If you love movies with drama, emotion and action in them, then you’d love The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, the sequel to The Maze Runner. Though The Scorch Trials storyline strays from the book’s, I still found it intriguing. The audience begins to learn more about Thomas’s backstory, the main character who, like the other boys, had his memory erased. Fans of the first movie would definitely love the sequel.

The Maze Runner is about a group of boys who are placed into a giant field with a maze surrounding it, commonly called “The Glade.” They all have designated jobs in the Glade, making everything run smoothly. Some people are in charge of exploring the Maze, trying to find a way out. Every month the Gladers get a new “Green Bean,” or Greenie, in a box in the middle of the Glade. When Thomas comes up, everything starts going wrong in the once peaceful glade. Once Teresa, the first and only girl to ever enter the Glade appears, the Gladers begin to find new clues on how to get out. Eventually they succeed and make it out of the Maze to WCKD (World Catastrophe Killzone Department) headquarters. WCKD which is still trying to run tests on them, so they aren’t free yet.

In the universe of The Maze Runner, before the kids were put into the Maze Trials, the Earth had been completely scorched by the sun, destroying most of the world and humanity itself. Extreme weather terrorizes the surface of the Earth. A virus was released that attacked the brain cells and turned people into something practically inhuman. The virus is known as “The Flare,” and few people are immune to it. The people that do get infected are known as Cranks, and they are incredibly dangerous to anyone not infected.

At the end of The Maze Runner, the Gladers had escaped from the Maze Trials and WCKD, the organization that put them in the maze experiment. It was revealed through Mr. Janson, played by Aidan Gillen, the man that helped show them around their “safe-house” that WCKD was trying to find a cure for The Flare. Soon Thomas, played by Dylan O’Brien, with the help of some of the other characters, realizes that this is all set up by WCKD, and their trials aren’t over. He takes some of the other Gladers with him, including Newt, played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Minho, played by Ki Hong Lee, and Teresa, played by Kaya Scandelario, and they escape into the outside world, the Scorch, with little supplies. Janson tells the kids “If the elements don’t kill you, the Cranks will.”

I really loved The Scorch Trials. As a true book fan, I was disappointed at the beginning to see how much it had been changed from the book. Almost the entire plot line was changed, and right from the beginning that was clear. They did keep the character’s personalities correct. However, in the end, I think that the movie’s version of the story makes more sense to people who haven’t read The Death Cure. It is rumored that The Death Cure will circle back and be more like the book, and the audience sees a bit of foreshadowing concerning one of the characters in one of my least favorite scenes. I had read before that there would be a small bit of a spoiler, but at the beginning of the movie I assumed that was just small details put in for book fans. Reaching this scene, it’s safe to say that I was unhappily surprised at what was shown, even if it was true to the book. That aside, I really loved the action in the movie, and the characters are still some of my favorite.

To see what happens while they’re traveling through the Scorch, you’ll have to see the movie. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone. There are so many great things about the movie, and there’s something for everyone. Back stories get more complicated and begin to intertwine. There’s foreshadowing for The Death Cure (the next movie), and brilliant character development. The Scorch Trials was amazing, and I couldn’t be more excited for The Death Cure.

Remember: the Maze was only the beginning.