“Maze Runner: The Death Cure” is a movie that has been one big hit, filled with much adventure and action, but also hitting the “feels” at the same time. Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) and the Gladers are set on a mission: to find the last city in the world, a WCKD controlled facility, and end their plan of continuously torturing young teens in hopes of finding a cure to an unstoppable disease called the Flare. Reaching there means receiving answers to every question the young teenagers had since they had their memories wiped and were thrown into a majestic maze created by WCKD itself. Throughout the whole movie, I was shaking with excitement, my eyes literally glued to the screen, to find out what happens in the next scene.

Of course there are other films before “The Death Cure”. Both film number one, “The Maze Runner”, and film number two, “The Scorch Trials”, will get you jumpy and gasping, as I did while watching them. Adding onto the films, there is a series of books, which the movies are based of off. James Dashner, an artistic and inspiring writer, wrote and published the series of five books: The Kill Order, The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Fever Code, and finally The Death Cure. I have read all of the books, turning page after page, having the urge to just turn to the last page of each chapter, and dying to find out the next surprising thing that happens. In general, all of Dashner’s writing has a cliffhanger or some kind of surprise ending at the end of each chapter, which is one of the reasons why I literally couldn’t take my eyes off the book, having these butterflies in my stomach every time I turned the page. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if you read the books or watch the movie first, since the books and movies are phenomenal.

However, there are some differences. First of all, there are five books in the series, but only three films consisting of the main story. Second, the first film, “The Maze Runner”, follows the book almost exactly the way it was written. In the second film, “The Scorch Trials”, about half of the film follows the book. Finally, in the third film, “The Death Cure”, doesn’t follow the book at all. This isn’t a bad thing of course, I actually thought it was pretty interesting how a lot of the events didn’t follow the book, creating almost two different “pathways” with the same ending of the story.

“The Death Cure” features many amazing actors. The main characters in the series are Dylan O’Brien (who is known for his role in Teen Wolf and many other films) playing as Thomas, Thomas-Brodie Sangster playing as Newt, Ki Hong Lee playing as Minho, and Kaya Scodelario playing as Teresa. Their director, Wes Ball, known for his first two films, gains new fans every day after releasing “The Death Cure”. Throughout the five years of working together, Wes and the cast have gotten very close. The amazing acting and reputable director added on to the breath-taking story itself, so I’m not surprised that 94% of people liked it with a 4 out of 5-star rating. The film runs two hours and 23 minutes, again, proving how much time and effort the cast and director had to put into the movie. So good luck trying to hold yourself together and not exploding of excitement for two whole hours.

Along with the amazing acting and director, the movie location is also intriguing. “The Maze Runner” was filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while “The Scorch Trials” were filmed in New Mexico. The most interesting was South Africa, where “The Death Cure” was filmed. Costuming for the characters wasn’t as exciting, since the characters were mostly dressed in plain clothes throughout their adventures. The props on the other hand, were the complete opposite. South Africa’s desert gave the crew a lot of open space and different choices on filming locations film. The beginning of the movie was filmed in the open space of the desert, so that came easy to the filming crew. In the story, the Gladers have to find the last city on earth, so obviously green screens, advanced technology, and many other props were required, such as steel sticks and pieces of buildings for different scenes, to make the shots looks as realistic as possible. To add on, different kind of cameras were needed to film the scenes, such as drones to take shots from up in the air. All of these things payed off really well as in the end, the shots came together and brought the movie to life.