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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film is Lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple. Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers, because this film is lit. I'm a crank. I'm slowly going crazy. I keep wanting to chew off my own fingers and randomly kill people. It's Maze, the Scorch trials, and this film is Lit. Hello, and welcome back to this Film Is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's part two for 2025 summer series. Coming to you late once again. This work is still very busy and hectic, among other things. But that's. For me, that's the main reason. But also the book is. These books are not fun to read. Yeah, particularly. They're also not miserable to read. It's just.
• 1:29
  Speaker B: We've had miserable.
• 1:30
  Speaker A: Learn. These aren't. Yes, these aren't miserable to read. They're boring. Yeah, not even that boring. I don't even know what. What it is exhausting. Maybe that's it. They're exhausting to read, I think is my experience.
• 1:43
  Speaker B: They are tiring.
• 1:45
  Speaker A: Yes. So we have all of our normal stuff to talk about. We're gonna do. Let me sum up here, but just a warning as we get into this. The movie and the book are so different that this summary of the movie is very, very different. But let's go ahead and do it anyways. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me.
• 2:05
  Speaker B: This summary has been sourced from Wikipedia.
• 2:08
  Speaker A: And it is just the film. We're not going to do the book. Right. This is the film. Yet. Well, you'll see the differences as we get to it. And I imagine most of the people here have read the book for this series.
• 2:21
  Speaker B: In a flashback, a woman leaves her son Thomas with the scientist Ava Page and armed operatives from the World Catastrophe kill Zone department. Wicked. To ensure his survival, Thomas, along with other children, is eventually placed in a confined maze they later call the Glade as part of Wicked's scientific trials to study immunity to the flare virus. Years later, shortly after escaping the maze, Thomas and the surviving Gladers are brought to a facility managed by Mr. Jansen. Jansen presents the facility as a haven, protecting them from the Crankshumans, who have been infected and driven mad by the Flare virus. While recovering, the group learns that their maze was not the only one constructed. Other young survivors from separate trials are also present. Suspicious of Janson, Thomas teams up with Aeris, a survivor from a different maze who was the first to arrive at the facility to investigate. He discovers that Ava Page is still alive and overseeing wicked's operation and that Janson is working for them. He he later overhears them discussing ongoing experiments on immunes. Survivors of the maze trials naturally resistant to the Flare virus, as well as an active search for the Right Arm resistance group based in the mountains. The Gladers and Aeris rescue Theresa, who had been held separately, and escape the facility into the desolate outside world called the Scorch. Janson dispatches WICKED soldiers to pursue and apprehend them. The group takes shelter in an abandoned shopping mall, but are shortly attacked by a horde of cranks and narrowly manage to escape. Winston is scratched during the encounter and becomes infected. By morning, his symptoms worsen, forcing the group to let him shoot himself before he succumbs to the virus. To escape a deadly lightning storm, the group flees into an abandoned facility, where they encounter Brenda and Jorge, leaders of a local survivor camp. Though initially wary, Brenda and Jorge agree to help them locate the Right Arm, abandoning the other survivors when WICKED locates and raids the facility. In the chaos, Thomas and Brenda become separated from the others and are forced to flee on foot. While evading the cranks, Brenda is bit and infected. The two eventually reunite with the group and Jorge, who beats Marcus, a Right Arm rebel secretly working for wicked, into revealing the Right Arm's location. The group presses on and eventually reaches a roadblock where snipers ambush them. However, two rebels, Harriet and Sonya, recognize Aeris from their maze and prompt them to stand down. The Gladers along with Brenda, Jorge and Eris are escorted into the Right Arm's mountain outpost, where other immunes have taken refuge. Fince, the Right Arm's leader, threatens to shoot Brenda after seeing her bite, but is stopped by Mary Cooper, a former Wicked scientist. Mary reveals that Thomas, having grown disillusioned with wcd, acted as their informant and had been aiding the Right Arm in dismantling wicked's major operations. Mary temporarily halts Brenda's infection using an enzyme and explains that the enzyme must be harvested from an immune rather than synthetically produced. She reveals that disagreements with Paige over the cure's Production led to her departure from Wicked. Teresa, still trusting wicked's intentions, secretly transmits the camp's location to Wicked forces, who launch an attack. The soldiers quickly overpower the rebels and round up the survivors before Paige and Janson. Teresa reveals having recovered her memories in Jansen's facility and now supports WCKD's goals. Janson shoots and kills Mary, and WCKD captures the surviving immunes, including Minho, R eris and Sonia. With only a handful of survivors remaining, Thomas resolves to take the fight to Wicked, kill Page and rescue the captured immunes.
• 6:18
  Speaker A: There you go. There is a summary of the Scorch trials. The movie. We have a lot to talk about, obviously, because these things are so different. So we'll answer all of your questions about how they're different in all of our segments coming up. But we're gonna start with all the stuff that we thought was better in the book.
• 6:38
  Speaker B: You like to read? Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 6:43
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 6:46
  Speaker B: Everything. So this book picks up right where the last book left off. Where they're in, like, a dormitory.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like the facility that the people who rescued them dropped them off at.
• 6:58
  Speaker B: But then when they wake up, it quickly becomes clear that all is not as it seems.
• 7:04
  Speaker A: Surprise, surprise.
• 7:06
  Speaker B: But one of the elements in this part of the book was, like, quick changing rooms. Like, they would go into a room and then come back into the room they had been in and it would be a different room.
• 7:19
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 7:20
  Speaker B: And I thought that was an interesting idea.
• 7:22
  Speaker A: It was at least somewhat interesting.
• 7:24
  Speaker B: I thought it could have been fun put to film. I spent some time trying to figure out exactly what the situ. Like if there were moving rooms or if it was all a simulation or what the heck was going on. Of course, that question's never answered.
• 7:37
  Speaker A: No, it's not really. Yeah, we leave there so quickly that nothing is ever explored about that. But.
• 7:43
  Speaker B: But I did think it was an interesting idea.
• 7:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it follows along with, like, the technology from the first movie of, like, the Maze. It's like a similar style of technology, like moving, you know, the big parts.
• 7:54
  Speaker B: Right, the moving. Moving parts.
• 7:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it seems like it follows, but. Yeah, we don't learn anything more about it or how it worked or what even it was or what the purpose was. Like, we don't really learn anything about it in the book, so it's not. But it was at least kind of interesting. And another element during that first scene that I thought was very fun was this that I was thinking. I thought was probably too dark to Be in the movie. I assumed it probably wouldn't happen, but I was interested to see if it was. Is that when they. During that one of those things where one of the rooms changes, they walk into the main common room area, out of their dorm room one time and all the lights are off and they start bumping into things that are hanging from the ceiling. And then they eventually are able to turn the lights on and it's revealed that it's all the people who rescued them have been like hung.
• 8:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 8:43
  Speaker A: In this room. And I thought that was like creepy and interesting. I guess they kind of steal a little bit of that element for the. The weird like thing Jorge does where he hangs them from the ceiling.
• 8:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, he like hangs them by their ankles.
• 8:57
  Speaker A: Kind of a similar. But obviously they're not dead. But I thought that was cool. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be in the movie because it just probably felt a little too.
• 9:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe a little too macabre for this type of like summer action, blockbuster, teenage fun time movie.
• 9:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. My next note is something that was in the movie that I wasn't a huge fan of because I thought it was kind of really clumsy writing. And this movie we'll get into it is like okay overall, but I think it has some pretty clunky exposition that doesn't feel like it necessarily adds up. And this was one of those moments where they're in this facility. It's a similar type of idea in the book. In the movie. Movie they're at this place. It's a way more.
• 9:41
  Speaker B: It's way more of like a medical testing facility in the movie.
• 9:45
  Speaker A: Or like a compound where like people are living and stuff. Whereas in the book it's like this weird, mysterious like two room building that like seemingly two room building. Like it's way more of a mysterious building in the book, but it's a similar idea. They're in this. Whatever. But in the movie there's this scene where they start realizing like every day in the. There's a bunch more people in the movie than there's in the book in this building. Because there's like a lot of mazes. But every day they come and get like 8, 10 of the kids or something.
• 10:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:15
  Speaker A: And say they're taking them to some.
• 10:17
  Speaker B: They're taking them to like a safe place.
• 10:18
  Speaker A: Safe place or whatever to like go.
• 10:20
  Speaker B: To a farm up state or something.
• 10:22
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. That was the joke. I mean you're going to a farm upstate. Literally. I think they say something similar to that. Yeah. But they One of the things that is revealed is that. Or Aeris, who's in the book and the movie communicates with Thomas, is like, hey, something's going on. He shows him this thing that he has found where he's like, they crawl through the vents and they see these gurneys with people on them, but you can't tell who they are because they're.
• 10:49
  Speaker B: Just covered in a sheet.
• 10:50
  Speaker A: They're covered in a sheet, and then you just see, like, vital readouts.
• 10:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:53
  Speaker A: But you don't know who they are or, like, what's going on. And they're just wheeling them into this room. And Eris somehow deduces from this. He goes, see, this is what's going on. I don't think anybody ever leaves here. Like, why would you assume that? And I. I guess it's just shorthand in the movie. And it's not that, but I thought it was really clunky of, like, he assumes that some random gurneys going into some room.
• 11:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:21
  Speaker A: Means that, like, they're. They're not releasing the kids who they're like. He assumes these are the kids that are being. Which I guess is not an unfair, like, thought. Maybe. But he's just, like, very confident that that's the case.
• 11:35
  Speaker B: No, it is. It's pretty clunky. And I understand that the movie needed something to get us to, like, this next.
• 11:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:43
  Speaker B: To get us, like, over the hump to this next plot point.
• 11:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. But why would you not just show the kid, like, have it be one of the kids we recognize, like, the way to make this work. I think. And I guess they didn't want to spoil it too soon. They wanted to try to slow build it. Because to me, the way that you do this is you have one of the kids, like, you see who's on the gurneys going in, and it's one of the kids that we saw get called out in the line earlier. At least that establishes, like, a. Oh, there's something weird going on here. Even that there could be a weird explanation of, like, before they go out, they do some sort of, like, medical whatever to them before. Before they were. But at least that you. Your brain would go like, oh, something's going on. They're taking the kids they say are releasing. We're seeing them going into this room. But just generic gurneys of people. Like, that could be, like, cranks. That could be. We don't know.
• 12:31
  Speaker B: To me, the thing. The thing that would have helped me. And I don't think Eris says anything like this in the Movie. I don't remember that he does is if when he had been talking to Thomas, if he had been like, I've been watching them do this for the entire time that I've been here. And it's always the exact same number.
• 12:50
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:51
  Speaker B: Of people that they think he said.
• 12:52
  Speaker A: I think he says seen it happen multiple times.
• 12:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:57
  Speaker A: But I don't think he says like. And it's always the same. Maybe he does.
• 13:00
  Speaker B: If he, if he had been like. And I really don't think he does this. If he had. If he had been like, I, I. They do this every time they take kids and it's always the same number of people.
• 13:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. That you're like, okay, that's at least something.
• 13:13
  Speaker B: The other thing that didn't make sense about this scene to me that I thought was clums. Why is he telling Thomas?
• 13:19
  Speaker A: Yeah, he doesn't.
• 13:20
  Speaker B: Well, he doesn't know Thomas well.
• 13:21
  Speaker A: But maybe he does. We don't know what he remembers the book plot. Like in the book, Eris is and Thomas were friends from before and so he. Maybe he remembers and knows, I guess is the idea. But yeah, I don't know.
• 13:36
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 13:37
  Speaker A: This is going to get. This episode just as a warning is going to be really messy because they're so different. And then we gotten to the point too now where it's so hard to know like what it's. Where it's hard to remember what details are from the previous book versus the previous movie. You know what I mean? And like which elements are in.
• 13:54
  Speaker B: And it also doesn't help that part of the overall, like, overarching premise of the book is that like, some stuff is not real.
• 14:03
  Speaker A: Yes, I had a note about that.
• 14:04
  Speaker B: Later, but yeah, but Dashner does not do a particularly good job of like providing any kind of guidance for the reader to like, recognize when some things aren't real.
• 14:18
  Speaker A: Which is the point. Like you're supposed to be uncertain the whole time.
• 14:21
  Speaker B: I understand that. That's the point, but I think, I think a defter hand could have provided like more clues here and there to like, help us kind of start to suss out, like, okay, maybe this isn't real, maybe that's not real. I just don't think it was particularly well done.
• 14:43
  Speaker A: I don't necessarily disagree, but I also, I think it like, I thought it worked okay in the book. The issue was when it got to the movie. And I have a note about this later that I'll talk to is that watching the movie after reading the book, there's this insane, like, issue of. Okay, how much of what I'm watching is different or is, like, a. Of these weird things that are going on? Is the movie just changing stuff completely? Yeah, from what the book is just going. We're doing a completely different thing versus how much of it is fake things that the characters in the movie are doing.
• 15:20
  Speaker B: Right. As part.
• 15:21
  Speaker A: As part of this, like, master plot. Yeah, yeah, this master, like, plot of, like, tricking them into doing these trials and stuff. And so you're. You're. You're, like, doing. Our version of the podcast gets very confusing because you're like, okay, well, this is. That's not how it happens in the book. Or, like, that's different. But, like, is that even what the movie is actually? Like, is this real or is this, like.
• 15:48
  Speaker B: Is this, like.
• 15:49
  Speaker A: Like, like, when they were watching the kids go into the room at that point, like, the. The gurneys go into the room? I was wondering, like, do they want them to see this? Is this part of the plan to the. And now eventually, I think it becomes clear as the movie goes on that, no, right. That the movie has completely abandoned this.
• 16:04
  Speaker B: Like, not doing the same. Like, they're all master Stringy.
• 16:08
  Speaker A: Like, no, it is much more of a standard, like, struggle between two factions. And the one faction isn't, like, completely manipulating.
• 16:17
  Speaker B: Right.
• 16:17
  Speaker A: You know, like, Wicked isn't running every, like, pulling all of these strings.
• 16:21
  Speaker B: That is the whole entire thing in the book.
• 16:24
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 16:24
  Speaker B: That, like, everything that happens. Everything that literally everything that happens is.
• 16:29
  Speaker A: Part of the plan.
• 16:30
  Speaker B: Part of the plan. And it's all manipulated by Wicked somehow.
• 16:34
  Speaker A: Somehow in a way that somehow will be. It will accomplish their. Their ends, their goals, whatever that is at this point.
• 16:43
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 16:44
  Speaker A: Very hard watching the movie to be like, okay, but so how much of what I'm seeing is supposed to be actually, like, the plot versus the fake plot that Wicked is putting. And, like, I don't know. So it just made it a nightmare to try to figure out. But at least initially, again, it got easier as it went on and just became clear that the movie is just completely ditching, like, most of what the book did.
• 17:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, Back to the book. Another thing that I thought was an interesting element was when they wake up and suddenly they all have tattoos on the backs of their necks, like, denoting their roles within the group, which we.
• 17:25
  Speaker A: See in the movie. They keep the tattoos, but they're just like ID tags. They're like barcodes, basically, that, like, they literally just tell them part of what was on the tattoos. In the book, which is like their number. Whatever, like a four, whatever. Whatever their designation number is. But it doesn't have any of the other stuff like the betrayer or the leader or whatever.
• 17:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. So they have like, like Minho says the leader and Newt says the glue and Thomas says to be killed by group B. Yeah. Really a role, but kind of funny.
• 17:56
  Speaker A: It was kind of a role, but. Yeah.
• 17:58
  Speaker B: But I also thought it was objectively funny that Dashner only bothered to do this for the named characters. And like specifically calls it out. Like Thomas is like. Not everybody has a role though.
• 18:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:11
  Speaker B: Only my important special friends.
• 18:13
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 18:14
  Speaker B: Have roles.
• 18:15
  Speaker A: Well, that was. I had this note in Better in the movie is that I. That and I think it happens in that specific moment. They, they're like. Thomas comically realizes that he doesn't know half of the kids names that have survived the maze. He's like, oh, you know, there was like 20 of us left. I realized ironically that I only knew the names of like half the kids here because the author has only bothered to tell us anything about like the five characters that matter or whatever.
• 18:41
  Speaker B: And it really. And it doesn't matter because they're all going to be dead by the end of this book.
• 18:44
  Speaker A: That's true. Yeah.
• 18:46
  Speaker B: Like all of. All of the non named characters.
• 18:50
  Speaker A: To be fair. Like, you know, I don't know if it's necessary for us as a reader to know the name of all 20 of these kids.
• 18:59
  Speaker B: Want to know all of their names.
• 19:00
  Speaker A: Yes. But it's, but it is funny.
• 19:02
  Speaker B: It's the fact that the text keeps comically calling it out.
• 19:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 19:06
  Speaker B: Is the funny part.
• 19:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it doesn't feel intense, like a, like lamp shading.
• 19:11
  Speaker B: But I don't know, it doesn't feel like lampshading to me. It feels more like he felt like he needed to acknowledge it somehow when in reality he could have just not acknowledged it and it would have been better.
• 19:25
  Speaker A: Fine. Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:28
  Speaker B: I also liked the rat man scene in the book. So there's one morning that they wake up and there's a huge pile of food. And then also a guy in a white suit sitting at a desk reading a book. Like an invisible force field around him so they can't actually approach him, but he does talk to them and he's like, there's 47 minutes until I've been given permission to start phase two, so you're gonna have to wait.
• 19:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. And he just reads this book.
• 19:59
  Speaker B: I just, I thought it was, it was one of those parts of the book where I Was like, okay, this is like unique and interesting. Like there's something kind of interesting happening here.
• 20:07
  Speaker A: There is, yes, go. Sorry, go ahead.
• 20:09
  Speaker B: But I don't know. And I think that was one of the most frustrating things about this book is that it had these kind of unique and interesting singular components. But you never knew if it was going to mean anything.
• 20:24
  Speaker A: Right.
• 20:24
  Speaker B: Or contribute to the larger plot.
• 20:28
  Speaker A: Yes. My note or my thing in response to that I was gonna say is that I agree. Cause I like that scene. I thought it was interesting, but it almost feels like a scene from a different book or a different movie. Like it's. It's almost like something from like 2001. A spit. No, it's not 2001, but something like that. That's way more strange than this book series is. And so, like, I understand why the movie kind of like cuts.
• 20:52
  Speaker B: No, I totally got why the movie cuts.
• 20:54
  Speaker A: Really. Like, I don't know. I say I understand why the movie cuts and stuff. I don't think. I think they could have done it. I just think they would have had to lean into it even more than the book does and do more of that kind of stu. Because yeah, that scene. Scene feels like something out of the Matrix or something like that. And it's like. Which is kind of what we're doing here. Like they're in this constructed reality, you know. And so it is kind of a Matrix style thing. I actually really thought of the Matrix when I read that scene the first time. But so it kind of works in that sense. But it felt like there needed to be more of that kind of stuff because that like super strange. Which the book has a little bit of that. And yeah, the movie just kind of ignores all of the more interesting elements of the book to make a much more straightforward movie.
• 21:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know, I just. I feel like James Dashner had like, maybe a lot of kind of disparate ideas and like stuff that he wanted to include where he was like, I don't know, starting to like, do like idea generation for this and was like, oh, this is cool. This sounds really awesome. This sounds super fun. And then kind of just talking. Tossed it all in together without really.
• 22:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 22:09
  Speaker B: Thinking about it.
• 22:10
  Speaker A: Well, another element is. I don't skip ahead. One note is the flat trans. That's another thing where it's like, okay, so they have this magical portal system. Essentially. It seems like that they can like walk through these like magic portals that can transport you through space and time or whatever. I see. I assume is what's going on there. And it's like, that's interesting and cool, but like that's the only time they use the technology so far at least. And like, what is it? Where. How do they have this technology? But then they have to. And it's similar to Divergent where we're like the level of technology, technological advancement that this, that wicked. And the civilization has kind of run counter to like the weird dystopian nightmare of parts of it. Of like, well, we can't do anything about this disease, but we can transport matter through space and time, which is like. I know that's like, to me that's like a world building issue that. It's not a big issue for like a YA story necessarily, but reading it as like an adult or like as a more of a critical thinker, you're just like this. The world doesn't really hold together of like, okay, so they have this insane, literally physically impossible technology, but also they're like struggling to like figure out how to cure seemingly like rabies. Like, you know what I mean? Like. Yeah, and it's just like, I don't know. That feels a little disparate, like disjointed in terms of like the level of technology. And I felt very similar about Divergent.
• 23:41
  Speaker B: To be fair and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think there is a cure for rabies.
• 23:47
  Speaker A: Well, there's not a cure, but there's a.
• 23:49
  Speaker B: We have a. I mean there's treatment, there's.
• 23:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:51
  Speaker B: If you catch.
• 23:52
  Speaker A: There essentially is a cure. Yeah, we have a, we have a, A vaccine. Vaccine. Thank you. We have a vaccine for it.
• 23:59
  Speaker B: Right.
• 24:00
  Speaker A: That you can give after exposure, which is not common for most vaccines. So maybe it's not even a vaccine. I don't know. But you can give it after exposure because you only give it after exposure. That's the whole point. Because it's so expensive.
• 24:09
  Speaker B: But you have to catch it fast enough. Like if you.
• 24:11
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 24:11
  Speaker B: If you get too far into rabies, that's not going to do anything for you.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. And once it gets to a certain point. Yeah, we can't treat it or whatever. But my point being, if we were civilization that could travel through space and time, surely we would probably have tackling at that point. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. That's. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. Anyways. But the Ratman actually is in the movie that he is. Mr. Jansen is.
• 24:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's a little finger.
• 24:38
  Speaker A: Little finger from.
• 24:39
  Speaker B: And I. And I totally get wanting to give him a bigger role in your movie.
• 24:43
  Speaker A: I think it makes sense for him to have an expanded role. But his introduction still could have been this scene.
• 24:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, it could have. Could have been a little. Or at least something.
• 24:51
  Speaker A: Something closer to this.
• 24:52
  Speaker B: Totally agree. There's also. There's a line in this book. And a lot of my stuff is not stuff that's better in the book. It's, like, stuff that made me laugh as I was reading the book. And this was one such line. And Thomas is thinking about, like, all of the crazy things that are going on when they're, like, trapped in this dorm building. And it's. He thought about Chuck and what he would say if he were there. Probably something simple like, this sucks. And I fucking lost it.
• 25:27
  Speaker A: A man of few words.
• 25:29
  Speaker B: I lost my fucking shit.
• 25:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's very. Because it builds up like it's gonna be this moment of, like, wisdom from, you know, of him, like, thinking about, what would Chuck be this. Which it is. It's a joke, obviously, but it just. It is. Yeah.
• 25:47
  Speaker B: So you mentioned the flat trans a minute ago, and this was another moment that made me laugh really hard as I was reading, but I'm gonna have to explain why. So when I was really little, there was a show on PBS called Ghostwriter. Does that ring any bells to you? Is it writer? Like, writing.
• 26:07
  Speaker A: Oh, no.
• 26:08
  Speaker B: Ghost writer.
• 26:09
  Speaker A: I don't fade. That doesn't ring a bell. No.
• 26:11
  Speaker B: And I. And this is literally, like, the only thing that I remember about this show is that in the intro, they're, like, explaining the concept, right? And this kid goes, he's a ghost. And he writes to us. Ghost writer. So when I read the line, it's flat, and it transports you somewhere. Flat trans. I lost it again.
• 26:43
  Speaker A: He's a ghost. And.
• 26:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but you have to. We're gonna have to listen to it because you have to hear the way that the kid says it.
• 26:54
  Speaker A: You have to promise never tell anybody about Ghost Rider. Cool. We're in the Ghost Rider team.
• 27:05
  Speaker B: We check out clues and solve mysteries.
• 27:07
  Speaker A: He's a ghost and he writes to us. Ghost Rider. He's a ghost and he writes to us. Ghostwriter. Fair enough. I've never seen that. I don't know. That's wild. I've never.
• 27:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, I was pretty little. It was, like, very early 90s. I also will say, I think that the book's idea of the flare virus making you less human by, like, slowly taking away your empathy is more interesting than what we get in the movie, which is literally Just straight up zombies. It's just zombies.
• 27:44
  Speaker A: It was clear in the books that the cranks at some point essentially kind of became zombies when they're totally full. Gone. Capital G gone. Is the book. Yes.
• 27:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. They are basically just zombies at that point.
• 27:57
  Speaker A: But in the movie they seemingly are just kind of zombie. Like from the be. Not from the beginning. But like, there's no like, real discussion or like we don't see much in the stages of it, at least in this one of like people slowly. I think there's like, they mention it that like, it takes a while and like you're. But like when it happens to Winston in the movie, he just is like hurt and himself. And then he doesn't want to become a zombie, so he shoots. It's like classic zombie movie stuff. Like there's nothing. Yeah. There's nothing to do with the like, slow descent into madness or. Or like you said, not having sympathy or like kind of becoming like sociopaths or whatever.
• 28:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because they specifically say in the book that that's how it works. Is that it, like, it takes away your humanity really slowly.
• 28:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 28:45
  Speaker B: So you become like more and more psychotic, unhinged and unhinged. Which. I don't know. Maybe that's not unique. Maybe other people like that.
• 28:55
  Speaker A: I don't think it's particularly unique. And you know. But it is at least. Least more interesting than a standard zombie.
• 29:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 29:01
  Speaker A: Thing.
• 29:02
  Speaker B: Which is what we get in the movie. And it also kind of seemed like the movie was ripping off the last.
• 29:07
  Speaker A: Of us and not kind of. I was losing my mind. It's very clearly the la. Like they're just doing. And now this is before the TV show, but after the game came out.
• 29:15
  Speaker B: Right.
• 29:16
  Speaker A: The first game at least, maybe even the second. I don't know. But they're just. Yeah. Because we get full on fungus zombie. Like they seemingly like fungus zombies. It kind of what it looks like there's like all these like, weird nerd. Like at one point we see like in the sewers, this huge, like network of like fungus or whatever that they're all like part of. Very similar to something like the Last of Us or even kind of annihilationy, like the movie a little bit.
• 29:42
  Speaker B: And it also looks like, like when Winston pulls up his shirt and shows like the huge wounds on his stomach, like it looks like something like moves inside of him.
• 29:50
  Speaker A: Yes. Which I think is supposed to be the fungus. Like.
• 29:53
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 29:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:54
  Speaker B: So. And then I spent the movie being like. So is it a virus or a parasite or what?
• 29:59
  Speaker A: I think it's like a parasite fungus is the idea, I think. Yeah.
• 30:04
  Speaker B: Which, like, sure, I guess.
• 30:05
  Speaker A: But yeah. So they're literally just Last of Us zombies. They even do, like the clicking noise that the clickers in the Last of Us do. Like, the guy is like. Or at one point in some of the ones we see, they do like that like, clicking sound thing, which is again, straight for out of the Last of Us. And I'm sure Last of Us probably isn't the first to do it, but it's maybe the most famous version of this type of zombie. And then what was. Blew my mind. And I just put it here because I was like, I didn't know where else to put it. And I think it belongs in Better in the book because it's. I was like, are you kidding me? Is like, right. Right after we get this huge, big zombie action sequence. And in the middle of this big zombie action sequence where they're running from all these Last of Us fungus zombies, we get a set piece which is our two main characters climbing through an old, you know, destroyed building that has collapsed and fallen and is leaning against another building, which is the exact set piece from the Last of Us.
• 31:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:01
  Speaker A: Like, identity.
• 31:02
  Speaker B: I really, like. I wonder if he was like a big fan of the game and was.
• 31:06
  Speaker A: Like, nobody's ever gonna. Yes.
• 31:08
  Speaker B: So, like, nobody's gonna notice.
• 31:10
  Speaker A: Or either. Not even that. Nobody's gonna notice, but just like an homage. Like, like, literally just like, I like this. It's not gonna. He, he, you know, he's thinking like, they'll never make a movie or TV show out of this. Probably. It's a game. Whatever.
• 31:19
  Speaker B: It's not gonna become a big phenomenal cultural thing.
• 31:22
  Speaker A: Like, it was a very popular game, but it was a popular, popular video game, you know, that, you know, general audiences didn't know or.
• 31:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:29
  Speaker A: And so he's like, I can take this and use this because it's cool and I like it. And it's like, okay. But it's such an obvious, like, rip off that. Especially now that with the TV show and everybody knows about. It's just like, oh, my God. It's just. It's that. And then it cracked me up because. And then right after that, that set piece ends with a direct rip off of a scene from Jurassic Park 2.
• 31:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:50
  Speaker A: And I was like, oh, my God. We're just like, he's just doing references. Like, he's just. Which, look, far be it from me to criticize somebody for referencing things in the art they make because, boy, everybody does it? It's part of the famous saying, good artists, whatever. Great artists steal. I don't know what the. What's the first half of that? Good artist.
• 32:11
  Speaker B: Is it good artists copy?
• 32:13
  Speaker A: Oh, it is. Good artists copy. Great artists steal. I don't remember. Okay. I thought for some reason that was different. Point being, everybody does it, but it's such a blatant, like, this is just the last of us. And then this is just The Jurassic Park 2 scene where she. And the scene is where she. In Jurassic Park 2, somebody falls. The RV is like, hanging off a cliff, and somebody falls down to the bottom of it where there's a big glass window and they land on it and it starts cracking. And they're like, sitting there hanging over a thousand feet in the air as the glass is cracking. And then a dinosaur falls on it and breaks it. And this. A zombie falls on it and breaks it. I'm like, oh, my God, we're just doing references.
• 32:51
  Speaker B: Well, and the fact that they're, like, stacked right on top of each other, I think really just exasperates the situation.
• 32:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. A detail that I liked in the book that didn't make it into the movie that I just thought was similar to, like, the. The. The moment with the rat man in the room. That was just weird and cool because initially I didn't even understand what was happening when. When the first, like, this moment starts happening, which is these. Some of the kids get their heads decapitated by weird.
• 33:20
  Speaker B: By, like, giant metal balls.
• 33:22
  Speaker A: Metal, like balls that fly around. And one of them ends up, like, they. This starts happening and they can't tell what's happening. But, like, a couple kids get killed and, like, Thomas realizes that their head.
• 33:34
  Speaker B: Is gone because they're in this, like, dark tunnel.
• 33:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. And they can't see anything. And Thomas realizes that, like, one of the kids head is some kid we don't know or don't care about. His head is, like, gone. But there's like this weird metal ball or whatever there. He's like, what the heck? And then eventually we get to see what is happening here because it happens to Winston where this weird, like, I imagine it looking like mercury or something.
• 33:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:54
  Speaker A: Like a ball of mercury like, flies over and, like, latches on the. Winston's head and like, slowly starts, like, sliding down his head, consuming his head to then, like, decapitate him. And they're able to pull it off Winston's head, but it, like, burns his scalp and stuff. And it's super gnarly and crazy and I also had a feeling this wasn't going to be in the movie because it's just so weird and pretty graphic, I think, or showing it would be fairly graphic. And so that's probably why they cut it. But I thought it was interesting in the same lane of, like, this is some of the weirder. Like.
• 34:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. And there is way more of that kind of weird stuff in the beginning of this book. And it kind of peters out as they get out into the school.
• 34:31
  Speaker A: It kind of just becomes like a. Yeah. Yeah. Another note that I had it in the movie that I thought was kind of annoying or frustrating was. And so I have this embedded in the book is that once in the book, once they get out of the wicked facility at the beginning, there's like 20 of them or something like that. Roughly. In the movie, there's like seven of them.
• 34:50
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's literally just our main character.
• 34:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so I'm like, well, there's sure not many people from this group gonna die because all of these characters are important characters except for, like, Winston, and he's the one guy who dies, which. He's alive in the book, I think.
• 35:06
  Speaker B: I think so. Yeah.
• 35:07
  Speaker A: I don't know if we know.
• 35:09
  Speaker B: I think he's alive.
• 35:09
  Speaker A: I think he's alive. I don't. Yeah. Anyways, the. So, yeah, you're like, well, they can't kill because, like, in the book, a lot of characters die as they run into these obstacles, like the lightning storm and stuff. And in the movie, I'm like, well, they. Nobody's gonna die because all of these characters need to survive to the end except for, like, one of them. So I thought that was kind of dumb. I understand it from a movie perspective. Like, we don't want 20 characters, right?
• 35:34
  Speaker B: We don't. Yeah. We don't want to follow a giant.
• 35:36
  Speaker A: Group and just like a logistic thing of, like, filming with 20 people, you know, it's just. I get it. But it does dial the stakes down a bit when, you know, like, when.
• 35:46
  Speaker B: There'S a giant tip off right at the top that probably nobody's gonna die here.
• 35:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:53
  Speaker B: Another thing that. That was, like, just stupid enough for me to love it in the book is that when they go out into the scorch, the. The desert that they're in in the book is, like, way harsher, it seems, than what we see in the movie because they literally have to cover their skin or they're gon frank. First degree, is it. First degree is the worst kind or third degree. Third degree. Third degree. They're gonna get, like, third degree burns immediately.
• 36:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 36:23
  Speaker B: So they decide they're gonna use their bed sheets from the dorms to cover their themselves. And I love that they just are wearing them like. Like babushkas. Like, they just. I don't know. But I really enjoyed the visual of all these teenage boys just, like, wandering around with their sheets over their heads.
• 36:47
  Speaker A: Like Winnie the Pooh. Yeah. Like. Like, like a. An elementary school production of the Christmas story of, like, Mary and Joseph.
• 36:56
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 36:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like, finding their. Trying to find an inn. Do you have any room in your inn? Yeah. That is what it feels like.
• 37:04
  Speaker B: The scene where Winston dies in the movie. I have a lot of disparate thoughts about this, and I honestly didn't know where to put this. And it kind of just ended up here because I organized my movie notes first.
• 37:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:18
  Speaker B: I thought that the scene itself was pretty decently emotional, but it would have been better if I had felt more attached to Winston.
• 37:25
  Speaker A: I didn't even remember him from the first movie. Yes.
• 37:27
  Speaker B: Or perhaps remembered who he was.
• 37:29
  Speaker A: Yes. I was like, wait, before that scene, I legitimately was wondering, like, was this the same actor in the first movie? I have no idea. I don't know. Like, I couldn't probably. But I was like, I don't know.
• 37:38
  Speaker B: Because, like, literally, as we were watching this, when he gets. We see him get, like, scratched by the zombies, and you were like, oh, no, that guy. We don't know. And then in the next scene, we were like, wait, that's Winston.
• 37:51
  Speaker A: Winston. Okay, sure, I guess. I don't know.
• 37:55
  Speaker B: But to be fair, the book is also really bad at that emotional bond.
• 38:02
  Speaker A: With a character that dies way worse than a movie, I would argue.
• 38:05
  Speaker B: For example.
• 38:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 38:06
  Speaker B: Who the fuck is Jack?
• 38:08
  Speaker A: Oh, my God. That was my. So during the lightning storm, they're running, and there's this really horrific scene where Jack.
• 38:15
  Speaker B: The description of it is super gnarly.
• 38:17
  Speaker A: Super disgusting and horrifying. And I'm like, well, they're definitely not doing this in the movie. This is like. This is like the beginning of freaking Saving Private Ryan. Like, storming the beaches of Normandy style, like, graphic gore. They're not gonna do this. So I, like, knew it wasn't gonna be in the movie, but, like, so, yeah, this. This kid gets struck by lightning and, like, his leg explodes and he just, like, burns to death and dies.
• 38:37
  Speaker B: And, yeah, like, they have to leave him behind and he, like, still alive, like, screaming and dying.
• 38:42
  Speaker A: Horrifying. It's horrifying. And I was like, well, that's definitely not A movie. But then at the end of that, like, horrifying description, Thomas is like, oh, we couldn't do anything to help Jack. And I was like, who is Jack? Who the fuck is Jack? I was like, I don't know who Jack is. Am I supposed to know who Jack is?
• 39:02
  Speaker B: So I. I had actually went back and looked, and Jack. I think he was one of the Medjacks.
• 39:10
  Speaker A: Yes, I think that is correct. I did remember, like, one of the Medjacks.
• 39:13
  Speaker B: They mentioned his name, like, a couple pages before this.
• 39:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 39:19
  Speaker B: Like, so technically we did know his name.
• 39:22
  Speaker A: Yeah. But it felt like I never. I never learned anything about it. Like, I don't know, you know, other.
• 39:26
  Speaker B: Than, like, literally that happened. And I was like, who the are we talking about? Who is Jack? Who is this man?
• 39:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, same thing. I thought it was hilarious. It was crazy. I was like, what are we talking about?
• 39:40
  Speaker B: I also thought it was just really dumb, clunky writing that Thomas literally is thinking about, oh, no, somebody's gonna get struck by lightning. And then it happens on literally the same page.
• 39:55
  Speaker A: No time to build that tension or dread. It's just like a nothing.
• 39:58
  Speaker B: Just like, oh, somebody could get struck by lightning. Ba. Bam. They did. Absolutely perfect.
• 40:04
  Speaker A: One of the little details that I thought was fun in the book that doesn't make it in the movie. It's just because it's. Again, some of the more weird stuff that's in the book that's at least interesting is when that. Right before the lightning storm happens, they find they're approaching this city. That is where they're trying to get to, because they see it in the distance and it's the direction they need to head because. Not to get into it. But in the book, they're given a task by wicked. By the Rat Man. You gotta go find the safe haven. It's 100 miles to the north or whatever.
• 40:33
  Speaker B: They're heading to the mountains to find this particular thing.
• 40:36
  Speaker A: 10 days to get there because they.
• 40:37
  Speaker B: Have been promised a cure to the Flare if they can do that.
• 40:41
  Speaker A: Whereas in the movie, they're heading towards the mountains because they think that's where the rebel resistance is. The Right Arm.
• 40:48
  Speaker B: Because they have literally just escaped from wicked.
• 40:51
  Speaker A: Because they escape from wicked, as opposed to being sent on a mission by wicked. Yeah. Anyways, so as they're approaching the city, which is in the path of where they need to go, they stumble across this guy just laying. This old man just laying in the desert, staring up at the sky guy, and just, like, ignores them. But, like, he can Tell like the storm is coming or something. And he starts saying some weird cryptic and then the lightning storm happens. I just thought it was interesting and creepy and weird. And I liked that, you know, like.
• 41:20
  Speaker B: It'S a very creepy implication that he's trying to like commit suicide.
• 41:24
  Speaker A: Struck by lightning or something like that. Because the idea is he's like. He's a crank who's like very far gone, I assume is the idea. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. It's never really. Cause he doesn't attack him or anything like that.
• 41:35
  Speaker B: He just maybe like gone enough to realize that the next step is like being psychotic and murderous. Yeah.
• 41:41
  Speaker A: And so he wants to get struck by lightning. I don't know. I thought it was interesting. Doesn't make it into the movie.
• 41:47
  Speaker B: We already talked a little bit about the tunnel scene where they have to. Where Thomas and Brenda have to escape from some cranks. I thought it was scarier in the book. I thought it was way creepier.
• 42:01
  Speaker A: Because in the movie it's just a traditional zombie. Yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker B: It's just a very straightforward. We gotta get away from the zombies. And they're acting like zombies, like fast zombies, like ah.
• 42:10
  Speaker A: Sprinting after them. Yeah.
• 42:11
  Speaker B: And what happens in the book is that they. They're going through the tunnels and they hear like glass breaking behind them and they don't know who's following them.
• 42:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. What's going on?
• 42:21
  Speaker B: And this guy steps out and he's. He's got.
• 42:24
  Speaker A: He's like missing his nose.
• 42:25
  Speaker B: Missing his nose and he's like all chewed up and he's like doing this creepy sing song thing.
• 42:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. About like his nose being.
• 42:32
  Speaker B: And like. And then he's like, I want your noses. And then more cranks start appearing out of nowhere and they have to like go hide and they're like hiding in a little space under a tank.
• 42:43
  Speaker A: Brenda knows about some little. She knows these tunnels a little bit, I guess. And so she knows there's like. Yeah. A little crawl space somewhere they can hide in.
• 42:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 42:50
  Speaker A: And they hide there for a while. But then the, the cranks trick them and they think they leave.
• 42:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. So they start to come out and.
• 42:58
  Speaker A: Then the classic like horror movie, like, oh, he's still there and he grabs them or whatever.
• 43:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 43:01
  Speaker A: And then has to kill him.
• 43:03
  Speaker B: He has to like shoot him right in the chest.
• 43:04
  Speaker A: No, he stabs him in the chest.
• 43:05
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, that's right. He stabs him.
• 43:07
  Speaker A: But like while Brenda's like holding him. And it's. It's super crazy and it's way more Scary because they're like people.
• 43:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. They're like.
• 43:14
  Speaker A: As opposed to just kind of human still. Yeah. Who. You know, they're. They're. They're descending down this path towards insanity, but they're not all the way there. I mean, I guess these probably are considered, like, full cranks in.
• 43:25
  Speaker B: Maybe they're not monsters, but they're not.
• 43:26
  Speaker A: Like, like, roaring monsters who sprint after you mind. Like, they have, you know. Yeah. They talk and they plot and they scheme and stuff like that. Which is just way more interesting and creepy than traditional zombies or can be.
• 43:41
  Speaker B: Another thing that's not better in the book. I just thought it was really funny that throughout the entire book, literally anytime they got, like, captured, Thomas strategy was just to trauma dump the entire story from start to finish to whoever they were talking to. Not worried about, like, oh, should be. Should I be revealing this information to this person? We're not worried about that. We're just gonna tell them the entire story.
• 44:08
  Speaker A: I thought. I thought the book actually did an okay job of justifying that of him. Every time he's like, I don't know. I don't have any better options. I might as well tell him, like, what I know. Like.
• 44:17
  Speaker B: Fair enough.
• 44:18
  Speaker A: And I also kind of found it satisfying as a response to the first book where nobody will tell anybody fucking anything is just anytime Thomas runs into anybody, he's like, here's what's going on. I will tell you the whole story from start to finish. Which I. You know. Yeah. It is kind of funny, though. It happens, like, four times over the course of the book.
• 44:36
  Speaker B: Another thing that I thought was interesting in the book was the moment when the girl gang. The Group B Maze.
• 44:44
  Speaker A: Yes. Maze.
• 44:45
  Speaker B: Starts, like, appearing out of the desert, just armed to the teeth.
• 44:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 44:49
  Speaker B: To kidnap Thomas.
• 44:51
  Speaker A: They just, like, rise out of the, like, what you call it from Dune.
• 44:56
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 44:57
  Speaker A: The Arrakeen people or whatever.
• 44:59
  Speaker B: I thought that could have been a really fun visual.
• 45:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 45:02
  Speaker B: Again, it was not something that was, like, super interesting other than that initial visual, but c' est la vie. I guess I also thought that the creepy pod monsters that they have to fight at the end of the book sounded gnarly.
• 45:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. When they get to the safe haven in the end of the book, they find the safe haven area that they told them to get to, quote unquote, just in the middle of the desert.
• 45:25
  Speaker B: It's like a little sign that says.
• 45:27
  Speaker A: The Safe Haven stick with a streamer on it that says Safe Haven. And. But. And these pods come out of the ground and these big hulking monsters come out of them. I was convinced that what was gonna happen when those pods came out of the ground was that there was going to be a certain number of them and that they were going to be fewer of them than there were people. And they were gonna have to decide. Yeah, I thought that was. And they were. The pods were the safe haven.
• 45:51
  Speaker B: But no, they're full of monsters.
• 45:52
  Speaker A: They're just full of weird, creepy pustule monsters. And it's the most video game thing. I was dying laughing. I was like, okay, James Dashner plays video games. Cause the way they figure out to defeat. They're these weird hulking.
• 46:06
  Speaker B: They're like kind of humanoid, but they have weird long limbs.
• 46:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. And they're tall and way bigger than humans. And they're kind of slow and hulking. And they have blade arms and stuff. Or whatever.
• 46:16
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like knives coming out of their fingers.
• 46:18
  Speaker A: Yes. But they have. One of the main descriptors is they have these weird glowing, like, pustules all over them.
• 46:24
  Speaker B: Like at their joints and.
• 46:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, like, all covering them all over their body. It says like, like kind of sporadically. And they. They're fighting them. And then Thomas eventually realizes, oh, you have to destroy these glowing orbs on them in order to, like, slow them down to defeat them. And it's. It's. It's the most video game thing ever. That is a video game mechanic that has been popular for like, over a decade of like, fighting a. A monster or a. Especially like a boss or whatever. And in order to weaken them. Because that's what happens too, when they destroy them, they, like, slow down and they, like, don't move as fast. In order to weaken them, you have to destroy the little glowing targets on them. I was like, okay, it's a video game. And then my last note for better in the book is just a line in the movie that I thought was dumb, is that when Thomas shows back up, everybody gets captured at the end of the movie by Wicked. And they're all, like, holding him captive. And Thomas is, like, hiding. But then he walks out and is like, I'm here. And he, like, turns himself over and Minho, like, he gets put down next to Minho. And Minho's like, why didn't you run? And Thomas is like, I'm tired of running. And Minho looks at him. The look he gives him in the movie is like, you. You did not just say that. You did not just say, I'm tired of running. He gives him a look like, oh, man, that was so cheesy. It was very funny. All right, those are all our notes for better in the book. Let's go ahead and talk about what we thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 48:05
  Speaker B: I really liked that we started with one of Thomas's memories. Like a flashback.
• 48:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, I had the same note. Yeah, I liked opening on that flashback. It's his mom handing him over to Wicked. And then we also explicitly see Thomas with Ava there, which I think helps kind of establish their connection and set that up right from the start and just makes that stuff some of that backstory a little more, gives us something to chew on from the beginning of the movie, whereas the book kind of piecemeals that out more over the course of the book.
• 48:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, we do get some. Like, there are some memories that come back to Thomas throughout the course of.
• 48:38
  Speaker A: The book, including one about his mom.
• 48:40
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:41
  Speaker A: Giving them up or whatever.
• 48:42
  Speaker B: But they were all, like, so kind of disparate that I had a hard time figuring out how they connected to things.
• 48:49
  Speaker A: I was able to put it together mainly because eventually Thomas literally lists them in order in the book of, like, he's like. He's talking to Teresa. I think after the gas chamber scene, he's, like, explaining all the memories he had, and he's like, well, I remembered all this stuff from before of, like, when we were. When we were learning to do. When we were learning to communicate psychically. And then, like, right before we went into the maze and, like, he really goes and recounts them all. I was like, okay, that's the order of events and how that all goes together. But, yeah, I just like the movie specifically giving us that emotional flashback Note to kind of start with, this is a very small thing that drove me crazy in the book that the movie slightly tweaks in a way that I think is better, which is that in the movie, they explicitly call it the flare virus instead of just the flare. Yeah, because in the book, every time they refer to the disease, they say, oh, you have the flare. Or this. Or, oh, we gotta figure out how to solve the flare, or we have to cure the flare or fix the flare or whatever, which I thought was very, very annoying and confused. It's not really confusing, but just kind of weird for them to call the disease that everybody suffers from the flare when there was also a catastrophic physical event where solar flares destroyed everything. And so for, like, the first handful of times, everybody talks about the flare. I'm like, Are we talking about the solar flares or are we talking about.
• 50:16
  Speaker B: The event or the resulting virus?
• 50:18
  Speaker A: Yes. And so, and like, it's, again, it's not like it's in. It kind of makes sense for the virus to be named after the event because it is seemingly, you know, related to it. Although in the movie and book seem to be very different about where it came from potentially. Because in the book they explicitly say that they think it was like a. When the, the solar flares happened, some, like, all of the resulting catastrophic damage caused some sort of, like, lab leak, basically from, like, the CDC or something like that. Whereas in the movie it seems like it's some almost like, weird alien thing or. I don't know, they never say. But anyways, I was just like, don't call the virus the flare. When the event was a solar flare. Like, it's just, it's just kind of weird and I just, just calling it the flare virus. It's a little change, but I thought it was a good one.
• 51:16
  Speaker B: I was again, really glad that the movie just dropped the telepathic communication thing. It's just an element of the book that irritates me.
• 51:26
  Speaker A: I'm still pretty indifferent to it except for we'll get to it, the end.
• 51:31
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:31
  Speaker A: And some of the stuff that happens there. I, I, it's, I'm so interested to see what happens in the third book with that. All of the te, the telepathy stuff.
• 51:40
  Speaker B: Whether or not it matters.
• 51:41
  Speaker A: Because again, the fact that the movies just don't use it at all, but it seems like such a pivotal part of the books.
• 51:48
  Speaker B: It feels like it, like, it feels.
• 51:50
  Speaker A: Like it has to be.
• 51:51
  Speaker B: It's like, then again, this movie has gone in a totally different direction, so who knows?
• 51:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know.
• 52:01
  Speaker B: So in the first book, we talked about this element that drove both of us nuts, which was everyone just patently refusing to give Thomas any information. In this book, what drove me nuts was that the Rat man literally tells them, if I can tell you anything today, it is that you should never, ever believe your eyes or your mind. And then they proceed to mostly take everything they encounter at face value.
• 52:30
  Speaker A: That is true.
• 52:32
  Speaker B: Which, like, and, like, they occasionally acknowledge, like, oh, maybe this is just wicked doing a thing. But I felt like not enough.
• 52:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 52:42
  Speaker B: Because if I were in this situation and this guy literally said to me, everything could be a trick.
• 52:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 52:49
  Speaker B: I would simply move through this constantly thinking that everything was just fake.
• 52:54
  Speaker A: Yes. But here's the other issue, though, is that he says that, but they, the Book then goes to several times to state, like, when they have those thoughts of, like, oh, maybe this is a trick, they go, well, but we can't. We don't really have a choice to do anything else. So it almost doesn't matter that he tells them that, because what are they gonna do? Like, what would they do? Like, I. It's like, even when they have those thoughts of like, oh, like, this could be a ruse or it could be part of a trick or whatever, but we still have to do the thing.
• 53:22
  Speaker B: Okay, well, here's the main thing that really irritated me in regards to that and the understanding that everything is this giant test and they're just being manipulated to react to different things. Because basically in the book, what Wicked is doing is studying their reactions.
• 53:44
  Speaker A: Yes. Seemingly. They say they got a phone, it seems like kill zone patterns so they can establish a blueprint or some shit. I don't know. Yeah.
• 53:53
  Speaker B: So, like, the whole thing about Minho having the tattoo that says he's the leader, but then there are signs everywhere that says Thomas is the real leader. And they were like. And they have this, like, tension with it. And I was like, you guys, this is obviously one of those things where they literally. They literally just want to see how you respond to that. So you could just ignore it, like, for the.
• 54:16
  Speaker A: That is a good. That. That is a good instance of that where it's like, yeah, you can. Can just. Guys, like, clearly this is.
• 54:22
  Speaker B: It literally doesn't matter who the real leader is. You're capable of understanding that you're being manipulated right now.
• 54:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a line in the movie that I like when he's talking to Mr. Jansen, the rat Man, Littlefinger, where they're doing, like. It's kind of like an interrogation scene. He's asking him, like, what he knows, like what Thomas knows and remembers about Wicked or whatever. Yeah. And at some point, Mr. Jansen asks him, whose side are you on? And Thomas gives this little speech back about, like, I don't know, I don't know. But he ends it by basically saying he's not on, you know, Wicked side or. Or in. Or. Or the right arm side or whatever. He's on his friend's side. Like, that's what his motivation is. And I liked the movie giving us a very concrete, like, this is what Thomas is about. He likes. He wants to protect and save his friends, which the book does that. It's just. I don't know. I like that line. I just thought it was a good line and response that kind of very clearly established what Thomas's goals are in all of this, which is to protect his friends as much as possible. I like that in the movie there's more than one other maze. I thought that was kind of interesting. It seems like there would be too. It also makes what Wicked has been doing more horrific. That they're doing it to hundreds and hundreds of or thousands of kids or whatever, as opposed to like. Like 60 or whatever, you know, like, not that. That's not bad. I'm just saying, like. Like amplifying that and turning it into this big machine of. Of exploitation and harvesting these kids or whatever is. Is at least like an interesting idea. And again, it's just kind of an expansion of what the book does by having the other maze, the secret other maze that they didn't know existed, but just takes it and goes further with it by having multiple other mazes. Speaking of them harvesting the kids, I thought it was a really cool shot in the movie when they discover the room where they're taking all the kids. The lights come on and it's all of their bodies hanging by these glowing wires. But I thought it was cool and creepy and I liked that in the.
• 56:28
  Speaker B: Book, when they're going down the long dark hallway immediately after going through the flat trans and leaving their dorm and there's like a bodyless old man voice threatening them.
• 56:42
  Speaker A: This is your one chance.
• 56:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, you're gonna get sliced. You're all gonna get sliced. And I was like, what is even the point of this?
• 56:51
  Speaker A: Well, it's the manipulation. They gotta. It's there to get their reaction to see if they will go through it. But then. But then it is actually dangerous. It's not a trick because they do.
• 57:01
  Speaker B: Because they do get sliced.
• 57:02
  Speaker A: They do get their heads cut off. So it's like. Okay, so it's just. It's. Yeah, it's one of those elements where it just feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall and like, maybe some of this will stick. And it's like, I don't know. This will be creepy and weird or whatever. I don't know.
• 57:18
  Speaker B: In the movie, I did think that the seeing, like baby grievers in grow tanks was fun.
• 57:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. When they first get into that room where all the kids.
• 57:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, before they see the kids. He sees the baby grievers.
• 57:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, like tanks full of grievous. Yeah, I agree. I thought that was cool.
• 57:33
  Speaker B: I thought the whole escape scene from the facility in the movie was really fun. I liked Minho's running kick.
• 57:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. He knees that Guy in the chest.
• 57:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. Figuring out, like, Thomas figuring out what the stun gun does. And then his, like, run and slide under the door. Kind of mirroring the moment from the first movie where he, like, slips into the maze as it's closing.
• 57:56
  Speaker A: Oh, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I agree. I had the same note that the escape from the wicked compound is fun. We get to. There's some running. He gets to do running, which is.
• 58:04
  Speaker B: You know, that as the maze runner.
• 58:07
  Speaker A: To be fair, there's lots of running in the book, but it's mostly just jogging in the desert. Whereas in this movie we get, like, explicit. Like, he's gotta run right now to survive kind of moments that are fun. And you mentioned the slide. I thought that was really great because it's kind of an Akira slide when he slides under that door, the shadow shot, the shots and editing they chose are. I thought were really cool because we're kind of following him. And then as he slides under the camera, that comes around to the other side of the door and he, like, spins around and slides. And there's a very famous shot from the movie Akira, the anime Akira that has been copied 8 million times in movies and video games and all these things called the Akira slide. It's that where he slides away from the camera and they've. So that's Batman. It's been in, like, 8,000 things over and over and over again. But the moment where he slides under the door kind of reminded me of that. And it's almost kind of like an Akira slide a little bit, which I thought was fun.
• 59:12
  Speaker B: See, that's a good way to do a reference.
• 59:14
  Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's the right kind of reference. Where you're not just stealing whole set pieces from other things. Yeah, just like, visual, like references. Yeah.
• 59:22
  Speaker B: Okay. So in the book, when they get out into the scorch and they know that they. They, like, see the city in the distance and they see the mountains behind it.
• 59:34
  Speaker A: And I. I have something to say about this.
• 59:37
  Speaker B: They're like, okay, well, let's head for the city.
• 59:40
  Speaker A: The city first. Yes. And Thomas is like, I think it's like a hundred miles away. Or somebody says, like, it looks like it's like. Or not 100, but, like, way far away away.
• 59:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. So. But Aminho also says, like. And I forget.
• 59:53
  Speaker A: Amino corrects.
• 59:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 59:54
  Speaker A: Whoever says, like, oh, that's like 80 miles away.
• 59:57
  Speaker B: He's like, oh, it's however. It's however many miles.
• 59:59
  Speaker A: No, he's like, oh, it's only, like 30 or 40 miles away.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker B: But then he says, like, oh, you don't spend every day as a runner in the maze without being able to judge distance. And I'm sitting there and I'm, like, blank. Now, why would running in an enclosed maze make Minho good at guessing distance.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker A: By sight and especially distances of that scale?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker B: Why would that make him good?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker A: Because. Because in the maze, the longest, like, you know, maybe a mile or something is like a corridor, you know, like. But they're not. I don't. I don't think we're supposed. They're supposed to have been running, like, 30 miles or. Like.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker B: I don't.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker A: I mean, there's no reason he would. Yeah, like, he could. He could probably be good at judging, like. Like a few hundred feet. Like, oh, that's 500ft away. Oh, that's 300ft. You know, like, you might be good at that. But judging how far a city is away by sight. By sight, that is tens and tens of miles away. Well, and then I was wondering if it's. If the joke is that he can't. Not even joke. The point is that he can't judge it because it drove me insane. He says that, and then we follow from there and spend and literally, I think, like, two days watching them jog through the desert. Yeah, we. So he says that when they get out, like, during the day, he says, oh, that city's like, 30, 40 miles in the distance. They start walking that direction. Then it gets to nighttime and they start running. Because it's cool enough now that they can run. They run through the entire night. And now most of these people, not most of them, aren't runners, but they're all in good shape. They're good enough to. They're jogging the whole time for hours and hours and hours. Hours. They go through that night, and then it gets to the next day. And at some point, Thomas has this thought, like, he sees the city in the distance and goes, well, it'll only take us another day or two to reach the city. And it's already been, like, a day and a half from when they first got out. And Minho said, It's 30 or 40 miles away, and they've been running for at least, like, 10 hours. The math doesn't matter. If it was actually 30 to 40 miles away, they would have been there in, like. So I looked up, like, what's the average jogging speed? It's like five miles an hour. So I was like, even if you do three miles an hour, like, make it. Because it's Hot or whatever. Make it. Yeah, make it less sure. Make it three miles an hour. But again, some of them are. They're jogging the whole time. That's 10 hours to go 30 miles. And somehow it's going to take them three days to get to this city. So again, the only explanation that makes any sense is that Minho was wrong.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker B: Actually is bad at judging distance.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker A: And was wrong about it being 34 miles. Miles. And it's actually like 60 or 70 miles. That's the only thing that makes sense.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker B: That was the point. It didn't work.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker A: No. Because then. And they never address it. They never come back and go, meh. I thought you said this was 30 miles.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker B: At this.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker A: We've been running for three days and we're still not there yet. Yeah, like that's never addressed. Oh my God. It drove me crazy. And to me that just felt like a. Something that the author didn't think through. Just had Minho say that and then didn't think about the timeline enough and like how fast they were moving or whatever. Because I. I went back back. It. It drove me crazy enough that I reread like those like three chapters to make sure I didn't miss any details about the timeline. And I know I was correct that it. They literally jogged for like a cumulative like at least 24 hours of jogging. Which again, even at like three miles an hour is like 75 miles. And so there's no way it's only 30 to 40 miles away. Again, so maybe Minho's just wrong. Maybe that's it. But they're never say that. So I don't know.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker B: So as they're jogging through the desert at night in the book, they see a building that they didn't notice before.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker B: Like it just cropped up out of nowhere.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like on the outskirts of the city, they're like, there's a building.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker B: Oh, there's a building that we didn't see.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker B: And. And then a girl comes out of this building.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker B: Like. Like a mirage or something.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker B: She comes out of this building. And Thomas is like, I'll go talk to. And he's walking over there and he's like, wouldn't it be great if that random girl that appeared out of nowhere was actually Theresa? And then it just is.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker A: It is Teresa.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker B: It just is Theresa. And she says some cryptic shit. And then they make out. Yeah, I hated that scene. I thought it was so stupid.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker A: And then we get the weird const. Like the part that gets so annoying about that is later we get The. Like when he runs into the group of the girls. They're recounting that happening because the girls were there. She was with the group of girls then. And in his mind, the way that all played out, because she's acting weird. Like, she. He said she looks like she's acting the same way that Galley, or. Yeah, Galley was when he killed. When he threw the knife.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker A: And he's like. So it looks. Seemed like she was under control, but then the only time it seemed like she wasn't, she seems to break out of it. And when she rushes over and kisses him.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker A: But then later when he's talking to, like, her or the whatever, they say that it was the opposite. That she was under control. That they made her kiss him.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker A: And that everything else that she was doing was of her own volition when it's clear that wasn't the case. Because he can tell from looking at her that she's being controlled.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker B: Well, I don't know. I don't know what exactly we're supposed to make of Theresa's behavior at all in this book, because sometimes it's like she's being controlled, and other times she, like, does stuff and it seems like she's not. And then she's like, oh, but they were making me do that.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker B: And I. I don't know what exactly we're supposed to think.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker A: Oh, I agree completely. We'll get to that more at the end with the whole gas chamber thing, that plot. I'm just like, this is the dumbest shit. And I understand. I'll get to it later. It's part of my final verge. I understand why the. The person writing the movie was like the. I'm just getting rid of all of this because it's. It's incomprehensible. And it's such a. A mess of like. Okay. Like, fuzzy, motivated motivations when you don't know why characters are doing what they're doing. And that's like, the whole point. Can get. Unless it's done really well.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker A: Is so frustrating. It's just so annoying.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker B: It's not a thing to drag through an entire book.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker A: No. The whole book is just like, okay, is Teresa on the level or is she not? And then it switches, like, eight times.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker A: And you're just like, okay, she's not on the level. Oh, she is working for Wicked.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker B: Oh, but no, actually they're forcing her.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker A: They're forcing her to do this.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker B: But then actually she is working.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker A: Still thinks Wicked is good, even though they forced her to do. It's like, what are we doing? And the movie is just like, no, no, no, no. Let's just make this way easier.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker B: The movie is just like, can we not.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, it's just exhausting. That was my biggest thing. It's just like. It's exhausting to be like, okay, but I don't care who she. Like, what is.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker A: Again, everybody's allegiance is seemingly change. Not everybody like Teresa specifically and even Brenda and some stuff to some extent. And Eris. It's just like I don't know what their motivation is or why they're doing the things they're doing. And the book doesn't want to tell us because it's a mystery. Like that's the point.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker A: Well.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker B: And that's the thing is that not only do we not know. Like it's one thing to not know.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker B: A character's motivations, it's another thing to not even be able to hazard a guess.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker A: Yes. Well, and yes. And because the whole premise is there's some weird mystery, shadowy puppet strings being pulled. But you don't know what strings are being pulled when. On who. So you're like, I don't know what anybody's doing or why. And why should I care if I don't know? Like I can't. I don't know if anybody's actions are their own actions or I don't know if one, if they're their own actions. Two, if they're being mind controlled by the evil corporation. Or three, if they're being not mind controlled but just manipulated, coerced into doing the things they're doing doing.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker B: Or four.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or I guess there's no four. There's those three things. So you have those three things and you're like, so I don't know. I never know. And it's just, it's. It's.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker B: And the mind control thing too is so underdeveloped.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's only mentioned a couple times.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker B: You're like, is that even real? Real?
• 1:08:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. Is it even a real thing?
• 1:08:04
  Speaker B: Or is that just something that Thomas has surmised?
• 1:08:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, I. I don't know. It's. It's just exhausting.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker B: This is a little stupid thing in the book. But at one point Minho says to Thomas, miss, He's like insulting him and he says, your pony loving butt I hate. I don't know what the. That means.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker A: I hate Minho's character in the book. His like his like weird. Like he does a lot of. He Talks like that a lot. Where he says these weird. Like, he like, insults people. It's like the classic. Like, the only way he knows how to, like, engage with dudes is to, like, be a jerk and make fun of them. But, like, it's so corny. Like, everything he says in the book is so corny and annoying. But he's also supposed to be like, one of Thomas's best friends, but he's just annoying. Whereas the movie makes him into a much less annoying, just like, normal guy who's just like. You understand why Thomas likes him, kind of. Whereas in the. In the book. I wish I had some more examples, but there's so many lines like this where Minho specifically says something and I like. Is that supposed to be endearing? Am I supposed to like this about him? Because I don't. It's. Yeah.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker B: Movie thing. I think a post apocalypse shopping mall is always a fun setting. Oh, again, not. Not unique. No, but it's a fun setting.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Now we're just creepy. Dawn of the or Land of the Dead. One of the dead.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker B: There's. There's a mall in the Last of Us too, isn't there?
• 1:09:34
  Speaker A: Yes. Which is so famously one of the. I think it's the second dawn of the Dead movie. Day of the Dead maybe takes place in a shopping mall. It's a bunch of people in a shopping mall and they're like, get attacked by zombies. That's kind of like the movie that started all of the zombie shopping mall things. Because a lot of things have done that since then. Because it's one of those. You get that classic juxtaposition of the banality, weird commercialism of a mall versus the society falling. But there's also the element of consumerism, of zombies clashing out with the consumerism of a mall. And like, there's like a lot of, like, thematic elements that are kind of interesting. Plus, like, the idea of like, running around in a deserted mall sounds like it's something like, appealing to like, our weird base.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker B: But it's also really creepy. And there's like, liminal space and there's a lot of. There's a lot of places that you could hide in a mall.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker A: And there's also. You. Also. This is one of the reasons that the Day of the Dead or whatever did you get lots of different stores. So you. If you want your characters to go, go get sporting Good. Like they need baseball bats or they need tools or. You know what I mean?
• 1:10:37
  Speaker B: They can be startled by Mannequins Exactly.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker A: There's all these fun little, you know, oh, you can go to arcade and all the, all the machines kick on and make a bunch of. No, you know, there's all these different things you can do in a mall. You have all these opportunities in one location for like hijinks and stuff. So it's. It's understandable. So yeah, it's fun. One little detail in the. When they get into that mall that I thought was very good subtle storytelling that the movie never, never like explicitly states that you just have to pick up from watching the movie. And I was like very impressed that the movie did that. Was they start slowly piecing together that people were living in this mall.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker A: And they start kind of like finding clues of like all their clothes and like where they were staying. They're like following. Oh, they had electricity. There's like wires. And they're like following the wires to see where they lead and stuff. And like at one point Teresa finds like this photo of this little girl. Girl, like with a stuffed animal or something like that. And she's like looking at it and she's like, I wonder where they went and that sort of thing. And meanwhile it cuts back to Minho and Thomas like searching for like where the electricity is going. And they get to this room and they find this. It's like in the basement or whatever. And it's like one of those. There's like a fenced in area that I assume is like a. Like a utilities area or something. It's one of those places where the, you know, like it's locked off because there's like. They store stuff there or something like that. That. And so there's this fenced in area and they get down there and the fence is like covered in like stuffed animals and stuff. And then they. I actually wonder. I. I bet this is stolen from the last of us. And I've just forgotten. I actually bet. I. Now that I think about it, I guarantee you this is just stolen straight from the last of us. Like a little. Yeah, I almost. Now, oh my God. I have to go look and see if that's the case because I just thought about. Because it's so good that I'm like, I bet that's what it is. But you, you like realize, oh, there was this. These people living here. And then. Oh, and then when Minho turns the electricity on and all the lights come on and this little girl comes like zombie girl comes running out and slams against the fence that where they had all these stuffed animals and you realize, oh, my God, the people who are living here, their daughter got infected. They locked her in this cage.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker A: Because they didn't know what to do as she, like, turned into a zombie or whatever. But they were still, like, bringing her presents and toys. And it's, like, deeply sad and horrifying and. And ridiculous and. And. But the movie never, like, explicitly says, like, what was going on there. Just lets you kind of piece it together, like, as you're watching. And I thought that was, like, really good. I was like, that's awesome. Again, now that I'm thinking about it, I bet it was stolen from something, but very good still. After Winston gets infected, the one moment that I really like in that is that as they're walking away, which I knew this was going to happen, like, they hear the gunshot from a distance. I just thought the way this movie did it was really good, which is normally what you expect in that moment, because we actually start with this shot which is him, like, walking towards the camera. And we're kind of, like, seeing their faces. And I'm expecting to hear the gunshot in the distance and then to, like, stop and, like, look back or whatever. But what actually happens is we cut to a wide silhouette shot, and they're, like, walking along this ridge of sand, hand, like, four or five of them, and we hear the gunshot, and they all immediately stop and turn and just sit there, like static, silhouetted on the ridge. And it's a really cool shot that I was like, that's a cool way to do that. That's an interesting way to do that. That's different than most movies.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker B: They should have kept that gun.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker A: Yes, they should have kept the gun. But, yeah, I also thought that the movie did a good job adding a little bit more of, like, inner turmoil to Thomas's character of making him feel, like, responsible because he's the one at the beginning of this in the book, they. They go out because Wicked is like, you gotta go do.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, they really have no choice.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker A: They have no choice. You gotta go get to the safe haven. Like, that's the thing in this. They give that. Like, some of them want to stay there. They're like, I don't know, man. They seem like they're on the up and up. Maybe that we should just stay here. But Thomas is like, no, this is. They're gonna kill us. This is bad. We. This is bad news. This is Wicked. We gotta get out of here. Here. And so he's the one that really, like, pushes them out into the. Into the scorch. And so he has to deal with the fact that the people dying out here, specifically just Winston. But. But Winston dying out here is. You know, he made the decision to go out here, and so he feels like that Winston's death is on his hands. And I thought that was at least an interesting character dynamic.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I thought Jorge was a more fun character in the movie. Yes, we, obviously, we hardly. We spend hardly any time with him in the book. Cause we are mostly with just Thomas and Brenda during that section. But I really liked his character, and I liked the idea of there's a warring faction in this survivor camp, and Jorge and Brenda want to use the Gladers to get in with the right arm.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I thought it worked well. And, I mean, it's Giancarlo Esposito. So that's how you get Jorge to be better than he is in the book, as you put a brilliant actor in that role and then let him have fun with it. I will say it's not like it's far from Giancarlo Esposito's, like, best role by any stretch. He's not doing anything super crazy and, like, interesting here, but it's still compelling and fun and. And, yeah, he's always fun to watch. I will say his introduction in the book is way cooler, though.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker B: I thought that was so goofy.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker A: It is goofy.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker B: When he jumps through the ceiling and somersaults over to them. I thought that was goofy.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker A: Oh, it's absolutely goofy. But that is the kind of goofy shit I am here for. I wanted to see him drop out of the rafters like bat. Come on.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker B: I thought there was another fun escape scene when they. When they get out of the survivor camp. I like the zip line and then, like, the music playing and all the. All the explosives on the, like, particularly, like, where they're in strategic locations on the beams, and then everything just kind of slowly starts to collapse.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker A: It's a fun. Yeah, the action set pieces in this are pretty. Pretty fun. Like, it's a pretty effectively done action movie. It's just kind of generic. But, yeah, like, a lot of the action scenes are pretty fun.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker B: Let's take a minute to talk about what a relief it was that the movie decided to drop. Brenda being really handsy and weirdly into pda.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker A: Yes, I.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker B: Because what was that?
• 1:16:59
  Speaker A: It was so. So I have a theory about what that was, and we'll get into that here in Lost adaptation in a few minutes. But it is really, like. So just for people who didn't read the book and only watched the movie. When we meet Brenda, like, she. She shows up and she's both hot and crazy, which is, like, classic. Yeah. Kind of like, she's not femme fatale necessarily, but. Yeah.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker B: No, but she's hot and crazy.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker A: She's hot and crazy and, like, immediately, like, kisses Thomas on the cheek and says she likes him. And he's immediately, like, like, what. What is happening? Like, and very weird. And then later when she. She, like, asks Thomas to, like, promise to get her to the cure. And when she does this, she, like, presses herself against him and, like, whispers in his ear. And during that scene, I was like. I wrote, she's the most fed. Fed to ever fed. This is she.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker B: What does that mean?
• 1:17:48
  Speaker A: Like, like, a plant? Like, she's a fed, like an agent, like, working for Wicked. I was like, this is. She's a plant. She is. During that scene, I was like, this is all, like, part of the ruse or something thing. I don't think it is. Maybe. I don't know. It's hard to know. It's hard to say how the book ended. Maybe. I don't know, but. And then the last note I had about it specifically here. And again, I'll get into why I think this is the case later. But the last note, like. And this is the weirdest part to me, at one point, she's, like, being like, really? Like, it might even be right after she, like, presses herself against him.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker B: She's, like, constantly, like, touching him and, like, acting like she's trying to get into his pants.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. And he's like. He mentions to her, like, hey, you're like. Like, this is weird. Why are you touching me so much? And he. She says that. Oh. She's like, oh, I don't know. It's just, like, normal where I'm from, like. Or how I grew up or something. Like, that is her little response. And I was like, what does that.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker A: Mean? What does that mean?
• 1:18:44
  Speaker B: That's just a bigger red flag.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. Weird. I was like, I don't know what that means. And the move or the book never addresses her, at least in this one, doesn't address her background or why that. What. Where she comes from.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker B: And. And, like, this ele of her being, like, super handsy kind of peters out after the party scene.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's because he tells her, like, oh, she tries to kiss him and he's like, you're not her.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. But the book never really comes back around to it to address, like, why.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker A: Why what's going on here. And yeah, so the movie just drops it, which I think makes sense because it's very strange. And I will get again in Lost adaptation.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker B: Here we're going to talk about a theory.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I had a note that this is a kind of a thing that I thought was very funny in the book, that I was like, oh, my God. Which is. We're at 170 pages into the book, he's talking to Brenda, and Brenda is giving him some backstory about the world because she knows more about. Because she has her memories.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker B: She's given him the Wikipedia overview of what happened, basically.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker A: And his response to this 170 pages into the second book, is she just revealed more info or more to him about the state of the world with those few sentences than he had learned since having his memory wiped. And I was like, brother, I would argue that is a problem with your pacing.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker A: Like, we are 170 pages into the book and we in like two sentences from one random character, have learned more about the world than we have up until this point.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker B: It's, it's, it's pacing, it's. It's world building.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's just. Oh, God. God, it's brutal. A thing that I liked more in the movie, I think, is that we actually. When people get infected by the flared virus, it requires like, it is more of a traditional zombie thing. They get bit more generic or whatever, but in the book, they're just like all infected. It's kind of like the Walking Dead thing.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker B: And I wasn't sure reading the book how or why, if it was like the Walking Dead, where, like, they all have it just, like inside them, or if it was just like so easy.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker A: To get that they're essentially.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker B: They're essentially. If you go out into the real world, you just have it.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker A: I don't know. But they never go into the specifics, but they basically say, like, you're all infected already. And again, I don't know if that's because, like, they infected them, like secretly or they. Or just existing in the world.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker B: Just existing like Walking Dead, where, like.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker A: It'S like in the air.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker B: Or if maybe they're not in the infected and wicked lying to them. Yeah, I don't.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker A: I don't know. But the movie changes that to, again, maybe a little more boring version, which is just classic zombie get bit, get scratched, whatever, you become infected. But I, I liked seeing them get infected because it really does make it more clear about, like, what the rules are a little bit, which I thought was which helped.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker B: And you know, even though I think some elements of how the disease works in the book are more interesting than what we get in the movie because like we've been saying the movie is basically just boilerplate zombie rules. Yeah, the stuff in the book might be a little bit more interesting. It would have been a nightmare to communicate in the film because they don't.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker A: Do a good job communicating it in the book even.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, it would. Like, how do you even show that? It would have had to have been an info dump at some point, which.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker A: Is what it is in Walking Dead. From my memory, when they find out they're all.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker B: In fact, when they go to the.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker A: CDC or whatever, it's like, surprise, you're all already infected.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker B: They're like, oh, it's already in your brain.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker A: Okay, I guess, sure, whatever. Yeah. So, you know, it's whatever. I just, I thought, Yeah, I didn't like it in the book. I thought it was too kind of nebulous in a way that I was like. I was again unsure of like, what I was even supposed to think about it. Like.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker B: And it was one of those things that frustrated me because I could see like the seed of a good idea there and like an interesting idea, but. But it was just so poorly handled.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker B: I already kind of mentioned this, but I thought all of the Thomas is the real leader signs around the city was just fucking dumb. Just. Just dumb.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker B: And then even dumber on top of that, that he spends all this time being like, well, but the signs have to mean something, brother. They do not.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker A: They do not.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker B: They, they absolutely do not.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker A: It's.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker B: They're just seeing how you react to it. They're fucking with you. The signs don't thing. Ignore them.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker A: It's a little thing in the movie, but again, similar to the first movie, I was like, this is more effective world building than the, the, the book ever did. I like seeing more of the society that has arisen in the world. Like their way get into the city. Well, and part of that is that there can be a society because everybody isn't immediately. Because that's the other issue with the way the book seemingly does the flare virus is, is that seemingly everybody out in the world is infected and either already a full gone crank or on.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker B: The path to coming on the downslope.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker A: On the downslope. Whereas in the movie it's more of a traditional. If you get infected, you become a crank. But like, there are just people trying to survive out here who are not infected. Like Jorge and Brenda in the movie when we meet them, are not infected. In the book, they're already infected and are just not like just recently infected. In fact, that's why they're out in the school, Scorch, is that they. Jorge got infected, got tested, and then they just dump you. Like.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because like when you get it, they just dump you in this city.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, I guess, like, you know, essentially. And like that's an interesting idea too. Like there's, I like the element of like, you know, it's. It's essentially like a, like a prison camp. They just like dump you. I don't know, like you go die out there or whatever. But the thing that's interesting in the movie is that we actually get to see like the society a little bit that has arisen in this post apocalyptic wasteland because they are just people who are trying not to get infected and trying to survive.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker B: They like get into the main part of the city and there's essentially like an open air market.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker B: Happening around them.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker A: And like this is because this is a direct correlation with the scene in the book where they get into the city and they find that party or whatever. But we don't really see it. There's not like any mention of like a society. It's just like there happens to be this party going on but there's not.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker B: Really any world building that goes with it.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, they're not like walking into us down a street and there's like people there there like selling stuff or you know, like any of that kind of thing. So I thought that I really liked the movie at least adding a little bit more of the world building.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker B: I thought that the scene with Jorge and Marcus was fun.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker A: Oh yes, it was very fun.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker B: This movie has so many actors who. That are just too good for it.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. This is Alan Tudyk.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker B: I also thought making Alan Tudyk's character actually connected to the main plot was a good call because he's just like a race random person they encounter in the book.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker A: He's essentially, I think in the movie he's essentially playing the correlation of like blondie or tall and ugly or one of those guys or whatever. Yeah, one of the three people who like.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker B: Three people who like forces them to go into the party.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, but he's like a named character named Marcus who was supposedly working for the. The. I keep the right.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker B: The right arm.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker A: The right arm. The right arm.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker B: But he was a mole.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker A: Turns out he was a mole working for Wicked and was actually delivering people to Wicked instead of helping Whatever.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker B: Whatever.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker A: It's interesting. It's fun. I. Yeah. And. And he does. I really liked his take on the character. He gets to do a fun, weird, like, slimy.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker A: Con guy.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker B: Yeah. He's kind of like a. Yeah. Like a slimy, like, almost mob boss kind of guy.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker A: But he does this very strange. He has a very unique, like, thing he's doing with his face and, like, his eye. I think there's some prosthetics going on too, where his eyes are kind of interesting. I don't know. I thought he was a lot of fun at the party. I really, like, liked a similar thing where he. They have the. They force them to have a drink before they go into this party. Same thing happens in the book. Except in the book, he just kind of, like, passes out. Eventually.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker B: He's, like, drunk, and then he passes out.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker A: In the movie, he's, like, tripping balls and we get to see, like, some of his friends, like, as infected. And then, like, a Griever is just, like, in the party, which I thought all that. I thought were some fun visuals while he's like, to trying tripping balls in this party that the book just doesn't really give us.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker B: Speaking of Thomas passing out, I wish I had known when I started reading this book to go ahead and count how many times he passes out. It is because it is a lot.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker A: You're not wrong.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker B: My guy is always swooning in this book.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker B: Another little just, like, stupid, funny moment in the book. Book when the girls kidnap Thomas. They, like, bring out a burlap sack. And I was like, oh, they're going to put a bag over his head. Classic kidnapping stuff. And then they literally stuff him into a giant bag.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker A: I think my brain didn't parse what was happening because I just assumed. I knew when they were like, he brought out the sack. I think I took me several pages of reading to realize, like, wait a second. Is he in a giant bag?
• 1:27:54
  Speaker B: He's in a giant bag and they're dragging him around.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I was like, oh, my God. That's what's happening here. They didn't just put it on his head. Okay. Yeah, I had the same thought of, like, wait, what? Sure. Okay. I like the scene in the movie where they're trying to get into the mountains to the rebel base, and they get. They get, like, ambushed by snipers. And then it turns out that it's Harriet and Sonia who are working with the Right arm, which I thought all the changes in the movie aside, I thought. I thought that was a clever way to work in Harriet and Sonia, who.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker B: Were characters in them back in the plot.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker A: They were characters in the book, but. But they're just part of the girl group who, like, come to kidnap.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, the girl gang.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, they come to kidnap Thomas. And we don't really have that same dynamic here because that whole plot of, like, kidnapping him and taking him to the gas chamber and all that shit is smartly not in what you're about to get here, smartly not in the movie. So I really enjoyed. I thought it was a clever way to get them back in, is that they've gotten out and they found this resistance that they're part of and, like, bringing them back. Plus, we. We get. What's your name From Game of Thrones, and she's always great.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker B: Speaking of the literal gas chamber that's in this book, I was trying to listen to the audiobook at this point so that I could be doing things and also reading. And I had to stop and go get the book to make sure of what I was hearing because this section was so confusing and weird.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, to me, the thing about this that was so strange is I've just. This was the part where I got to the end of this, or as this was all happening. I'm like. I'm still. Like, Teresa is still. This is still all in act. But it's like.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker B: But is it.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker A: But is it. Cause she literally gives him a concussion. Like, she hits him so hard with a stick, she gives him a concussion. And then they, like, drag him into this thing and they drag him into this gas chamber and. And then the gas goes. But it doesn't kill him. And he wakes up later, and then the door opens again and he comes out and she's like, oh, thank God it was all an act. And the thing that is so insane. And then they reveal that, like, before this, like, as they're taking him to the gas maze or the gas chamber, they. They reveal that her and Aerys have been communicating telepathically since she woke up in the Glade.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker B: And then, like, they make out.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker A: They make out as, like, part of this big, like, show to, like, make him jealous and, like, feel betrayed or whatever. And she explains that this whole thing, she had to do all this, that someone told her, and I assume that wicked, like, somebody from whatever, presumably, that. That. That they had to do this. They had to drag him in this gas chamber and that he had to believe that they were betraying him and if they did that, he would survive, I guess.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker A: And that's why she does all this. And then the whole time I'm just. Just like, buddy, how are you gonna make this make sense with, like, what the point of this all is? The maze and the tr. Like, Like, I, like, again, I get the idea is like, he has to be. Feel, like, betrayed because they're like, scanning his brain state or something in order to. Like, that's gonna be what it has to be. Like, something to do with. They have to, like, I assume the general idea. This is where I'm at at this point, has to be something. Something like, they have to evoke every possible emotional type of like, true emotional reaction in order to, like, completely, like, map his brain or something.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker A: In order to, like, use their brains to figure out something. I don't.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker B: I don't know, like, figure out how the flare affects or something.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker A: Brains. I don't know.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker B: I don't.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker B: I don't know how any of this is going to equal to what we're getting.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker A: Yes, but it's so insane. And. And like, the whole time I'm just like, what? And. And I. I also don't buy that Teresa would be able to do, like, she's. She, like, beats him unconscious with the stick. And I'm just like. And she's like, well, I had to do it for the thing. And I'm like, okay, but. And then the thing that's so funny to me is like, so did they tell you after he gets out of the gas chamber? And they're just.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker B: They're just like, explaining every.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker A: And they're explaining everything that happened. Happened. I'm like, did they tell you that you could then, after this happened, just explain everything that happened and that wouldn't be an issue? You know what I mean? Like, I'm just like. So, like, they get out of this, and they're like, well, so we had to do that because this, this and this. But those people would still be watching you, I guess they told you, well, after you do all that, after you drag him into the chamber and make him think you're murdering him, you can then tell him that it was all a ploy.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker B: Maybe they. So they can scan for. For that emotion. I don't know.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker A: So weird. It's so confusing. Again, I just get to the point. I'm just like, there's no way you're going to pull this off. And it makes me think that he didn't because the movie completely changed it. Like, that makes me think, oh, we did not get to a place that works.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker B: We did not stick the landing.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker A: And so the movie was like, we got to figure out a way to change this so that it actually works. Because it just. It's utterly ridiculous. And so much of it just feels. And I think that's what makes it so frustrating is that so much of it just feels like. Like tension for the sake of tension. And because you don't know anybody's motivation, you can't, like, judge anybody's actions. And so you're just reading events transpire without knowing why anybody's doing anything or what any of it means. And you're just. And that was my big thing. I finished reading this book. I'm like, nothing happened. Nothing happened because how could anything have happened? Because. Because we don't know what anybody was doing or why. Like, we don't know why anybody was doing anything they were doing. And the book.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker B: And we're just back at square one.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker A: And we're back to the exact same thing that we ended the. The last book on, which is like, oh, oh, no.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker B: It was wicked the whole time.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker A: It was wicked the whole time. And now it's like, what? Yeah. And so you literally just felt like we spun our wheels for 360 pages and, like, a bunch of stuff happened. Literally the only thing of importance that happened in this is is that he now doesn't trust Theresa.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker A: We spent 360 pages to get to the point where Thomas is like, this.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker B: Is finally, like, it's time to not trust.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker A: I don't trust Theresa because of everything that transpired. But everything else is the same. Like, all of the same characters are basically alive. Other than some of the characters we don't care about. We don't know anything else more about the plot, really, except vague lingo about, like, oh, when we get. When we're almost done, and it'll be time to. To. To. Fucking. What does she goddamn say? The Sykes are deliberating even now. When they say the time is right, we'll remove the swipe and tell our remaining subjects if they are or are not immune to the flare. What? I don't. What? That's nothing. This is nothing. Nothing happened. And, like, what? We're like, literally just at the same place and nothing transpired. And after 360 pages, it was just. We went from point A to point B, and it feels so pointless. It's so pointless.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker B: A little thing in the book that I just thought was dumb after the. He gets out of the gas chamber and they explain everything to him and they're like, well, we still have to get to the safe haven. Yeah. And Theresa's like, we need to run. Can you run? And Thomas goes, please, I'm a runner.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker A: I'm a runner.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker A: Okay, man.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker B: Okay, man. All right. A thing that I liked in the movie, though, was when they. When they get to the. The rebel camp and the formerly Wicked scientist, Mary Cooper. Mary Cooper puts together like an antiviral or whatever to give to Brenda that like, slows the progression of the.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker A: It basically stops it for a period.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker B: Of like, for a period of time. And I thought it was really interest because it almost sounds like. And I hope I'm not getting this entirely wrong. I think that this is how like, HIV medication works similar ish. Where like, it's not really idea. It's not really a cure, but it like, keeps the virus from getting worse.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker A: It suppresses it so much that you basically don't have it.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker B: But you have to, like, take it. You have to continue taking it. Which is what she says. Like, oh, she's always going to need it.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker B: I thought that was an interesting, like, avenue to go down.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, it does seem interesting. Yeah. I have no idea what the book. Because we still know nothing about the. The disease in the book, really. So. Yeah, So I thought it was. I kind of liked that the movie just actually has Theresa. So we talked about how the fake betrayal with Theresa in the book.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker B: But, like, is it fake and how fake is it?
• 1:36:34
  Speaker A: It's fake. I think it's fake. I think it's completely fake. I think it's completely fake. It's all in act. She, like, in the book. But she also still agrees somewhat with what Wicked is doing. But what she's doing there is an act. She doesn't want to kill Thomas. You know what I mean? Like, that is all in act.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker A: What do you mean?
• 1:36:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker A: So the movie, I think, switches. It doesn't switch it, but gets rid of all of that because it's so confusing and convoluted and dumb and it just feels wrong and whatever. And so in the movie they just have her actually betray Thomas and the Right Hand and give up their position to Wicked because she thinks what Wicked is doing is important. Like, she is, like, still on board, which is where the book kind of ends up.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. She still thinks Wicked is good.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. She's like, that's the last thing she says to Thomas when he, like, tells her to get out of his head or whatever. She's like, wicked is good. And so she still thinks that. So we get to kind of the same place, but the movie does it in a much more compelling character drama way of having her, like, have doubts about what they're doing the whole time. And, like, kind of, like, doesn't agree with Thomas's decision to go out, to run away and all this sort of stuff. And, like, watching Winston die and then, like, all the stuff they're doing and, like, potentially the. What they could be doing. And then. Well, and then they reveal at the end of the movie that they gave Theresa all of her memory back when she was at the thing at the beginning, beginning. So she remembers all of the backstory, or she remembers everything from before they went into the maze now of, like, what Wicked was doing and why. And she's on board with it still. And, like, is, like, you know, on the side of for the greater good or whatever. And I thought that was at least kind of compelling to make her. I thought it was a better way of getting to the same place that the book does by not doing this weird, dumb, fake, fake out thing. Just have her actually slowly go down this path and then actually betray them in, like, a meaningful way. Because she does a fake betrayal in this, but then still ends up on the side of Wicked, Right?
• 1:38:25
  Speaker B: So the fake betrayal doesn't really mean anything.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker A: Doesn't really mean anything. Whereas in the movie, she does an actual betrayal and ends up on the side of Wicked, because that's what she, like, it makes. It follows with what her character is thinking, and I think it makes way more sense.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker B: I agree. I agree.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker A: There's a little moment in the movie that I thought was really kind of compelling where when Thomas does, everybody has been captured by Wicked. They show up, they kind of destroy the rebel encampment, capture everybody. They have them all sitting there. Thomas comes out and, like, gives himself up to all of them. But then they're like, all right, time to go. And when they're doing that, Thomas pulls a bomb that he got from Jorge out of his vest and is like, we're not fucking going anywhere.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker B: I'm taking you all over.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker A: And all of the Gladers come around him and they're like, fucking do it. Just blow. Like, blow us up. And I thought that was kind of interesting. I thought that was, like, kind of compelling. But then we get a really fun action scene where Jorge drives a truck through a helicopter, and it's fucking sweet. I thought that was a lot of fun. Also, after he drives that truck through the helicopter, there's a great moment where he falls out of the truck. And this guy comes up and aims a gun at him and he just turns around and shoots him in the head. And then the way it was presented was so matter of fact that it was. We both burst out laughing. It was just very funny. And then my last note here is related to the book thing or. No, this is a movie or. Yeah, this is a book thing.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker A: There's this whole nonsense at the end where when they get picked up by. By wicked. We know, right. But they get picked up from the Safe Haven area and they bring Brenda and Jorge on with the. All the rest of the survivors. And the guy on this. This helicopter ship or whatever that they're on is like, who are they? They can't come with us. Pick one of them. They can come and he. Or pick one to kill and I'll. We'll bring the other one. And he picks. He says, kill Brenda. Thinking.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker B: Thinking that they'll do the opposite.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker A: They'll do the opposite of what he said, says. But then they don't.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker B: On what ground?
• 1:40:15
  Speaker A: I don't know. I don't know. Because that's not really been a thing so far where they, like, do the opposite of what. Whatever. But he's like, well. And then like, oh, no. So they're gonna kill Brenda. And then. So he runs over and, like, tackles the guy and, like, gets the gun away from him and stops him from killing Brenda. And then the guy's like, good job.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker B: Congratulations.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker A: Congratulations.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker B: That was the right answer.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker A: That was the right answer. You're all safe now. You're all actually safe. Safe. And it's like, very obviously not the case. And then immediately right after that, they. We get. And we'll get to it in my predicting the series thing, we get the exact hack ending where they fall asleep, he wakes up and he's in some padded cell.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker A: And now Brenda is in his head.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. She can also telepathically communicate.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker A: And she's like, hey, I have bad news. Things are gonna get bad for you.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker B: Oh, again.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker A: Again. I'm like, I'm so tired of this. Like, it's the same setup. It's just the same thing. Again, it's. It's again. And I'm like, but why is Brenda in his head? And again, this is the moment where earlier we're like, well, it's a good thing. The movie. You like that the movie removed all this telepathy stuff. One of the most, like, important elements of the final few pages of the book is Brenda telepathically communicating into his head. A thing that has never happened before and is, like, seemingly out of nowhere. Seems super important. And the movie just doesn't do it at all. I'm like, how. What? Where is this possibly going? I. I don't know.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker A: I. Yeah.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker A: It's so exhausting. It's so exhausting. But luckily, we're almost done. We're gonna get now. And talk about just a handful of things that the movie nailed. As I explained, expected practically perfect in every way. This is a very short list. Very different.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker B: Not much.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, the dorm room kind of like, when they get to the thing, it's very different. Like the building. But they have, like, a dorm. Yeah, they have, like, bunk beds in a dorm. So it's, like, kind of similar, at least. And, like, the door, like, locks and they're like, what's going on? That kind of thing.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. They still do a dramatic run through a really bad lightning storm.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker A: They do. Most of that is the same. We talked about the scene with Jack earlier. That's like, the main thing the movie cuts out. But apart from that, it's pretty similar. Like, imagine or similar to what I envisioned reading the book.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker B: And Thomas temporarily loses his hearing from the lightning.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. And during that moment, Minho gets struck by lightning and catches fire, but survives. But that also happens in the book.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker B: Thomas and Brenda still end up separated from the others and have to make their way through underground tunnels.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. I was like, oh, so that's how we split them up. Because it happens in a very different way in the book than in the movie. But they get split up and they have to.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker B: Yeah. The movie, for all its differences, it does keep, like, the big main, like, chunks of the plot.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. They definitely hit some main, like, key elements of it. Like. Yeah, like, narrative points. But, yeah, it's so much of it is so different.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker B: Speaking of, they do somehow still end up drugged at a dance club.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker A: I was like, they found a crank orgy.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. I thought that, like, the, like, zombie baiting scene was interesting and weird and.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker A: Dark in the movie.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker B: Yeah. Where he sees them. Like, they have, like, a zombie on a chain that they're, like, fucking with.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker B: But I also did. I. I thought the description from the book of it being lit by flashlights hanging from the ceiling was cool.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker B: I thought that could have been cool. And in that scene, Brenda and Thomas do kiss. And then Thomas is like, you're not her.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker B: And it hurts Brenda's feelings.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker B: And my last note here is that I liked Thomas and Brenda better than Thomas and Teresa in both the book and the movie. Movie. Which I guess is the point.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker A: I do think that's the point. I think you are supposed to like them more. At least now. For now, we'll see where.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker B: For now, we'll see what kind. What kind of traitorous shenanigans Brenda gets up to in 3.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker A: I have more about that here momentarily. But before we get to that in our prediction series, we have a few things that we want to talk about in Lost. An adaptation. Just show me the way to get.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker B: Out of here and I'll be on my way.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker A: Lost. Yes. Yes.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker B: And I want to get unlost as soon as possible. Okay. So the movie plot.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker B: Being that they're harvesting the kids for a cure to the. To the disease.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker B: At least so far. Makes way more sense than what we know of what they're doing in the book.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker A: Yes. Because we don't know.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker B: I have no.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker A: We know they're trying to study them. Them to, like, study their own patterns.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker B: But I don't know what that means.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker A: To study the. To make a blueprint for something to do with the cure to the disease or something.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker B: And I don't. I don't understand how that's going to equal up to a cure.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. No idea.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker B: So I think that that element of the movie makes more sense because they're.
• 1:45:09
  Speaker A: Literally just harvesting the kids and using.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker B: Their blood enzymes or whatever to make the cure.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker B: But then I also felt like that made the maze part make even less sense in the movie universe.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker A: Literally sense in the movie. Like, what is the point?
• 1:45:25
  Speaker B: Because why would that. What would they have had to have been doing in the maze?
• 1:45:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. Why aren't they just rounding the kids up.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker A: And finding. Testing them to figure out who's immune and then.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker B: And. Yeah.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker A: Using them to make the serum.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker B: What is the point of the maze?
• 1:45:41
  Speaker A: It makes literally. No. And I. I don't know if we'll ever figure out because I feel like we're past that at this point in the movie series.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker B: I feel like the movie is just gonna pretend that that didn't happen. Yeah.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker A: I had the same thought. I'm like, what is the point of the maze if they.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker B: Because I don't understand everything about what they're doing in the book by a long shot, but I at least understand how the maze experiment could be part of that.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker A: Like they're studying something about them. They're not studying anything about them in the movie series. Seemingly.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker B: Seems like.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker A: Well, they are, but we don't know why? Because Thomas is talking about how he's watching them in the maze and stuff. But what does the maze have to do with.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker B: With harvesting.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker A: With harvesting their enzymes? Because you could just take them and do that. Why did they need to go through a maze for? I don't understand that at all. It makes no sense. And I don't know if we're ever going to get an answer. Completely agree. I thought that was super dumb, an element that I have. I put this in Lost adaptation. I was going to put this in better in the movie, but I. I don't know because I don't know where it's going to go yet. I have this here because if this plot element is coming in the third book, maybe it'll be in the third book and it's just coming early in the movie. Like they're setting it up early or it's not. It's a. Maybe it's completely a movie invention. But in the movie, we get flashbacks of scenes where we find out that Thomas he. One of the scenes, Thomas tells Theresa that he couldn't keep watching the kids die and he had to do what he did. And as he's saying this, he gets, like, grabbed and drug away by, like, wicked security guards or whatever. And he's like, I had to do what I did. I couldn't watch him die, or whatever. And then later we find out, specifically from Mary Cooper, I think, that he was. He, like his. He couldn't take watching the maze stuff happen, so he started feeding information to the right arm. He was like a mole, essentially. And none of this is in the book. Like.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. At least not yet.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker A: Not yet. And so I just put this here because I was interested to see where this goes. Like, I think it's an interesting idea, but I don't. Like I said, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe that's where the book. The third book that comes up.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's. And it's kind of implied in the movie that this is like, maybe right before they wipe his memory and send him into the maze.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker B: So I think that could pan out to something really interesting.
• 1:47:59
  Speaker A: Although that wouldn't make sense because we see before. No, it almost can't be that because we see the scene. But in the book, now that I think about it, we see the scene right before he goes into the maze and he's seemingly, like, on board. And I mean, I guess they could do it differently. There could be. We could see that because, like, he says goodbye to, like, Teresa and Eris. And they have, like, a heartfelt goodbye. But he's seemingly, like, on board with what they're doing or whatever. I guess there could be another scene, like, right before that that we. Event that we see in the third book that's shifting shows that while that happened, he was still secretly undermining what they were doing. And that was all a show for, like, Right. Eris and Teresa or whatever.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker B: Or maybe he had some other plan of what he was gonna do or something.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker A: Right. Yeah. That recontextualizes that scene or something like that. Maybe. We don't know, but it does. Yeah. That is very different than what we see. But anyways, I'm. I put it here because I was like, I'm kind of interested to see where it goes. And I don't really. I don't have a preference right now because I don't know how it's gonna play out, so. Yeah, we'll see.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker B: I agree. All right, Our last thing in this section, I wanted to circle back. And I'm pretty sure we talked about this in the first episode.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker A: I think we did. Yes.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker B: I want to circle back to your high school metaphor theory.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker A: I'm. I am the. I am the leading. I hope everybody knows that I am now the leading critical theorist on the Maze Runner series. There's no way I'm not. There's no way I'm not.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker B: Honestly. There's no way you're not. Yeah. Because I think that there's a lot of stuff in this book that strongly supports that.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker A: The more I read this book, the more I was like, I fucking nailed it in one, baby.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker B: The first thing being the general, like, fraughtness of Thomas's relationship with Teresa throughout this book. Because I thought that it rang really true to that of kind. Kind of fickleness that there often is with teenage relationships and both friendships and romantic relationships. Like, somebody can be your best friend one minute and then your worst enemy the next.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, I. Yeah, I thought the same thing. And. And we'll get to this. But I, like. It is hard to tell how much of that is just. These characters are that age. So that's your writing character doing that versus this is like a direct, intentional metaphor for, like, high school relate. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, but, like, a lot of the plot elements and, like, a similar element is, like. And I mentioned this earlier, when Brenda shows up, she's the new girl, the new hot, slutty, quote, unquote, slutty girl who, like, is very physical. With him and is like he's had.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker B: A breakup with his girlfriend and now here's this hot new girl, new crazy.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker A: Girl who like can't keep her hands off him and he doesn't really know how he feels about it, you know what I mean?
• 1:50:37
  Speaker B: It's like cuz he's, he's still devoted to his ex girlfriend and now that.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker A: Is, is like just classic character stuff that I think you could be like. It's not really like a metaphor quote unquote for high school. It's just like kids who are this age, that's the kind of relationships they go through. Sure, whatever. But then you start getting the other stuff, like they go to this weird party and get alcohol foisted on them.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker B: And end up in a really ham fisted metaphor for peer pressure.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker A: Yes, in a really hamfisted metaphor for peer pressure. And then like he drinks this and then he ends up like putting his foot in his mouth with this new girl and like telling her that he, oh, you're not Theresa, blah blah, blah, blah. And so you get like elements like that. And then I also think just the broad element of it's the adults who are the ones, put it like, wicked is all, you know, run by adults and stuff and they're the ones putting them into this situation. Kind of like when you're a kid, that feeling of like when you're, you know, you're forced to go to school by your adults and like forced to kind of go through those early stages of your life, it feels like everything is imposed on you by these puppet masters that are kind of you have no control over and you have like, you're even unsure of how much of like what you're doing is like, you know, how much the adults in your life are actually controlling what you're not even controlling necessarily, but like you're trying to find your own independence and, and your world feels very constrained by the adults in it and like they're the ones actually in charge of everything that is going. You know what I mean?
• 1:52:01
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker A: And so it does feel like a lot of the like broad narrative elements of this book series kind of map onto just that general experience of being a young person growing up, going through high school, high school and growing up and going into high school and that sort of thing.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. And two, with this like idea of everything being controlled by the adults and like being told, oh, it's for your own good. Whereas opposed like in the book, it's more like, oh, this is for the greater good.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. That kind of thing of like. Well, you know, you don't. You don't understand what we're doing here. Like, you don't understand why you need to learn calculus, but trust us, you.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker B: Need to learn calculus.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like, it's. It's a lot of stuff like that. And I'm like, it just. The more and more stuff that happens, the more and more. And then like all the whole thing where the. And. And it's like the whole fake out plot, but. Which is kind of a weird different element. But like, where Eris shows up and. Oh, she had. She's been secretly in love with Eris the whole time. And, like, they've been talking behind his back for months and months. And like all this very, like, high schooly drama.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker A: Nonsense.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker B: All feels but, like superimposed onto this weird, like dystopian sci fi.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker A: Sci fi world. And, like, find other weird elements to. Yeah. Or other. Like using some of those sci fi elements to accentuate, like, some of the thematic.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker B: Even, like, stuff like. And this was an element in the book that drove me crazy because we never find out anything about it. And I don't have high hopes that we will in book three either, where after Thomas and Theresa have, quote, unquote, broken. Broken up, Teresa has told all of her girlfriends that he did something horrible to her.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker B: And he has no idea what it is.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. That was another one. I was like, that actually feels kind of weird too. Yeah. Where she's like, oh, you know, they're like, oh, what did you do to her? Like that. You know, like, she told us what you did and all this sort of stuff. He's like, what are you talking about?
• 1:53:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker A: It is all exactly that kind of stuff. And I'm like, I think that might be what this is.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker B: I genuinely think that this may be the smartest, most interesting read of this series in existence. I have to question whether we're experiencing authorial intent or reader response.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker B: But I do. I do think that, yes, you are the foremost scholarly critic on the Maze Runner series at this time.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker A: I'm gonna write my dissertation. I'm go back and write my dissertation on the Maze Runner series.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker B: Please do.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker A: I am not. I am not. I would. Oh, God. I would. There's. I can't think of anything I'd rather do less.
• 1:54:41
  Speaker B: I think you can write a dissertation without going back to school fair. We kind of do that on this show all the time.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker A: True. Well, I. I wouldn't compare. Yeah, sure. To some extent. Not nearly.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker B: As I said, kind of.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that's a very important word in that sense.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker B: It's doing a lot of heavy lifting, but by God, it's there.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, it's time now to see how we did predicting the Maze Runner series and then to make some new predictions for the final chapter.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker B: It's going to happen, Edward.
• 1:55:17
  Speaker A: So we're going to go back and forth on our first predictions here and. Or our predictions from the last episode for this book series and see how we did, but then also give our new predictions. So we'll start first with my first prediction that I made in the last episode. I said, this feels like the easiest prediction ever. Assuming that you were right about Gally being alive in the movie or in the movie as well as being alive in the book, is that he returns at some point, is able to overcome his programming or whatever, and redeems himself by sacrificing himself to help our heroes take down Wicked. TBD on that one. He's not in this one, but.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker B: But I could easily see that happens.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, it still could happen.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker B: My first prediction for the Scorch Trials, I said, Teresa will have an about face and end up being a villain. I think this mostly because Dashner strikes me as the type of guy who would do this with his only female character. And I'm gonna count this one as correct.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, I would say so. Even discounting the fake betrayal, she still, at the end, ends up ends up on the opposite, seemingly on side of Wicked. Yeah. Yeah. My second one was that Dashner recycles the ending of this book one more time and the Scorch trials end with our heroes thinking they're safe, having defeated the trial, only for it to reveal that it is all part of Wicked's master plan. And they're still in the experiment. I was so mad about being right about this dog shit ending, because that is exactly what happens.
• 1:56:41
  Speaker B: Fucking hack shit.
• 1:56:42
  Speaker A: Hack ass shit.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker B: My second prediction was Wicked will resurrect Chuck as some kind of grotesque bioware weapon similar to the Dead Tributes coming back as Mutts in the Hunger Games. And I was not right on this one. I guess I still could be at some point.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker A: It's not impossible.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker B: I thought. I. I thought for a minute that I was going to have this one in the bag when the humanoid monsters came out of the pods.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker A: I had the same thought when I read that part. I was like, oh, this could be it. This could be no, it wasn't. But it was not, or at least not explicitly stated to have been the case. And then my final prediction. What was they encounter a group from one of the other maze trials. This was. The fact that there was another maze trial or other maze trials was spoiled for me, but that was all I knew. And that group is all girls except for one dude, and that dude falls for Theresa and it kicks off a classic why I love triangle. So I got. I was not right on the second part because. Oh, well, no, I was.
• 1:57:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker A: Or at least in the fake version.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker B: Of it to some degree. You were correct about that.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker A: I do the fake love triangle thing, but it's all like an actor. Whatever.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker B: But we do get. Get an actual love triangle with Brenda.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, we get a. Yeah. The Brenda Thomas Teresa love triangle is real. The heiress Teresa Thomas. One is fake. But is. Is what I was specifically talking about with these characters. So close enough. And I definitely called the. The group being all girl. That was very funny to me because I literally wrote initially, there's another maze group. It's all boys except one girl. She gets taken or, you know, and then that girl ends up falling in love with Thomas and we get like a three. But I switched it at the last second to a group of all girls with one boy. And I'm so glad I did because. Holy. That's what it was. All right, let's get to our prediction.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker B: You skipped my.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker A: Oh, sorry, sorry. That's right. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker B: My last prediction for the Scorch Trials was Fry Pan will separate from the group to go on his own quest that somehow cooking release related. And I'm still holding out hope that this will happen.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker A: He's still alive in both the book and the movie.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker B: So I'm pulling for Fry Pan.
• 1:58:46
  Speaker A: Absolutely. All right, let's get to our predictions. Now for the final installment, the Death Cure. My first prediction is that Jorge dies saving Brenda in some way, I don't know how. And he like, gives Thomas and Brenda his blessing to be together.
• 1:59:02
  Speaker B: That feels like a strong possibility. Possibility.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker A: Because he's kind of like a father figure.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. My first prediction. This feels like a no brainer, but I think Teresa will end up sacrificing herself to save Thomas.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker A: Okay. Okay. This kind of ties into my second prediction because my second prediction was tied into my first one, which is because I think Brenda and Thomas are end game.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker B: Definitely.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker A: I don't think Theresa and him are. And I think Teresa is either going to be the villain or die after realizing that she, like, messed up or whatever. Like, sacrifice herself. I think that's more likely. Which. Which again, is basically your first prediction.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker B: All right, my second prediction, at one point early in the Scorch trials, Eris posits that maybe Wicked wants to use the two groups to breed disease resistant people. And I'm predicting that that's going to be revealed as part of Wicked's ultimate plan.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker A: Okay. Okay, good. See that? And then my final prediction is that. And this is. I think I don't have any wacky predictions this time, unfortunately, but I went pretty straightforward what I think might actually happen. But that. So especially because the movie ends with Thomas giving a big impassioned speech about, like, he's gonna kill Ava Page.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker A: And now this. This is my prediction for the book, by the way, not for the movie. But I predict Thomas doesn't kill Ava, that she in fact is ripped apart by Grievers. I think it's gonna be the classic hoisted by their own petard kind of moment where. Plus. So we get a couple things there. One, Thomas doesn't have to.
• 2:00:31
  Speaker B: The villain. We don't have to stain his soul.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, we don't have to stain his soul by, like, murdering the villain. She gets killed by Grievers who are, like, the things, the monsters she created or, you know, that Wicked created in order to do this whole thing. Plus, we get. We get. We didn't see any Grievers in this whole book or movie. We see kind of see them in the movie a little bit, but we don't see them in this whole thing. But they're like the big thing in the first book. So getting them to come back at like, the final moment, like, yeah, everything seems lost or whatever. And then all of a sudden, a bunch of Grievers come bursting through a door and rip Ava page. You know what I mean? Yeah, rip Ava to shreds and she gets killed by her own thing. And then even I'll add. I'll add another. I'll add another layer to it. They then figure out a way to, like, make the Grievers like, docile. And, like, after they kill Ava, they domesticate them. They somehow, like, either domesticate him or they. Or something like that where they're. They're not like, evil killing monsters anymore once Ava's dead.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker B: And maybe then they can ride the Grievers across the scorch.
• 2:01:31
  Speaker A: Let's hope so. Let's hope so.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker B: All right, my last prediction, and I feel pretty confident about it due to the title of the book, I think that the third book will get weirdly religious, out of nowhere.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker A: 100%.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker B: And Thomas will have to die and be resurrected in order to find the cure for the flare.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker A: You mean it'll be the end of Insurgent or Allegiant or whatever the third one was called. Yeah, 100%. 100% it's going to happen. Absolutely. 0% chance that does not happen. 100%. All right, let's get to a handful of odds and ends before the final brand.
• 2:02:19
  Speaker B: Right side. See, at the beginning of the movie, I made a comment on it as we were watching. We got a classic pensive shower.
• 2:02:26
  Speaker A: One hand up, one hand on the wall, water streaming down, water pouring over you. The classic shower, brooding shower. Yeah, it's great stuff.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker B: I was also laughing at the beginning of this movie because they made Aeris like an emo character.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker A: I did not like Eris's casting at all. It was not remotely what I imagined his character to be in the. It didn't bother me, but whatever, I guess.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker B: But it's like we. We pan over to him in the cafeteria, and he's, like, sitting by himself.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker A: Squirrely little kid with, like, his.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker B: His, like, hoodie up. His striped hoodie and, like, his long hair.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker B: And I was like, oh, okay, that's what we're doing.
• 2:03:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. I thought he was very strange. I guess it works. His character works better in the movie than I. His casting works in the movie because we don't get the whole weird betrayal thing.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker A: If that character was doing the Heiress part in the movie or in the book, I don't think that would have worked at all where he's, like, all cocky and, like, kissing Teresa. That would have been really weird. I don't.
• 2:03:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker A: But for the version of him in the movie, it's fine.
• 2:03:30
  Speaker B: These books, and I think we talked about this in the Maze Runner episode a little bit. But these books have so far not been super, like, commentary filled.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker A: No.
• 2:03:44
  Speaker B: Which is a departure from dystopian literature in general.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker B: But there was one little, like, segment in this book where it's close to the beginning and Thomas is thinking about how, like, he's not really phased by any of the weird stuff that happens. And he thinks to himself, like, anything can become normal. And I was like, hoo, boy. That might be the most prescient thing that's been in these books so far.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker A: That is true. That is true. Speaking of, like, the books not really doing anything with the commentary or, like, asking any difficult questions, this next moment that was in the book. That I thought was interesting, that I just wanted to mention here is that at one point, after all this shit is going down, it's like about, like, halfway through the book or something. Thomas wonders aloud to Newt if it's even worth surviving. He's like, maybe we should just die. Like, what is the fucking point of all of this nonsense? And Newt is just turns him and is like, you don't believe that. And then they just move on and never address it again. We just never talk about it. Approached asking an interesting question and, like, having to deal with, like, an interesting, like.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker B: And then immediately.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker A: Newt's just like, no, you don't believe that. Moving on. It's like, okay, wait a second. Can we go back to that? Because that's actually an interesting question. I don't know. Like, yeah, they're like, no, no, no. Moving on.
• 2:05:10
  Speaker B: I just want to say that granola bars are, like, the meanest possible food to give them for hiking through the.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker A: Desert, especially if they're Nature Valley granola bars. Yeah.
• 2:05:21
  Speaker B: Because granola bars make you so fucking thirsty. That's so mean.
• 2:05:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's true. I thought this cracked me up reading the book this time. And it was. It was a thing in the first one, but it was really a thing in this one. Characters constantly express how little sense any of what is happening makes. And I'm like, man, that is a bold play, James Dashner, to constantly have your characters be like, this makes no sense. Why is this happening? This makes no sense because, boy, you better really stick the landing or else you were just correct. Like, it doesn't make sense. And your characters were just saying, none of this makes sense. The whole time.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker B: You've just called out your own ineptitude for the entire entire series.
• 2:06:05
  Speaker A: Yes. And I'm. I'm so interested to see how. How that landing goes.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker B: The movies do not give me a lot of hope.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker A: Not at all.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker B: I was really super pleasantly surprised to hear a Patsy Cline song in this movie. I love Patsy Cline. She's great.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker A: Where. When does that happen?
• 2:06:21
  Speaker B: The song that Jorge plays.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker A: Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a fun moment. Yeah. I liked adding, like, also, like, bringing in something from the old world, which was not something we really see much in the book series, which is surprising. No, not really like, the remnants of. Of the previous world, like, obviously, like, the buildings and stuff, but, like, in terms of, like, the culture and stuff of, like, the, you know, we don't see, like, music or, you know, art or any of that kind of stuff, really. I Guess. Yeah. What? I don't remember what book the Rat man has in the beginning or.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker B: I don't think they say he's just reading a book.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 2:06:54
  Speaker B: A little moment in the movie that kind of made me chuckle. I guess. Ava Page is like, no, no, no, no. We're the good guys. We're doing good things. This is all just a means to an end. And I'm like, oh, things that good guys say historically.
• 2:07:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's just a means to an end. Yeah. Great.
• 2:07:16
  Speaker B: Real quick. I don't have a note about it here, but I did want to bring back up what we talked about earlier, because in the prequel to this, we discussed the book and the movie being really different and the book readers not being happy about.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker A: About that. Yes.
• 2:07:31
  Speaker B: And we had a whole discussion about, like, what you like in an adaptation.
• 2:07:38
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker B: And, like, wanting an adaptation to be, like, a biblically accurate copy of the book.
• 2:07:46
  Speaker A: How that's weird. The point was like, I think it can be boring if, like, anytime a movie changes anything from the book, if you're like, no, it's got to be just like the book. That's, like, a weird and boring way to engage with media.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker B: To me, and I agree with.
• 2:07:57
  Speaker A: With you.
• 2:07:58
  Speaker B: And I just wanted to bring that back up, because now, having seen the movie and how it's just literally a completely different story than the book, I do think that that adds another layer.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker A: There is an addendum.
• 2:08:10
  Speaker B: There's an addendum. There's an additional layer to this conversation because I do have to agree that if I were, like, a huge fan of the Maze Runner books and I went in to see this movie and it was literally just an entirely different story, I probably would be pretty pissed off.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker A: That's a little bit different of just, like, it's one thing for, like, changes here and there. Like the first movie where it's like, look, there are changes, and there are even some significant changes to what happens in the story. But as a whole, the story is mostly the same story. You know what I mean? It's like the same characters doing mostly the same things, and we end, start and end in similar places. This movie is just. It's just after the first, like, few minutes, it's like, might as well be an entirely different story. Like, basically entirely different. And that, I think, is the addendum of, like, I. I think it's fair to be like, look this. Even if. Even if you think the movie is, like, fine, which I do. I think it's fair to be like, okay, like, I The movie's fine, but like, it's not even really the, like, it's just a wholly different thing at this point. The same characters kind of, or like some of the same characters. Like, yeah.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker B: And I, and I know, like, we had some inklings going into this that they were very different. We had some, some clues from different places. But I, I really, I, I underestimated how different they were going to be.
• 2:09:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, 100%. Before we get to the final verdict, we wanted to remind you you can do us a giant favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Goodreads, Blue sky, all those places. Interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about the Scorch trials. That would be super fun. We'll have that on our next prequel episode. You can also do us a favor by heading over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our show. Drop us a five star rating, write us a nice little review. That always helps. And you can really support us by heading over to patreon.com thisfilmislit get access to bonus content there. Among other stuff. Lots of good stuff. Patreon.com thisfilmislit Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker B: Sentence fast.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 2:10:10
  Speaker B: That's stupid. When you were looking up the movie for the prequel to this episode, One of the IMDb IMDb trivia facts was that the book and the movie were very different. And oh boy, was that true. I don't know if I'd say it's like comparing apples to oranges. To me, it's more like comparing an Italian noodle dish to an Asian noodle dish. There are some similar components, but the two are really nothing alike. The book is both more interesting than and less less intelligible than its predecessor. It flies along at a mile a minute and a lot of stuff happens. But does that stuff equal up to a coherent plot? I'm not sure it does. By the time I was finished reading, I felt no closer to understanding how all of Dashner's ideas were going to come together into a conclusion that even remotely makes sense. I thought some of the book's individual ideas were unique and interesting, like the way that the flare virus affects people and the creepy creatures at the end. I also think it did a marginally better job with character and relationship development than the Maze Runner. The quiet moments between Thomas and Brenda were the kind of thing we needed more of in book one. However, these not so awful elements are stuck in a book book that, at least in my opinion, flirts heavily with being so bad that it's good. It doesn't quite stick that landing, but a lot of the stuff in the book is just so unearthly stupid that it hedges on comedy. The movie had a far more digestible plot, but its main failing is that it's just generic as hell. It really could have been any zombie apocalypse movie. Aside from the characters, I didn't feel like there was a whole lot tying it to the world of the first movie. I understand the movie's plot more overall, but I understand how it connects to the maze even less than in the books, if that's possible. In the end, this ended up being a battle between something that's less coherent but has a handful of unique ideas, and something that's far more digestible but also kinda just generic. And while the movie isn't especially unique, it did have good performances, fun set pieces, and I could follow it. When I finished reading the book, my ultimate reaction was to quote Billy Owens, I don't even have a clue what's going on. And for that reason, I'm giving this one to the movie.
• 2:12:54
  Speaker A: I don't have a lot to say here. These two stories have diverged to a degree that it's hard to even compare them anymore. I did have that in italics when I finished reading the book. I was just mad. I felt like nothing had happened, that I had read 360 pages of events occurring, but that none of it actually mattered or amounted to anything. The constant deception and ulterior motives just made getting through the book exhausting. And when it was over, I felt like I still knew just as little about Wicked's plans, or more importantly, why I should care about these characters. The movie isn't great. I thought the first movie was fun because it took the elements in the book that I thought were interesting and then edited them into something resembling a real story with stakes and characters. This movie, I think, understandably decided to just chuck out damn near the entirety of the book, and as a result, we get a more coherent movie. But it's a pretty generic one that lacks a lot of the weirdness of the book. And that weirdness was pretty much the only thing that made it interesting. So I don't know. The book's boring and bad. The movie is kinda fun, but generic. So I guess the movie wins. Katie Wood, what's next?
• 2:14:01
  Speaker B: Arousing endorsement for this film.
• 2:14:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker B: Up next, we are having our little break in between these two books to give us more time to read. So we are going to be talking about sleeping Beauty, the 1959 Disney film which according to Wikipedia is based on the fairy tale as recorded by Charles Perrault.
• 2:14:25
  Speaker A: There you go. We will talk more about the fairy tale, I'm sure on the prequel episode for people who are wondering what version they should read and all that good stuff.
• 2:14:33
  Speaker B: And I can share some links.
• 2:14:35
  Speaker A: We will have more about that on the prequel episode, including all of your feelings on the Scorch trials. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker B: Pals and everybody else keep reading books.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker A: Keep watching movies and keep being awesome. Sam.