar spidey senses. He’s the catalyst for Thomas finding out about the real purpose behind the so-called waystation. The harvesting room is terrifying and you see exactly what’s happening to the kids that have “gone to the farm.”
Thomas has a moment where he thinks Teresa’s there but it’s not her, it’s Rachel who got taken the first night, so Aris says and that he’d told her it was going to be okay. The biggest shock comes from seeing Jansen come in and have a discussion with Dr. Paige.
Thomas and Aris witness this and the conversation that gives us the information that these Immunes are being harvested for something in them that can provide clues towards a cure. The progress isn’t fast enough for Dr. Paige and she wants all the rest of the Immunes sedated and prepped for Harvest by the time she arrives there. She wants to be able to guarantee their safety and despite Jansen’s protests, she points out that he still hasn’t found the Right Arm and that they had hit two of their facilities. Jansen says he’s going to start with the newest arrivals.
From that point on, things happen very quickly. Thomas and Aris make it back to the room and inbetween the panic and Thomas’ frantic action to block the door from the inside, Newt and the rest of the Gladers get the information out of the two of them and after some quick thinking and daring stunts, they rescue Theresa and make it out of the base and into the Scorch.
Their saving grace is that it’s nighttime during what could be called a light sandstorm. So their footprints are almost immediately covered up behind them. They get to what the audience would realize is a parking structure and Theresa demands to know what’s going on and Newt demands to know what the plan is. Thomas doesn’t have one really until Aris mentions the Right Arm up in the mountains again.
So that’s their goal. Reach the Right Arm.
The imagery of the shopping mall and the parking stucture covered in sand and semi-destroyed by the elements. They decide to explore their surroundings some, see what resources they can scrounge up, and that’s when they’re more closely introduced to the Cranks. There’s also a bit where Minho and Thomas are looking together at a circuit board and Minho straight up tells Thomas that he doesn’t want to end up like those kids that they left back there. Newt making sure Frypan doesn’t watch as Teresa changes. Newt is truly the best of them.
The guy with the bag over his head, the shrine at the chain link fence, all of these are amazing details that give us a better idea of just what this enviroment is actually like.
The ONE Raven/Crow as foreshadowing. If you’re at all familiar with the counting crows rhyme, you know that’s bad. One’s for sorrow after all and we don’t have to wait long for it. Winston was attacked and hurt pretty badly.
The first daylight looks at the Scorch and the sheer amount of rubble and devastation steals your breath away. They have to scatter at one point because of the transport (“berg”) that is carrying Ava Paige over to the waystation.
They come over this dune and you see the SF Bay Bridge and all of a sudden you know exactly where they are in real space and it is bonechillingly terrifying.
Theresa reveals to Thomas that she’s getting all her memories back and how she remembers why they were there and what Thomas was like as a small kid when he was first brought in. She wants them to go back and Thomas refutes that wholesale. Thomas knows that Theresa isn’t telling him everything but before he can press her on it further, they have to run back to the group.
It’s Winston and he’s in bad shape. He doesn’t want to turn into one of those things and it gives us the first inkling that maybe not all of the Gladers ARE Immune. Winston is the first to die in the Scorch and it’s his own choice.
The Scorch is very much a desert and the weather there behaves like it, hot during the day and freezing at night. And the lightning storms are beyond terrifying.
Especially when there is little to no safe shelter. They wind up taking shelter in a building after Minho gets struck by lightning. It looks like a factory and then they notice that there are Cranks chained up in seemingly random places.
Enter Brenda who walks right up to them with no fear whatsoever and she takes them to Jorge. She and Jorge are curious because no one else has come out of the Scorch in a long time.
Jorge has three questions for them, where are they going, where did they come from, and how can he profit. It’s fascinating to see the interplay between Jorge and Thomas. We also find out that Thomas and the other Gladers are tagged as being property of WKCD which makes them highly valuable.
Jorge plays it like he’s going to sell them back to WKCD, however secretly he wants to use them as his and Brenda’s ticket into The Right Arm. Barkley, one of the men in the gang has sold them out to WKCD already. So there’s a WKCD team already infiltrating the place to get the kids back.
The part where Jorge tells Brenda that he’s going to play them his favorite song and her reaction to that is one of my absolute favorite parts of this movie. I really love the relationship between Jorge and Brenda.
Jorge helps them escape, but Brenda and Thomas get separated from the group and have to find their own way out…before the song finishes and the place blows up.
It’s during these scenes that more information is revealed to us, that supposedly the Right Arm has been taking Immunes to the safe haven for years and that it’s a paradise free from the sun, free from infection. Helping the Gladers is going to be their ticket to it, so Jorge thinks. Brenda is more skeptical.
She’s got a great line about how hope has killed more of her friends that the Flare and Scorch combined. Hope is dangerous. We also get to see what full term Cranks look like and it’s appropriately terrifying.
There’s an important moment here as Brenda is revealed to have been bitten and shrugs it off for the moment because she’s got a job to do. She’s got to get Thomas to Marcus because that’s where Jorge will be headed.
Also the prop work here is stunningly amazing – the only way that I know that it’s not real concrete and wood is that Thomas and Brenda’s palms aren’t all scraped up and bloody.
The price of admission to the party being a liquid that no one knows what’s in it is definitely suspect but they go along with it because that’s what they have to do in order to get in and see if they can find Jorge and the Gladers. It’s definitely some of drug, given the effects on Brenda and Thomas. Brings to mind the island of the lotus-eaters in the Odyssey.
Thomas has a vision while he’s under and it’s here where we find out more about our favorite Runner. Thomas telling Teresa that he had to do it before getting pulled away by security guards.
Fade back into reality and Jorge is interrogating Marcus about the Right Arm. It’s revealed that Marcus has been funneling kids to WKCD all these years, however last he knew the Right Arm had an outpost up in the mountains.
They steal a car and drive up as far as they can, Brenda is looking worse and worse but still plugging on. They start out on foot but can’t get far before they’re being shot at.
It turns out to be a misunderstanding. The people shooting at them are The Right Arm. They’ve found them.
Everything is great, except there’s forty minutes left in the movie, so you know this isn’t nearly the happy ending it initially appears to be. They’ve accomplished one objective, but they’re not out of the woods yet.
Brenda collapses and that’s when Mary shows up and drops a hell of a lot of revelations. We get all this information about Thomas and Immunes and the science behind why WKCD does what they do. The Immunes produce an enyzme that can’t be manufactured, it can only be harvested from an Immune. She mixes up something from Thomas’ blood that puts the symptoms Brenda was having to rest. However, Mary cautions that it won’t save her, it’s not a cure, and that she’ll always need more.
Mary mentions that WKCD started out with the best of intentions, but degenerated into what they currently are and if they had their way, they wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice an entire generation just to get more of that enzyme. Let that sink in for a moment.
One whole generation.
It’ll make your blood run cold, thinking about how far WKCD was willing to go.
The conversation between Thomas and Theresa on the rock gives us some insight into her characterization and it’s an odd parellel between Thomas’ actions that kicked off the whole series of events and hers now. Theresa was used to help flush out the rest of The Right Arm and WKCD attacks the camp.
The battle scenes and the score are amazing here in how they’re composed and executed. They managed to get free, but they lost a lot of people and Minho in the process. Vince wants to stick to the plan, but Thomas has other ideas.
He’s not going with them. Remember, the talk that Thomas and Minho at the beginning? It comes into play here. Thomas gives this great speech about how it’s never going to stop and that it’s time to take the fight to WKCD.
He’s going to kill Ava Paige. He’s going to get Minho back.
Vince has the best closing line. “That’s a great speech, kid, but what’s your plan?”
The looks on everyone’s faces as it flashes on the survivors before fading out on Thomas’ face.
Like I said in the first installment of this series, it starts off small and then slowly unfolds more and more so we get this ever-expanding view of the setting and world. The Scorch Trials gave us a lot of new information about the world and how the characters all fit into it.
We also learn that not everyone in the Glade was an Immune, which makes sense. There would need to be a control group after all, right? For the experiment to be valid, you would always need your control group to contrast against your test group. So just like with the movie before it, it’s setting things up for the next installment of the franchise. Leaving us wondering exactly what’s going to happen with all of the characters we’ve come to know and love.
