Written by T Canchola
Edited by Silas Lucas
It's a given fact that books are able to convey much more content as opposed to movies. They’re not limited by actors, budget, or run time. Some extravagant ideas and themes are sometimes hard to translate from page to screen. So, when a series like The Maze Runner by James Dashner makes an appearance on the silver screen, it’ll be subject to changes. Lots of changes.
The first book in the series made its debut on October 9, 2009, and stirred the masses with its message. Around two years later it was followed by The Scorch Trials, then concluded with The Death Cure. Five years after the first installment, the series had gained enough traction to be adapted into a movie trilogy.
The films starred Dylan O’brien (Thomas), Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Newt), and Ki Hong Lee (Minho). However, like many book-to-movie adaptations, many details had been altered or omitted from the original plotline. The movie that fans took the most notice of for its differences was The Scorch Trials.
Now, there are many deviations in this film, but we’ll go over the biggest three. Starting with its beginning. In the movie, the Gladers are brought to a facility where they are cleaned up from their previous endeavor of escaping the Maze. They discover the other subjects that WICKED had experimented on. However, they soon discover that the facility is owned by the very scientists they had fun from. The Gladers escape to the Scorch (after a compelling gesture from Dylan O’brien), and begin to trek through its deadly sands. WICKED, in turn, spends the film hunting them down.
Compared to the book, it is vastly different. The book begins with the main character Thomas and a secondary (but just as important) character, Teresa conversing telepathically. This aspect of the series is absent completely from its movie counterparts. But it gets weirder.
Within the first few chapters, The Gladers wake up in a small locked down building, only able to observe the outside through bars. They see Cranks (this world's version of zombies), and when they finally break out of their rooms, the boys bear witness to the bodies of the same people who had rescued them. Soon, they discover doors with labels for certain people in the maze (I’ll let you find out for yourself), paired with matching tattoos on every Glader neck, labeling them “Property of WICKED.” The only time this is ever referenced in the film is a fleeting (and frankly awkward) moment between Thomas and Teresa. Even then, it was hinted that only Teresa had one.
Eventually, after a talk with the Rat Man, the boys find their way to a secret tunnel through something called a Flat Trans (a portal of sorts that’s never mentioned film-wise), and begin to traverse the tunnel, which eventually leads to the surface of the Scorch, and they must fight to survive.
Pretty different, if I’ll say. Now, what irked a lot of people (you know, other than everything else that was different,) was the betrayal. Teresa, in the film, contacts WICKED and they come to the Right Arm’s base in the desert and take the kids as prisoners. Three cheers for fake friends! Beforehand, she explained that she miraculously remembered her mother, who was infected, which motivated her to call WICKED in hopes of finding a cure.
As opposed to the fever dream that the book was, in which Aris and Teresa drag Thomas out to the dead woods and scramble to get him into what was essentially a gas chamber. Oh wait, that’s exactly what it was! When the chamber opens in the morning Thomas finds that Teresa is still there, crying for his forgiveness, and claiming,
“They said they’d kill you if we didn’t do everything just like they told us. No matter how horrible. I’m sorry, Tom!”
We can all agree Thomas deserved better, right?
Sure, Teresa’s betrayal wasn't too bad. And so what if the beginnings were a combination of the last two books? It can’t get any worse, right? Wrong!
Towards the very end of the novel, WICKED instructs Group A and B to reach a “safe haven” in the Scorch, but when they do, they discover the desert floor is quite literally opening up. From out of the cracks rise pods which hatch grotesque creatures with wrinkly skin and bulb formations on their skin. It’s discovered that the creatures can only be killed by shattering the bulbs, which serves as a final trial in the book. Needless to say this was not mentioned and shown in the movie. Pretty sure it would’ve been labelled horror instead of dystopian.
So now we’ve gone over some of the key things that were omitted and added to the movie adaptation of The Scorch Trials. I’d like to make known that I absolutely adored the movie series as well as the books, and hold no ill will against either for creative choices. Movies undergo a lot of cuts, changes, and additions. And that’s okay. In the end, The Maze Runner movie series is a favorite for me, and perhaps it can be yours too.
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