YMMV / Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

• Angst? What Angst?:
  • None of the other kids resent Thomas for getting Winston killed or call him out for forcing them to fend for themselves in a desert.
  • Likewise after Teresa betrays them to WCKD, Thomas immediately decides to go back and help. He doesn't show any angst about all the people who got killed as a result. This is in stark contrast to the book where, although he forgives her, he can't trust her anymore. What's more is that in the book Teresa is being forced to betray them by WICKED, and in the film she just chooses to do so.
• Badass Decay: Thomas suffers a major case. While he was a resourceful, quick-thinking badass in the first movie, here everything he does basically amounts to "winging it". All he does is running, freaking out, behaving like an idiot, and coming up with "plans" that fall apart within moments and rarely reach past stage one. The only reason he and his gang live past the first ten minutes of the film is their uncanny luck because there's always someone there who bails them out at the last moment. It really makes you wonder why the others are even following him.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Jack, the only extra from the first movie to have escaped the maze with the main characters. He's mostly used as a Living Prop but he's given some respect for lasting as long as he did without any plot armour.
• Memetic Bystander: Jack, a Red Shirt who was given a name in the deleted scenes, he survives the first film and is the only extra to reappear in the sequel. He never speaks, is mostly ignored or forgotten about by the others and the group takes about two seconds to get over his death, whilst they spend an entire film mourning over Winston, who dies in the same scene.
• Memetic Mutation: Thomas gave Littlefinger the middle finger.
• One-Scene Wonder: There's Lilli Taylor as Mary.
• Sequelitis: The Maze Runner (2014) was well-received for being considerably smarter than a lot of the other YA adaptations. This film was viewed as a step down, with no emphasis on character development and for it being an In Name Only Adaptation Distillation of The Scorch Trials.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The book's plot is actually pretty good — WICKED manipulating the teens into the second stage of the trials. Everything the teens go through — including Theresa's betrayal is engineered by WICKED. Due to the film being an Adaptation Distillation, this version is more of a Random Events Plot with no Character Development and overemphasis on action scenes.
• Tough Act to Follow: The first movie was praised for being significantly better than a lot of other YA adult adaptations such as Vampire Academy, The Host (2008), The Mortal Instruments. It's nearly universally agreed that the second film could not match it.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Teresa betrays the group to WCKD. She does it of her own free will, unlike in the book where she's being forced to. She's given a Freudian Excuse and the movie tries to play her sympathetically. Even though she condemns hundreds of people to death as a result.
  • She's so callous in the book that her tearful confession to Thomas and reasoning actually made a couple of book fans like her more. Until WCKD showed up and proved once again that they don't care about anything beyond a cure.

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