All language subtitles for Maze.Runner.The.Death.Cure.2018.1080p.BluRay.x264-SPARKS.eng

WES BALL: And here we are,
the final journey.

T.S. NOWLIN: Indeed.

Hello, everybody. This is Wes Ball.

Sitting next to me
is T.S. Nowlin, writer.

NOWLIN: Hello.
JOE HARTWICK JR.: Hmm. T.S.

BALL: And producer, Joe Hartwick Jr.
HARTWICK JR.: Hmm.

BALL: I think I've never said
"Junior" before.

NOWLIN: Yeah, it's weird.
BALL: It's true.

BALL: I just have
your email in my head.

(HARTWICK JR. CHUCKLES)

NOWLIN: So, here we are,
doing the last movie...

Commentary for the last movie.

BALL: The opening.
You should talk about that.

NOWLIN: We had a different opening,
I think, at first, right?

- It was the...
- BALL: There's different versions

but it always centered around a train.
(LAUGHING) Remember?

NOWLIN: No, no, yeah,
but I mean like the very beginning,

there was the idea of opening
on a microscopic view of the virus,

it was a title card sort of thing.

BALL: Yeah, sure.
No, actually originally,

I wanted to open up
on a solar flare, remember?

- That was...
- NOWLIN: Well, that was before we had...

BALL: That was the original version.

That I wanted to open up
on the title on a solar flare.

I had this really cool design
and set it up and it just didn't work,

and then I started doing
this virus thing.

It was about the virus,

and at one of our test screenings,

someone complained
about how silly it looked.

And so I lost my nerve and we cut it out
and just went straight into this,

which is cool, opening up on the ruins.

But this basic opening
was, I think, always kind of the idea.

NOWLIN: It was always the idea.

BALL: We were gonna just be thrown into
this sort of rescue attempt.

NOWLIN: Yeah, I think, as soon as we
knew the ending of the second movie,

that it was gonna end with
Minho getting taken

and the group deciding
that they were gonna stop running

and fight back against WICKED.

It was always the idea
that we would be...

With the time jump opening up
with a mission already in progress.

BALL: Yeah, I had two things in my mind.
It was Return of the Jedi

- and Last Crusade. (LAUGHS)
- NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Right.

BALL: Last Crusade,
obviously the train thing,

but Return of the Jedi was that whole...

That first little chunk of the movie

really isn't connected
to the rest of the story.

It's just it's own thing.

And it is about rescuing.

In that case Han Solo
and here it was ours about Minho.

And I thought it was cool

'cause that
right in the very first three minutes

you knew what this movie was about,
which was about rescuing Minho.

Of course, it evolves
into being much more than that,

but it was just
a good, simple, I think, device.

And I think fans were always
ticked off with us on the last movie

for stealing Minho,

but I think we felt like we needed it,
even in the second one,

to give this movie stakes.

NOWLIN: Right. Well, there was a point
before the second movie came out

where we had
a couple of drafts of the script

where we actually did rescue Minho
earlier in the story

and he rejoined the group.

And it was like an early instinct
I think you had

that they can't get Minho.

They can succeed in the mission
and get a bunch of kids

and there are gonna be familiar faces
like Aris and Sonya,

but if they don't have Minho,
if he's in the city,

that's the emotional hook.

That's what's driving them together.

BALL: It's a very powerful carrot
to dangle in front of our characters.

NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: Yeah.

BALL: Nothing will stop them
until that happens.

And after that happens
you feel like everything's over

and I think we do a good job of,
as soon as they get him, it's not over.

There's something else that comes next.

NOWLIN: Right. And there was
a question, too, of like,

"Well, what are we gonna do with Minho

"if he's gonna be in captivity
for a lot of the movie?"

And we started talking
about Teresa's storyline

and the idea
that she's not just experimenting

on nameless, faceless kids
that we've never met,

but someone that we know and love
and someone that arguably she knows.

And how does she justify that to herself
and how does she justify that to him?

And it just started creating
all these little opportunities

that felt like
a lot of fun to play with.

HARTWICK JR.: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: So, the movie was all shot
in South Africa.

HARTWICK JR.: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: This is in the Kalahari Desert.

Looks very much like an old Western.

I don't know,
there's something cool about it.

I think early on, I don't know why
a train always popped in my head.

It's just
some kind of a cool vehicular...

Like an old Western,

except with horses, they have
old beat-up trucks and vehicles,

as they attempt
to basically steal a train car.

And this also came about partly from
in The Death Cure when they're escaping.

I think one of the differences is

they wind up back with WICKED
in the second book,

at the end of the second book.

And in the third book

they have this escape
from WICKED headquarters or something.

And they steal a Berg,
Jorge steals a Berg

and we still incorporated that
into this sequence. But...

NOWLIN: We also felt
like we did that sequence

at the beginning of Scorch Trials.

That was how we launched
into that journey.

BALL: Something else worth mentioning
here, and just on a technical level,

this stuff is... Almost every one
of these moving vehicle shots is CG.

That's all CG.

Every one of these shots with the train,

except for some of the second-unit stuff
is a CG environment,

which Weta did a good job on.

NOWLIN: Looks good.

(GRUNTING)

Shit!

Let's go!

Hey! Berg!

PILOT: Zero-one-niner, be advised.
You've taken on boarders at the rear.

We're engaging the truck now.

BALL: There's only one shot,
or two shots in here I think

that we actually used from Vancouver

when we first started
and the rest of it's all re-shot.

Like all that, all those explosions,
those are all CG.

That wasn't really there.

Weta did a good job with that, too,
I thought.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah,
they did do a really good job.

NOWLIN: But remember, you did...
Some of those were practical, right?

BALL: That's real.
Yeah, only that one's real,

but you can tell
it doesn't look quite the same.

NOWLIN: It doesn't
look as good as the CG?

BALL: Not as big. (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: Yeah. Bigger.

BALL: But it was a good sequence.
It's long.

It's a super long cold open basically.

It's a 10-minute-long open of...

Thrown in the middle of a rescue attempt

and you get to meet
all the characters again,

and it was kinda fun
to come up with this thing.

NOWLIN: I think it's all little...
It's all fun I think.

I think what's interesting, too,
is comparing it

to the way the first two movies opened,

because the first two movies
are really about

putting the audience
in Thomas' point of view,

putting them in his shoes.

He's completely disoriented, thrown into
a world he doesn't understand

and here you see that they've...
They know their place in the world.

They've evolved
into this kind of tactical position.

BALL: Yeah, exactly. I think

it's really setting up
the rest of the movie, I thought,

was like all these characters
are capable but limited.

You know what I mean?
They work together as a team,

they can do pretty accomplished things

and you saw some of these things

being set up in the earlier movies
is their capabilities,

but now they're working
as a unit together.

I thought it was cool.

Get down! Get down!

Vince?

We're set! Cover your ass!

GUARD: Go, go, go!

VINCE: Take cover!

BALL: And they steal a train.

So like all these shots,
they're all on a green screen,

you know, parking lot basically.

We shot it in daylight cause
that was very important VFX wise.

A lot of the big problems...

Like Dylan there is on green screen

and the other train was shot
for real actually in the background.

That's a real train obviously.

And we actually really did separate
the trains while it was moving.

That was our train we had
for what, like a week?

NOWLIN: A week, yeah.

BALL: It was our train
and our tracks to use for

however long we wanted.

And it was cool.

We had our own train to run around on.

NOWLIN: And that was the difference

between Vancouver
and South Africa, right?

Like, you didn't have tracks
in Vancouver.

BALL: Yeah, we didn't have tracks.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: We had to build 200 freight tracks
and tried to make them work.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah,
this wound up being better.

BALL: This stuff, we did shoot all this.

This whole sequence here,
we actually did shoot this in Vancouver,

but we couldn't use it
because it was so different,

so we had to reshoot it all.

So all this is still...
All this is new stuff,

but it's all pretty close.

If I were to compare frames
from Vancouver to this stuff,

it's pretty close.

It's maybe a little bit more
efficient I guess

- in terms of what we got.
- HARTWICK JR.: Hmm.

But still... I could have spent another
two days on this stuff out here,

but we ended up cutting up
a lot of stuff in this,

in this sequence.

But I think at one point
it was 18 minutes long

and now it's 11 minutes
or something like that.

So this stuff, like here,
more technical stuff I guess,

but there it is being towed on a truck.

And the guys aren't really driving,

but that is real backgrounds and stuff.

And all of this stuff here

is all one little ranch basically
in the desert,

we found all these different locations
for this opening sequence.

So it was right on the corner,
so right around that little ridge

was where we'd do
some of the train tracks stuff

and bouncing around for five days
shooting all this stuff basically.

Stop right there. Don't move.

I said freeze, asshole!

Whatever you say, hermano.

NOWLIN: I just
like watching Giancarlo here.

BALL: Yeah, Giancarlo's fun.

Yeah, it was fun to come back
and do all this stuff,

and the locations were cool.

Probably cooler than
what we had in Vancouver actually.

Just the look and feel of it
is very desert, you know?

- Old West.
- NOWLIN: It's kinda good that

you're opening with the environment
of the second movie

before we start venturing out into
a completely new terrain.

BALL: It's pretty much
like we did in the second one, too.

I think end of the first one

we opened up into the Scorch,
and you kinda tease that world.

And then we start right back
where we left off in the second one

and kind of pull back further

on that world of the Scorch
and the desert and all that stuff.

And then we kinda finish it here

and then start setting off
towards the city,

which is like a big player in the books.

NOWLIN: I think that was one of the
first things we talked about in the book

is the idea that a lot of the action
was centered around a city

and that's something that
we haven't seen in the movies.

BALL: Yeah, a new stage.

NOWLIN: And you had an instinct early on
that it had to be a discovery.

It couldn't be something
that we just cut to

- as if it was no big deal.
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: It was
so different from the ruins

that we had seen in the Scorch.

It's a reveal to the audience
and it should be the characters as well,

but there is a place like this

that is protected
and that exists in the world.

BALL: Yeah, hopefully it just kind of
expands on the universe of these movies

where you've got these giant mazes
with robot spiders and...

NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: You know, destroyed civilization

and you got one last city
that's kind of...

I think that the big design thing there
was trying to make sure that that city

still felt like
it belonged in our world,

so that's why we kind of designed it

very much like the maze
in the first movie.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

Yeah, it needs to feel
a little bit like a homecoming.

It needs to feel like
you're going back to

where it started,
to the same sort of environment.

But at the same time
I think it's fun that...

It's a hard thing with a story
that's so interconnected and serialized,

that builds off each other
from 1 into 2, and 2 into 3,

that the movies are also distinct
and that they have their own identity

and their own palette.

- Like we always talked about looking...
- BALL: I always liked that...

NOWLIN: The box...
BALL: Yeah, the posters, you know?

NOWLIN: Like the boxed set, yeah.
BALL: Each one's so different.

NOWLIN: Like the green and the concrete
of Maze Runner

and the orange and the desert of Scorch,

and then the kind of Blade Runner
sort of world of Death Cure.

BALL: Yeah, it's cool.

And I don't know,

I'm really happy we got to do that

because I just don't know if
I could just keep doing the same thing

over and over again for each movie.

It's fun that we got to explore
different things in all these movies.

NOWLIN: Well, it's funny, people say
"Oh, I like the maze in the first one.

"Bring the maze back."

I'm like, "All right, well,
what do you want us to do in here?"

BALL: Yeah, what do you do differently?

- Well then, you get silence because...
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: There's nothing else to do.

And it wasn't just about the maze.

It was about the mystery of
who gets to go back to what's outside.

BALL: You don't go back to the maze
in the books either really, except...

- They kinda do at the end, but...
- BALL: Yeah.

BALL: But it's...

The maze only is effective
as long as there's mystery around it.

And as soon as
you pull that out, it's...

- NOWLIN: You can't rebottle the ketchup.
- Exactly.

BALL: It's not very interesting anymore.

Like it's another thing here, too.

That's a giant drone shot.

I do a ton of drone footage
or drone shots in this movie this time.

It's the first time
we actually used that.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, that's true.
BALL: It's a really cool tool,

where it's not really a helicopter shot,
not really a crane shot.

It's kind of in between.

And that wasn't always the case, too,

putting the title
in the middle after that.

Originally we had it in the beginning,

but it just felt like it
separated that opening

from the rest of the movie
in a cool way.

And also it followed
what we've done in the previous movies

where we have this little
throw-the-audience-in cold open,

and then, the movie begins
after that opening.

Same thing with
Thomas coming up in the box

and then Thomas and the group
being brought into that

in the second movie,
into the bunker, you know?

So it kinda fit with us I guess.

Just in this case it's a 10-minute
little cold open that we have to watch.

Hopefully you enjoy it.

NOWLIN: People might not realize
it's 10 minutes watching it.

BALL: It's a very fast scene.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, for sure it's fast.

BALL: And I remember John's score,

that was a really tough one to get
'cause it's a solid score.

It's a real battle between
sound and music there.

I think they did a good job.

HARTWICK JR.: That was a cool location.

BALL: Yeah, another cool little spot
in South Africa.

- Saint Helen's Bay?
- HARTWICK JR.: Look at the... Yeah...

BALL: Was it Helena's Bay?

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah,
it was like an old lobster thing?

BALL: Yeah.
HARTWICK JR.: An old fish...

BALL: It was basically
in the middle of nowhere.

And it was just this building
that was just falling into the sea

and we obviously put all the boats in

but like that boat
behind Barry was not really there.

Surprisingly being in Cape Town
on the ocean,

there was no boats for us to use,
at least that we liked.

And so we had to just do it all CG.

Thought it worked out really well.

I think it's for the most part
pretty seamless.

Like you'd ever know that
that boat behind him is full CG.

He's actually just standing on
blue sky there.

Well, I don't.

So in two days...

when we get
this tub of rust seaworthy...

we're getting the hell outta here.

We're gonna go to a place
where WICKED will never find you.

BALL: And this is also kinda
bringing back the second movie, too.

You know, the idea of the safe haven
and that there is a place for them to go

and they have this chance to
basically be done with it all.

You could literally end the movie
right there if you want to.

If they all just got on that boat
and left.

They'd never have to
deal with this ever again,

but of course Thomas' character
and his friends,

- they aren't done yet, you know?
- NOWLIN: Right.

NOWLIN: There was a little work
that kinda had to be done

because they had joined up essentially
with an army at end of the second movie.

But what you really want is to get to

your core group of characters
on a mission,

so the idea they've succeeded,
the mission is over,

but not for Thomas
because he doesn't have Minho yet.

BALL: Yeah, and it centers it,

which I think this movie's
much more centered around character

and the emotional track of this movie

is stronger I think than
the last one for sure.

NOWLIN: Well, it's not as driven by
the question of

- what is this world?
- BALL: Plot.

NOWLIN: And why are they important?

What Vince does in that previous scene

is pretty much a scene that we

never really let ourselves have
in the other movies,

which is laying out very clearly

the essential conflict
of the two different sides and...

BALL: And how like Thomas in particular
is kinda caught in the middle.

NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: I always liked
how this stuff looked here.

It's really good-looking stuff.

Again, it's not a set,
we like locations,

so this is just one of those buildings
in that location

that we were shooting in and it just
has a great feel.

We did knock out some walls.

All that brick stuff back there,
but that texture was really there.

It was really a great place to be.

All I know is...

they kept talking about a city.

BALL: And we had
Nathalie and Kat come back.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

Well, it was a shame
we weren't able to get more of them in,

- but it's just...
- BALL: Yeah, there's two things.

BALL: Remember
when we were in Vancouver,

someone wasn't available.

- It was like two days.
- NOWLIN: It was Nathalie, yeah.

BALL: We had two days with her,

so we had to kinda figure out
that in the script.

And then when we got back,
Kat was on another shoot.

- She was doing her TV show.
- HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: So we had to really...

I think we had
a couple of days with them,

so we had to just make
what we had with them work.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: But I think they did a good job
and they went back.

NOWLIN: They at least have
a clear role in the story,

but, I mean, I think when you get...

BALL: That was the main thing I think.
NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: We didn't wanna find ourselves,

you know, I felt that a little bit
in the second movie

where we have so many characters
standing around that

it's all they're doing
is standing around.

And it's hard to give everyone
some kind of dramatic, you know...

- Agency in the story.
- NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: But this, we just wanted
to keep this very simple and focus on

rescuing Minho, and Thomas,
and the gang, you know?

So it works out, but...

NOWLIN: It's also
a different type of movie,

like in The Scorch Trials

it was a fugitive story,
they were on the run.

And so we've talked about this,

the idea that is a shape for a story

where it's hard to explore the dynamics

of an ensemble of
seven or eight main characters

'cause the situations
just aren't varied enough.

But in a mission movie,

it's easy enough to
split them off and say that

everybody kinda has
their role in the mission.

With Nathalie and Kat,

and Jacob, who was I think a really
good addition in the second movie,

I think as soon as we decided that
Minho was not going to be on the train,

that he was gonna be in the city,
you wanted familiar faces,

which is Aris and Sonya on the train.

And that would have been
Nathalie's reason or Harriet's reason

forgoing on the mission with them,
as if her friends were in the city.

Otherwise she would just be in the shot.

BALL: Right.

HARTWICK JR.: It was a good scene.

NOWLIN: But, yeah, I mean,
that's the hard thing.

You get three movies deep here.

You got all this big ensemble
from the first movie.

BALL: It's a lot to wrap up.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, it is.

NOWLIN: You have all the new characters
in the second movie.

And I think if you just make a list
at the start of this

of all the characters we have
and the plot threads we have...

BALL: And service, yeah.

NOWLIN: And that's where it can
get away from you, you know?

Because you have all this business
you have to attend to,

questions that have to be answered,
threads that have to be addressed.

There was an earlier scene
with Jorge and Brenda

that's basically just to
remind the audience

that she got infected and that
she's living on borrowed time.

And there was an idea that
we sort of removed from there,

that because of that she's not planning
to go to the safe haven.

But you just have to find opportunities
to weave that into something like this.

'Cause we just wanna
tell a story, you know?

You're not trying to do
franchise homework.

HARTWICK JR.: Right, right.
BALL: Right.

NOWLIN: But it was good
to make that list early on

of every question we wanted to answer

and every beat we wanted to hit

to really make sure that
we're wrapping up the story

because this is the finale,
the conclusion.

And then put that aside,
just try to tell a good story,

and then realize there's an opportunity
to tie that up or, you know?

BALL: I also think we probably said

we had at least a rough idea of
what we wanted this third one to be.

- NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
- On the second one, we didn't,

- on the first one...
- NOWLIN: No.

BALL: I mean,
we assumed there would be more,

but had we known,
if we put a little bit more thought

into the second and third movie
during the first one,

we probably would have done this
a little differently

just to set ourselves up.

NOWLIN: Yeah, definitely.
We definitely...

BALL: And that would probably, honestly,
it would have been going

a little further away from the book
just because it...

And it's not to speak negatively
about the book at all,

but it's just difficult sometimes,
these books,

there's so much in them that
it's hard to put that all into a movie.

So you end up putting the narrative
in this kind of pretzel shape

to try to hit all the beats,

and it makes things kind of complicated
in terms of movie viewing.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: But we always spent a lot of time

trying to keep as much
from the books as we can,

even in some form or fashion.

Even if we changed something,
we tried to keep something in like that,

for instance, stealing the Berg,

we still tried to keep that idea
and make it a part of the story.

NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: Same thing with drones
and all these different little things

and the idea of guns
and the WICKED defenses

and things like that we'll see later.

We take it very seriously.

The book fans
are really important to us.

But sometimes we just have to focus
on the movie experience.

Again, CG boat back there.

Obviously, all that stuff back there.

I always liked this scene, too.

This is kinda to me like what...

It's really the heart of the movie
in a way.

It's about these friends that are
willing to do anything for each other.

And that gets to the core

of what that first movie
I think it was all about,

that family coming together
and willing to die together

and that's this, you know?

And it's kinda fun that Newt gets to
have the surprises.

He knows Thomas so well,
he's waiting for them.

And then this little cool surprise,
which was I think...

I think it was actually Gyula's idea,

the idea of Frypan sitting in there
and just opening the door for him.

I remember in Vancouver
we talked about this idea,

like, we had some other version
that revealed Frypan

and then he gave me that idea of

opening the door
and he's already sitting there.

NOWLIN: Yeah, I think it was Frypan kind
of announcing himself into the scene

- or walking up like, "I'm here, too."
- BALL: Yeah, something like that.

BALL: It thought that was a funny.
It was a good visual gag though.

It's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna steal that."

It's something a little different
and then we ended up doing that...

NOWLIN: Well, what's nice about him
being motionless and just sitting there

already behind the wheel.

The tone of it is like,
"Of course I'm coming.

"Of course I'm coming.
You don't need to say anything."

BALL: You don't need to sit there,
have a big discussion.

NOWLIN: Right.

HARTWICK JR.: Our cow pasture.
BALL: So, yeah, this scene

I don't know, this scene actually

more or less came together
after Vancouver I think.

I remember we had some version of this,

but it was after Vancouver
when we went to...

NOWLIN: I think you had a problem
finding a Glade in Vancouver.

BALL: Yeah, exactly,
so we were doing something else.

But in here, we went twice as big

- I think than we originally planned.
- NOWLIN: There were so many options.

NOWLIN: I remember location scouting
with you guys.

- There were so many Glade options.
- BALL: Yeah.

BALL: But no matter what, we felt...

I felt it was really important to
see this image again of

someone in the maze with the walls.

I thought that was
a really cool kinda throwback.

I always felt like
they would put this in the teaser

and people would say, "Oh, my gosh,
we're going back to the maze," but...

NOWLIN: No, they did.
It's in the trailer.

BALL: Yeah, part of it.

Not the good part of it. (LAUGHS)

But it was interesting.

This was the very first day
of shooting actually.

It was actually considered a pre-shoot,
which is not really an official shoot,

but we steal time and we shoot
two days early basically.

NOWLIN: You just did all the key...

You did like this, and then
the Griever stuff the first two days.

BALL: Yeah, those are the first two days

so all this stuff here
was done in a day.

Actually, about seven hours
or something.

We didn't really spend all day.

But it was fun to kind of revisit

the textures and aesthetic
of the first movie again, you know?

It was a weird feeling.

I remember Wyck called me,
'cause he didn't come to South Africa,

but he called
and he had watched the dailies,

and he said he felt this weird feeling
of seeing that imagery again, you know?

NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: It's cool. It's fun.

NOWLIN: Now, this actually,
I'm gonna tell a story about this.

So we actually had...

And there was a part of
the opening dream sequence,

the memory in the beginning
of Scorch Trials.

We start with Thomas a young man.

As a little boy
getting handed over to WICKED,

and then suddenly he's in the box.

And then we were gonna have
another little section...

BALL: Yeah, him up top.

NOWLIN: He was gonna be in the Glade,
and that shot of Alby and Chuck

turning to him from the walls
was always a part of that script.

I think it was the same thing of
no Glade in Albuquerque.

BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: And so we finally got that.
BALL: And also it was a time thing,

we abandoned it.

NOWLIN: Actually, yeah, the pace of it
works better without it.

BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: That single rising crescendo.

BALL: That shot was really cool, too,
going into the hut

and it just kinda seamlessly transitions
into this tunnel.

That was fun to do.

NOWLIN: This was something
you discovered later

was the idea of the doors,

almost like the doors of the maze
opening in the hallway.

That wasn't in the script.

BALL: Yeah, originally,
it was just a long hallway

and it felt like we needed something.

And that imagery of the maze,

of those walls, those doors
were so iconic

that it'd be nice to include
that kind of concept.

NOWLIN: Yeah.

This feels like the first night
in the maze with Thomas.

BALL: It was different
'cause we never had fluorescent lights.

Again, we're starting to bring in
some of the world.

If you notice, the color schemes of this
are the same color schemes of the world

that we're gonna see him in
when he's dreaming in that lab set.

So, there's super bright greens
and these cool blues.

It was cool to... It's the maze,

but it's more tech-based.

It was just a way to...

Obviously, what we're getting
at here is that

his dream is starting to fall apart
and become more his actual...

Circumstances of being tied up
and tested on in this lab setting.

This was a cool shoot, too.
I love this shot.

We actually really did hang him up.

HARTWICK JR.:
We did that for real, yeah.

BALL: He was on a wire, basically,
and we just yanked him up.

He's using his strength to keep his arms
attached to the ceiling.

But he has a couple of wires there,

just yanked him up to the ceiling
and he really did it.

Gyula was up on an apple box
walking around up there.

(HARTWICK JR. CHUCKLES)

NOWLIN: Something I hope
you can clarify here.

- This is not a simulation.
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: This is an induced nightmare.

BALL: It's for whatever people want,
but I always thought, yeah,

it's not like they're projecting images
into his brain.

It's actually just

they're stimulating some part of
his brain that they needed to stimulate

which is kind of the mythology, I guess,

is that the brain is the important part
of finding a cure here.

That might be his own invention
in his mind, that world.

NOWLIN: But the idea is, yeah, you're
stimulating something in the brain

that produces the antibodies

that are separated from the blood,
which we thought we...

We had tried to be a little more subtle
in communicating that

in the second movie
with the hanging bodies.

Here now, we realized
you need to see it happen,

- that someone needs to say...
- BALL: Say it.

NOWLIN: "Not as effective as the maze,

"but it seems to be working."

BALL: Hit it on the nose
and be done with it.

- It is what it is, but...
- NOWLIN: It is what it is, but yeah.

BALL: I think people can go back
and look at the second movie

and they'll see, "Oh, this all lines up.

- "It still is the same stuff."
- NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: It might be more clear now
when they watch that movie,

that we don't really
hold your hand as much.

'Cause maybe we should have,
but, you know...

NOWLIN: Something that's really
satisfying for me watching this movie

is the kind of organic way
you get to re-introduce

all of these characters
throughout the story,

like the way Teresa comes in,
the way Ava comes in.

BALL: Without dialogue,
which I think is fun.

NOWLIN: Without dialogue.

- Yeah. It's the storytelling.
- BALL: Visual storytelling.

NOWLIN: And we've never
done this before.

We've never really cut away
from Thomas in these movies.

We've never shown
multiple points of view.

Even just the way you open
with these big overview shots

of the Scorch and the ruins,

it was much more, it's subjective,
the word I guess.

Just subtly preparing the audience
for something

that feels very structurally, tonally
different from the other two movies.

BALL: It also comes
to just being a bigger movie.

It's like, part of that first movie
was all a singular point of view.

I liked that.

I liked the intimacy of that movie,

but we just couldn't
do that again this time.

So it needed to be bigger
and finish off in a big way.

- This was a cool location, too.
- HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: There was a ton of great locations
in this country.

Right to the right of that building,

there is actually a freeway or a highway
that goes underneath the mountain.

This is a giant seven-kilometer long
service tunnel

that goes along for emergency access
to the main highway in there.

I had Weta go and create
in that wide shot

a lot of destruction and stuff
on the building itself,

but that building was really there.

It's a good example of real footage

that's been extended
and enhanced digitally

instead of just being a full CG thing.

But it was cool. It was fun.

This was our first five days
of shooting,

or I think first three days,

and then we had
a couple of days on the weekend

to clean up some of the stuff.

HARTWICK JR.: That was a tough location.

It was so dusty in there.

It would really mess with your lights.

BALL: Yeah, all the crews
would just suddenly drive in

and then, we'd be sitting there
for 10, 20 minutes

just waiting for the dust
to clear out of the tunnel.

NOWLIN: This was another scene
that I think changed

when we changed
from Vancouver to Cape Town.

BALL: Yeah. It got way bigger.
NOWLIN: It got way bigger,

but also, there were
no tunnels like this.

I think we had a sequence
that was more on a bridge.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, it was on a bridge
with some stalled-out cars and stuff.

BALL: Honestly, it was kinda weak.

It wasn't very interesting,

but that's when we found this location.

We just, "Okay, yeah,
we have to do something here."

We wrote this scene
to take place in here,

just come up with a cool little...

We needed to, again,
remind people of the Cranks.

There was a conscious effort this time

for us to not make Cranks
just monsters this time.

They were actually human beings
that were infected.

NOWLIN: It was always the plan, right?

It was always the plan
that we would see them as monsters

and then we would see them
as infected patients.

BALL: Then we started to see...
And that ties us into Teresa's story

and how she views the Cranks,
these monsters,

that we witnessed in the second movie.

The whole goal is to set up
why WICKED's doing this

and blur that line
between good and evil again, right?

Make it gray, that maybe
you would agree with the fact

that maybe it's worth
breaking a few eggs

to make an omelet kinda thing.
(CHUCKLES)

NOWLIN: Yeah. That ties into the...

- (EXHALES SHARPLY) That's good.
- (BALL LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: That ties into
what we were talking about,

the structure of incorporating
multiple points of view.

It actually works thematically
to what this movie's about,

which is that it's not all
black and white, good and evil.

BALL: Which was honestly why we changed,
a little bit, Teresa's betrayal.

We made it have real teeth,
like she really did do something bad,

because of her views.

NOWLIN: Dashner's books are all about
that kind of ambiguity,

and that's why he keeps repeating,
"WICKED is good, WICKED is good."

And so, you know you need to give
a voice to WICKED's side of the story,

and it's easier to do that
through a character like Teresa.

BALL: That you know.
NOWLIN: That you know,

as opposed to
a remote authority figure...

BALL: And hopefully care about.

NOWLIN: ...like an Ava or a Janson.

Like it wouldn't work as well.

It was also important to see the Cranks

the way we saw them
in Scorch Trials here

before we get to the stuff
with Teresa later

where we see them a little earlier
and it's a little girl and she's scared.

BALL: But even here,
they're not quite as far gone

as we saw in the second movie,

- which was straight-up horror.
- NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: This is more like...

That lady that bangs on the door
was a great actress.

NOWLIN: She's desperate.

BALL: She's a real person who's scared,
but, in fact, that's scary.

NOWLIN: This might be
my favorite shot in the movie.

BALL: So this shot was actually
an accident, which is fantastic.

Originally, the plan was for the car
just to flip over on its side

and I had this whole thing
about how they were gonna

crawl, punch out,
or kick out the sunroof and climb out.

So, we did a couple of practice takes
and got close

and we did this take,

we had to leave,
it was almost time to go.

The cargoes.

We set up the shot
and the car flips over

and it rolls over
and everyone held their breath.

"Oh, my gosh."
Someone was about to call, "Cut."

I said, "Don't! Don't call cut!"

I said, "Is everyone okay?

"Move your flashlights around.

"Take the camera, start pushing in.
Slow, slow, slow.

"Okay, go in. Okay, now, cut."

It was this great little happy accident

that turned into a great, great shot
that's all in-camera.

There's nothing CG about it.

You'll see that there's a person
in there that you see...

If you turn the frame upside down,
it's actually the stunt double.

It's not Dylan.

NOWLIN: That's my favorite part
of the shot.

- You see the truck roll over.
- BALL: Yeah, you see people in there.

NOWLIN: The pull back becomes a push in
and there's someone in there,

- and they're acting!
- BALL: Right.

NOWLIN: It's pretty horrific.
I don't know.

(ALL CHUCKLE)

- Come on!
- Hold on!

- Frypan gotta go! Come on!
- Wait!

Come on!

BALL: This is the most Scorch Trials-y
scene in the movie, I think really.

NOWLIN: But we get it out of the way in
the first half hour or wherever we are.

BALL: It also serves the story.

It's setting up the issue that we're
about to be faced with, of the infected.

Also, it brings Jorge and Brenda
back into the scene.

NOWLIN: You need them to bail them out.
I like the idea, yeah, it's...

There's something a little cavalier.

"The three of us, we're gonna go
and take on WICKED."

BALL: Let them get in over their heads
a little bit.

NOWLIN: Giancarlo has this...
BALL: You're lucky to have friends...

NOWLIN: "I'm impressed you made it
a day," and it's kind of a funny line.

But yeah, so there's more to...

(SIGHS) I remember... We tried to do
so much with Brenda,

the idea that because she's infected,
and she's gonna turn eventually

if she's not going to the safe haven,

we had an idea in the script
that Thomas didn't know that.

So when Thomas leaves Brenda,
he's not just abandoning her.

He's leaving because he assumes

that she's gonna go to the safe haven
with everyone else.

That part, I think, would've worked.

The problem is then you have to do...

Thomas has to find out
and then he has to confront her.

You don't really feel
a ticking clock here.

You don't really feel like
they're trying to get Minho back

with enough time to get back to the boat
and get to the safe haven.

They're just trying to get Minho back.

That's why it's such a decision
for them to leave earlier.

They're walking away from paradise.

BALL: Those hills back there are all CG.

It's actually the same entrance
they went into the first time.

They just replaced the background.

This was the only entrance
or exit we had.

NOWLIN: This was day one, wasn't it?

BALL: This was official day one.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: Ugh, I hate shooting...

I mean, I certainly love
the look of real car stuff,

but it's so hellish shooting this stuff
on a real moving car,

and it's just slow, so slow.

It's painful, but it's worth it,
I think, visually.

You've always seen
those fake process shots,

they're on green screen.

It just never works.

That's actually Jorge.
He really did drive that.

That rock, if you see there,
it's actually his mark to try to hit.

He really did all that several times.

You've probably seen
a couple of times now

where I do a lot of
long shots this time.

I wanted to...

Something... As a filmmaker,
I hate being forced into coverage.

It feels like almost like
a TV show where it's like

close-up, close-up, wide master,
you know, that kind of stuff.

I like letting an audience sink in

and see the close-ups
when it really, really mattered.

It's hard to do sometimes
when you're shooting a movie

because you're looking at
a little tiny monitor on set

and so you wanna get closer.

But on a big giant screen,
that is a close-up right there.

You can read everything on his face
that you need to read.

So, I tried to make it
a conscious effort this time

to just be a little more cinematic

and a little bit bigger
aesthetically this time,

which I like personally.

I think it has a good flow to it.

It's really simple shots.
There's nothing crazy.

Everyone doesn't need their own shot,

their own coverage,
you know what I mean?

NOWLIN: I like that.
You write in the script

these little moments between characters

and you just let it play out
in the frame

rather than like rack focus to Brenda,
then reaction, then close-up.

BALL: Right.

We still shoot lot of that stuff.

I just don't end up using it.

Here, you can see
the design of the city.

It was very much, if you saw
the last shot of The Maze Runner,

it's very similar in design

in terms of the walls
and the structure of it.

So, it has that echo of the first movie.

I think it was cool to meet Teresa
in this new world,

a way we've never really
seen her before.

I think that first scene also
with her and Minho being tested on,

I think it was a great little thing
where you see her having...

Maybe it's regret? Maybe it's doubts?

It's like she's not just,
"I'm evil now,"

or, "I'm with the bad guys now."

She's still doing what she believes
is right, but it does affect her.

It's this little look right here
when she sees his picture,

she's obviously
reflecting on what she's done.

I think that's the cool thing about
her character is that she did it anyway.

NOWLIN: Yeah, she's torn, but...

BALL: She did
what she thought was right.

Whether we agree with that or not,
I think there's something that...

Something cool about that.

NOWLIN: That's why it was important
that she had this scene,

that she had a mission-statement moment.

Like, this is why
we're doing what we're doing.

Oh, there's James by the way.

BALL: There's James Dashner, author.

NOWLIN: Actually, there's consistency.

He played the board member
in the first movie.

BALL: He was in the first movie
in the boardroom, yeah.

- Here he is again.
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

NOWLIN: Now there's many less.

so we assume that
it's gotten worse out in the world.

We're gonna put a skeleton
in one of the chairs.

- BALL: Only three board members remain.
- (ALL LAUGHING)

NOWLIN: Just a skeleton
in one of the board chairs.

That was Harold.

He didn't make it.

Two thousand?

And that's assuming
your protected areas...

stay protected...

which we know they won't.

BALL: Yeah, it was good
to give Kaya a scene.

Like you said, a statement of
what she believes essentially.

Again, it's also setting up

what we tried to start telling
in the second movie,

was the story of WICKED's search
for a cure to the virus.

And that's why the maze,
why the kids have been rounded up,

why the immunes, all that stuff.

And hopefully now, we're just
giving clarity out to all that,

that if it wasn't there,

hopefully it's concrete enough now
to let go of that

and just enjoy the experience
and the ride of this adventure.

NOWLIN: I'll admit,
I was a little surprised

when the second movie came out

that people, even fans, weren't
a little bit more understanding

of Teresa and why she did what she did

'cause I thought Kaya was so good
in the betrayal scene.

She tells the story about her mother
who died of this virus.

But it's a generational thing,
where the younger audiences,

they're... I don't know what's the word.

Tribalists. They're about their squad,
their group.

The worst crime you can commit
is to betray your group, your friends.

I think what this movie's about,
it's kind of...

That's part of the appeal of the series.

It's not about just a Katniss
or a single hero raising the army.

It's about a group.

This movie's an argument against that

saying that you also
have to think for yourself

and make your own decisions.

BALL: And also it's like...
HARTWICK JR.: That's all CG.

BALL: Yeah, all the city's CG, yeah.

Again, one long shot here. (CHUCKLES)

It's the only way
to really shoot this scene to be honest.

But also it's, I think,
along the lines of Teresa.

It's like there's nothing much...

Redemption stories are really fun.

(CHUCKLES) They're fun to watch.

And hopefully... We have no idea

because the movie hasn't come out yet
while we're recording this.

Hopefully, the people that maybe
were against Teresa vehemently

in the start of this movie,

hopefully they're won over
a little bit by the end.

I mean, at least if nothing else,
even if they don't agree with her,

can appreciate her stance on it,
and, obviously, her sacrifice,

which I think was necessary narratively,

but hopefully earned it.

HARTWICK JR.: The abattoir.

BALL: Yeah, this was a really cool
abandoned meatpacking area or something.

HARTWICK JR.: Slaughterhouse.
BALL: Yeah, slaughterhouse.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: This is the most extras
I've ever had,

like 400 extras or something.

It's huge.

NOWLIN: I always like that throw from,
"I hope you're right,"

down to, "What's outside the walls?"

BALL: Yeah, again, that's
what was fun about this stuff, too,

- is the transitions.
- NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

It's like she's talking about Thomas.

She's looking out at the world
and what they're fighting against.

And then you cut down to it,
body bags of infected people,

and you also see this intro
of the group that are...

They're not a Right Arm Glader group.
They're not WICKED.

They're someone else on the other side,
the far extreme.

So it's interesting that our characters

are caught in the middle
of these two forces,

the people outside
that are just angry and scared,

and then WICKED on the inside
that are just probably as scared, too.

NOWLIN: There's no bad guys
in the story, really.

Other than Janson, speaking of which...

BALL: Janson's the true villain,
which is fun.

NOWLIN: But what makes him
the villain honestly, this is a spoiler,

but he's a sick guy
who wants to make sure

he always has his medicine.

That's not all that evil.

BALL: I always thought that boils down
to selfless versus selfish,

- you know what I mean?
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: That's really what
this movie stems from.

NOWLIN: And Janson, I think,

he fundamentally
just misunderstands Teresa,

- like, he thinks that she is like him.
- BALL: Right.

NOWLIN: That she made a decision
for her own survival.

She was joining the winning side
of a conflict.

But she was thinking about the world.

She was putting the needs of others
over her own desires, I guess.

HARTWICK JR.:
Which is why you see her turn later

when he's talking about,
"Tough choices will have to be made."

NOWLIN: He misjudges her.

I think that moment in the elevator.

We're getting ahead of it now.

BALL: Another one of the biggest
green screens we've ever had.

- We had this huge, really cool location.
- HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: That's real,

except for on the left,
those buildings are CG,

but that main structure is real.

We had this gigantic green screen
in front of them.

So, the background's all real,
and the foreground stuff is all CG.

Set up those gates and the wall.

I asked Aidan once,
"It's fun playing a villain, right?"

He just smiled at me
and he said, "Of course, it is."

(ALL CHUCKLE)

It is fun though to watch him
'cause he does do it well.

We needed someone good to root against,
you know what I mean?

'Cause so much of the movie,
Ava, Teresa,

they're painted in a way that
it's not easy to hate them.

NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: You disagree with them possibly.

BALL: We needed someone to really just
wanna and get what's coming to them.

NOWLIN: I think
that's something we knew,

you mentioned this before,
the idea of planning ahead.

I think we knew in the second movie
with introducing Janson

that he was gonna be the main villain,

and that ultimately, we had with Ava
this character that we...

BALL: An adversary.

NOWLIN: We had... We would hold her up
as the typical corporate,

- ice-queen kind of villain...
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: ...but always with the intention
of eventually subverting her.

BALL: Yeah, we were gonna let her hair
down, which you see in this movie.

BALL: Her hair's down this time.
NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: We meet her first
with her hair up...

NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: ...but it's fun to...

She's not the person you think she is.

NOWLIN: Peel back
the layers a little. Yeah.

We had a great scene at one point.

It was when the board meeting
was a different kind of moment.

It was later in the story.

but the idea of her
putting her armor on,

pulling the hair back,

becoming the Ava Paige that we know
from the first two movies.

Oh, that's cool,
that little body in there.

BALL: Yeah, that body's
actually a CG double.

- It's not even there.
- NOWLIN: Of course it is.

BALL: Well, actually, in that shot
there, with the wide shot,

there's a lot of CG people
that you can't tell.

We did a lot of that in this movie.
I'll try and point them out as we go.

NOWLIN: "Gee, I wonder
why they're so upset."

- BALL: Yeah.
- (LAUGHTER)

That's the thing. He obviously
did something not good.

He's just stoking the fire
of the rebellion outside.

NOWLIN: But it was also
important to understand

why they couldn't go through there.

BALL: Right.

- Yeah, it's super important.
- NOWLIN: There's nothing we can do.

NOWLIN: Gally says it.

"There's nothing we can do
against those guns," which means

they need a way to get inside WICKED
and turn the guns off.

And Thomas can do that for them.

BALL: Yeah, I'm curious, when the shots
that we have of Gally and the mask,

- I'm curious how many people...
- NOWLIN: Yeah. "How obvious is it?"

BALL: I don't know.
I have a theory on it.

I think some people won't remember it.

I think some people, the big
die-hard fans, they know it's him.

And they actually enjoy
knowing that it's him

and waiting slowly for the...
This is a great shot.

NOWLIN: Whoa! Where'd that come from?

BALL: This shot's really great.

It's full CG, which was great.

And it sets up that world
of these migrants essentially

that have come
to the outside of these walls

begging for mercy or for help.

They set up basically a shanty town
essentially on the outside.

They're just camped out
in a city that's been cut off,

which is really cool, that...

I was looking images of Brazil
going from rich city to just a line.

And suddenly,
it's just poor in the favelas.

I thought it was a cool contrast
of the state of the world.

NOWLIN: Driving around Cape Town
tells that story, too.

BALL: In terms
of my thing with Gally though

on our first test screening we did,

Gally got a huge reveal,

- I mean, a response to his reveal here.
- NOWLIN: Response. Yeah.

BALL: I think it's because
they were just waiting for it.

It's that famous definition of suspense
of knowing what's gonna happen

and waiting for it to happen, right?

You tell them the bomb's on the table...

You show them the bomb on the table
and they wait for it to go off.

So, I think there's this feeling of,
"When is he gonna show himself?

"When is he gonna show himself?"

So, when he finally does,
it's this big thing

- rather than it being just a surprise.
- NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: I think
it might work in our favor.

NOWLIN: I think you get away with it,
too, in terms of who remembers

because at this point,

your audience are people
who have followed you to this point.

- They've seen the first movie at least.
- BALL: Yeah, exactly.

BALL: At some level though,

this can't be a movie
that stands completely on its own.

I mean, I think it still does.
You can still enjoy it and go with it,

but it does require a bit of knowledge
of the previous movies

to really fully enjoy it,

- to really appreciate it.
- NOWLIN: It's a different experience,

but I think we worked as hard
as we could to make the movie work,

especially knowing there'd be a big gap
between 2 and 3.

We did as much as we could, I think.

BALL: Yeah. And I think
if you'd never seen any of the movies,

we did do in our test screenings,

there were people
that had never seen the movies,

and they fully enjoyed the movie.

In fact, some of them
rated it higher than the others.

So, I think going in knowing
that it's the third one

and you have to go with it,

but if you never knew anything,

"Oh, that's a guy that I guess
did them wrong somehow.

"They thought he was dead
and he's not. Okay."

That's all everybody
needs to know really.

- He's an old foe.
- NOWLIN: Right from the beginning,

like, "Okay, there's some...
They're trying to rob a train.

"Why? There're kids on the train.

"They're chained up.
Oh, that's their friend.

"They're trying to save their friend

"because you're immune to a plague
wiping out the human race."

BALL: Yeah. You get the pieces you need
if you've never seen them before.

HARTWICK JR.: This Werdmuller building
was a tough place to shoot

'cause of sound.

BALL: Yeah,
it's another cool location, too.

There's a giant street right outside.

It's just a ton of noise,
but the location is fantastic.

A lot of really good locations
in Cape Town we looked at.

It's good stuff.

NOWLIN: It's a good-looking movie.
BALL: Yeah, Gyula.

BALL: Gyula came back
to DP the third one again.

He did the second one.

He's kind of become my DP man.

We have very similar aesthetics,

and we really get each other really,
really well in terms of our style.

We both really like to sink into shots.

He's really good
at lighting, I think, too.

I think it really shows.

It is probably the best-looking movie,
I think, of the three.

After the maze, I got picked up
by a group headed to the city.

They realized I was immune,
patched me up...

and they brought me here to Lawrence.

This group's been at war with WICKED

ever since they
took control of the city.

BALL: This is, again,
setting up the idea that

there is another group
that we're introducing

in this universe of Maze Runner,
which is the angry mob, essentially,

- the have-nots, that we're setting up.
- NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: And Gally
has somehow fallen into them.

We try to fill in the blanks
a little bit with what Gally says,

but for the most part, it's for people
to make up for themselves,

but he obviously
found his way into this group.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

Well, it makes sense if he was immune.

I like the idea that he was
brought here as a commodity,

but instead, he was taken
under the wing of these people

because he was a fighter.

BALL: There's an element
of being exploited

the same way WICKED exploits the others.

Lawrence uses him to go
get inside the city to do his spying,

and as they figure out a way
to storm the castle,

look for their opportunity in.

Like here, he talks about the walls.

There's no way to get past those walls
with those guns,

but they're looking for an opportunity.

Thomas ended up being that thing.

- This is a cool thing.
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

NOWLIN: Rose took his nose?

BALL: My original concept
for him was gonna be

the Rose-took-my-nose character
in the second,

but everyone was mad
that I didn't incorporate...

I always had this idea
in the back of my mind

that we would do it in the third movie.

It would make him
a really cool character.

So, we got Walton Goggins to play it
and I was really worried about R.

So I actually didn't...

When we were shooting this,

I didn't think we were going to
be able to take off his nose.

But as we were going,

I had concept art drawn out
with him without a nose,

and he just looked so cool.

And so, we shot it as is

and we had all the makeup on the
right side of his face and everything.

I asked Weta, I said,
"Guys, what could you do?"

We didn't do any tracking markers,
no nothing.

And they came back and showed me
what they would do to take off his nose,

- and it's fantastic work.
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: I mean, it looks totally real.

And the fact that
we didn't really shoot it safely,

thinking about markers and,
"We can't do that shot,"

it just has this feel
like we're shooting it

as if the character has no nose.

So, it has this really great
natural approach, I thought.

And the fact that Weta didn't have
any tracking markers or anything,

and they had to
rebuild his face practically

and seamlessly take off his nose,
it was really, really great work.

And it looks really cool, too.

Obviously, it's a little throwback
to a character,

that for people that don't know,

Mr. Nose is from the second movie
who's gone a little bit crazy,

he's a little nuts,

and he keeps repeating,
"Rose got my nose, Rose got my nose."

That's why there's roses
in the background.

In the very beginning of the scene,
you can hear these little whisperings,

- these little mutterings of...
- NOWLIN: He's whispering it, yeah.

BALL: "Rose took my nose I suppose."

He's just gone a little crazy.

NOWLIN: That was always the fun idea
of this character,

- someone who's half mad, but half sharp.
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: His eyes are different.

BALL: Yeah, he was that idea
we wanted in this movie.

We wanted to show a Crank
that's not monstrous this time

but is a real human being
that is suffering.

He was very much that.

He's the guy right in the middle.

He's half Crank, half human.

NOWLIN: Right. In the books,
they call it "you go past the gone."

There's a point
where you become more monstrous.

BALL: Yeah, and we see that
with Newt and all that stuff.

NOWLIN: Yeah, and I think
it was interesting to say

if there's a character
that is straddling that line.

But we couldn't do that
with the second movie

'cause, I think, we purposefully wanted
that to be a reveal in movie three,

- that they're not just monstrous.
- BALL: The different shades, yeah.

BALL: To keep
expanding on the depth of the...

NOWLIN: There's a lot of criticism
in the second movie,

like "They just turned them
into zombies."

I kept wanting to say,
"Wait, we're not done!

"The movie's... You're in the middle."

BALL: That is one thing
that's for right or wrong,

I don't see these movies as sequels.

I see them all as one story,
which I think is...

For the fans that have stuck with us

and will continue
to revisit these movies,

it's gonna feel interesting to watch
all three movies as one saga

instead of just, "And another one,
and another one."

There are things
that are set up in the first movie

that aren't paid off until this movie,
or vice versa.

It's cool that we get to do
that kind of stuff.

For some ambitious people out there
that are gonna have a marathon,

it'll be a cool experience, I think,
to watch six hours of a story.

We're ready.

BALL: Now, the virus.

It's probably one of our first views.

There's another scene we cut out

where we really get to see
the hallways and the lab setting

that we have in this movie.

Which is cool.
It's a big giant set we built.

Dan Dorrance again returning
as a production designer

from the second movie.

Again, this was obviously
the thing of showing the...

NOWLIN: The humans side.
HARTWICK JR.: The state of the world.

NOWLIN: The face like a little girl
who's scared.

- And also for Teresa to be...
- BALL: The caretaker.

NOWLIN: To have a good bedside manner,
to be affectionate and caring.

BALL: This little girl,
we found her in South Africa.

HARTWICK JR.: Mmm-hmm.

Remember how we couldn't find
anybody in Vancouver?

BALL: She'd never acted
in anything before.

This was the first thing
she'd ever done.

NOWLIN: So, this was one of the big
steps forward we made with the script

between Vancouver and Cape Town
because in Vancouver,

we were asking too much
of this little girl.

We were asking her to get the injection,

to start to feel better,
and then to crank out, all in one scene.

I think we realized,

- "It'd be so much more effective..."
- BALL: Yeah, wait.

"...to let Teresa live
in that hope for a little bit."

When she goes to see Minho,

she's thinking they might have
found something.

And then, right when he attacks her,
you see this girl deteriorate.

The audience needs to feel that.

It can't just be,
"Oh, I guess they don't have a cure."

BALL: We need to let Teresa
live in the moment of,

"We've won" for a little bit.

- "We've found a cure."
- NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: Obviously,
all her eyes are made red.

Another thing you notice
is that when she opens her eyes,

you see the red slowly just disappear.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: The midpoint is basically

- when Thomas finally meets Teresa.
- NOWLIN: Kidnapped, yeah.

BALL: Which is cool.

It's these two collision points
of the story, these narratives.

They're both talking about, or at least,

on different ends
of the spectrum of this one story,

and then they collide in the middle,

and then,
the story really jumps forward.

And missed, apparently.

The patrols never found a body.

Thomas is still out there.

What about her?

Does she know?

NOWLIN: It's fun to do scenes like this.

So many scenes in this movie that we
just couldn't have done in 1 or2.

BALL: Mmm-hmm. Yeah, it's a full movie,
that's for sure.

I mean, we went in going in

we were never gonna split the movie
into two parts like it's the trend.

We wanted it to have a good trilogy.

Beginning, middle, and end.

And that meant that
this movie had to be packed,

and there are a ton of scenes
that we cut out.

There's actually a scene right before
this one of Gally and Thomas and Newt

breaking into an underground subway

and basically racing a train
that almost hits them,

a subway train.

That was their first little adventure
before they got into the city.

NOWLIN: Which we had so many...

There were people who told us
that we were gonna cut it,

and I think
where we justified it was that

it had to be hard to get into the city.

BALL: I miss it still, for sure.

It's just, a two and a half hour movie,

we had to find time somewhere,
and it was a five-minute chunk.

And, and for the most part,
you don't question it too much,

but it is something I miss.

Hopefully, people will get to watch
either in deleted scenes

or hopefully as an extended movie.

I think that would be really fun

to really experience it
in its full, uncut form.

NOWLIN: I think it makes sense though,
too, the challenges of just

- getting into the city.
- HARTWICK JR.: Cool sets here.

NOWLIN: The challenge is getting
into WICKED and turning off those guns.

That's what Lawrence has to do.

BALL: That was Cape Town.
So a lot of those buildings are CG.

But it's good work by Weta again
transforming this...

I don't know,
I wouldn't call it a modern city,

but a city into a real modern future.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

It's like, you've seen
the outside, you've seen the squalor

and the tightly-packed people
and the desperation,

and now, you come into this place
that's beautiful.

BALL: I just love
the color palette, too.

This fluorescent, harsh, sodium vapor.

It's a real city.

An urban adventure.

It's very similar to, think,
in the first movie,

to where Minho is taking Thomas
on a journey to the maze.

Here, Gally's doing the same thing
through a new kind of maze,

which I thought was a really cool thing,

and it happens right around
the same time in the first movie.

There's another scene
that was cut out here

where they actually end up on a freeway.

NOWLIN: Yeah,
it was a really good scene.

BALL: And they make a jump

from the freeway onto the wall,
which was cool,

but it was cut for time.

They're really giant shots.

This is another drone shot

we shot in a shipping yard
where boats are repaired.

So, that's a real wall there,

but obviously,
it's hugely extended by Weta.

That's really our guys
running along the concrete wall.

NOWLIN: That's a great-looking shot.

BALL: Yeah, and replaced
and extended by Weta,

which really did a good job
setting up this world, making it real.

NOWLIN: I remember that dry dock.

- It was so cool.
- BALL: It was cool.

HARTWICK JR.: That was another
hard night of shooting, remember?

We had the gas leak,

and then all the noise
from the boat being worked on.

BALL: I was up there in this...
Two stories up with the guys,

and all of a sudden,
we smell something funny.

Our nose starts burning.

I'm like, "What is that?
That's strange."

And all of a sudden,
we hear over the PA,

"Everyone, get to the stairs
and get to the surface immediately.

"Don't panic. Just go."

- I'm like, "What's going on?"
- (ALL LAUGHING)

Turned out,
it was some kind of ammonia leak.

And because we were shooting at night,

ammonia's heavier than air, so it sunk
into this pit that we're in.

And ammonia can be really dangerous.

Eventually, it cleared out
and we went back to shooting.

Not only that, but we had a gigantic,
huge shipping vessel, I guess,

parked right next to where we are here,
being worked on.

And the crew had to work 24 hours a day,

so they're just sawing and welding
right next to us

during all these scenes,
and we couldn't ask them to stop.

So, a lot of this dialogue is all ADR.

It's never preferable,
but they did a good job.

This is a cool moment where, finally,
the two stories connect I think.

Like what? You've seen the building.
She is our only way in.

NOWLIN: The fun thing, I think,
of telling a story,

where there's all these different
points of views and threads,

is the anticipation for them
to tie together and collide

into one propulsive track.

BALL: This is more necessary work
of exposing Newt

as something's wrong with Newt.

Yeah.

I still wonder sometimes.

We experimented with actually
cutting this scene once.

NOWLIN: Yeah, it was the idea of,

"Are we revealing
Newt's infection too soon?"

BALL: I always thought it would be cool
to save it for later,

like, hint at it and save it for later,

but we just didn't have time
to reshoot anything.

It is what it is.

It is a cool scene
to see the two guys...

See a side of Newt
we've never seen before.

"What's going on here?"

You see he's slipping,
he's losing himself a little bit,

which is a tragic thing for him.

NOWLIN: I feel like the movie
wants this type of a scene here,

which is the interaction of the group
and conflict between the group,

which we haven't really had
since they left the base.

There's been a lot of plot.

BALL: It was a good throw going from
Thomas looking at Teresa

- to Minho going to talk to Teresa.
- NOWLIN: It was really good, yeah.

BALL: It was nice.
NOWLIN: That was really nice.

BALL: It was the momentum
that was really nice.

You missed all this stuff.

And there's one scene I miss here.

We had Newt talking about...

NOWLIN: The story
of how we got his limp.

BALL: The story about how we jumped
from the wall and tried to kill himself.

It was good. It was just long.

NOWLIN: It was Minho who found him.
The point of the story is that

it was Minho who saved him
and gave him another chance.

The point of the story is that,

if there's anything we can do
to get him out, we have to do it.

That's more important.

BALL: It's already a three-minute scene,

- then it was a seven-minute scene.
- NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: It just had to go, unfortunately.

Being in the middle of the movie,
it's where most movies sag,

and you have to do everything you can
to keep it moving.

You got the information you needed here
and you got the kind of connection,

but it is one of those scenes
that I think

people, fans,
will really like to watch again,

either as its own deleted thing

or hopefully as an extended experience
to the movie

because I always loved it.

Newt did a great job
with that reading and that story,

and it naturally flows in.

Get a little bit more to it.

As an extended thing... In the theater,
I think it's right to be gone,

but when you're in the comfort
of your own home and stuff,

the real fans who wanna enjoy
that kind of thing,

they would enjoy
a 15-minute longer version of the movie.

NOWLIN: This is our campfire scene
from Scorch Trials.

BALL: Yeah. Yeah.
HARTWICK JR.: That's right.

BALL: Unfortunately,
another one of those.

It's still a regret for me.
I still regret cutting that scene.

NOWLIN: I think we regret not figuring
out a way to protect it in the story.

- BALL: I know what I would've done now.
- I know. Yeah, we've talked about it.

BALL: We might have talked about it
on the commentary of the last one.

NOWLIN: But this throw works,
too, though,

the idea that we have to
get Minho out, cut to Minho.

BALL: Yeah, it just doesn't have
quite the momentum,

but it is still good.

(LAUGHING) Then we see poor Minho
being just totally...

He's gone through hell.

Hopefully, it's just
reinforcing the idea of like,

"Oh, man, get in there and save him!"

- So, you're just really...
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: You're really
waiting for that chance.

"Are they gonna get him in time?"

NOWLIN: Can I say, whoever made him
wear that shirt is a jerk.

(LAUGHTER)

BALL: It's funny.

NOWLIN: Poor kid.
He's been through enough.

BALL: We have a sense of humor
in this movie. It's good.

NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: It's a good scene to have.

I told Teresa, "This is the first time
you've talked to him."

NOWLIN: I think she's been
waiting for good news.

She's been waiting to be able
to tell him that we're making progress.

This is why we're here.

HARTWICK JR.:
To allay some of her own guilt.

BALL: A thing we kept talking about
in the script is this idea of the cost.

She kept saying it's worth it,
which is cool.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: Kaya does a really good job
in the movie in general, I think.

She's really good.

NOWLIN: So much of her character
in the first two

- has been building up to this movie.
- BALL: This. Yeah.

NOWLIN: I'm excited
for people to see the movie

for what she does,
and for Teresa's arc as a character.

BALL: There'll still be plenty of people
who will not like her and just say that.

But I think there'll be some people
who genuinely find an interesting depth.

NOWLIN: As long as there's one person in
your opening weekend group of friends

- that is making the case for her...
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: ...then you're arguing
in the parking lot.

- That's all we want, is the discussion.
- BALL: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: This isn't about
how she's the best.

BALL: Yeah, we're not saying
that she's right or wrong.

It's just that she's complicated,
and they're all complicated.

I think even Dylan, he might...

Or the character of Thomas,

he might be doing things wrong actually.

He might be putting his friends
in jeopardy coming here,

but he's doing what he feels is right.

NOWLIN: We ended the second movie with,
"I'm gonna kill Ava Paige.

"We're gonna take on WICKED
and I think..." (LAUGHS)

This is fun.

BALL: A little sneaky thing.

I don't know if people
are gonna catch this or not,

but he actually steals the hairpin
that was in her hair.

NOWLIN: If you look it at.
It's a chestnut.

(BOTH LAUGH)

The idea that Thomas
ends the second movie,

his growth, I guess, is figuring out
what his purpose is

and what he's gonna do
now that he's out of the maze.

He's gonna fight WICKED,

but he has a very
black-and-white understanding

of who's right and who's wrong.

A lot of this movie
is challenging that certainty,

whether it's having to work with Gally
who killed Chuck,

or having to confront Teresa

and then trust Teresa
and then go back to WICKED.

It's just about chipping away at that,
and it's all a coming-of-age story.

Starting from the blank slate that he is
at the beginning of movie one

to becoming a leader,
getting out of the maze,

and then that final step of maturity,

of seeing the world from someone else's
point of view other than your own.

BALL: This just turned into
Teresa's worst day ever.

HARTWICK JR.: (LAUGHS) Yeah.
NOWLIN: (LAUGHS) Right.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah,
she gets like triple punched.

BALL: Originally, it was just,
Minho attacked her and she walked off.

And here, the fact that we put
that little... That thing broke down,

it really helped to...
You really felt her...

Everything she's done,
everything she had to go through,

betrayal, everything she's
done it for is wasted.

NOWLIN: It's a dead-end, yeah.
BALL: Yeah.

BALL: She's lost.
NOWLIN: It was for nothing.

BALL: Then, of course,
opportunity shows.

NOWLIN: That's what she says
in the boardroom.

"Please don't let
those sacrifices be for nothing."

She's talking about
her sacrifices as well.

We talked about this,
how important it was,

the first time Thomas and Teresa
see each other in this moment.

We're in her point of view, not his.

He's not stalking her.

BALL: Originally, it was
not that way, remember?

It was in Vancouver
we came up with that idea.

We were struggling with it
for a bit, I remember.

And it was Thomas...

It was seeing from Thomas' point of view
going after her, I remember.

We went out to location one day,

and I remember having this idea that
it'd be nice to follow her for a bit.

NOWLIN: We're chasing him.
BALL: And then she sees him.

BALL: Suddenly, the scene, for me,
clicked into place I think,

you know what I mean?

NOWLIN: Yeah, I don't remember that
other version, but it's possible.

We went through,
that's something to say...

We went through
so many iterations of the story.

More than the second movie.

I think the reason why we didn't think
as much about 2 writing 1

is 'cause one was so contained.

It was about getting out of the maze.

And the big reveal
we were planning is that

the world outside the maze is a ruin.
It's a bigger world.

BALL: By the way,
that movie could be the end.

- For all we knew, that was the end.
- NOWLIN: That could be the end. Right.

BALL: But when the second one came out,
we didn't know there'd be a third one.

HARTWICK JR.:
We didn't have as much time, too.

Our second movie
started shooting a month...

After the first one came out.

NOWLIN: A month
after the first one came out.

But also with the decision
to open the second one

right where the first one ended,
we're immediately...

You have that great opening,

and now we're in a corner

that we have to wiggle our way
out of a little bit.

BALL: We had to explain that,
"Wait, so she's not dead?"

It's just this weird thing
that we have to tie up unfortunately.

NOWLIN: The hardest scene
to write in that movie, frankly,

was Thomas spying on that conversation
between Ava and Janson.

That was such nightmare.

They did it well.

Here, there were so many possibilities.

We did a draft, I swear to God,
where the solar flares came back.

BALL: Yeah, right,
I remember that, yeah.

NOWLIN: We did a draft where
they leave the city at one point,

where WICKED had another...
Closer to the book.

They had another, like,
their version of a safe haven.

HARTWICK JR.:
Like an underground vault thing.

BALL: It just felt like every time...

NOWLIN: You want it to end at the city.

BALL: It was just too much.
NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: It was like you felt you wanted
to split off and do another movie,

and it's like it's better
to make the city the stage

and make WICKED's headquarter
in the city.

NOWLIN: And if it's the last city,
this is the last stand of civilization,

- when WICKED falls, it's over.
- BALL: Yeah. "There's another place."

BALL: And you have to go there.

And then you have to
spend time doing that.

NOWLIN: I thought about that watching...

I shouldn't say this,

- but we'll talk later.
- BALL: Okay.

I think I know
what you're talking about.

I always remember
loving the idea of this scene, too,

just the two people coming together.

And the trick, essentially,
of him kidnapping her.

It's like, they get to actually meet
and talk to each other for a moment.

This quiet...

Originally, in Vancouver,
it was gonna be an alleyway.

But we found this little spot.

NOWLIN: Something else,
if we had been able to reshoot

the Newt infection reveal,

which, let's talk through that,

because if you would cut
right from seeing Teresa

to her point of view.

BALL: You wouldn't know what's going on.

NOWLIN: What's going on here?
This isn't part of the plan.

He could just be
genuinely concerned like,

"You gotta get out of here.
They're gonna come and get you."

BALL: Yeah, there's a lot of
good mystery there.

NOWLIN: A lot of good... Yeah.

BALL: But even there,
there's still a surprise

that Gally comes around and takes her.

NOWLIN: Yeah, that's cool.

This is a little structural change
you did.

Originally, we go from
the bag over her head

- to the scene with them at the church.
- BALL: Yeah, the church scene.

NOWLIN: This would've come right before
the heist, but it works well here.

BALL: Yeah, we did this in editing,
'cause you wanted to...

Again, the off-screen movie
is transporting her to somewhere secret.

So, we get to go away somewhere,
a different point of view.

NOWLIN: This is also one of
the slower moments in the movie

where it's good to have that,

"What's going on with Teresa
in the back of the..."

But I love this scene.

BALL: It's another one
where they really talk about

the state of the affairs of the movie.

NOWLIN: But the fact that Ava's done,
that that was her last chance,

and really clarifying the fact
that they're on their last leg,

that the virus is inside the city,

and this is the kind of split moment
between Ava and Janson.

I think going into the heist
from this scene,

I don't know what's gonna happen.
I don't know what I want to happen.

BALL: Yeah, you get that idea that,
"No, not this time."

The virus is airborne.

There's a little reaction to Janson,

it's because he knows he's infected,
that's how he got sick.

NOWLIN: Yeah, he's ahead of her on that.

There was a lot more about that, too,
like little setups that Janson...

BALL: Yeah, I cut those out,
some of them unfortunately.

- Mainly just for time.
- NOWLIN: I think all of them, right?

BALL: Yeah,
there was a scene we had earlier

right before Teresa was testing a little
girl where Janson steals some serum,

and you're not quite sure why.

I think you get it.

There was a scene early on
between the two characters here

talking about Thomas
after they rob the train

where Janson's hand is shaking.

We're obviously just setting it up.

I think pretty much any audience member
would know what we're doing there.

It's another little thing that I miss

that I think actually would be good
in a longer version,

'cause he was really good.

He made a lot more of a character
in the beginning.

But even this line here,
maybe it won't mean much to people,

but the fact that she says,
"Everything we put them through,

"at least we gave them the tools
they'll need to survive."

What she's talking about is

everything they've put them through
in the maze and in the Glades.

These kids know
how to fend for themselves.

They know how to grow food.
They know how to build shelter.

They know how to have democracy.

They know how to start
a new world together, which is cool.

NOWLIN: We've had that
in the back of our minds for so long.

It was always, for me,
the most satisfying explanation

for why they're in the maze beyond...

- 'Cause the problem is the experience...
- BALL: They trained them

for a world on their own.

NOWLIN: Right. And for the eventuality
for their own failure,

that they're gonna have to carry on
and rebuild civilization.

So, whatever they needed to do to them
to get to test them for the cure,

they also had to prepare them
for starting over.

BALL: Which I thought
is the cool concept to me, really.

The concept of the movies
we always said,

the first movie's like being in school,

and then the second movie's graduating.

NOWLIN: Into the big world
and to college.

BALL: And then the third movie's
finally, "You're on your own."

And that first thing in the Glades,

it's really about preparing them
for the state of the world out there.

These young people have to start
a world together in some way or another.

NOWLIN: Right.

There's a little bit
of a disconnect, I think,

between, when people
watch the first movie,

the explanation feels disconnected

from the experience that these kids
actually went through

of working together and building
the food and the shelter.

I think that's why
it took a little while

to get into the world of the movie
in Scorch Trials.

BALL: There's definitely those...

There's one great critique.

"It's a great movie
with a terrible ending."

I think for a lot of people,
or some people anyway,

we still, I think, are pretty successful
as a movie series.

The people that we lost, we probably
lost them at end of the first movie

where the answer
wasn't satisfying for them.

They wanted it to be aliens or they
wanted it to be some other explanation

to where they were
and why they were there.

It is what it is.

NOWLIN: It wasn't an answer
to the questions they were asking.

- It was just new information.
- BALL: Mmm-hmm.

NOWLIN: And it wasn't always that way.

We originally had an ending
where we didn't talk about the Flare...

BALL: Yeah,
we didn't go into that stuff.

NOWLIN: ...or the Cranks.

The whole device

- of rushing them out that door.
- BALL: But at the same time,

we have two more books
that we have to follow.

So we have to hit that stuff,
and hopefully by this movie,

that it just becomes
a part of the universe

and a full experience of not just mazes,

but a world of destruction and infection
and the ultimate cure here.

NOWLIN: It's the idea that
the future belongs to these kids.

You're either going to support them
or you're going to exploit them.

They're ultimately gonna decide
their own path.

BALL: This scene worked out
really well, too.

Just in general,
I'm kinda proud of the way it flows

from point of view to point of view
throughout.

Just the way it's cut and everything,

I thought it came together
really, really well.

NOWLIN: All this stuff from...

BALL: Yeah, just like that one shot,
it goes from his...

He's been worked on, too.

NOWLIN: And now they're watching him
and then she walks over.

BALL: They have all their...
And then this little shot becomes...

It's all one shot, too,
which I always love, too.

NOWLIN: This is one
of my favorite shots in the movie.

It's also because of their performances
in the scene and...

BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: I just like watching.
I'm just gonna watch this.

(BOTH CHUCKLE)

BALL: Yeah, it was good.

It was a pretty fun day.

It was a cool real church
that we shot in Cape Town.

We had to clean it up every day,
didn't we, or something?

I forget.

- To get access to it, it wasn't easy.
- NOWLIN: Uh...

BALL: We weren't sure if we were gonna
shoot there for a while.

They were doing
services and stuff, yeah.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, in the front corner,
they were still doing services.

BALL: They let us keep parts of it
still messed up, there's churchgoers,

- "What's going on over there?"
- (LAUGHTER)

HARTWICK JR.:
It was hard for Gyula to light.

BALL: Yeah,
but it turned out good I thought.

HARTWICK JR.: It was good.

NOWLIN: We struggled with, "Where
are they laying low before the heist?"

There were different ideas.

BALL: I always like the idea,
it's very subtle,

but the idea that people
have given up on religion

- in a way in this world.
- NOWLIN: Exactly.

BALL: That people don't go to church
anymore, so that it's safe to go there.

NOWLIN: It's a world that's lost faith.
BALL: Yeah.

BALL: I thought there was
something cool about that.

Brenda.

I didn't think she'd still be alive.

BALL: Kaya did a really good job here.

This is a really tricky
story moment to have here.

NOWLIN: Because it's such
important information,

but she also needs to be clever.

She's fishing for information, too.

HARTWICK JR.: She did a good job.

BALL: That realization there, too.

I think she did a really good job
with a scene

that could have been...

It could have not worked very well.

NOWLIN: This is the other reason why
it was a big step forward

to show the limit of the serum
that they're getting from the kids,

seeing them turn.

- This is such big news for her.
- BALL: We know what she's talking about.

NOWLIN: It's big news for us, too.

BALL: The real challenge here
is that you have to remember

that Thomas gave Brenda his blood.

NOWLIN: Or even if you don't,

the way she chips away at him
through the rest of the movie,

- you start to figure out.
- BALL: You at least connect it,

but the people that remember that scene

between him giving his blood
and saving Brenda

for two, maybe three months.

Then that scene with Jorge and Brenda
saying, "How's it looking?

"You're looking pretty good."

She's like, "I'm gonna turn eventually."

The pieces are there.

If they're strong enough,
we'll find out, I guess.

But it all does all
start to come together now.

A perfect example of where something
that's set up in the second movie

that pays off in the third.

NOWLIN: I wonder if people notice her
taking the blood sample there.

BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: They do?

NOWLIN: So, was that
a misinterpretation on Gally's part?

He thought she was
reaching for the knife,

- but was really reaching for the...
- BALL: That's the idea.

NOWLIN: Yeah, okay, that's cool.

BALL: The idea is, yeah,
he's like, "Nice try."

He always gets a laugh, too.

I've been surprised
in all of our test screenings

that people love
Gally's character in this movie.

I think Will did a good job.

HARTWICK JR.: This is a good scene, too.

You can't save everyone, Thomas.

BALL: I don't remember
why we came up with this line.

I'm still on the fence about it, but...

NOWLIN: It was part of another arc
for her where she was talking about...

She was supposed to be
talking about herself.

BALL: Every time we went into it,
it's like we stopped the scene again,

the momentum of the scene
to talk about their relationship.

And it's just, ugh...

It's just like you hit the brakes again.

NOWLIN: It's not where you are.

BALL: And I love how it's after these
15 minutes of slow pace.

NOWLIN: Yeah, here we go.
BALL: Boom! Here we go.

BALL: It's like we're going in.
The heist is beginning.

It's like, "I'm just ready for it."

So, from here on,
the movie basically doesn't stop.

It just goes.

NOWLIN: But I will say,
just to go back to that earlier point,

the idea of Brenda's relationship
with Thomas

and the fact that
she's gonna turn eventually,

it was supposed to be our vessel
of reminding the audience

that it was his blood that saved her,
that gave her this time.

BALL: I think you get it.

This is another one of those cases

where it's like less is more, I think,
in this case.

But this is a cool thing, too.

Again, no dialogue. Just, you get it.

They all got in.

They're just slowly meeting up
in one little smooth kind of way.

HARTWICK JR.: This is a cool location,
the convention center.

We shot all over this place.

NOWLIN: This is great.

Just one by one
they're all trickling in...

BALL: None of the lights matched.
(LAUGHS)

Gyula really had a tough time
lighting this one.

If you notice, our go-to trick
to make something look sci-fi

is we put fluorescent lights
in the background.

- Everywhere we go, that's what we do.
- (LAUGHTER)

NOWLIN: Her little ID badge
that just says "Teresa"

Does she not have a last name? (LAUGHS)

BALL: I think it says
"Teresa A," doesn't it?

NOWLIN: Oh, it does? Okay.
BALL: Yeah, I think so.

NOWLIN: "T," Agnes?
BALL: Agnes, or whatever her name is?

BALL: Which, I guess,
we don't do that,

but in the books, you find out

that all these characters' names
are not their real names.

HARTWICK JR.: Can't do it.

NOWLIN: You just can't do it. Like...
BALL: Yeah, we just couldn't do it.

NOWLIN: You fall in love
with Newt as Newt.

BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Thomas is Thomas.

BALL: Yeah, but this...

HARTWICK JR.: She notices
he's sick here.

NOWLIN: I think maybe in the book
that's easier. You just read, you know?

BALL: Yeah, exactly it is.

It's just one of those things where
in a movie it just kind of spoils it.

You know, it's like,
"I don't want that."

HARTWICK JR.: That was good.

NOWLIN: This is good. We're kind of
back to the opening train now,

- except you know, we're, we don't...
- BALL: Yeah, exactly.

NOWLIN: We know
there's something unfolding.

We don't know exactly what the plan is.

BALL: Yeah, which is cool I think,
you know?

It's unlike a typical heist movie.

It's just a heist movie where they get
to really lay out all the problems

and how they cleverly get around them.

We're not so much of a heist movie,
you know,

as we are just a mission movie.

NOWLIN: It's a rescue mission.
BALL: Yeah.

And it is fun to be
a little behind the characters in a way

and we're kind of piecing together
what's happening here.

NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: Now there is a scene
that we cut out

in that scene where Newt flips out
where Lawrence

offers them this little device
to get them in.

If they can get inside, he can help them
get past the security.

But I felt like we just didn't need it.

And like you kind of, you've seen
enough of these kinds of things before

and this is kind of stems of the book

where Thomas' thumb drive, I think,

that he plants into the WICKED system
and disables their...

NOWLIN: Their weapons, yeah.

BALL: Their weapons or something.

So that's where this came from.
But yeah.

NOWLIN: Well, you need to know, like,

they can't just be walking around
to the point where...

BALL: That's my voice there saying
"Check it out." (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: Oh, really? I could tell.
BALL: I'll check it out.

NOWLIN: But I also like
that moment of where

with Lawrence not giving them the device

it's like... Oh, yeah, he's a part
of this, too, yeah.

He'll know what's going on.

NOWLIN: Yeah, but it's good
that he's a part of it.

NOWLIN: Keystone Kops here.
BALL: Yeah.

BALL: But I love
this little off-stage sound.

- (BALL IMITATING GUNFIRE)
- NOWLIN: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

BALL: It's pretty silly.

I don't know why,
but I always loved the shot of Newt.

- I just like how he looked.
- HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

NOWLIN: Let's go.

BALL: You can see his veins
just starting to show a little bit.

- He's getting sicker, you know?
- NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: Trying to track
all that was crazy.

NOWLIN: That's something else, that if
we had waited to reveal his infection

that moment in the stairwell of Teresa
noticing that he's sick.

- That's important either way.
- BALL: Yeah.

- But it did work really well actually.
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: We didn't know,
but we kind of, like,

something's going on there
and she knows.

It did work really well.

Next time. (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: So you know, there's always one
or two of those things when you're...

You get later into the process.

BALL: Yeah, you know, someone said it.
"Movies are abandoned, not finished."

NOWLIN: Right.

BALL: We basically ran out of the clock
on this one. Beyond, I think.

NOWLIN: Well, I think we learned
a lot of lessons on 1 and 2

that I think we incorporated really well
in writing this.

And then we learned still more lessons

in this one that we'll incorporate
into Maze Runner 4.

- BALL: Yeah, you never differ.
- (NOWLIN CHUCKLES)

BALL: Yeah, good luck with that.

NOWLIN: Yup.

BALL: Tell me how it goes.
NOWLIN: Yup.

BALL: I'll be there, opening day.

NOWLIN: Probably paying matinee price,
you jerk.

BALL: Yes. (CHUCKLES)

Thomas, that's on the other side
of the building.

NOWLIN: So yeah,
here things start going wrong.

BALL: Yeah, the little issue in the plan

where it wasn't
supposed to go this way...

It was important to get Newt to go
with them, too, you know?

Yeah, the group
slowly starts splitting up.

Like Return of the Jedi, you know?
All these different characters,

they kind of start splitting up,
and are they gonna come back together?

Are they gonna see each other again,

like that scene with Jorge and Brenda,
you know?

I'm worried I'm never gonna
see you again.

Hopefully you're thinking "Oh, my gosh,

"something's going to happen here
that..." You know.

NOWLIN: They're about to do
something stupid.

BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: So, I wonder if the audience
is wondering what's in that vault.

'Cause earlier, when we see Janson
stealing the serum from the vault,

that's kind of when you reveal
what's in there.

BALL: Mmm-hmm. I don't know,
it says "serum vault." (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: Does it?
BALL: I think so.

NOWLIN: Why would you
put the sign up? (LAUGHS)

BALL: It's for your question
right there.

NOWLIN: Yeah, okay.

BALL: But again, I think people
just kind of go with it.

I don't think...

HARTWICK JR.: Well, and Thomas also
has a line about the serum, so...

BALL: I think Gally even says so.
Yeah.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, "I'll get the serum
and meet you guys out back." Yeah.

BALL: I think you just go with it.

HARTWICK JR.: This is a good scene.

BALL: Yeah, this is a cool scene.

NOWLIN: So this was something...
We had outlined the heist,

the major beats of the heist.

And this was one
that was kind of missing.

And it was like
you were just riding through...

They get in the elevator. All right,
what if Janson walks in the elevator?

And then the scene
just kind of writes itself.

BALL: Yeah, this is one of those cases
where it works

because of what's come before.

Like, on its own, this is one
of the longest shots in the movie.

I just sit here in one shot, you know,
and just watch them,

you know, be uncomfortable. (CHUCKLES)

Our sound designer Ai-Ling
did a good job on the movie, too.

She'd been on all three movies.

You know, actually mixed
the movie, too, this time.

She had this really subtle,
kind of like a high-pitched whine

that's getting louder and louder
over the entire scene

so it adds to this
kind of level of tension.

As the floors go.

It is the longest elevator in history,
but who cares. You go with it.

NOWLIN: Yeah. 'Cause it's also Janson...
BALL: But what was so funny

- is right here...
- NOWLIN: The little look? Yeah.

BALL: When he says, you know,
"Thomas is here."

And then in the background you see
the two guys look at each other.

I put a little squeak
of a sound effect, you know?

- (LAUGHTER)
- It's just funny.

And I remember
in our last test screening

people just kept laughing through
the entire scene, in a good way.

NOWLIN: You're supposed to, yeah.
It's that type of scene.

BALL: An uncomfortable laughter thing,
you know?

NOWLIN: There's also Janson there
at his most Littlefinger.

BALL: Yeah.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: We give him a better death though.

NOWLIN: I liked his death.
BALL: I said we give him a better death.

NOWLIN: I said I liked
his death in Game of Thrones.

BALL: It was okay.
I thought they shortchanged him.

(HARTWICK JR. CHUCKLES)

Are you going to kill him?

Would that be a problem?

(ELEVATOR DOOR OPENS)

This is me.

BALL: Yeah, it's a good little
fun scene.

NOWLIN: Also, that little moment,
this is a little subtle thing,

but when she says,
"Are you going to kill him?"

She's obviously thinking
about the situation. She...

BALL: Thinking about the size
there in a way. Yeah.

NOWLIN: Well, she's...
It's setting up...

BALL: She's starting to.

NOWLIN: It's setting up a decision
she makes later,

she's not willing to let Thomas go,
but she needs to protect him.

She needs to make sure
he doesn't get himself killed.

BALL: There's a line...

Even in the second movie,
she says, "I can't...

"I made a deal with them
to protect you guys."

NOWLIN: Well, no, now that
she's suspecting

that he's the cure
is kind of what I mean,

is the idea that she needs to make sure
that he doesn't get himself killed.

BALL: What I'm saying also
there's a line for her.

There's a line she won't cross,
that she won't betray.

You know, at some level,
I know that they're...

That's the start of it, she's starting
to kind of feel that out I think.

And us as an audience, that there is,
regardless of what she believes in,

there is... She won't...

NOWLIN: Kill him.
BALL: Yeah. She won't kill Thomas.

NOWLIN: She'll just put them
through hell.

BALL: Mmm-hmm.

NOWLIN: But you'll live.

BALL: We even had a thing though,
that was her design

of the new procedure on Minho.

Instead of putting him
in the maze again...

It was her more humane way of...

You know, extracting the serum.

NOWLIN: It's just a little hard
to swallow. It's like, who is this girl?

- (NOWLIN LAUGHS)
- BALL: Yeah, right, exactly.

It's a little silly, but...

NOWLIN: How many PhDs
does this 22-year-old girl have?

BALL: Yeah, right.

Well, in the books,
they all designed the maze, you know?

When they're 14 or something.

I think the movie's always been a little
bit more grown-up than the books.

We've tried. And that's been
the challenge, and I think it's fine.

That line, you know, of believability.

So I think we take
the movies fairly seriously.

There's not as much fantasy
as maybe the books were. So I...

NOWLIN: I think it came
to the first movie...

BALL: We make it very real,
and especially the first movie. And...

NOWLIN: Well, you had this vision,
I think,

of this rustic kind of handmade world.

There weren't pre-existing structures
in the Glade, and so it kind of put...

BALL: Yeah, there's no holograms.
There's no underground maze.

NOWLIN: Yeah, so ideas of like
the Flat Trans and the telepathy...

BALL: Trying to make it
as believable as possible.

And that kind of echoes
throughout all the movies.

And sometimes it's hard
where some of the concepts

are difficult to portray
in such a realistic light, you know?

But we do our best.

NOWLIN: It's a nice moment.
It's kind of, "Why did you do that?"

BALL: Again, there's something
nice about, in this movie,

it has a lot of unspoken moments
between the characters, you know?

Which is nice.

NOWLIN: Well, it's something
we learned, too,

on the second movie
that it's not always about scenes.

It's about moments within scenes.

Janson, I need them alive.

- Come on. Come on!
- GUARD: All right, let's move!

GUARD 2: Yes, sir! Level three, now!

NOWLIN: He should have told the soldier,
"She doesn't tell me what to do."

BALL: (LAUGHS) Who is she?

NOWLIN: This is one of my favorite
little Gally moments. (CHUCKLES)

BALL: Yeah, he gets a laugh.
This always gets a laugh here.

And that kid was really good.

This whole group here of these extras,
they were fantastic.

They were really...
Hats off to them all.

They were really fantastic.

They sat in the train with us,
on the bus with us.

Hung off the bus upside down with them.

They were great. They never complained.

They just had a great time.

It was one of my best experiences
with extras I've had on a movie.

The score here I love, too. This is like
one of John's early scores.

He just kind of like...
Just whipped it out one day real quick.

It was just like,
"Try this out. See how it feels."

And I said "This is great."

And I put it all over this scene,

this whole reel, reel five, that's
just basically the building heist.

And then he started
kind of going and tinkering with it

and adding more stuff to it.

I said, "No, no, no." Just go back to...
Just something very simple.

And there's like a beat to it.

It has, like, a rhythm to it.

It kind of reminds me of Heat
or something in a way, you know?

NOWLIN: Sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the bank heist.

It's more of a pulse
and a kind of tone...

BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Like a pace.

BALL: See, even the way it's shot
though, the movie isn't...

it's shot very real.
It's not super slick.

It's very handheld and, you know...

The wandering cameras, you know?

It's not like...

It's got its own kind of energy
and tension to it,

you know what I mean?

Which was fun to do. I really liked this
little section of the movie, really.

NOWLIN: But how are they gonna
get out of this, you know?

BALL: Yeah.

That was another thing. That little shot
of them hiding in the closet...

NOWLIN: That was new.
That wasn't in the script, yeah.

BALL: I just felt like when we were
shooting it, I needed an out.

If we weren't gonna... I didn't know
if I was gonna use it or not,

but I needed like some way to say

for the time I was gonna be down here
with them, where were they?

And if I just left them in a place,

I feel like it gave us a little bit
of license to just, you know...

Not just have them walking the halls for
five minutes, you know what I mean?

GUARD: Got someone here.

BALL: I always saw this scene
this way, too,

where it's like you see it
from her point of view

and then you know, don't really go
into a close-up of the guys

walking closer.

There's something scary about it
from her world.

Except this shot. It's a funny shot.

Hold on!

BALL: And so there's a driver,
a stunt driver right behind Brenda here.

And that's who's driving,
looking over her shoulder.

And so that bus is really moving
and that guy really almost got hit.

It was fun. It was fun to do.

GUARD: Load up! Load up!

Let's go! Move it!

Move! Move!

ANNOUNCER: All R-16 personnel,
report to their assigned stations.

BALL: Yeah, I thought
we needed this moment, too,

just, like, Thomas finally coming
face-to-face with Ava,

that idea of "I'm gonna kill Ava Paige"
and he has the chance here in a way.

And I think it's still ambiguous

whether or not he does take a shot
or not, you know, is the question.

Before Janson starts shooting.

And this is really where everything
just spirals out of control and...

I mean, the bus is gone.
The way out is gone.

They haven't gotten Minho yet.

We don't know where he is, you know?

How are they gonna...

NOWLIN: Now they're just
shooting their way through. Right.

BALL: Yeah, and now they just...
It's just crazy.

Now they're running in the maze

instead of the Grievers chasing,
it's Janson with his army.

And it's just fun.

The walls are kind of closing in
around them, you know?

And then...

NOWLIN: This was always one of my...

I thought would be one of
the coolest moments of them just...

They lose control and they're
just screaming for Minho

and then him hearing them, you know?

It was cool.

BALL: Yeah, and building that tension of

What's gonna happen to Minho?
And then you kind of call back.

That thing he did with Teresa.

He's still got it, and you know...

Kind of a little bit of a Sarah Connor
thing from Terminator 2.

NOWLIN: It's also, for Minho,
it's the moment we've been waiting for.

Where the Minho we know and love
comes back.

BALL: Yeah, right. It'd be a shame if it
was just the guys come in and free him.

NOWLIN: Yeah. He can't be
a damsel, yeah.

BALL: Yeah, he's gotta do his part,
too, in a way,

which I thought was cool.

- And I always love this.
- NOWLIN: Oof!

BALL: (LAUGHS) I think you don't
know it, but it's cool.

NOWLIN: Sure seems like he shot him.

BALL: Well, that's what
it's supposed to... (LAUGHS)

But Minho's fast, so.

NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: He ducked.

BALL: And pay attention to the next time
you see that guard.

Yeah. That's Jake,
the actor Jake, and...

You see he's all beat up,

so there's a little off-screen story
that took place there.

NOWLIN: Minho just gave him a little...

BALL: So this is kind of calling back,
sort of those things from the book

and the second movie.

There's kind of, you know...

James described these
kind of electrical grenades.

You know, that we tried to keep.

These are non-lethal kind of weapons
that they would use.

NOWLIN: But it's also
this is how WICKED captured...

BALL: That was a real shot by the way.
He, Newt... That was the third take.

Newt really threw that thing and it just
perfectly spun out right in that spot.

It was just awesome.

- And this moment is...
- NOWLIN: But that's the same weapon...

BALL: In one of our
test screenings anyway,

was the biggest,
"took the house down" reaction.

It was amazing, you know?

Like when he just, you know,
Minho hulks out,

just there they are.

They just screamed.

They were screaming
over this entire moment here.

They couldn't even hear
what he said there.

Hopefully we'll get that in the wild,
out in the wild.

A little lighting stuff.

This little moment here
was actually meant for earlier,

but I put it later so that it felt like
Janson's closing in.

Which I thought worked really well.

And if you actually look
what Janson's seeing,

there's actually
only two guys running away.

It's not all three of them
'cause it was from earlier.

But I don't think anyone notices.

In here, in here.

(GRUNTS)

Newt, come on.

BALL: Let's see. We had another version.

- It wasn't them jumping out, right?
- NOWLIN: Sliding, yeah.

BALL: Yeah.
I had this version in Vancouver

where it was gonna be they were gonna
jump out of the window onto a sloped...

The design of the building was gonna be
kind of angled, sloped.

They were gonna slide down
this gigantic huge glass slide.

And it just turned out to be
a really complicated thing to pull off.

And so when we went to Cape Town
and we had that year off,

I found this pond outside
of the convention center.

I was like what if they did like

a Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid-style thing

and jumped out of the place?

And then we started slowly working
our way into this one shot,

you know, of just them falling
out the window and into the pond.

And I think it turned out really cool.
It was fun.

NOWLIN: There was a moment
in the test screening

where this shot hadn't been done,

so they turned into naked
white mannequins,

- just motionless dropping and...
- BALL: Hmm... (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: You know,
it's one of the hard things

about testing a movie
with so many visual effects, right?

BALL: That's why every time
you get your scores,

you always think about, you know,
you'll go up a bit

when your VFX and your mixes and your
sound and everything's done.

You know, so...

But the fact that we got
such high scores, you know...

NOWLIN: Yeah, it's worth pointing out.
We scored well with no effects.

BALL: Yeah.

Actually we had probably
a rougher test screening

than we had in the previous two
because it was...

Our post window on this was so much
shorter than our other movies.

NOWLIN: There you go, book fans.

BALL: Yeah, that's right. We added
those lines in there for them.

I know they're out of order. They're not
exactly like it was in the movie...

in the books, but they're the best
we could come up with.

NOWLIN: Well, when you grow up
you can make your own movies.

BALL: And that's the shot.

So the guys really did jump out

of something onto a 20-foot little pad.

And the camera
really did jump out with them.

And then WETA took over in CG

and kind of went CG doubles
and went into the water.

And this night, man,
it was freezing cold.

It was winter when we shot this.

It was summer in the United States,

but being on the other hemisphere,
it was winter in Cape Town.

And it was freezing cold in this water,
and they kind of...

They suffered through it.

And we had just off camera a Jacuzzi

that in between takes they
would jump into to get warm.

NOWLIN: That's a good idea.
'Cause they stay wet, you know?

BALL: But, you know,
tensions always run high on these days

and there were a lot of, you know...

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: People yelling sometimes,
including myself saying,

"Let's go faster. Come on."

But another good little moment
just to bring Gally back into the fold.

Here.

Uh-uh-uh! Don't even think about it.

Get on your knees
with your hands in the air.

You son of a bitch. (SCREAMING)

NOWLIN: That's good, the...
BALL: That little voice there.

NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: You son of a...

- That's our editor Dan doing that.
- NOWLIN: That was great.

BALL: He did a really good job in temp.

And we just ended up
using it in the movie.

Too bad he didn't have
long locks of hair

that just flew as he pulls his mask off.

NOWLIN: Sure, it would have been nice.
BALL: It would have been amazing.

NOWLIN: Unfortunately Will couldn't
grow the hair out.

BALL: This is a funny moment, too.

It's just, you know, "What!"

We could sit there and explain
everything to him, but it's better...

- To just let's leave it and move on.
- NOWLIN: Explain later.

Well, of course we're not going to.

- But that's something we kept realizing.
- BALL: See, there you can see, Jake.

He's all beat up to hell,
like you can imagine.

Minho did a number on this guy.

NOWLIN: If we get so caught up
in the story,

like even in the script, we're like
"Oh, yeah, shit, you know, we have..."

People have to keep reacting to the fact
that Gally's alive.

BALL: Right.

NOWLIN: Meanwhile...

BALL: Yeah, and that little fun
little side set piece thing.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Now, in terms of
run time, this was the one thing

that was kind of potentially
on the chopping block, you know?

BALL: Yeah.

Who knows, maybe in a couple of years
I'll look back and regret not cutting it

but it is a fun sequence
and it's fun to know what happened,

what was Brenda and Frypan's
contribution to this heist, you know?

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Yeah. Without this,
you lose Frypan completely.

BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: And it's also the idea that...

Yeah, we leave her getting chased
by a bunch of vehicles.

BALL: That I don't question.

You know, you imagine they went
off-screen and went into the tunnels.

NOWLIN: Sure.
BALL: Its fine, but...

NOWLIN: We set up the problem
of these walls.

You're now escaping
within a walled-off city.

BALL: Yeah, but you saw him
easily walk into the city... (LAUGHS)

So I just feel like you go with it.

But it is a nice little bit of fun

before the movie gets really heavy

with a lot of emotional stuff
with Newt and Teresa.

So it's nice to just have
one last little shot in the arm

of fun adrenaline victory,
you know what I mean?

A complete victory, you know?

You actually...
Thomas and the gang got out

and Brenda and the kids got out in this
kind of spectacular way, you know?

NOWLIN: It's also one of those really
sticky, memorable kind of scenes...

BALL: Yeah, and the idea was...

NOWLIN: You're not just shooting.
You're fighting, you know?

BALL: And the idea was that we
originally were gonna have Brenda say,

"Don't worry, we do this all the time."

Which is kind of the callback to...
We did something similar

with the Berg lifting the train
off the things.

NOWLIN: Yeah. It didn't really land.

BALL: Yeah, it didn't really work,

but hopefully it comes across
that it's very...

It's somewhat similar to what we set up
in the opening sequence with the train.

- And if you look closely, there's an X.
- NOWLIN: Or we're just out of ideas.

- BALL: Maybe.
- (NOWLIN CHUCKLES)

There's an X on the ground.

Only I regret calling it out,
but whatever...

Is that when Brenda stopped the bus,
I wish I had the cars pulling up

and not already sitting there.

- So, this is kind of convenient.
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: (LAUGHING) They're sitting
right where the X is.

I don't know, we just ran out of time.

NOWLIN: No. I wouldn't have
noticed that if you didn't.

BALL: Yeah, you kind of go with it,

but if you really think about it,
it's a little convenient.

NOWLIN: It is like
where they hijack the Berg.

You're going to one point where
you know that you have an advantage.

That's fun.

BALL: So, we really did
hang the kids up.

We didn't do this.
That's obviously a CG bus up there,

but we actually did
hang the bus up 90 degrees,

and all these kids were in there,
for real.

Very uncomfortable, but they're wired in

and we just shot this sequence.

Shit.

BALL: A lot of the city, it should
be known, that's all CG behind 'em.

Obviously, this is CG.

NOWLIN: (CHUCKLES) These poor kids.

BALL: You see their hair
and all that stuff. It's really real.

Some people think we're just cheating.
We actually really did it.

It's only five feet off the ground,

but they've been hanging up
for 10 minutes at a time.

And you say,
"Okay, guys, just one more time!"

And then we do,
"One more take! One more take!

"Just keep the camera rolling!

"Okay, let him down!"
And they all have to get off

and let the blood rush
back to their head.

NOWLIN: Hurry, Frypan. (CHUCKLES)

BALL: Yeah, it's just a fun sequence,
I think.

Hold on to something!

(ALL SCREAMING)

(SCREAMING CONTINUES)

(THUDS)

BALL: And we really dropped the bus.
We really did drop this thing.

And this is actually
the same wall that we used.

We shot Thomas and them
when they're on the wall.

And we really towed a bus in there
and hung it upside down.

And hung it up 90 degrees
and actually dropped it.

No one was in it, of course.
But yeah, it was fun.

And that was an accident.
That out-of-service sign. (LAUGHS)

It was not planned. It just worked out.

I had it planned to come on in this shot
where I had control over it.

So, while the bus
was hanging 90 degrees...

It's too hard to get to it.

No one was allowed to go near the bus
in case something happens or falls.

So, we had to go
and pre-program the sign.

Of course, we turned off all the lights
and all that stuff.

And we dropped the bus
and something shorted out,

- and the light turned on.
- (LAUGHTER)

And that was one of those perfect little

serendipitous things
that was meant to be.

And that's our first real view
of the vault room now.

But we have some other scenes
where we got to see it in there.

And this is cool, too,
just seeing him and her.

They don't like each other.

He obviously already decided
he's not with her anymore.

She's given up and he's not going to.

NOWLIN: I couldn't hear.
Did he still say his line?

- "They're not out yet?"
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: Okay, cool.

That's another good throw though.

HARTWICK JR.: This is the last location
we ever found, I think.

BALL: Yeah, it was a tough one.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

BALL: It turned out okay.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, it's cool-looking.

BALL: Just looking for that place
where they're hiding.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: On the run still.

BALL: Anywhere we could go
that kind of suggests that...

They weren't outside the walls,
they're still inside.

We had to do something that was bright,
but still secretive somehow.

And it's nice to...
We actually struggled...

Talked about cutting this scene, too,

but it's nice to have Minho and Newt

actually have a moment together,
you know?

NOWLIN: Yeah. And Minho and Gally,

it's like you gotta appreciate Minho
back with his friends, you know?

BALL: Mmm-hmm. Yeah, it's good.

How long has he been like this?

He'll be okay.
We just gotta get to Brenda.

She's got the serum.

Come on, let's go.

Hey, Newt.

Come on, bud.
We gotta get you up. Let's go.

- (NEWT GRUNTS)
- Whoa, whoa, whoa!

- You okay?
- NEWT: Yeah.

NOWLIN: But this would have been
where we would have revealed

the infection if we had held it off.

BALL: Yeah, right.
We would have shot this scene here

where he's like,
"What's going on, Newt?"

And then he would have shown it.

And then all three of them
would find out here,

and then suddenly
after having that victory we get,

oh, my gosh, a new development,

which could have been really good,
but at the same time, who knows?

It might have been maybe the fact
that knowing Newt's sick earlier

- helps people go with it.
- NOWLIN: Yeah, maybe it's too late.

Maybe people don't want
a new development, you know?

BALL: We never got really a chance
to test it, so we'll never know.

Yeah, the moment where she...

I actually like that
we don't see it at first.

We just see her reaction.

And let's just prolong this,
the moment later.

BRENDA: Lawrence!

BALL: Hopefully this reads. I do miss...

There's one scene that
I miss that we cut,

and it was Brenda calling Thomas
on the walkies and seeing,

and basically explaining
that Lawrence is gone

and going into detail
about what's going on

and Gally being surprised by that.

We cut it out here and just says
Lawrence is gone, that no one's here.

And we just cut to where Lawrence is.

I think people go with it,
but it isn't...

It certainly isn't as good of a throw
as the other one, but...

Again, it was just,
unfortunately it was a...

a pretty big pressure
to cut the movie down.

And it's already
two hours and 21 minutes

so it's the longest movie
of all of them.

NOWLIN: It's the same sort of transition
that's basically question/answer.

Where's Lawrence? Here he is.

What's he doing?
We're about to find out.

BALL: It works.

If you ask the question,
it's just it'd be nice to see

I think Gally's reaction saying,
"What do you mean he's gone?"

There's something cool about that,
this wasn't quite...

NOWLIN: Gally's not in on it,
I think, is important.

BALL: Which I think still comes across,
but it's not as effective.

NOWLIN: But Walton's so much fun.

BALL: Yeah, Walton, man. He is awesome.

He is so great to work with.

He just really throws himself
into this stuff.

And actually the first night...

'Cause he had that hood on his head
and he was walking through that tunnel.

When he's first walking through.

And there was a really low beam
and he couldn't see it

and he smacked himself
right in the forehead.

You know, gashed his head.

It was bleeding and he was like, "Ah!"

We're like, "Oh, no, what happened?"

And we didn't know what we're gonna do

and he says,
"All right, let's go again, come on."

And so for all these scenes, basically,
there's this welt on Walton's forehead,

- which kind of blends into the makeup.
- NOWLIN: It works, yeah...

BALL: But he just acted through it, man.

He's a trooper, man.
He's just fantastic.

And he just really commits and he got
this whole crowd wound up.

And he was like in between takes

and he was just keeping them,
kind of, you know... He was just great.

He's an awesome guy to work with.

- Everybody, actually.
- NOWLIN: Just in general, actually.

I think he played it
a little differently.

Remember when we first cast him...

We were watching The Hateful Eight
and I think it was just...

- We're writing dialogue.
- BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: It was a really big performance
and he came in

- and did it really kind of quiet and...
- BALL: Differently, yeah.

Determined.

But it's cool.
It's draws attention to it

and it's kind of sets up
what his real plan was.

His ultimate agenda
was just to, you know,

his time is up, but he's gonna
go out with a bang.

That's all CG behind him, everything.
It's kind of crazy.

It's a cool little music cue, too,
from John.

Has a good, building tension

that's just like, oh, my God,
something huge is about to happen.

And I love that he's just kind of...

NOWLIN: But this is the payoff of,

"I'll help you get past the cameras
and the security.

- "You put this device in... "
- BALL: Right.

NOWLIN: But it also gives him
control of their guns.

BALL: Right, which I think comes across.
NOWLIN: So now he can do what he wanted.

Yeah, it does, but I mean...

BALL: That was the intent,
that he was looking for an opportunity.

Thomas presented him an opportunity.

He used Thomas to get access to the guns

and now he's gonna blow everything up
with this huge gigantic explosion.

(LAUGHS)

- (EXPLOSIONS)
- (ALL SCREAMING)

NOWLIN: This was kind of
Gally's moment of...

BALL: And the sirens go on.

NOWLIN: This is kind of
the culmination here.

It's the idea that he had a new family.

BALL: Yeah, yeah.

NOWLIN: But they weren't
what he thought he was.

HARTWICK JR.: I miss the line though,
you know, "Gally, come with us."

NOWLIN: It was a blocking thing, right?
But I mean, it was the...

At the end of the first movie,
Thomas says, "Gally, come with us,"

and Gally refuses.

And now he goes with his friends and...

By this point in the story,
he's kind of proven himself and...

He gets to go with them.

BALL: Yeah, I mean, now basically,
Dylan says, "Gally, come on."

It's kinda much more subtle,

but it is the idea
of Thomas telling him "Let's go."

NOWLIN: I think maybe
what doesn't work about "come with us"

is it doesn't feel like
as big of a decision.

Like, of course he would go with them.
I think we're there already.

BALL: That's the problem, yeah.

We didn't come up to a place
where we never had a scene

where he says,
"Well, we'll go our separate ways."

NOWLIN: Whereas in the Maze Runner,
we literally

had the line that people crossed
to stand with Thomas, you know?

BALL: That's why it didn't work
on the day.

It just felt unearned or something.

And this is the culmination.
Thomas is the cure.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: Which is a tricky thing to do.

NOWLIN: It's the one idea that really
stinks of "YA." The one, you know?

But it also gives us so much.
It gives us so much.

- It's the answer.
- BALL: It's the books, too, yeah.

NOWLIN: It is the books, but it's...
It's also very different though.

In the book, the idea that Thomas is...

BALL: They had to dissect his brain
or something like that.

NOWLIN: Well, yeah, they need to kill
and it's still the idea of sacrifice.

But I didn't feel in the books that
there was as much of Thomas wrestling

with the implications of that.

Basically, that means that
they can use him as bait

to get him in, so he can plant
the device and turn on the gun,

- so they can attack WICKED.
- BALL: Right.

NOWLIN: And in this case,
I think it's interesting that

when he does find out
right when he's losing Newt,

which is also from the books,

that it creates this implication of
what is my responsibility, you know?

BALL: Yeah, right.
I can actually save...

And he starts to come over
and see Teresa's side.

If you can save the world,
do you, you know?

NOWLIN: Teresa's story at
the end of the second movie...

BALL: He needed his version of that.

NOWLIN: He needs to lose
someone close to him.

BALL: He needed to lose someone
to the virus that he could've helped.

As a movie,
it was a more efficient way to get...

NOWLIN: Did you put a Wilhelm in there?
BALL: Yeah, I put a Wilhelm in there.

I love that.

And there's a CG guy flying off
with the smoke on him and everything.

It's awesome.

But this stuff, we shot it
in four hours. It was crazy.

We took over the street
and just went crazy.

NOWLIN: This was something
you couldn't have done in Vancouver.

BALL: No. And there's another
big giant drone shot I just love.

Everything's in CG
except the buildings, basically.

So, it was a clean plate.

So, all the crowds, all the smoke,
all the explosions, it's all CG.

NOWLIN: Maybe it's because
drones are kind of still somewhat new.

I'm still trying to
get used to drone shots in movies.

I get used to
the movement of a crane, you know,

and what you can do with a crane.

Suddenly, the camera's doing things
that seem impossible, you know?

We're not gonna make it.

Wait, what are you talking about?

- Don't let them get away!
- (GUNFIRE)

Just take the others.
Get everybody out...

while you still can.

No.

Brenda.

I'm not leaving you.

Okay?

So forget it.

BALL: I thought it was interesting.

We shot this in one take, basically,
one shot, you know?

Again, not doing much coverage and stuff

and just letting it play
kind of in silhouette, you know?

With the war raging out behind them.
I thought it was cool.

NOWLIN: And it helps
Giancarlo's moment here.

You need that "all is lost."

He's coming in at just the right moment
to give the right...

BALL: If they don't have a way out,
they're not gonna make it.

Then that thing that we set up earlier.
You got a long way to go, you know?

A long road ahead of you.

NOWLIN: And hopefully,
if the audience tracks

before things go wrong in the heist,

they all should've been on that bus.

You know, they should all be there,

get on the Berg,
fly away and everything's fine.

The fact that Minho wasn't where
they thought he would be

is what separated them
and now they gotta go back for him.

BALL: Yeah, and then
we got to bring back Barry.

It was just a scheduling thing.

I couldn't get Harriet and...

Or Kat and Nathalie back.

For some reason,
they weren't available this day.

And I wanted them to be in there, too.

So, the group that we left behind
comes back to help, too, you know?

I think it is powerful to have Barry,

who was against this suicide mission.

He comes back and sees that, you know,
they needed my help.

I'm gonna do it, you know?

NOWLIN: Look at what Thomas did.

BALL: Yeah,
it's not just one man anymore.

It's a bunch of people.

It's the thing he fights and dies for,
you know?

NOWLIN: In fact, these kids
would've been lost

no matter what if Thomas hadn't come

and now he's stuck in there.

We owe it to him to do what we can
to get him out.

BALL: I love Barry, too.
He's great to work with.

Actually Giancarlo,
all of them, everybody.

I'm really lucky to have
such great actors that

give everything
and do such a good job with everything.

NOWLIN: Really hard to give
everyone their due.

So many characters.

BALL: We do it as well as we can though
within the time we have though.

NOWLIN: While focusing and making sure
that the priority is the story.

BALL: It's really Thomas
and Teresa's story with Newt.

NOWLIN: Really, yeah.
BALL: Really, that's the story.

BALL: This time.

But, fortunately, every movie has
their own little feature, I think.

It's like Minho is kinda featured
in the first and second movie

and he gets to...

He comes back in the story of course
in this one in a big way,

and I think he makes a big impact.

But, this Gally guy has a nice role
in this movie and then...

Hopefully, it'll be
one of those movie series

that everyone has their favorites.

I'm a Temple of Doom guy.

NOWLIN: Like you said,
when you put all three together,

everybody has their arc
and their moment.

This is an important moment.

We get a lot of tweets about this,
about the fact that Minho and Newt

would've known each other longer

than pretty much
any other relationship in the story.

HARTWICK JR.: That's the shame about

having to cut out
that other scene though

when he says about how Minho saved him.

That "Thank you, Minho"
would've meant so much more.

NOWLIN: Yeah, I would've liked to have
given Minho one more line there, but...

BALL: I think it works. Simple. Clean.

Not a lot needs to be said.

And I always
like this moment of him drifting off.

I like this idea that, you know,
something about lights

to infected people, as they're turning,
the sun starts to hurt or something.

They kinda get mesmerized by lights
or something.

Thought it was cool.

NOWLIN: Thomas is really,
really good in this, this scene.

BALL: Yeah, he did a really good job.

We'll see what happens
to some of the book fans.

I know I changed Newt's death,

but I think for the better,
for in terms of movies.

This is where the "Tell me, please"
fit in, was here.

NOWLIN: We've introduced this idea
that WICKED has been

harvesting these kids for serum
that can buy you time.

And they're looking for a cure.

We have to do something with that.

There is a way to save Newt.

If you're just inches away,
it's more tragic.

You were minutes away
from being able to save him,

which means that Thomas would never...

It would never make sense for him
to intentionally shoot him.

BALL: Yeah, it just would have
never worked

to just say, "Okay, I'll shoot you."

There's just no way to make it work.

NOWLIN: There's something
more interesting

about, like, Newt makes his own choice.

BALL: Yes, right.

Newt sacrifices himself
to help the group

and help get Minho out
and all that stuff.

And Thomas also learns a valuable lesson
from his friend's sacrifice.

And that's what
kind of changes him as a person.

NOWLIN: Exactly, yeah. And he did
what he came here to do and...

BALL: I think we milk it
as much as we can, this...

Also the love the two...
That he has for each other.

They have for each other, you know?

They'll do anything.

In fact, I always kinda felt that
even reading the book.

I just never saw Thomas' character,

no matter what,
he would never shoot his friend, period.

Even if he was chained up attacking him,
I say he wouldn't do it.

I just couldn't see it happening.

NOWLIN: It comes
from a completely hopeless place.

But if the movie and the books are,
they're about a search for a cure.

You wanna collapse those threads,
you know?

BALL: So hopefully, the fans
will somewhat

at least forgive us and hopefully we...

While different,
it's still just as effective for them.

NOWLIN: I just hope they, I don't know,
think critically about it.

TERESA: (ON PA, ECHOING)
Can you hear me?

BALL: And this was
kind of an interesting idea.

NOWLIN: This was another
post-Vancouver idea, I think.

- Was it?
- BALL: Uh... No, no, definitely not.

I remember we were all very worried
about this scene actually, 'cause...

It's on the edge of being cheesy,
but I think it works okay.

Any kind of "You are the one" is...

But also we're kind of the idea that
in the books...

Teresa can talk to Thomas in his head.
They have telepathic kinda talking.

We obviously
weren't gonna do that in the movies.

But this kind of feels like that
in a weird way.

NOWLIN: Well, that's why
I pushed the idea, originally.

It was just the moment of like...
You're totally in that moment.

And suddenly out of nowhere,
Thomas can hear me.

BALL: In some of these places,

we used some of the Thomasses
from the first movie

where, when he goes into his dreams
and he hears Teresa's voice.

NOWLIN: Really?
BALL: Yeah.

BALL: So, some of that stuff is in here.

That "Thomas, Thomas, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?"

NOWLIN: That's cool.

BALL: So, we're trying our best
to bring all that stuff back.

But being subtle about it.

And this day, for whatever reason,

we had this huge wind,
like 70-mile an hour gust, or something.

So, this whole scene
with all this wind and fire and smoke,

it just is.

And it just was fantastic.

- It looks really great.
- NOWLIN: Fortuitous.

BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: I think Dylan
did a good job just listening

and taking in what she's saying.

I wanna hear this.
Let me try to turn up my volume.

Newt?

BALL: Obviously we get into Newt
that's not Newt anymore.

And this was take one of this moment
that I never got back to.

I kept shooting more takes and...
This is the one.

And he actually doesn't have
the right contact lenses in actually.

But I just didn't care.

'Cause we had
different stages of contact lenses.

But just his look on his face
and everything,

it was just so chilling.

I thought it was great.

NOWLIN: Just kind of unaware, you know?
Oblivious.

BALL: It's not him, you know?
It just so felt like someone else.

And then this line, originally,
he said, "Tommy, help me."

But I put in "Tommy, kill me,"
which was from the books.

I'm trying to help
keep the fan thing down, you know?

I think it works still.

NOWLIN: There's something just brutal
about a gun.

I think it feels like an execution.

BALL: I am teasing a little bit
with the audience here.

The gun comes out and I think

maybe that's gonna happen
and I knock it away.

I like the idea that even the book fans
don't know what's gonna happen.

And, you know, it might be to...

Sometimes they'll be mad at me
for not going the same way.

They don't know what's gonna happen,
but that's the fun of movies.

It's like why would you wanna go into
a movie knowing what's gonna happen?

Part of it's being swept up in it
and enjoying the ride and...

NOWLIN: I think this is great.
This, I don't know.

BALL: Yeah, it's good stuff I think.

I think it'll just be judged against
what they're expecting, you know?

So we'll see how it goes.
Hopefully it'll be okay.

NOWLIN: Oof!

BALL: And this was...
Basically we shot Chuck

in the first movie when he got stabbed.

And in this movie we, instead of
shooting Newt, we stab him, you know?

That's how we kinda went with it.

NOWLIN: (LAUGHS)
That's a good way to, yeah.

We used that card and now we have to...

BALL: Yeah, put it elsewhere.
NOWLIN: Yeah.

We did though.
That was kind of our strategy

of just, tell the three stories.

Then we had all these ideas
from the books,

like where can we fit stuff in?

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.

NOWLIN: Oh!

BALL: Yeah,
it's definitely an adaptation.

It's not a... Whatever.

NOWLIN: Think of it
more of an interpretation.

BALL: Yeah, an interpretation
I guess would be a good way to put it.

NOWLIN: Inspiration.
BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: Yeah, the truth is
we do start with the books.

I mean, every time we start
with what's there

and what opportunities.

BALL: And the books still exist.
We're not overriding the books.

It's just, for a movie
we wanna make sure

that people that haven't read the books,

that it makes sense and tracks well
for them, too, as an experience.

But, yeah, poor Newt.

And if you look there closely on his
side of his face, a little tear drops.

Newt played a good, good, good...

It's a good death there I thought.

NOWLIN: That's a real tear?

BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Okay.

BALL: A lot of people
crying in this movie. (LAUGHS)

- It's like they're crying everywhere.
- NOWLIN: It's just so sad.

BALL: Yeah, to me that was the
money shot. I told Dylan right there.

I'm right next to him and I'm like,
okay, that's the money, dude. Cut.

(LAUGHS) You know, and I'm thinking
I'm actually in the take there.

It was just that look on his face,
it was so good.

And he was exhausted.

I mean,
they were fighting the whole time

and we're running out of time
I remember and he...

Dylan was actually getting
a little frustrated with things,

but, you know,
it gets that way sometimes,

but it's cool 'cause that's what we do.

We push things and hopefully get to
places that are unexpected.

NOWLIN: So this is so interesting
for Rosa because she's telling him,

you know, you can't save everyone.

I think the audience knows
she's thinking about herself and now...

She's cured and Newt's gone.

This is not what she meant,
but, you know?

BALL: Yeah...

No dialogue. Nothing needs to be said.

You know, I think we did that early on.
It was gonna be this...

I always had this image in my head

of them being separated
for some reason, like...

The equivalent of being
on the edge of a canyon, you know?

- And I liked...
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: That, you know,
you can still be there with him.

NOWLIN: She knows. He knows.
They all know why he can't.

That's the other good thing about
Teresa with the big broadcast message.

Everyone needed to hear it.

BALL: Yeah, it was the best way to...

NOWLIN: Did you cut
all your close-up of the...

BALL: No, not anymore.
NOWLIN: Bastard.

BALL: She has it in her hand.
NOWLIN: Yeah.

(GUNFIRE CONTINUES)

BALL: Originally we had Teresa
sitting here waiting,

and then Ava walks up.

And then Ava says you gotta leave.

And then a guy comes up
and says, "Last transport's leaving."

- And Ava says, "Teresa, go."
- NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: So originally we had Teresa
waiting for him, but...

NOWLIN: She also said,
"Meet me on the roof."

It was the idea that there's transport
leaving from the roof.

'Cause Teresa takes him there later...

BALL: But I think,
to really get it over with...

NOWLIN: Move it, yeah.
BALL: Yeah, exactly.

It did feel like unfortunately
you didn't want to stop again.

You know, you wanted to keep it going,
but I do miss seeing Teresa waiting.

NOWLIN: Yeah, this is a moment
where I think

he might actually pull the trigger,

more so than with Newt.

This is one of, I think,
Dylan's best scene.

BALL: Yeah.
I don't know how Dylan does it,

but basically for the eight hours
that we were shooting this scene...

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: He was crying the entire time.

And just as an actor
he's gotta be there, you know?

He's gotta get himself in that place,
and he can't leave,

so it's kind of exhausting for him.

NOWLIN: There was like some kind of
construction or noise happening, too?

BALL: Yeah, there was like construction
stuff happening in the background

'cause this is a convention center.

(LAUGHING) There was some kind of
a convention thing

setting up in the background.

But anyway, yeah, it's interesting,

working with actors that,
you know, they really commit.

And I'm talking to Dylan, like,

I'm giving him direction and stuff
and his face is just puffy and...

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, swollen.
BALL: And swollen...

And he has tears
and he's like, "Okay, yeah, sure."

And it's still Dylan.

But he's just in this place
that he's gotta stay to be authentic.

And you just love working with people
that commit so much.

NOWLIN: I mean,
for everything he went through

and then to come back
and do a great job.

HARTWICK JR.: Wow.
NOWLIN: So, what my hope

is that people
have kind of forgotten about Janson.

BALL: No, it always works.

I remember in the test screenings,
there's always a big groan of... "Oh!"

You know, Janson. And hopefully
we set up that he hates her now.

With two scenes of that now.

NOWLIN: Well, it makes enough sense
that he would wanna control Thomas

and control the cure on its own.

This next reveal of he's infected.

BALL: I think it works fine.

NOWLIN: That's a nice little, yeah.

It's actually kinda nice
not teasing it throughout.

- 'Cause you do that with Newt anyway.
- BALL: Mmm-hmm.

NOWLIN: But it sucks Newt dies,
and he's gonna get the cure.

- That sucks.
- BALL: Right.

BALL: It's tricky though.

It's like, in 30 minutes,
we kill four people in this movie.

NOWLIN: Yeah, that's a blood bath.

BALL: I mean,
it's called The Death Cure.

NOWLIN: But I mean Ava,
Janson, you know...

Teresa and Newt
I think are the big ones.

BALL: Yeah.

Hopefully we've earned it.
That's the question, you know?

NOWLIN: Yeah. Boy.

BALL: This was cool, too. I like just...

NOWLIN: That's freaking crazy.
They're taking buildings down?

Are those buildings up to code?

- BALL: No.
- (HARTWICK JR. LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: The sound transition there
was really cool.

BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: That was a nice...

BALL: That's where I use
a lot of that stuff in the first movie.

"Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,
can you hear me, hear me?"

- It's that kind of stuff from his dream.
- NOWLIN: Right.

NOWLIN: Yeah, so structurally
between Newt's death...

BALL: And this moment, by the way,
we do it in every single movie.

Thomas passes out

- and wakes up to find Teresa over him.
- NOWLIN: And Teresa's over him.

- That's interesting.
- BALL: Every single movie we've done it.

NOWLIN: Yeah, I think even in
the second movie she even points out

we have to stop meeting like this.

BALL: Yeah, right.

NOWLIN: What if Thomas said that here?
No, it's too jokey.

BALL: Yeah, at this moment,
yeah, unfortunately.

NOWLIN: But the hard thing,
you talked about this a lot

is going from Newt's death
and then to Ava waiting,

Thomas shows up. Then Ava gets killed.

Thomas gets knocked out, wakes up.

There's a lot of stop and start,
stop and start.

I think you did a really good job

just making it feel like
a continuous movement.

BALL: Yeah. I mean the issues
are still the issues.

But hopefully we did
as deft a job as we could

to keep it flowing interestingly.

We'll keep you alive.

- Just.
- (GRUNTS)

And in return...

you will give life to the rest of us.

The ones we choose to save, anyway.

NOWLIN: As far as monologuing goes,
this is pretty good.

BALL: We cut a little bit
of his monologue,

but, you know, you gotta do it. (LAUGHS)

There's a reason it's a cliché is
because it's necessary sometimes.

NOWLIN: But the cliché for me is he's
got the gun on him and he chooses

when he could be pulling the trigger.

What he's talking about is
why he's not killing him.

Why it doesn't make sense
for him to kill him.

I always like that line of
the Flare burning itself out.

BALL: Yeah, which is there is an end
to this at some point, you know?

Who's left standing?

And that's what
gets into this character.

That's what separates I think WICKED
from say, Janson. Janson's selfish.

He's thinking about himself,
his survival.

Teresa's thinking
about others' survival,

you know what I mean?

NOWLIN: That's also just very human.

BALL: She represents the good of WICKED,
you know what I mean?

NOWLIN: Yeah, WICKED is good,
but Janson is bad.

BALL: Yeah.

NOWLIN: But this idea,
I think, from Janson's point of view,

in his mind, it's almost like he's
more deserving of survival because...

BALL: He's fought for it, yeah.
NOWLIN: He is willing to do

what is necessary, you know?

It's not the people
who were born with a gift.

It's the people
who do what they have to do to make...

BALL: Yeah, hopefully, this is where
people start turning around on Teresa,

and like, you know,
are cheering her on now.

She's come to the light side.

Some of this is stunt double.
Some of this is Kaya.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. That's Kaya.

- BALL: But this is stunt double.
- (ALL LAUGHING)

THOMAS: Teresa!

NOWLIN: Yeah, good.

BALL: Now the reality, though,

is Janson's not doing
any of the work there.

The stunt girl's doing it and he's just
got his hand on her, but it looks

really convincing.

This was fun, too.
I've never done a fight scene.

If you notice,
there's not a lot of cuts.

Like Asian fight movies,
they don't cut a lot.

So, it feels authentic and real.

And so, we tried to do that
as much as we could

to do long takes for all these fights
to make them just as real as possible.

And it means
you have to do a lot of takes.

It means they actually
end up hitting each other sometimes.

It's exhausting.

But it's fun to do.

I'd like to do more one day.

NOWLIN: There was a moment
at the end of Scorch Trials

where it felt like they could have
had more of an altercation.

I remember even
talking like we saved that.

Like, they're gonna have a big fight
at the end of the third movie.

BALL: They do it here.

And it goes for a while.
It's not just this fight.

It's like they still gotta go into
the Crank lab and see to his demise.

NOWLIN: Ooh.
BALL: And hopefully we've

set up this whole thing with these guys.
They've arrived.

NOWLIN: They've showed up, yeah.

BALL: You've seen
out the window, hopefully,

that wave of destruction
is getting closer and closer.

And we've set up that the buildings are
coming down around them, blah, blah...

NOWLIN: But also,
this is their real target anyway.

- Oh. Are they using the guns from the...
- BALL: Well, that's the idea.

You don't realize
is that gun that they have

was repurposed
with some other WICKED thing.

It has like a WICKED symbol on it.

They kinda repurposed it and...

It's just a little side detail thing
that, you know, these guys have been...

And that's why they have the masks.

They've been fighting WICKED
for a while.

NOWLIN: So, this hopefully comes across.

Janson would not
intentionally shoot Thomas.

BALL: Yeah, he tried to shoot Teresa.
NOWLIN: He's trying to shoot Teresa.

BALL: And Thomas got in the way of her.

NOWLIN: Thomas does for her
what Chuck did for him

- at the end of the first movie.
- BALL: That's the idea.

BALL: Hopefully, that's obvious.

NOWLIN: Yeah, it's hard.

Blocking-wise,
I could see it was a challenge.

BALL: Yeah, it's tricky.

He says, "Teresa," gets in front of her
and pulls it out and he shoots.

NOWLIN: It's also like...
It's not great. (LAUGHS)

Find something.
Here. Here!

Just put pressure on it. Hold it.

(LABORED BREATHING)

You gotta go.

You gotta go.

BALL: Yeah, it's just ultimately
the culmination of their story, really.

It's like they're back together again
essentially, you know, on the same side.

But is Thomas gonna make it now?

But she does have the cure.

I always liked this stuff, too.
I like the feel of it.

NOWLIN: Teresa hasn't
necessarily changed her mind

from where she was
at the end of the second movie.

She's still protecting the cure,

except now that means protecting Thomas
rather than betraying him.

BALL: But I think there is...

She came closer to Thomas
a little bit, too.

You know, he went the other way,
she went the other way.

And then here they kinda
come back to the middle a little bit.

They both changed each other
a little bit, I think.

NOWLIN: But I think through Janson,
she sees kind of a darker reality.

BALL: Like, do you regret it?
Sometimes, but I'd do it again.

NOWLIN: I think that's where she was,
so I think she...

There was a part of her that regretted.

BALL: But maybe there's a different way,
you know?

NOWLIN: Yeah, of course, yeah.

BALL: Yeah, but I always liked this.

I think we came up with this basic scene
pretty late in the game.

HARTWICK JR.: Yeah. Yeah.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

NOWLIN: Well,
it was always the question.

We knew we would kill him with Cranks.

HARTWICK JR.: 'Cause it was a button
for her to press.

NOWLIN: Or something, yeah.

BALL: And it just wasn't
very interesting.

NOWLIN: Well, there were two things.

Which is one,
we wanted to give it to Thomas.

The actual killing.

Teresa has so much to do here.

BALL: Which came from Dylan,
I remember.

Dylan has good insights, too.

And he's like, "I feel like
I'm not doing anything in this scene."

And we kinda looked at it
and said you're right.

And so we started thinking about
how do we give it to Thomas?

Which is right.

And then it was about pushing a button,
and it just wasn't very interesting.

Let the Cranks loose,
so he came up with this gag of like...

NOWLIN: So, he wouldn't know
what button does what.

BALL: And it's a little bit
of a stretch,

the breaking the window thing,
but I think it works.

If the audience is with us here,
they're gonna go with it.

I think you have something of mine.

BALL: (CHUCKLES)
Look how crazy he is in this one.

I told him.
He's like he's a little off now.

He's a little bit further along
in his like deterioration.

Maybe in another couple of hours,
he'll be where Newt was, you know?

But he's just a little crazy.

He enjoyed it.

NOWLIN: If you watch the movie
the second time,

knowing that he's sick
throughout everything else,

the moment when he goes in
and sees the serum is gone

has kind of a different meaning.
There's a different desperation there.

He's good here, too.

He's a little, you know, off.

There's no character who can't
justify their actions in this movie.

That's a good look.

He just kind of like
disengages with her.

BALL: Yeah, he's like, "Okay.
I know what I have to do now."

Like this shot, too.

The choice. What's he gonna do?

And, hopefully, you think
he's really gonna shoot her.

Okay. Fine.

Have it your way.

(GUN COCKS)

THOMAS: Janson.

(GRUNTS)

Missed, you little shit.

Did I?

(GLASS CRACKING)

BALL: And it's all part of the plan.
(SCATTING DRAMATIC MUSIC)

And Janson gets his demise.

NOWLIN: It's the right death for him,
I think.

BALL: It's that, or he pops up
in the end when the building collapses.

(ALL LAUGHING)

(BALL MIMICS JANSON YELLING)

BALL: It wouldn't work.
NOWLIN: Are you kidding?

BALL: We want it to be
emotional with Teresa.

No, he won't do that.

There's a larger scene here.

They originally were
gonna go to the elevator

and it was gonna fall.

I always liked it,
but anyway, it got cut.

This is the first shot
that ever basically came to me

when we were
talking about this third movie

was Teresa carrying a wounded Thomas
through chaos.

At the time for me,
it was an underground

lab thing or something.
It was this big kind of place.

But we ended up
winding up on the roof here.

But like that was the shot for me,

and it's coming up here in a second,
the actual shot.

I mean, it was pretty much right out
of my freaking brain,

what I kind of imagined.

It's like
her on a walkway and everything.

It's like fire bursting all around them.

Always building up to. It's coming up.

NOWLIN: Let's see if I can guess it.

BALL: And it's like
they're racing towards us.

It's like if we could
get to that place in the movie

where Teresa's trying to save Thomas,

I feel like that would be
a good close to this movie.

If we wind up there, along with
everything else we had to do...

If we could earn that, it would be
a satisfying kind of...

Close to all the drama of the series.

NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.

BALL: It's interesting,
we did have a set here

and we had a lot of fire
all around them.

That wasn't all the fire.

We had some of the fire CG,
but all the embers and stuff are CG.

There's kind of a beauty to it
in a weird way.

That's kinda cool.

NOWLIN: I've never seen it
with all that fire and embers.

BALL: Yeah, it's pretty, you know?

It wasn't planned.

- We'll see how people react to it. Yeah.
- NOWLIN: A kiss?

BALL: We were doing a couple of takes
where they just said their lines.

Smiled and hugged or whatever.

And we had somewhere,
I was like, "Let's just kiss."

Finally, these characters deserve it.
After all this.

These movies,
they deserve one last kiss goodbye.

It's not like a super romantic...

NOWLIN: Ooh, that looks great.

BALL: Yeah.

It's pretty cool.

HARTWICK JR.: Good score here.

BALL: Yeah, this is a really tricky cue.

NOWLIN: One of the big
music moments for John, really.

BALL: And well, the trick was
our first cue, which wasn't working,

and me and John
would argue about it a lot.

He wasn't playing Teresa.
He was playing the situation.

NOWLIN: Was it that shot, Wes?
BALL: No.

BALL: It's this one.
This one right here.

Right there. (EXCLAIMS)

I swear like right out of my mind
from all in Vancouver time.

But anyway, John, it was like, you know,

it was when he started to play Teresa,
the girl who's trying to save the boy.

You know, that's when it suddenly
started to work emotionally.

And it wasn't just about the danger.

It's about, she's doing everything
she can to save him and he's gonna...

Or he's gonna die.

NOWLIN: It's also the moment that...
It's people that she betrayed.

It's a moment
where they're rooting for her.

You know, they're, "Come on, Teresa."
That's really just satisfying.

BALL: And the kind of
desperation of it all.

This is my favorite shot
in the movie actually.

NOWLIN: Really? Oof.

BALL: That's great.
NOWLIN: (LAUGHS) Oh, that's cool. Damn.

BALL: Dylan's doing a great...
Everyone's doing a great job,

but Kaya just did
fantastic on this scene.

I mean, you just feel it in her face.

NOWLIN: There's a way to look at this
movie where she is the protagonist.

BALL: Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. And then poor Teresa.

NOWLIN: It's gonna crush her.

Oh, I always think
it's gonna land on her.

Teresa!

BALL: Yeah, and then, you know,
time sort of slows.

All the sound goes away
and it's just the two of them, you know?

NOWLIN: I'm very curious
about this shot coming up.

BALL: But yeah, her demise.
And this is like in the book.

Basically she pushes him out of the way
and a boulder drops on her.

But we wanted to do something
that was a little bit more...

NOWLIN: Less arbitrary, you know.
Like she needs to...

Oh, man, that's so sad.

BALL: Yeah, something neat about that
is that her arms were CG there,

'cause her arms
didn't do something right in the take.

So we had them replace
her whole arms and everything.

I guess the idea here was always to go

a little bit more of
this kind of ethereal, beautiful thing.

Celebrate the sacrifice of it all,
the loss of it all, rather than like...

Being too...
I don't know what the word is.

I mean, it is still sentimental.

HARTWICK JR.: Too sappy.

BALL: I don't know if audiences
are gonna accept this ending or not.

It's nice to see all our friends
back together and worried about him.

And it's also kinda cool that
the protagonist of our movie,

the main hero
isn't actually doing the saving

at the end of the movie,
which I think is a bold but cool choice.

NOWLIN: It's like he spent two movies
saving everyone.

This moment it's their turn to save him.

BALL: Which I think is a cool thing.

It's not typical, but I think that's
actually great that we get to do that,

that he had an impact on them,

enough that they're willing to
sacrifice themselves for him, too.

Yeah, and then the question here,
"Did he die"?

And you see what's left of that city,

the last city, it's gone,
so the world now really is

gonna have to rise from the ashes,
which is kind of cool.

Now it's up to these kids
to create a new world, which is cool.

NOWLIN: Hey, good commentary, guys,
that was a good movie.

BALL: Oh, wait! (CHUCKLES)
NOWLIN: Wait a minute, it's not over.

BALL: Which is cool,
I hope we trick people out. (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: Oh, what a horrible ending.
BALL: I love it.

I heard at one of the screenings,
someone started clapping there.

NOWLIN: 'Cause they saw a good movie.
BALL: Right. And then, "Wait..."

BALL: I love how it's so quiet,

and this is very much like
Thomas waking up in the box.

NOWLIN: Yeah.

It's like he's coming into
another Glade.

BALL: We always talked about this
as Glade 2.0.

It's the same kind of material,
just a little bit cleaner,

a little bit more materials this time
and a little bit more open.

NOWLIN: And the opposite of walls.
BALL: Yeah.

BALL: Although, in a way, they're
still trapped, but trapped on an island.

They're still surrounded by water.

But they have a boat.

NOWLIN: I always thought that was fun,
especially after the Scorch.

We have these scorched-out, empty areas.

BALL: Because you see
a beautiful landscape.

NOWLIN: To see the ocean is nice.

BALL: This was a really cool
national park

or some kind of park in Cape Town.

And this shot.
This shot was always the plan,

a 360 that takes you all the way
from Thomas coming out,

all the way coming around
to reveal this.

This is real.
We built all this for real.

HARTWICK JR.:
Yeah, that's a pretty shot.

BALL: Mmm-hmm.

HARTWICK JR.:
What was that area called again?

BALL: It's another really... I forget.

But it's another really beautiful score
from John.

It's an eight-minute cue basically.

It doesn't let up.

This is basically the end.

This is the farewell to the series,
the characters, the fans,

the crew, even.

I think it wasn't
the very last thing we shot,

but it was almost the very last thing
we shot in the movie.

I think like a day or two,
clean-up stuff after this,

but there was this kind of weight here

- where everyone knew this was it.
- HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, for sure.

BALL: This is all over.

I think we shot our crew photo here
and all that stuff.

HARTWICK JR.: Remember
the bioluminescent water?

BALL: Oh, that was crazy. Yeah.

The waves were glowing
while Thomas was reading Newt's letter.

This is cool, too. Another moment where
there's no dialogue.

Nothing needs to be said.

It's this moment where Minho,

he doesn't know what to say.

You see it on his face.

"I don't know what to tell you."

And then, they just hug each other
and you realize that's all they need.

I think this is a nice end

for Barry's contribution
to how they all got here, too.

'cause he's the person,
the custodian of this effort to

- to save the immunes.
- NOWLIN: This is his dream.

BALL: He's the opposite of Ava.
NOWLIN: Yeah.

BALL: He wants to save all the immunes,

not just experiment on them
and find a cure from them.

He wants to let...

His view of the world
is to let the world burn out

and save what's left.

Save what's worth saving,
these immunes kids, the future.

Maybe that's a little dark, too.

NOWLIN: Or if there's
a cure to be found,

but if it comes at the cost
of exploiting these kids

who have been chosen, in a way,
by nature to carry on.

BALL: I also think
it's really important,

'cause we actually experimented with
cutting this speech out once.

What it did was,
it made it all really heavy.

And what's nice is that
you get this moment of celebration.

NOWLIN: "We did it. We're here."
BALL: Everyone's happy.

BALL: Everyone's excited,

but Thomas still has one last thing
to deal with, and that's Newt.

And so, that's why it works so well,
I think, to keep that scene in there.

It was a longer scene originally,
but we cut it down

to just bare essentials I think.

I like this shot in particular.

It's just good. It's just one long shot.

It's the two guys that, arguably,
we care about most now.

NOWLIN: Two people who need a moment.

It was all about rescuing Minho
and it came at a horrible cost,

- but they're together now.
- BALL: And in the books,

Newt's letter was a thing,
but it wasn't like this.

NOWLIN: Newt's letter was what was

urging him to pull the trigger
and kill him.

Newt was upset with him because he...

BALL: Because he didn't read it
or something like that.

He didn't read his letter.

NOWLIN: He didn't read it
at the right moment.

BALL: Yeah, or something like that.

It never really quite worked for me,

but this was our way
of bringing that letter back

and doing it in a way that it gave you
something to leave the theater with.

NOWLIN: It gives Newt
a presence in paradise.

BALL: Words of hope and a future.

And promise, which I think was a strong,

again, interpretation of the idea
of the letter in the books.

NOWLIN: What was hard
about writing this,

we went through, even just up to
about a month ago,

a couple of extra little lines,

'cause it also has to resonate with the
choice that Teresa has left Thomas with.

- Which Newt wouldn't have known about.
- BALL: Right.

NOWLIN: So it has to play
a double meaning.

BALL: He doesn't know that they're safe,

but he knows if he's reading it,
that he's probably safe.

NOWLIN: I think he's writing
from the point that he's safe,

but he doesn't know
that Thomas is the cure

and that he's wrestling
with what to do there.

So the idea of talking about,
"The future's up to you now,

"and I know you're gonna do
what's right."

BALL: "Whatever the choices
ahead of you,

"I know you're gonna
choose the right way."

NOWLIN: 'Cause it also needs to work for
Thomas putting Teresa's name on the...

HARTWICK JR.: Right. On the wall?

NOWLIN: That's another reason
why we can't cut the Vince speech.

BALL: You can. You just assume it,

but it does have a lot more power
when he says, "This is for them."

There's something nice about that.

You kinda know what they're doing
when they're doing it.

That's really Thomas',
or Thomas Brodie-Sangster's handwriting.

He really wrote the letter out.

- I have it. I stole it. (LAUGHS)
- NOWLIN: Oh, good.

BALL: I have it at home.

I have Chuck's little totem, too.

I don't have anything
from the second movie.

NOWLIN: Don't you have one of those
little baby Grievers?

BALL: Yeah, I have one of those,

but it's not something you can hold
or put on a wall. (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: They're incredibly heavy.
BALL: Yeah, they are.

Another thing here is, John's score here
is freaking amazing.

But like no sound.
It's just very simple.

It's like there's something about
leaving the audience

with basically just Newt's voice,
and music

and the subtlest of waves
crashing on the shore,

these kind of waves of
everything washing away, essentially,

of the past movies.

There was something
really nice about it all.

It was necessary for Thomas.

He needed that last thing
that lets him let go and move on.

That's why it was an important line
that we all have.

And then he looks up
and he joins the group.

NOWLIN: He's been given permission.

BALL: Yeah, he's being given permission
to be happy

and move on, and look to the future.

NOWLIN: Can I say how sad it is that
Gally puts Chuck's name on the wall?

By the way, the name "Mary"
that Vince puts on there

is Lili Taylor's character
from the end of the second movie.

BALL: Yeah, just a little touch.

I mean, who knows what
their full story is, but we all know.

NOWLIN: Well, they're obviously
working together.

BALL: Yeah, but it's up for people to
make up their own minds on that stuff.

NOWLIN: I think she shows up in one of
the little prequel comics that they did.

BALL: This is all cool stuff though.

Just to see the group,

it's very reminiscent of
that first scene or that first...

NOWLIN: Night of the maze.
Night of the Glade.

BALL: Night of the maze or the Glade,

just happy and communal.

And it's all their friends,
and just laughing and having fun.

It's like we haven't had this
in the entire movie,

so it's a nice breath of fresh air.

You get to see this beautiful landscape,

and it feels like the world
is full of possibility now.

The two people that we set up
in the second movie

about this mythical safe haven
and wanting to get there,

and Jorge talking about, "We're gonna
use these kids to get there."

And he became a part of the group now.

They've wound up here, too.

It's all coming full circle.

This was obviously a big idea here with
Teresa's name symbolizing that...

NOWLIN: Growth.
BALL: ...full closure,

and yeah, the growth of,
I think, again...

She gave him something, too.

Just as much as Newt did
and the rest of the guys.

NOWLIN: Well, she earned her place
on that wall,

and Thomas has grown
to be willing to acknowledge that

- and put her up there.
- BALL: Right.

Yeah, and a lot of
our crew's names are there.

- I think it's a good ending.
- NOWLIN: It's a good movie.

BALL: It's a small ending,
which I think is cool.

We've always done
the big, giant endings.

NOWLIN: Yeah, "Tune in next year."

BALL: But I think it's so cool
that we end on... (LAUGHS)

NOWLIN: "What's the choice?"

BALL: Okay, I'm not even
gonna answer it,

but people can make their own choice up.

But he's looking at the boat
and he's got the cure in his hands.

You tell me what he's thinking.

There's always some question about that.

NOWLIN: What's more interesting to me
is, "What would you do?"

- Ask yourself that.
- BALL: That's the question.

NOWLIN: That's where you end.

BALL: We're not gonna answer it.

It's something cool about
the choices ahead of him

and then that's for you to talk about
in the parking lot. (LAUGHING)

NOWLIN: Good job, Wes.
It's a good movie.

BALL: Yeah, good job, everybody.
HARTWICK JR.: Well done.

BALL: It's been four,
five years I guess.

- That's the end of that little journey.
- HARTWICK JR.: Yeah. Five years.

BALL: So, I think this movie's
a farewell for all of us

as much as it is
for the characters I think.

It's been a fun ride,

but I think we're all excited to get out
into the world and move on, too.

NOWLIN: It feels like
graduating from college, in a sense.

You're sad to see it end,
you're saying goodbye,

but you're also excited
about what's next.

BALL: Yeah, but I hope everyone enjoyed.

Thanks to everybody.

Watch all the credits.

Appreciate everyone's work there.

A lot of the people in this crew
worked really, really hard

for all the movies actually.

Some of these people worked on
every single one of the movies.

Some people worked on
just this one movie,

and some people worked on
just two movies,

but appreciate everyone's effort

'cause it certainly can't happen
without everyone's contribution.

It's been fun to be a part of.

So, hope you all enjoy,
and thanks for listening.