WES BALL: Well, hello there. T.S. NOWLIN: Hi, Wes.
BALL: This is Wes Ball, director of this movie.
NOWLIN: Hi, this is T.S. Nowlin, co-screenwriter of this movie.
BALL: Thanks for being here, man. NOWLIN: Thank you.
BALL: I asked T.S. to come because I did not wanna just sit here by myself
talking about this movie.
NOWLIN: Now that we're actually sitting here, I totally get it.
- You feel like a crazy person. - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: You're sitting in a chair with a little headpiece on.
BALL: So this was like... This was like when I first read the book,
I immediately saw this scene and opening the movie this way,
with basically just darkness, sound effects, which are very good, by the way.
And then doing this whole elevator thing.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: And the whole idea of it speeding up came to me a little bit later,
'cause I was thinking the challenge of it was like,
how do you show someone in dark?
I didn't wanna kind of do the whole sound effects thing.
- But... - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Just pitch black.
BALL: Yeah. But then slowly,
as it kind of starts speeding up, speeding up, speeding up,
that came to me when I started making the pre-vis for this little scene.
It was like, pretty much after I got the job,
the first thing I did was I made this little elevator in CG,
lights and everything, and it's extremely close to this,
same angles and everything.
And, yeah, I made this crazy little scene
and I pitched that to the studio and showed them how I wanted to do it
and how the opening of the movie was gonna be.
It was fun. It was cool.
NOWLIN: I remember all the different versions of the script that we went through.
This scene never really changed at all.
- I don't think... - BALL: Yeah.
- That pig was the bane of my existence. - NOWLIN: Pig. (CHUCKLES)
(PANTING)
(ALARM BLARING)
BALL: Yeah, I always thought it was a cool way to intro into the movie,
where it's like you don't... You are in that elevator with that boy.
You just transport the audience there, we're not in the movie.
We're just experiencing this crazy little adventure with him.
- I thought that was cool. - NOWLIN: Mmm.
BALL: This is another shot where it's really straight from the pre-vis,
how we made it.
This was cool. I always liked how Gally jumped down in.
Originally, there was a lot more to this scene, too.
There was gonna be people who were gonna jump in around them
and they were gonna pull stuff around him
just to kind of create that swirl of this energy.
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: And I remember Wyck was saying,
"You're never gonna use that. "
And I was like, "Yeah, I will. Of course I will. "
And then, yeah, we ended up cutting it the first time.
Just getting straight to Gally jumping in.
NOWLIN: Wyck's right as usual. BALL: Mmm-hmm.
Yeah, there's one really cool shot I miss not putting in the movie.
It was just really awesome. We had this fast camera-golfcart thing
that had Thomas running.
It was a really awesome shot. It just didn't really kind of work.
NOWLIN: Hmm.
BALL: Yeah, so it's funny how this whole scene kind of pretty much...
Pretty much was exactly the way we originally always intended it to be.
NOWLIN: It's an interesting kind of introduction to the world.
I think usually, in these types of movies,
where, you know, ordinary characters in extraordinary situations,
you begin with some kind of status quo, like a life in a world
that you can immediately connect to and then everything changes,
and they're thrown into this bizarre place, and we kind of begin with the bizarre.
We begin with "Where are we? What's going on?"
BALL: Yeah, it makes it more of an experience.
NOWLIN: Yeah. BALL: Also, that title wasn't always there.
I still kind of miss it in a way.
Before it would always go from him seeing that 360, see the walls,
and then boom, cut straight to this.
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: So, we just do a big massive time cut.
We felt like in one of the screenings, we just didn't give the audience
a chance to catch their breath.
NOWLIN: It was a pacing thing. BALL: Yeah.
- Putting a title in there helped. - NOWLIN: It was in the script though.
I think we always had that title card come up.
BALL: That goat really did do that and that was fun.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it's one of those happy accidents.
He didn't tell you, that was on take 20,
waiting for the goat to finally jump up on the thing.
BALL: Yeah. This scene always kind of worked out the way
we kind of intended it to.
NOWLIN: It's really more later, I think,
in the tour that sort of evolved more in the end.
BALL: Yeah, I wanted that awesome kind of going up zip lines
and the bigger stuff that I just couldn't afford.
Like, "Oh, it's gonna take you three hours to shoot this, "
and we had three hours to shoot this whole scene, not one little gag.
Yeah, so the movie, I guess, was shot in eight weeks?
NOWLIN: Mmm. Forty-two days of shooting. BALL: Yeah, 42 days of shooting.
- Yeah, and this... - NOWLIN: Which even now sounds insane,
when you say it out loud.
- Forty-two days of shooting. - BALL: Yeah, it's fast.
It's very much kind of a run-and-gun style.
I always love this shot of Dylan here, the way he kind of looks up.
And says the whole, "What is this place?" thing.
They use it in the trailer constantly.
But look at that. That looks great, that shot.
And the whole idea was like, you know, finding...
Finding our Thomas was going with that sort of...
He comes into the world a scared, vulnerable boy and leaves a man.
- That was kind of the idea here. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: Yeah, look at that shot.
Dylan's good. Dylan did a good job.
NOWLIN: Yeah. I remember talking to him like really early,
like when he first got to Baton Rouge about this first act, you know,
"You're playing this character.
"You're playing the hero of the movie, but he's not heroic in the first act.
"He's scared. He's afraid, you know. He has a lot of questions. "
And actually, he just nailed all that stuff.
You just immediately kind of sympathize with him.
BALL: Yeah, it's interesting. This whole movie, it's very much kind of a...
It's a ride.
I mean, it's a little experiential thing, and we don't really...
You don't do the typical kind of spoon-feeding, lots of exposition.
We have some exposition just setting up the rules of the world.
NOWLIN: Yeah, but it's the exposition
that preserves the mystery of who built this place,
who are these kids? Where did they come from?
What's in those walls? And I think exposition that gives you some information
but information that makes you ask additional questions is...
It's always the best way to do it.
BALL: Yeah, it's interesting. And Newt was just fantastic.
I mean, Thomas Brodie-Sangster is...
All these actors, actually, were just absolutely fantastic.
I lucked out having them.
But you can see the challenge of creating this Glade stuff.
You know, this could easily just spiral out of control
where it's like every shot has to have these walls.
It's like you have to think these kids are trapped in this place
and not in just an open field, like it really was.
Look, I'm sorry to rush this.
BALL: So we just picked our shots and fortunately this...
Originally, we chose this location because it was lined by trees,
so we could hide sort of, like we're doing here with the trees.
I guess this little treehouse thing, I added from the book.
Just thought like it was something you wanted, I guess.
It's that Swiss Family Robinson thing, I guess, you know.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it was a part of the big design choices you made,
is that the world was gonna feel like a handmade world,
like a world made by these boys.
BALL: Yeah, it was different from the book. In the book, it was like there's a house.
There's a shower and just traditional things and...
I felt like it was cooler just to, almost as a test, in a way.
You have to learn how to survive on your own
without anything really majorly given to you.
I thought it was just cool textures, you know, and...
NOWLIN: It's also part of the wish fulfillment I think of the premise that
this is your world, that you're self-sufficient,
you're making your own rules, you're living by your own code and...
BALL: Right. NOWLIN: And there's a dark side to that too.
BALL: Right. Yeah, it's interesting.
Most importantly...
BALL: Yeah, there was a lot more to this kind of tour, too.
We had some stuff where we meet Frypan and Winston and it was...
I think the comment was that we made it a little too light,
and we wanted to kind of get more to the scary stuff and I still...
The opening is a little slow, but it's measured pace, I guess,
'cause it speeds up so fast by the end, you know.
I like that kind of slow introduction to the world.
We had one big crane shot that kind of showed off
this little village that we made in the Glade, and we cut that out.
But it was a cool little world they created. I call them the original Gladers.
It was the construction guys who pretty much lived out here
for weeks and weeks and literally built this place
and put their own little touches in it and every little hut is
kind of someone's different little thing, you know.
It's kind of fun.
NOWLIN: I love that shot. BALL: Cool shot. Yeah.
Yeah, and basically a tiny little piece of that was built and then we just...
You know, Method comes in and makes it like a really cool, awesome shot.
Eric and Sue, our VFX supes.
Remember that gag we had originally?
It was like, when Minho and the runners return
we were gonna have everyone throughout the Glade announcing their return.
- And you see this relay style. - NOWLIN: Yeah. "Ben and Minho are back!"
BALL: You know, just coming through. NOWLIN: (IN DEEP VOICE) "Minho!"
BALL: We just cut that 'cause we couldn't make it work in the space.
NOWLIN: Yeah, yeah. BALL: It was a cool idea.
NOWLIN: Yeah, I guess for that to work you need to feel almost like more...
It's so empty, you know. It needs to be more populated.
BALL: Yeah, as soon as we found this location, we killed that idea,
but that little island of trees there was cool.
I remember when we actually scouted this location for the first time,
it was winter still, so there was no green on any of the trees,
and it was like a leap of faith hoping that this would turn green.
This is another one of those scenes where I kind of...
I had a pretty clear idea about how it was gonna go pretty early on.
NOWLIN: I really like, actually, the way this whole tour up until this scene
has a really organic way of introducing all these characters,
with Alby giving the tour and meeting the second-in-command.
Chuck is the one you're kind of handed off to.
And I don't think we actually explicitly state it in the movie anymore,
that Chuck was the one who came up right before Thomas.
BALL: Yeah, there was a scene I cut out there, which was a good scene, but...
NOWLIN: Little intro Chuck scene, right?
"He was the last to arrive so it's his job to look after you. "
You get it a little bit when Ben says, "How does it feel to be promoted?"
as he runs past.
That's what that line was referring to.
BALL: Yeah, one idea that never really found its way back in.
NOWLIN: But still, then you have Gally kind of stopping him here,
and by the end of this sequence,
by the time these doors close for the first time,
you've pretty much met all your principal characters.
BALL: Main characters, right.
- Except for the girl. - NOWLIN: Except for the girl, yeah.
BALL: I don't know why I always saw this kind of wind thing. I thought it was cool.
The idea that the maze deep down in those corridors is somehow moving and shifting
and pushing all this air through,
as it was coming to life like a monster or something.
NOWLIN: Right, the monster exhales. BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Even the sound is just... Yeah.
Makes it feel like there's a living thing.
BALL: The sound design in this section is awesome.
Doug and Ron and Ai-Ling and John.
They did a really good job with those.
NOWLIN: I mean, the movie transformed... I saw an early cut
without any of the sound effects and it just transformed when the sound...
BALL: Yeah, sound's everything. Sound's like 50% of the movie, you know.
Welcome to the Glade.
NOWLIN: That was originally gonna be a repeat line.
That was gonna be the first thing he said on the tour.
BALL: Oh, right. Yeah. He comes back around.
NOWLIN: Yeah. And it works well this way, too.
BALL: And this is always the scene... NOWLIN: You always have this, right?
- You always have this kind of... - BALL: I know.
- I like this burning-of-the-effigy element. - NOWLIN: This is you.
- (CHUCKLING) This is pure Wes. - BALL: I don't know.
I like the idea that it's like
they are actually all a bunch of scared boys, of these monsters.
Of course we don't know about the monsters yet.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. BALL: We're still holding that back.
But like, you know, this is them showing their bravado,
and that they're not scared when actually, in truth, they all are.
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: That's why they're all here, essentially.
It's that they haven't found a way out,
because they haven't faced their greatest fear,
- which is the monsters. The Grievers. - NOWLIN: It's a good shot.
BALL: Plus, I just like that bonfire.
And also the idea was we always kind of wrote it as,
this is the birthday party. This is basically
everyone comes up once a month,
so every time a new boy arrives,
all the other boys suddenly either, for better or worse,
remember that they're also... It's their time.
It's how they kind of mark off the time they've been here, too.
So, yeah, you'd naturally throw a little party.
You know, and that is where that pig came into it.
- The pig would come up every month. - NOWLIN: This was the end of the pig's arc.
BALL: And they would have a big pig feast. In the background,
- somewhere you can see... - NOWLIN: This roasting pig.
BALL: But it originally had the whole scene where they were gonna see the pig,
and the pig was gonna get loose and dragging some boy across the scene.
NOWLIN: Right, this little background story. BALL: And we shot it, you know.
We shot some aspects of it where this pig would constantly show up
and the last thing you see, that pig is in this scene where it's roasting over a spit.
NOWLIN: It gets its comeuppance.
BALL: It would have been a great little thing.
We just couldn't get that damn pig to do anything.
NOWLIN: Yeah. I love that idea, though.
I love the whole concept of ritual and ceremony in this Glader society.
It makes it feel real, like they've been there for three years.
BALL: I wish we could've done more of it. I always liked that concept too.
That's what struck me about the concept in general, was that idea that...
NOWLIN: Well, you don't wanna go too far with it. Yeah, it makes sense
to have this sort of birthday party when a new person comes up.
BALL: There it is, there's the pig in the background.
NOWLIN: Okay.
BALL: It was absolutely stinking.
We had it up there for two days.
As the shoot rolled on, no one would go around that pig.
Oh, gross.
Yeah, I love the concept of a world that people were creating for themselves.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: And fortunately, the good thing about Thomas Brodie-Sangster was,
he was handed the big, giant expository dump here.
But he's got such a great accent and he's such a good actor that it was just...
- We loved listening to him say it. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: So it's the best version of an expository scene
that you could ask for, I think.
NOWLIN: And then hopefully, the audience is already somewhat curious
about the information that he is given.
We've held it back, I think, as long as we possibly could.
BALL: Yeah. I mean, what, we're like 12 minutes in, I guess, now.
NOWLIN: Is that timer thing accurate? BALL: Yeah.
Listen, the truth is...
BALL: Yeah, it was a cool little...
And there's also a little scene that we shot here.
We shot a little Beetle Blade section
where actually Thomas is sitting there all alone, which I missed the shot.
It's like everyone's out there partying, partying, partying,
and then you cut to this wide shot of everyone kind of partying,
and the camera drops down and shows Thomas all by himself
kind of lost in thought, hasn't quite found his way into the group yet.
And then Chuck comes in and tries to cheer him up,
gives him some food and tells him about the Beetle Blades
that they see crawling on the wall.
And you're like, "Beetle Blades, what the hell's that?"
And then Newt comes in and steals the food.
NOWLIN: Right, and sends Chuck away.
BALL: Yeah, and then this scene would start,
but the problem was just pacing-wise.
We had to just lose it and the...
Adding another concept of weird little creatures
on the wall was... It was just too much.
And in a movie that already had a lot of fanciful kind of fantastic elements to it.
NOWLIN: Right, you kind of wanna keep this Glade rustic and technology-free,
and then let the weird things be in the maze.
BALL: Yeah, as the further you go out.
So, yeah, that cut worked for the most part.
I don't think anyone notices that we cut that out.
But I don't know why I always had this wrestling scene in mind, too.
- It's not in the book either. - NOWLIN: It's another ritual feeling.
It's like even though... I think Thomas just kind of stumbles into it, yeah.
BALL: This stuff looks great though.
I love the world and all this is actually really lit by fire.
Which is awesome. It's like natural.
NOWLIN: Yeah, I was gonna ask, it looks cool.
BALL: It looks fantastic.
- Enrique did a good job. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
And I think the look of the film goes a long way to establishing that tone
that you're talking about, that it wasn't gonna look like...
BALL: Yeah, it has a grounded kind of thing. Yeah, I kind of...
I always pitched it as... I would say, "We're not gonna do something
"bubble-gummy or like, you know, teenybopper.
"We're gonna make just a movie. "
And it was gonna be sweaty and gritty and nasty and...
Where I say heavy hand-held, when it's like a heavy camera hand-held,
it's different than a light camera hand-held.
You don't want a shaky cam, but...
And it's a little bit off, and the camera's always moving, it's always on
Steadicam or something and...
Like this little push-in here is a Steadicam. Yeah.
We had giant fog machines in the background there.
We were just constantly pumping fog into the woods there,
just to keep the atmosphere going constantly.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: And our epic fight scene.
Ready?
BALL: It wasn't really much of a fight scene honestly, but...
NOWLIN: Well, these boys aren't superheroes, you know.
BALL: It's punctuated by these cool little shots like this, I think.
So a nice little...
What I can say is like, storytelling to the frame, where it's...
It can move from one thing to the other without editing,
because without cuts, you can actually do editing essentially.
Which is cool.
But it gets the idea across, he does something.
And Dylan and Will had a lot of fun doing this scene.
NOWLIN: I remember them rehearsing this in the production office.
They're laying out a little mat and just going at it.
BALL: It's tricky, 'cause you want it to be kind of real,
but you don't want it to be like a movie fight scene
where they're just doing kick-ass stuff constantly, you know.
It goes over-the-top all of a sudden,
but hopefully you find that balance where it's like, you get the story of it.
You know, he did something here that kind of surprised everyone.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
BALL: He really hit himself too there, man.
NOWLIN: That looks brutal. BALL: He did it over and over.
And Enrique kept on missing the shot,
- "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. Do it again. " - (NOWLIN CHUCKLING)
BALL: Enrique... Enrique operates most of the A camera stuff,
so he's like sitting there with Dylan like, "Oh, man, I'm sorry. Do it again. "
NOWLIN: What was that take?
BALL: Oh, it must've been take eight or something. I don't know.
And we didn't go very high usually in our takes. We didn't have time to,
but for some of the key shots, we had to.
NOWLIN: This was another difference from the book, I think,
is the way Thomas remembers his name here.
BALL: I thought it was cool. It was a cool idea that
this character, his name would come to him,
and that would be his way of being welcomed in the group.
He's not one of them, you know what I mean?
In the book he just comes up with his name.
I thought it was so much more interesting that he kind of...
I don't know. Has a moment.
- Oh, yeah, the Griever. - NOWLIN: The Griever.
BALL: Yeah, I thought it was a cool idea.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it is. And you wonder, "Yeah, they all have a story of
"how they remembered their names and how long it took them and... "
You know, I'm curious, is that fast?
Is that, you know... I think Alby said a day or two.
BALL: Or did that head shot have something to do with it
and knock something loose?
NOWLIN: I liked that idea too,
that there was an element of what Gally's doing here.
He's not just being a bully.
He knows that this is kind of how you remember your name.
There's a line I think, originally, where he's like, "I knew I could get it out of you, "
or "I knew I could beat it out of you" type of thing.
BALL: Yeah, originally also, there was a little moment we cut out
at the last moment actually,
was after that Griever roar, Gally roars back.
Which was a cool idea. It's just...
NOWLIN: Again, that bravado.
BALL: It was a place in a weird spot where sometimes people would laugh,
but not in a bad way, where they would laugh,
but that's just the wrong emotion you wanted.
So we just cut it out to be safe, but I do kind of miss it.
NOWLIN: It's a cool idea, and to me, it's a key...
It's the great thing about Gally's character and
Will Poulter's performance is that he doesn't play the stereotypical bully.
He plays someone who's motivated more by fear
and defensively trying to protect this world that he's built from any threat,
anything that could shake up the status quo.
BALL: Yeah, you understand him if not agree with him.
NOWLIN: Here's your Terrence Malick moment.
BALL: That's how I always pitched this scene basically,
it was this kind of voiceover...
NOWLIN: Not this, the... Yeah.
BALL: That's what I mean, this little voiceover thing.
But so, by the way, also in that dream sequence thing,
any of the fans who talk about missing telepathy,
- it's kind of in there. - (NOWLIN CHUCKLES)
BALL: You kind of have Teresa asking, "Thomas, can you hear me?"
She might be talking to him. Just saying.
But yeah, this scene, we always talked about it being voiceover,
it's this little collection of shots, early morning shots.
- These long lens, kind of floating... - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: I always thought it was a cool visual kind of...
I think we're gonna do a lot more of that in the next one,
if we're lucky enough to do that.
NOWLIN: Right, fog on the ground, kind of see the Glade and...
BALL: By the way, I guess we should mention
that this movie has not come out yet
- when we're making this. - NOWLIN: Yeah, let's talk about that.
It is August 22nd, 2014,
so we're just under a month before the movie comes out.
So anyone listening to this knows a lot more than we do about
whether we get to do another one.
BALL: And so far, test screenings have been good.
Fans seem to like the movie, the ones we've showed it to.
But you really just never know.
NOWLIN: It's interesting too, the fans that we've directly talked to, I think...
I don't know what your experience has been.
But they sort of embrace a lot of the changes and...
BALL: Yeah, and they get it, they understand why we change things.
NOWLIN: George.
Guys, track down this comic book.
It tells you the story of George.
BALL: Oh, yeah. I need to make sure that gets out.
Yeah, we had this whole story about George and how Alby was the first boy up,
and how the second boy...
NOWLIN: We tell half the story in the movie.
Which is Alby coming up and something happens.
BALL: It's just one of those little textures, flavors that don't really...
You don't need to know really, to enjoy the movie,
but it's kind of cool if you do know that
essentially, Alby put that boy down, George, with his own knife.
NOWLIN: The first one to go into the maze.
The first one to get stung, yeah.
And that knife that he's always carrying.
BALL: And that's what that one, lone little grave is, which is from the book.
NOWLIN: Which you're about to see, yeah.
BALL: Yeah, we came up with all these little back stories with these things.
NOWLIN: That's what I love about seeing that wall of names
and half of them are crossed out.
There's a lot of stories up on that wall, you know.
BALL: Yeah. I always thought it was cool, that rite of passage, that kind of...
I don't know why I put that name wall in. I think originally I put it on a tree.
It was on the lookout tree, but I realized quickly that couldn't work,
and I thought it was cool that, "Oh, it's on the wall. "
The wall, the very thing that's keeping them safe,
they etched their names into it permanently.
NOWLIN: They put their stamp on their prison,
which is what their society's all about.
BALL: And we had this idea, they would...
Some people would have a section of the wall where they
mark off their days and then you would see hundreds and hundreds of these marks,
for all the days they've been there.
NOWLIN: Of course, again, it gets back to ritual, you know.
BALL: That's cool.
I don't know. I love that part of it, you know.
The Swiss Family Robinson shipwreck movie aspect of it all,
these kids creating their own little society in the world.
NOWLIN: Something defiant about it too.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: You're not gonna just be a prisoner.
- You're gonna make a world that works. - BALL: So that little CG bucket...
All right, that little bucket that he drops there, that was me.
I made that, it's in CG.
Originally, he drops the bucket in another shot,
another little section we cut out of the movie,
and there was a weird montage... I mean...
NOWLIN: Transition.
BALL: Yeah, there was a weird little blip there,
like suddenly he didn't have the bucket.
So, it was a last minute thing, I made it and I put it in there.
NOWLIN: Our one edit note at the first test screening is
BOTH: "What happened to the bucket?"
NOWLIN: Everyone wanted to know. BALL: So I did it.
On my computer at home.
NOWLIN: That's a great kind of... Just seeing those bones.
Just the movie just...
BALL: Well, I had this idea. It's kind of dark, but...
I had the idea that maybe down this hill,
they just throw all their carcasses and dead animals and stuff.
NOWLIN: This is day one, right?
BALL: Yeah. It was the first day we shot. I think you can kind of tell, personally.
NOWLIN: How's that? Yeah. BALL: I was still getting on my feet, I think.
But there's some cool stuff in it.
And these guys, they really gave it their all and they were...
They got totally beat up by the end of the day.
It was a testament to what the rest of the movie was.
It's hard work, but they're all smiling by the end of it.
They had a good time and we're all doing it together.
NOWLIN: I actually left. I was there up until the first day of shooting,
and I left midway through this and I was saying goodbye to Chris,
the actor who plays Ben.
He was showing me, I think, on his arm like he had these cuts and bruises.
Like, "This one's fake, this one's makeup, this one's real, this one's real. "
BALL: Right. This is where he gets clocked
right in the face on one of these shots right here.
NOWLIN: By Newt, coming up.
Yeah. This shot, Jesus! The way he goes up on his neck like that.
BALL: Yeah, it's crazy.
This is my Michael Bay shot.
NOWLIN: That was your Steven Spielberg shot.
BALL: I think it's a Michael Bay shot. NOWLIN: All right.
BALL: That was my Indiana Jones shot.
Coming over the edge of the mounds of the hills,
the Indians behind them, you know?
NOWLIN: Yeah, except it's just one crazy boy.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: I love that shot, everyone kind of converging. (EXHALES)
BALL: Yeah.
Oh, this was like a little reshoot, this whole stinging thing.
We couldn't get it to really work.
NOWLIN: Yeah, originally there was a stinger embedded in the wound.
BALL: Yeah, we couldn't get it to work.
NOWLIN: It was kind of cool. Your first look at a piece of a Griever.
BALL: The concept art, yeah, it was awesome.
We just couldn't pull it off for real.
NOWLIN: I remember some makeup tests that were so over-the-top in terms of...
BALL: Yeah. Didn't work. It ended up being, I think...
Visual effects had to come in and help us a little bit in some of those areas.
But we're working on the new versions now for what the Cranks essentially are.
- Hopefully they'll be really crazy. - NOWLIN: Yeah, pretty nasty.
That's another thing, too. Yeah, you're talking about
previewing the monster of the second movie.
BALL: Yeah, exactly. I guess all this movie is like...
It's a tricky one, because we're...
It's a setup, you know, for a much larger story.
It's not just its own movie.
We tried to make it so that it could be enjoyed as its own movie,
but it's all kind of supposed to be...
NOWLIN: A saga. BALL: Yeah, a saga, a true saga.
NOWLIN: That's what's really fun. So we were, kind of, right now,
working on the script for Part Two, and it's a bigger world.
- The world really opens up. - BALL: Much bigger.
NOWLIN: You get to go on a journey with these kids and test the bonds of friendship.
BALL: Tie up loose ends and open up new ones.
And, yeah, much more mature and deeper and...
NOWLIN: Guys, go see this movie. Give us a chance.
- Give us a chance to make the next one. - BALL: Yeah.
But...
Yeah.
NOWLIN: It looks like Blake in the back of the scene, just listening.
BALL: Yeah, I don't know if you notice, but he's carving something.
Constantly when you see him,
he's carving this little totem that we see later in the movie.
And it was one of those things, you never really feature it,
then it would be kind of silly, but it's kind of there.
NOWLIN: You kind of... You do feature it later, I think, when he tries to...
BALL: He pulls it out, yeah.
NOWLIN: I think actually, it's gonna be something fun
we're gonna do over the three movies,
is kind of track this totem, as it goes between different characters...
- Alby? - Yeah.
BALL: I always saw this cut for some reason, too. Maybe it's cheesy, but...
NOWLIN: The banishing? BALL: This shot, too. Boom.
The wide, you know. I thought it was cool.
NOWLIN: I don't think it's cheesy.
Here's another one of those scenes that's pretty much exactly like
what you first pitched when you read the book before there was even a script.
Like, you knew this scene.
BALL: Yeah, I mean, it was...
For me, it was just a scene from the book that I really just...
It's what made me kind of wanna do the movie.
It's like, "Oh, we could do something dark and brutal and merciless. "
And seeing, essentially, kids doing adult things.
They have to get rid of him because it could mean danger to the entire group.
It's tough. But...
NOWLIN: But in the book it was just for the attack. It was real important.
BALL: He just got in trouble 'cause he got attacked.
NOWLIN: Yeah, never harm another Glader.
BALL: It's sort of changing and the serum thing
- was a little bit different in the book. - (NOWLIN MIMICS CHOKING SOUND)
BALL: That was CG, actually.
NOWLIN: That's another key thing too, that we'll explore in Movie Two, is that stuff.
BALL: Yeah, fluid. NOWLIN: Anyway. No more.
- That's enough spoilers. - BALL: Yeah.
But, yeah, this scene was interesting 'cause we had it scheduled,
and you can look down on the ground there, it's soaking wet,
because this is the only time in the entire eight weeks we got rained out.
And so, we had a certain block of time scheduled to shoot this,
and we had to sit it out and just wait and wait and wait for it to finish raining,
and then ran out and then with three cameras,
we shot this whole scene, including the end of it
in like, I don't know, five hours or six hours or something,
which is crazy for the amount of shots we had.
No, no, no! Please!
No, please! Please, don't!
NOWLIN: Yeah, Chris was really good in this scene.
I also like the way you have Blake just turn and walk away.
BALL: Yeah, it's like, the smaller boy kind of shows you
he doesn't wanna see what's gonna happen.
NOWLIN: He gets it.
BALL: He might not have even seen a banishing before...
NOWLIN: Oh sure, he's only been here a month.
But he gets it and he doesn't wanna stick around and watch.
And Thomas can't look away.
BALL: I always like the idea that when they drop him down,
and you see Minho pull out his knife,
you think he's gonna cut his throat or something.
And then you always see this... This little sigh of relief in the audience
that doesn't know the movie. (SIGHS)
They thought something bad like that was gonna happen, but...
NOWLIN: Wow, it's weird. I never actually thought of that.
He belongs to the maze now.
NOWLIN: I'm very interested how fans of the book will interpret Minho in this movie,
because I think he is more of that sarcastic guy in the book.
And here it's more of the war veteran
who hasn't quite assimilated back into civilian life and then...
BALL: He's seen some stuff out there. NOWLIN: I love that shot.
That looks like concept art, just looks good.
But, yeah, then as he befriends Thomas later in the movie,
that other side of him starts to come out.
But it's something that Thomas has to earn.
BALL: Yeah, he's a cool, quiet, stoic character.
BALL: This is my favorite shot, right here. NOWLIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, we shot this. - BALL: Or right after this.
Even this shot, honestly. I love this little shot.
It's like one of those little oner shots. It's like, we just...
There's no editing here, just one little simple shot.
NOWLIN: Tells the story. BALL: Well composed and boom.
I just love that shot. I remember when I found that shot.
We were sitting there, shooting a scene and I grabbed the other camera
and I looked around like, "Oh!" and I put them there
and put some smoke in the scene and then we shot it real quick. It's fun.
NOWLIN: Coming into the second dream.
I guess this is where we get more of Kaya and Teresa and...
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: The question of, "Yeah, who is this girl?"
BALL: Yeah, this was tough stuff to do, really.
I don't like having to do flashbacks and dream sequences.
But it's kind of necessary with something like this.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
I think it was always an attempt, 'cause we have three of these
that sort of punctuate the movie and one is much later,
and the idea is you wanna just tell fragments of a story
that comes into focus over the course of the movie.
BALL: Something provocative, you know. NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: And trying to understand the process of coming up
and where, maybe, he was.
NOWLIN: There's a point too, where when Teresa does come up
and they're sort of comparing notes about what they know and what they remember,
and it leads them to some answers.
You want to have planted those questions earlier by the time she comes up.
BALL: I like that shot, too. It's another big VFX/built shot,
but those walls actually moved. It was cool.
Yeah. Interesting.
This was one of those cool scenes I remember shooting.
It was just a really fun one to shoot.
We had two cameras going basically,
and it was one of the last scenes of the day, and it was this beautiful light.
We're sitting in the shadow of this tree here
and we didn't really storyboard it.
We just kind of found the shots and just let the actors do their thing,
you know what I mean? And I always liked this scene.
It's one of the scenes that might have been able to get cut from the movie,
but I feel like it's good character development,
it's interesting to know Alby's story.
NOWLIN: It's the one part of the movie, I think, where you can get away...
The pace picks up so dramatically, you couldn't have done a scene like this
- in the second half of the movie. - BALL: Yeah, right.
NOWLIN: This is one time you want to take advantage to really...
BALL: Take a little moment. NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: A little breather.
Yeah.
And it's important to see Thomas' character journey,
like he's starting to kind of...
After that banishment,
I think that's the turning point for him as a character, in a way.
He doesn't want to ever see something like that again,
so he's gonna do everything he can to make sure that doesn't happen.
So he starts to become more involved with the group
and wants to play a role in all of this.
NOWLIN: Right. Question time is over.
BALL: The next scene, obviously, that he goes in.
But also, there's a little bit more about saying...
He starts to hear thunder and Newt's going,
"Don't worry, they'll be back. "
It's just constantly hitting this note of, "Don't worry. They're coming back. "
It's a little too on the nose. It's too heavy so we cut it out.
But you get the sense that a storm is coming.
Something bad is on the horizon here, is kind of the vibe.
And that shot of the rain. That was just pure luck.
We were out shooting some little inserts and then it started to rain.
I'm like, "Shoot, shoot.
"We need to show what real rain looks like. "
It's hard setting up rain, man.
It's really hard to get that stuff to even work.
So I kind of lucked out.
NOWLIN: This is one of my favorite cuts, I think, coming up.
"Where is everyone?" and these empty shots of the Glade
and then you just reveal everyone at the doors.
BALL: Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it's kind of storytelling.
You don't have to say anything, in a way. You know where everyone...
Where we're at basically.
NOWLIN: That seemed pretty much that, "Don't worry, they're gonna make it back. "
You kind of do it all right there. "What happens if they don't come back?"
I think that's important for Newt's character, too.
He's kind of being confronted with if Alby doesn't come back.
He's kind of the guy. He's in charge.
BALL: That's kind of the iconic shot, I think. I love this shot.
It's cool seeing them all lined up,
and that low camera angle. It's cool.
Come on, guys, can't we send someone after them?
That's against the rules.
BALL: Yeah.
This was... I remember this shoot here was awful.
It was so, so hot.
It was one of the worst days of shooting ever.
It was just absolutely brutal.
It had just rained so it was like a sauna. It was practically steaming out there.
So everyone looks like it, too.
- You can see the heat on them. - NOWLIN: It's good, though.
BALL: Yeah, exactly. It looks good.
I kept telling them, "Pain is temporary, film is forever. "
NOWLIN: Did you coin that? BALL: No.
(NOWLIN CHUCKLING)
BALL: Robert Zemeckis. I've always heard he said it.
And I just kept pretending like I coined it.
But it's kind of true.
It's like all the stuff that you're going through, it's gonna live here forever.
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: So, don't forget it.
Yeah. I guess people liked this scene.
Never quite turned out the way I wanted it to,
but I guess it's still cool.
NOWLIN: I think it's probably my favorite scene in the movie.
BALL: It's a cool moment, that's for sure.
But yeah, I never quite got what I was wanting for some reason.
Yeah.
NOWLIN: I just think from this moment forward,
you don't question Thomas as the hero of this movie,
and then even going forward like, yeah, he does this brave thing.
- But it's not... - BALL: It's kind of stupid in a way, too.
NOWLIN: It's kind of a dumb thing, yeah,
but it's just that idea of taking that step forward.
BALL: Yeah, well that's like the whole idea. He's an impulsive character.
He just kind of follows where his heart takes him.
I think that's something to kind of explore in the next one, too.
It's like sometimes that impulsive thing might actually hurt people.
And maybe that's what he's wrestling with.
NOWLIN: Or requires that kind of balancing influence
of characters like Newt and Minho...
BALL: Yeah, to constantly tell him... NOWLIN: ...to question him.
BALL: ... "Wait, maybe you need to think this through first. "
Yeah.
I like this shot, though.
I always had this idea, too...
I always wanted a scene like, "What happened to his head?"
- And then... - NOWLIN: "I did what I had to do. "
BALL: You don't quite know what that means,
but you assume that Minho basically knocked him the hell out.
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: So he could drag him this far.
'Cause he wasn't gonna... He wasn't gonna let...
Let his leader be banished either.
It's like Minho was like... You know, he didn't want to.
He doesn't really agree necessarily with those banishments either, but...
NOWLIN: Well, Alby's different, too.
BALL: Yeah. Everything changes.
Yeah.
This is... I think it's fairly close to the book, I guess.
NOWLIN: Yep. This was anything...
One of the big challenges, I think, even just when you're working on the script was
to make a movie in the box that we have...
The budget and the schedule that we had to do these sorts of set pieces.
These big, effects-driven set pieces.
It was really, really hard.
I always remember... This one not so much, I think we made a few cuts to this.
There were some things that we wanted to do that
- we just couldn't do. - BALL: Yeah.
That set was crazy small. It was only 16 feet tall.
It was not an easy thing to even try to do
something that was significant, like this giant maze.
Yeah, it never...
But still, people have a good time with it, I think.
They like all this stuff 'cause I think we've set up that
it's a scary place out there.
NOWLIN: Well, we keep hitting the idea no one survives a night in the maze.
Even after Ben gets banished, Thomas asks,
"Is there a chance he might make it?"
There's that little glimmer of hope. And that's Chuck, right? Who says,
"We have to just forget about him." No one comes back.
BALL: Right.
And then, yeah. I guess the difference from the book was
that Thomas, inch by inch,
over the course of hours, hoists Alby up.
And, of course, that was not gonna work
for a movie scene where you're trying to build tension
and build momentum.
So we came up with this idea of someone
basically doing the classic little rope-thing gag.
Which is good enough, I think.
Hopefully the fans don't care too much.
Like this shot was outside. We had one little piece.
We just put a wall up and it had a parking lot
and just shot that one shot.
So we could feel like we had some scale other than the 16 feet we had.
Took over a little Sam's Club.
Like this is all, basically, VFX.
Basically there's a big, giant blue screen there, and almost all of that is VFX.
NOWLIN: Bad-ass shot coming up.
NOWLIN: I like that shot. BALL: Yeah, it's fun.
I always love the idea of just seeing a little silhouette of this thing.
You don't know what the hell it is. It's just a shape.
Minho, stay with me.
BALL: And then, I always remember this moment in the book too, and Minho
freaks out and turns into a coward, I think it's cool.
And then the fact that he comes back
and actually cops to the fact that he was a coward.
- That to me shows true... - NOWLIN: Strength.
BALL: Yeah, exactly.
NOWLIN: It's kind of when you forgive him fully.
BALL: Yeah. Totally.
From that moment on, he would be with Thomas forever.
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: You know? Yeah.
NOWLIN: We always said, if Thomas is gonna become the leader,
we have to talk a little bit about what does it mean to be a leader?
What does it mean to come in and get people to follow you?
And just having that courage to impulsively,
almost stupidly, kind of go into the unknown
when everyone else takes a step back. That was always...
I think that was what I was trying to say before,
like the idea is why I like that scene where he runs into the maze so much
is from that point forward,
"I'm with Thomas" is kind of like...
BALL: Right. NOWLIN: "Our guy. "
BALL: That's how we treated Gally, too.
They almost, like, they could probably have been very good friends.
They're like two sides of the same coin.
The only difference between them is that one person kind of steps back
and the other steps forward.
Or Gally wants to stay and protect what he has
and Thomas wants to risk it all to...
NOWLIN: To get out. BALL: ...go to a future that's worth living.
Yeah, and this is very much that The Beach shot that I kept trying to get.
From Danny Boyle. (CHUCKLES)
I love that shot that they did.
DiCaprio kind of runs around the tree and hits that kind of terrified close-up.
Yeah, so Aml had a great time
being hoisted up on this thing and just playing dead.
Poor guy.
Yeah.
NOWLIN: There's a moment, I think right before that cut
where you really feel like it's just right behind him.
BALL: Right.
Yeah, you think...
That's what typically movies do, it was even framed that way.
You're expecting it to come up and then, no.
It's kind of like, build up the tension and then release it.
NOWLIN: This is a big audience reaction shot, that pan up.
(SCREAMS)
NOWLIN: The Griever.
BALL: Yeah, pretty weird looking thing.
NOWLIN: Pretty weird looking guy. How did you come up with that design?
It's a little different from the book too, right?
BALL: Yeah, I think I took the cue off of James,
you know, with the idea that it's biomechanical, is the big word.
A slug-like thing.
I had this idea, you know,
in the lab they would grow this big massive muscle
that had a brain, that's about it.
And then, it was kind of like a Frankenstein creation.
Insert these metal appendages so it could just be the lethal machine that it is.
But it still has the key words from the book for him, you know,
slimy and spines and metal appendages.
There's no saw blades.
NOWLIN: Right.
No Swiss Army knife, no tools.
BALL: Yeah, right. But I think fans will like it.
Fans of the book and stuff.
Yeah.
And it kind of has a cool little...
Erik De Boer, our animator, he did the Life of Pi tiger, which is fantastic.
Got an Oscar for it.
Yeah, he had a lot of fun with rigging and just building this thing
so they could do some crazy stuff with them.
It sucks we only had like two or three scenes with these Grievers,
you couldn't really do some of the cool stuff we could have.
NOWLIN: Well, this is one those... Anything with a Griever,
I just remember it would be written and storyboarded
and we'd go through these sequence meetings,
and we would just walk through the whole sequence,
and everyone would look over to H,
our first assistant director.
And I just would remember he would just
tell us or hold up fingers, for how many days of shooting we had just pitched.
- It would be seven days of shooting. - BALL: I have two.
NOWLIN: And we had two.
So, "Okay, back to the drawing board. What can we do?"
And it was always about... This scene, I think, was easier because...
BALL: It's a chase. NOWLIN: Yeah, it's a chase.
But things like later, the attack on the Glade, it could have been huge
and it was the idea of finding creative ways, I think, to...
BALL: A lot of times also, it's like you have 16 shots.
You can afford...
NOWLIN: That was the second one.
Once you could get it down to two days of shooting,
okay, now you have 30 VFX shots in there,
and you can afford a third.
So just ideas of like, you know...
BALL: No, this was definitely an exercise in...
I mean that happens with every movie, but, movies are compromises, basically.
It's just what it is.
No matter what scale you're at I think, you know.
But, yeah, we definitely wish... We had a lot more planned, that's for sure.
Some really cool moments that just, you know,
will be in my head forever, I guess.
NOWLIN: Hold onto them. Bring them back eventually.
BALL: At some point I'll do another monster movie or something.
I think this was your idea actually, to cut to black and not...
I originally had them falling out of there or something.
NOWLIN: I remember, yeah... I guess I should say,
I was the third writer that came onto this movie.
There was Noah Oppenheim, who wrote a draft under a previous director
and then Grant Myers was the first writer to work with you.
BALL: He did the first, what, three drafts? NOWLIN: The first three drafts.
Right. I came in like December of 2012, up through shooting and...
There was a scene... Yeah, there was a scene of like,
where you see the Griever get squished
and then there's another scene where they go back to check on Alby
- and kind offtake him down and... - BALL: Right.
You just didn't need it.
NOWLIN: But this becomes the one moment
where you cut away from Thomas for a second.
BALL: I should say this is the only scene in the movie
- where we cut away from Thomas. - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: And it's just for the audience, really.
But the rest of that, every scene is basically through his eyes.
If he doesn't see it, we don't see it.
NOWLIN: I think I just love this shot of the doors opening
and just Chuck sitting there.
And you know he's been there all night, you know.
BALL: And you can see some of the shots he said, "Get up. "
And then everyone's kind of sleeping on each other's shoulder.
A lot of people have been waiting for what happened to this boy
who was crazy enough to run into the maze.
NOWLIN: Remember, this line here, "He didn't just see it, he killed it. "
There was a fan screening in San Diego.
BALL: Oh, they went nuts. NOWLIN: They went nuts.
BALL: Also when they came around...
I wasn't in there for that one.
But the second screening we did, the test screening we did?
That moment when they come around, they're just waiting for him to return.
You know he's coming back.
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: And they just cheered.
NOWLIN: (CHUCKLES) Movie's over. Cool.
BALL: Cool feeling.
That's all you want to do,
is just to give an audience an experience.
Give them some tension, some suspense.
Cheers, laughter, whatever.
NOWLIN: In a way, it's predictable, that he's coming back.
BALL: But you want it to happen.
NOWLIN: At the same time it's that kind of, you want to give the audience...
BALL: That's what suspense is, you know it's coming
and you're just waiting for it to happen.
That's what suspense is, versus horror or a thrill
is when it's a surprise, you know what I mean?
The suspense to me is the best stuff.
NOWLIN: I want to say something here that what Gally is saying is totally accurate.
They have been living in peace with these things for three years,
and you do not know what happens now that you've killed one.
BALL: Yeah, I think the only cost is... They found a way to live here.
- The only cost is they'll never leave. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: That's what you have to accept and he's kind of accepted that, I think.
NOWLIN: Well, I think he's proud of what he's built.
I mean, there's an element of that.
But there's also the fear of what's out there and I think...
We talk a lot about identity.
It's all part of the fun of having all these boys whose memories have been erased
is that they all have to confront the question of who they are,
and they're just intrinsically... Gally intrinsically...
He would always be kind of opposed to Thomas.
They would always have found themselves at each other's throats.
BALL: Like that shot of Minho. NOWLIN: Yeah.
This is his kind of hero moment, I think.
BALL: Yeah, he's just honest and it's true.
But he's a...
NOWLIN: You just know they're friends for the rest of the movie.
In a way, I think we've always said too, is like, Minho's the soldier.
BALL: Yeah. NOWLIN: He's not the general.
BALL: Yeah, he needs a general behind him. Right.
NOWLIN: Right. And there's a line that Newt has...
(BOTH LAUGHING)
BALL: That little joke of...
Actually, it's gotten a laugh a few times now.
NOWLIN: Which one? BALL: That "Thomas, Thomas. "
NOWLIN: Oh, that always gets... I think that's funny as hell. I love that.
I love that he tries to start up a chant.
BALL: We originally dropped an F-bomb here.
NOWLIN: Yeah?
BALL: With Gally saying, "You do not eff with it. "
NOWLIN: "One thing I know with the maze is you do not eff with it. "
BALL: That's a great shot, by the way. Most of that wall is all CG.
Oh, Method did a good job on some of this stuff, man.
But yeah, we put it in there 'cause we were allowed one F-bomb
in a PG-13 movie, and it just felt gratuitous, so I just cut it out.
NOWLIN: I also remember, we talked too in Will Poulter's audition.
He was one of the few actors who didn't punch that word.
He went, "One thing I know about the maze is you do not... " (GRUNTS)
He just kind of threw it away, which was awesome.
BALL: Right.
I think this is pretty much exactly from the book, pretty much.
NOWLIN: Well, she doesn't say "Thomas, " as everyone reminds us.
BALL: I think she says something.
NOWLIN: She says, "Everything's going to change. "
BALL: Then she passes out.
NOWLIN: Right. Now we put that into the dreams and I think the note is the same.
BALL: And she doesn't have written on her arm...
NOWLIN: She doesn't have "Wicked is good" written on her arm.
BALL: We wanted that mystery to keep playing.
NOWLIN: I think we have a really good introduction
of the "Wicked is good" concept in their scene later on.
The thing that they both remember from before is the woman,
and it kind of introduces Ava Paige in a way.
This woman saying the same thing over and over,
"Wicked is good. " What does it mean?
But, yeah, her saying "Thomas," I think it's important.
I think it's important that everyone looks...
BALL: Exactly. You want this little... Hey, you want to basically say, "Oh, my God.
"Thomas has done something to throw things out of whack.
"What is with this girl that just showed up? How does she know him?"
And basically the idea was that Teresa was kind of a harbinger of doom.
Everything was gonna stop now.
And I don't know if we hit it hard enough, that she's the last one ever
means that they're not getting any more supplies.
I think that's one thing that I wish maybe if we went back,
is to really say that they need the supplies that keeps being sent up.
NOWLIN: Yeah, 'cause right now you have Jeff saying,
you make the point like, "The Box is not coming up. "
BALL: It's not hit hard.
This is not a good thing that this girl just showed up
and said that everything's gonna change
and what does Thomas have to do with it all?
Is it because he went out there and he kind of upset the gods?
NOWLIN: I almost think, you wonder if you would have gotten that
with that idea, that early idea,
of everyone rushing in and grabbing the supplies eagerly,
like they're always just holding on for a month
- until this Box comes up. - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: They're rationing, you know. You get a sense of it.
BALL: I love that shot too, right there. It's a good shot.
This was a set too, in a little... It was an old church, actually.
Is where we built it.
NOWLIN: Really? BALL: Yeah.
We've got enough to deal with at the moment.
BALL: Yeah.
Unfortunately, we cut out a lot of Jeff and Clint's scenes, the med-jacks.
It's just for pacing. You gotta keep this stuff moving.
But Jeff and Clint
had cool little buddy stories
and how they got the job.
It's like they just get these jobs, they don't know what they're doing.
NOWLIN: That was always a funny line, right?
BOTH: "I got my job the same way that you did. "
NOWLIN: They keep asking... They keep treating him like a medical expert.
I always thought that was funny.
I think one thing we learned about the humor in this movie
is things like Teresa running up
and throwing stuff down from the treehouse.
That there's humor embedded in the situation.
You don't have to turn away from it.
But it's not a movie where you really get away with jokes.
BALL: That's right. We had a couple in that we cut out.
It wasn't that kind of movie. It's a very serious movie.
NOWLIN: It's kind of like the way... Yeah. You watch the first cut...
I remember that two-and-a-half hour cut or whatever it was,
and it's like the movie really frigging talks to you.
It's like, "Get this off me. I'm not doing this. " (CHUCKLES)
BALL: Yeah. It tells you what doesn't work and does work.
NOWLIN: And it's like, yeah, it's things too that you fight for in the script,
and then it's like, "Sorry guys, that was stupid. That was wrong. "
Yeah, but it's all worth it for those moments
that actually do work the way you expect it.
I always liked that idea that the runners have quit.
After two people get stung and brought to...
BALL: Yeah, they're not going out there anymore.
NOWLIN: It's like the one thing that gave them the courage to be runners is the rules,
that they felt if they followed these rules, they could survive.
If they made it back before the doors closed, they could survive,
and now things are changing.
The only people still willing to go into the maze are Thomas and Minho,
and, of course, the people inspired to follow Thomas
because he took that first step.
I always really liked this idea.
This part of the movie here,
it's like he did one brave thing and this moment where he's not gonna stop.
BALL: Yeah, everything kind of goes from there. That was one of the...
Probably the most significant change I made in here was that
there's no cliff, there's no magic kind of cliff to find a way out.
I liked that thematic idea of
the only way out is to face your greatest fear,
- which to these boys is the Grievers. - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: And it's like it's inside of
a dead Griever is where they find their key to salvation.
Whether it works or not, I don't know.
But I think, thematically, I think it works absolutely.
NOWLIN: Momentum-wise, it's great because of the big development,
is that no one's ever killed a Griever before.
Now we have one. You want something to come of it.
I think originally, what it was gonna be though, was that...
BALL: They dragged the thing back in. NOWLIN: They dragged the thing back in.
BALL: Which would've been cool. I just couldn't afford it.
NOWLIN: The autopsy scene with all the Gladers kind of gathered around.
BALL: But I loved the idea that the doors were gonna open
and then comes around the corner is Minho and them
dragging a dead Griever.
NOWLIN: An awesome hero moment. BALL: It would've been awesome.
We just couldn't build it.
NOWLIN: It is cool to motivate another trip back into the maze.
BALL: Yes, that was the other reason. It'd be nice to go because
it was called the Maze Runner and we had two scenes in the maze.
You can only afford so much.
NOWLIN: But what's also important too
is the idea that you have characters like Zart and Winston here and Frypan,
and they're willing now...
Thomas doesn't have to go out there on his own.
It's the beginning of people sort of...
Almost battle lines getting drawn.
Gally's got, you know, the runners have quit,
and now Thomas has his followers.
And you see the beginning of that sort of rift.
BALL: People following the leader.
(NOWLIN LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: You notice here the kind of creak of the chair lean-in moment.
BALL: Right, right, yeah, exactly. Everything goes quiet.
- And there's that little breath. - NOWLIN: You know that's coming.
BALL: Yeah, exactly. You know it's coming.
It's a little cheap gag,
but for the younger audience, I think they'll love it.
NOWLIN: You know what? BALL: That always gets a reaction.
NOWLIN: It doesn't have to be pretty. BALL: That's right.
- Yeah. - NOWLIN: Speaking of not pretty.
BALL: Get everything you can.
NOWLIN: That leg is like the one thing you built, right?
BALL: The only thing we had.
NOWLIN: I always liked the description in the script.
"It was like peeling off the leg of a crab. "
BALL: Yeah, that's how I always pictured it. (VOCALIZES)
Even the sound effect I think, we put that stuff in there.
NOWLIN: Yeah, you didn't hold back on the sound effects in this scene.
Crank that up.
I do think the movie really works in terms of pacing.
I'm surprised now.
First time I've watched the movie with that little timer down there.
We're actually 50 minutes in.
BALL: Oh, yeah. NOWLIN: It just kind of moves.
BALL: I think everyone that sees it, the one thing that they say that they like is,
it's just they're on the edge of their seat constantly.
- It's just constantly... - NOWLIN: I think...
BALL: ...pushing forward, and a lot of it is that mystery engine.
It's the questions that kind of keep pushing you forward.
And it's also the trick, you know.
I was talking with Bryan Burk about Lost, and the issue of
sometimes the questions are more interesting than the answers.
I mean, it's a tough thing to do.
NOWLIN: And there's a lot of conversation too, about the other young adult movies
and what separates this.
It's interesting when you're working on the script.
We never talked about Hunger Games.
I don't think we even knew what Divergent was.
BALL: Divergent hadn't even come out when we were writing this.
NOWLIN: I knew it was a book, but I hadn't read it or anything.
We were talking about like The Goonies and Explorers and Hook
and the movies that we grew up on about...
BALL: Lord of the Flies. NOWLIN: Lord of the Flies. Sure.
BALL: What I always say is it's not a kids' movie. It's just a movie with kids in it.
You know, but there's no oppressive government to be overthrown.
You know, there's no love triangle.
NOWLIN: You kind of avoid the...
BALL: You're not going through teen issues, you know what I mean?
They're just kids in this crazy circumstance trying to survive.
And yeah, I thought of it as a Lord of the Flies shipwreck movie.
With this kind of added mystery, sci-fi element.
NOWLIN: Right. Lord of the Flies meets Lost, right? That was your pitch?
BALL: That was basically how Daria Cercek, the junior exec
who gave me the book, pitched it to me, sort of.
And I was like, "Okay, interesting. " And read it.
And I kind of saw what she was saying.
NOWLIN: In reference to what you were saying
about the mystery kind of pulling you through.
I think that's something else that sets us apart is,
I think most of those movies,
they open with setting up the rules of the world.
Like Divergent is about these factions.
And Hunger Games is about these games.
BALL: A new version of high school.
NOWLIN: And then you tell a story within those rules
and the experience of this movie, I think, is one of unfolding mystery
and questions which...
BALL: Yeah, the adventure. It's much more of an adventure.
NOWLIN: "Meat and potatoes. " I remember that phrase.
- Who said that? - BALL: Emma.
NOWLIN: Good, yeah. Emma was like, "A good meat and potatoes movie. "
BALL: Yeah.
So...
Yeah, this is, I guess, definitely a moment from the book
or basically where Thomas is made a runner.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: It's a little different, I think, than...
They had several Council Hall scenes or something.
NOWLIN: What I liked is the idea that we made Thomas a runner in this scene,
but it's not Thomas' scene.
- This is Newt's scene. - BALL: Yeah, that's right, sure.
NOWLIN: And it's the political maneuvering...
BALL: Love that little look there.
He's unsure what all else is gonna happen.
NOWLIN: There was a line there... BALL: Yeah, he just crossed a line.
NOWLIN: He says, "Thanks. Don't make me regret it. "
- And with Thomas you just don't need it. - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: Thomas Sangster, you know.
This I love... And another thing that I love about this too,
is like we're 55 minutes in, almost an hour.
We're still going to new places in the Glade.
We're still seeing things for the first time.
BALL: That was key throughout the whole thing
of trying to design this thing was,
we basically have three locations in the movie.
How do we keep people's interest?
That was the maze, that was with the Glade itself.
It's like you had to constantly have these layers that you kind of explore.
NOWLIN: Right. Very easy to feel repetitive, back and forth.
It's like usually, like I think in Scorch Trials, the best thing we have is a journey.
BALL: A journey, yeah. They're on the run.
NOWLIN: You're always kind of moving into these new places.
But we always knew that we would be, to a certain degree,
you have to go back and forth between the maze and the Glade,
the maze and the Glade.
So not only is the Glade varied between the Map Room and the Council Hall
and the lookout tree and the village and all that,
and the open fields and all this stuff,
but the maze too, which you kind of see for the first time here.
You designed a whole different sort of layout for the maze
where you're not in these cramped corridors.
- For the whole time, you know. - BALL: Yeah, it opens up.
- It kinda becomes bigger and... - NOWLIN: A world.
BALL: I love this idea of a Map Room, though.
Yeah, I remember...
NOWLIN: It's different from the book, too.
BALL: Yeah, it is. And I think it's cooler.
Fans will probably be a little mad about this one,
but I think they'll get it.
Definitely looks cool.
NOWLIN: It's like, when you're making a movie,
you have a choice between maps on a piece of paper,
or this awesome kind of model.
BALL: Like a diorama thing, yeah.
NOWLIN: It's obsessive, too. It's like this is the work of obsessed people.
BALL: Well, if they've been doing this for three years,
yeah, they're gonna have quite...
NOWLIN: This is why the runners aren't socializing.
This is what they're doing. They're in here.
BALL: Also, the idea that he doesn't even come in here very often anymore.
We had one more scene in the Map Room before they went off on their trip,
but we cut it out 'cause of the pacing again.
Where they're getting suited up and getting all their gear together.
NOWLIN: Thomas becoming a runner, getting the pack.
Getting all the stuff.
BALL: And I had this idea in my head of what that scene was gonna be.
It just never really came to fruition.
I didn't shoot this set right either.
This was a real set we built out in the middle of the woods.
It was absolutely fantastic. One of my favorite things.
I actually designed this little room myself. Um...
And the guys went...
Mark, our production designer went
and got all his builders out there just to go start building this stuff.
And they had such a good time.
I think everyone had a really good time with this little set.
It was a fun little building to build.
The windows on top of the roof which I never really got to see,
they had these little ropes actually working.
You can pull on a rope and the things open.
You know, you can only do so much with that stuff.
I don't think she likes us very much.
BALL: Yeah, this scene was fun.
NOWLIN: Actually that Map Room scene, that's one of my favorites too, actually.
I really like... I think Ki Hong does a great job in that scene.
BALL: Oh, yeah, yeah. He does a really good job.
NOWLIN: 'Cause actually, it's a little while until we get back into the maze here,
because we have all this stuff with Teresa and then going back to Alby,
and then the night in the pit and so...
You need to plant like that what their plan is.
They're not just gonna go out there wandering around.
They have somewhere to go.
BALL: They have a goal. NOWLIN: Yeah.
And it's... I don't know.
The hard thing is, it's so easy in this movie, I think,
to wind up doing the montage of...
Weeks go by and running in the maze and still not finding anything.
BALL: That's how it was in the book.
It's very much, you know, days and days go by.
But we didn't want that. We wanted a momentum thing.
We wanted the real-time aspect of it all.
NOWLIN: The cause and effect of one thing leading to another.
BALL: I also remember us coming up with this scene,
and we were out on location doing something, working on something.
We're driving back. It was an hour back to the office.
- And we came up with this scene in the car. - NOWLIN: Right.
It was like... Honestly, what we were doing.
I remember specifically we were in rehearsals,
and it was Dylan and Kaya going through this scene,
and originally when the med-jacks come running up,
they say, "The girl's awake, "
and Thomas goes to meet her in the medical hut.
And the idea, originally, with this scene
is that he was gonna take her on a tour of the Glade, kind of the way Alby did.
Him becoming the new Alby. It was too on-the-nose.
BALL: Good idea, but... NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: And it was a great concept, but it just...
As an audience member, I'm like... (GROANS) I'm bored, you know.
NOWLIN: Yeah, you wanna just... BALL: I felt it.
NOWLIN: In a sense, it's hard when you're just following one character
and you have such a limited point-of-view.
You wanna hold on to that idea of
things are happening away from him as well, too.
So the idea of the med-jacks running up
and one of them's got a black eye or something,
and he has, like, a welt
and the girl's awake and something has happened off screen.
And then you're catching up with the situation.
BALL: It always gets a laugh there, too, when you cut to that shot.
And everyone's on the bottom just like...
NOWLIN: It makes a weird kind of sense that that is what a lot of people would do.
BALL: That's what makes it so funny, is that you don't have to say anything.
You get it. She woke up and kicked some kid's ass.
I think there's a line in the book, something like,
"The first Glader who got beat up by a girl. "
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: Um...
Yeah, and it just kind of worked.
And I saw that shot and everything.
It's kind of a quick thing.
And we ran in, I remember the office, and like, "Wyck, we got an idea. "
NOWLIN: Right, right, right. We were so excited.
And I think, yeah, then we pitched it to Wyck.
And then, as is always the case, we pitched it to Wyck until like,
uh, you get half of the reaction you wanted.
- Then you have to go and make it better. - BALL: Yeah, right.
NOWLIN: But I remember the line too, is like...
I remember pitching like, "Thomas comes running out
"and you just see Chuck laughing his ass off. "
And you had the idea of the line of, "Girls are awesome, "
- which always gets a laugh. - BALL: Yeah.
I think it only gets a laugh...
I don't know why. It's interesting.
Ever since you came up, that Box hasn't gone back down.
NOWLIN: I think of the idea that everyone's
scared of this girl and what she means and what...
Gally's pissed off and Chuck just, he's eating it up.
He loves it.
BALL: Yeah, and the tough thing is that, Kaya, she's absolutely beautiful,
but she's not in like a crazy, glamorous way.
Just a very natural kind of beauty.
And she's really, really good and subtle and mysterious,
and it's tough because here we've reached half the movie,
and it's the first scene we get with her.
We don't have a lot of scenes with her.
And that's kind of inherent in the book, but I think, regardless, she holds her own.
She makes an impact
and, again, talking about The Scorch Trials again,
but we're gonna really get to do some great stuff with her character.
NOWLIN: Yeah, we have a lot of plans for Teresa.
And I think we had to resign ourselves to the fact that...
BALL: We're introducing her. NOWLIN: We're introducing her.
And there there's a sense, too, in the end of the movie,
that we do ask the question of what is the nature of this
mysterious connection between her and Thomas.
We answer that question.
But there are elements of her story and her backstory
that have not been answered by the end of this movie
that we're purposefully holding out for the next one.
I think Kaya's really good at playing that mystery
and, you know, a character who maybe has a couple secrets up her sleeve.
BALL: Yeah, exactly right.
NOWLIN: And I think, too, she was the hardest character to write, too,
just for the script,
because you also have a lot of very easy, readily available bad options
with the one girl,
which is the traditional love story or a damsel in distress.
BALL: And that's honestly...
It's like even the marketing guys,
they immediately tried to go there and make it that, but it's not that.
NOWLIN: Even in the second movie, we're not really doing
the traditional love story or love triangle type of thing.
BALL: Yeah. We could do a little more of that and go down that path a bit,
but it just becomes more interesting.
NOWLIN: And people like that we don't go there,
maybe 'cause it's a YA thing and I think when people...
There's something about YA.
People always, when they watch a movie like that,
they always find themselves critics,
at least putting the whole genre on trial, in a way.
BALL: Yeah, sure. Yeah.
NOWLIN: But for me it's like, I have no problem with a good love story,
- if it's earned. - BALL: Yeah, right. Totally.
It's tough to do it when you're bringing someone in halfway through the movie.
NOWLIN: And they have no memories.
And within two days the story's over from when she wakes up,
and it would have been so forced to...
What you can say is that
there was something that happened between them in their past
and they're putting the pieces together
of what the nature of their relationship was.
But part of the idea here, I think Newt hits on it later.
We keep talking about identity, is that who they were
isn't as important as who they are at this moment.
In a way, WICKED gives them that opportunity to reinvent themselves,
and kind of get rebirthed into this Glade up through the Box,
and now they have a second chance to be better people.
- BALL: Right. - (BEN SCREAMING)
Yeah.
NOWLIN: Now here, I think furthering the mystery of when Ben got stung...
BALL: Yeah, what happens, yeah.
- This kind of virus thing. - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: Again, just setting up something that's gonna pay off bigger in the next one.
I guess we should mention that the next one right now
is based on our test screenings
and just some of the early buzz on the movie.
Fox Studios, you know, is cautiously optimistic
that there's gonna be a desire for another one.
So we're, uh, furiously prepping the next one to start, um,
in about nine weeks...
NOWLIN: Jesus, really? BALL: ...to shoot, yeah.
- (BOTH LAUGH) - NOWLIN: You said it out loud.
BALL: We've got stages in New Mexico.
NOWLIN: I've got my laptop open right now while we're doing this.
BALL: We're going to be moving out in, what, three, four days?
NOWLIN: Three or four days. BALL: We got stages.
NOWLIN: We're desert people now. BALL: We got crews coming in.
The script's going together and sets are being built and...
NOWLIN: The script's awesome, guys. It's an amazing script. (LAUGHS)
- If I do say so myself. - BALL: Biased.
NOWLIN: I would say, yeah,
it's a strange kind of situation to be in, 'cause like I said before...
BALL: We don't know if we're really making it yet or not, but assuming we are...
NOWLIN: But there's sort of a window... Pardon me.
There is a kind of crazy, almost uncivilized turnaround with these YA movies.
But there's also the availability of the actors, 'cause Dylan's on Teen Wolf,
and so there's a point where we have to start shooting,
and it happens to come maybe,
six or seven weeks after the first movie comes out.
So you have to do all this prep.
BALL: Yeah, exactly. For the movie that we have planned, it's absolutely massive.
It's at least twice, maybe three times the scale of this one.
And, like we said, much deeper, much more mature.
We're changing a little bit of the book, you know.
It's okay. I've talked to James a little bit about it.
But just keeping the trajectory of this larger saga moving forward.
It'll be fun to watch them all together.
'Cause the next one really takes place right after
- the other one ends. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: This was a good little scene. I love the score in this.
Talking about the score actually, John Paesano, um,
- fantastic guy. - NOWLIN: Beautiful work.
BALL: He's kind of like my guy. Um...
Another first-timer, in a way.
I mean, he's done some stuff,
but this is his first big introduction to the world, I think,
and I met him through Fox basically,
because I told them I wanted a score that was...
I'm a huge score junkie. Um...
So John Paesano came up because I kept talking about John Williams,
and these ideas of themes and the score being a real character to the movie,
not just kind of, you know,
there is a trend right now, and it's not to knock on what Hans Zimmer does,
but that's... We've kind of gone there now.
Because when he came on, it was so fresh and so new and so interesting
that it's kind of what everyone else is doing again,
where it's just this kind of... It's more of a pulse to the movie.
It's not really a character, in a way, sometimes.
Although some of his later stuff, it's been really good,
like Thin Red Line is fantastic and Superman was really good, too.
But anyway... Uh...
Because John Williams came up, then he said,
"Well, you should meet John,
"because he actually trained as a very young person
"under John Williams.
"And then he went off to work for Hans Zimmer for a little bit,
"and then went off to work for John Powell. "
John Powell is another one of those guys that's big on theme,
and so we met and talked and he's just an awesome guy,
and totally gets what we're trying to do.
It's funny, when we first started doing the score together,
we'd just sit in the studio late at night, just kind of knocking around ideas.
At first, we were going much more John Williams actually,
and it was very kind of, you know, um, sweetened.
I'd say old-fashioned, and the movie just didn't want it.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. BALL: It just wasn't working.
And so we eventually, slowly came into this place
where it was like what you're kind of hearing now,
which is kind of an old-fashioned sound,
but has this kind of modern edge to it also.
I'm really happy with it. I think it'll be cool.
And what's neat about it also is that you can listen to it,
I have the soundtrack now,
and it tells its own little story.
It starts in a certain way,
and then it grows and becomes a little more modern, a little more sci-fi.
It has a real kind of character to the whole score throughout. It's fun.
I love movie scores and I'm real proud of what John did on this one.
NOWLIN: And it's fun, too.
We're working on the script for Part Two,
and to listen to the soundtrack from Part One,
you imagine how some of those themes are gonna carry on.
BALL: Yeah, we already have that one track that John already wrote for the sequel,
that's absolutely awesome for me.
I love it, 'cause it just tells the kind of...
The kind of drama that we're gonna explore in the next one. It's cool.
NOWLIN: We skipped over it, but before that scene with Chuck,
there was a little moment with Gally that
I just want to point out is one of my favorites,
and I think probably my favorite performance moment from Will,
which is his reaction to, "We can't stay here forever. "
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: It's a moment where you start to feel sorry for him.
BALL: Yeah, what's also interesting about it is it's a perfect example, where it's like,
sometimes dialog... The same thing with that Alby scene.
Sometimes dialog hurts things.
- It's like... He doesn't answer. - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: And not answering is the answer, you know what I mean?
It's like he just looks at him, doesn't say a word,
turns and walks away.
NOWLIN: I think deep down, Gally does know.
BALL: Yes, exactly. But he also... NOWLIN: He doesn't like being reminded.
BALL: Exactly. Right. Yeah.
It's cool. So this is where we get to kind of show...
Unfortunately, for me, uh,
this is like the one montage of the movie,
and I wish I didn't have to do a montage,
but unfortunately, it's all we could afford, basically.
But at least they're cool shots. (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: Like, this is where the maze starts to open up,
and it's not just that same place we went to last time.
It's starting to become this big, almost abandoned
industrial kind of...
Almost Soviet-era kind of thing.
And you start to see the design of the maze and how someone could get lost out here.
And, um, yeah, it's cool.
And then starting to set up this mystery of the numbers essentially,
which is the equivalent of what was in the book,
except in the book it's a bunch of numbers...
NOWLIN: Words. BALL: Words, yeah, hidden in the maze.
We tried to do that for a while,
and I just could not get it to work where it didn't feel cute.
So we just did something a little simpler, which was about these numbers,
these sections that James described, which was eight sections of the maze,
and the idea was they found number seven and that one Griever,
and maybe there's eight Grievers out there.
And then because that one Griever didn't come home,
the way that it came in,
- it never closed again. - NOWLIN: Stayed open, yeah.
BALL: So, essentially, that line that comes a little later is,
"Their way in could be our way out. "
Again, kind of the idea that there's no way anyone would ever get out
if they don't face a Griever, essentially.
NOWLIN: But also then, with the code ideas,
'cause that's where the words came in,
that was the password to get out.
The idea too, is it's not just as simple as killing a Griever,
taking the key and going to open the door.
You also have to have run the maze enough
to know the pattern, the sequences of how it changes.
BALL: Which is what we saw in that Map Room.
NOWLIN: So, in a way...
BALL: That way, it couldn't be just Thomas coming in and changing everything.
It had to be this culmination of Minho having known the maze
like he does. And, you know, yeah.
NOWLIN: Yeah. It's really cool.
BALL: So it's all there.
It's still there in spirit from what's in the book.
It's just something that's a little more manageable on film.
NOWLIN: What I really like too, is there's this question
that you can still ask yourself,
which is whether or not
they essentially solved the maze the way it was meant to be solved,
or if they kind of cheated it, in a way.
Like this key thing that opens the door,
it could just be like a garage door opener for the Grievers.
BALL: I kind of like the idea that this was not meant to be done this way.
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: But it's also worth mentioning that this entire section of the movie,
when they started... When they took a...
When they went running out
all the way to the end after that big maze rearrange section,
was shot in two days.
And we're talking like, about 10 minutes worth of stuff.
Two days is what we had to shoot this whole giant set piece.
Actually all of this stuff, basically. Um...
NOWLIN: That's incredible.
BALL: It was fun, but it was intense. NOWLIN: I had no idea.
BALL: But we were looking for it forever, and I'm a big...
Obviously, I know a lot of the effects stuff in the background,
and the one thing you always know is that real sunlight makes things look great.
And we had kept talking about,
"We're able to do this on a stage, let's do this on a stage. "
I'm like, "No, we can't do that. "
So, I ended up right across from our stages.
I was driving home one day,
and I noticed there was this gigantic concrete parking lot, essentially.
And what it was, was an old hotel building that had got demolished, essentially.
And they scraped all the debris and rubble away,
and they were just left with this foundation.
This awesome concrete world.
And so, I was like, "God, this is where we need to shoot this thing. "
And so, Joe Hartwick,
(STAMMERING)
our executive producer, an awesome guy,
who said, "Okay, great. Let's do this then, "
and he basically got with all of the crew
and they just one day, brought out like eight or 12 shipping containers,
made this gigantic blue screen out there at this location,
and we just shot this little thing in the movie, and VFX...
And then basically, Method came in and really made it all work, essentially.
It was cool. It was a testament to, I think,
all the departments working together, in a way.
Yeah, all that stuff in the background is obviously all CG. That's all Method.
So, it's cool stuff.
And it wasn't necessarily planned, you know,
'cause we had a much different ending planned for our movie.
It was a much bigger ending.
It was more about the tunnels than it was this little bridge thing here.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. BALL: Which is kind of...
For me it was kind of... I'm still putting in the cliff from the book.
It's kind of what I saw this being.
But we had to scramble at the last minute and rejigger our ending
to be a little smaller and use just this little location here.
NOWLIN: Right. You always go back to the basics of it.
I think originally, you go through this door and you were gonna see
the mechanics of the maze and how it operated...
BALL: We were gonna see where the Grievers were made.
NOWLIN: Right. And have...
Have that final confrontation with the Grievers in the Griever factory.
It was a really cool idea.
That was in the first draft you and I did together.
BALL: Yeah, it was fantastic.
NOWLIN: And it was like immediately, like, "We can't do it. "
BALL: Yeah, we needed another two weeks or something.
NOWLIN: But we also knew and kind of... BALL: Just, by the way, real quick.
This is one of my favorite shots in the movie.
NOWLIN: This overhead one?
BALL: For me, it's the kind of shots that I wanna do.
It's these long, awesome, energetic shots
that don't require cuts, you know what I mean?
Love that shot. Plus seeing what Method did there, I mean, it's all CG.
They're just on, basically, a concrete floor and everything else is CG.
NOWLIN: This is such a fun sequence.
BALL: Yeah, it was fun coming up with these blades.
This was kind of an answer to the idea
that the maze can take all these different shapes and how do you do that?
NOWLIN: Right, how do you do that? BALL: Without being silly and cute
and, um, kind of ridiculous.
'Cause we wanted to make something that was grounded and real,
and that's why I came up with this weird grid pattern.
NOWLIN: Look at how it can make a wall.
BALL: Yeah, you can make all kinds of different...
It can make an infinite number of maze patterns.
Yeah, and then there's this... All this is the different mechanics.
The giant mouse trap of this thing was kind of fun.
This is, kind of, just an indulgent section of the movie,
but it's a fun section, you know.
When you keep hearing about the maze changing,
you wanna see how it changes and maybe it doesn't usually change this way.
It's just because they got as far as they did, it triggered this...
NOWLIN: I always see this as part of like, kind of a kill mode, almost.
BALL: Yeah, right. It's like this is...
NOWLIN: It's very Raiders. You lift the idol...
BALL: There was also this other idea of what was actually happening here is that
the maze was basically shutting down and creating this one long pathway
that was gonna be to the exit.
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: And in fact, I shot it,
so that when they come out of here, they actually see that
what they walk into is...
It was a straight shot now.
Kind of a runway. All the way to number seven,
all the way from the Glade.
And it's like "Wow," they think this is a great thing.
They just solved the maze. It's fantastic.
Little do they know, actually they just let the Grievers come right to them.
NOWLIN: No, actually it was a good moment when you come around,
you see this runway, and I think either Thomas or Minho has the line of,
"I think we just solved the maze," coming off that death-defying sequence.
BALL: I'm still not sure if that was actually a good idea.
So there you would see, instead of a wall, you would've seen
a gigantic long stretch of run to where they were supposed to go.
So it's like, "Yeah, we just found something. "
NOWLIN: But it does at least let... Gally is kind of, you know...
- Once again, let him be justified. - BALL: But ultimately, we just cut it out
because we just felt like it was just another thing that was confusing people.
NOWLIN: But the important development is that they opened a new door.
There's now, for the first time, there's a new place to go in the maze and...
It's one of the key things in that Map Room scene
that I think was a really cool development,
was the reveal that there is nothing left to map.
That they've run the whole maze and that they've...
BALL: Yeah, nothing's changed since they've been here
and now everything's changed.
Yeah.
Alby, are you all right?
BALL: And this is kind of the last quiet scene of the movie and...
NOWLIN: This is it. I mean, think about it. From the maze rearrange
to the Griever attacks, Thomas stinging himself,
to fighting off Gally, to going through the final Griever charge into the labs.
BALL: These long kind of set pieces.
NOWLIN: Things are about to wrap up. BALL: Which is fun, people like that.
But some people also feel almost exhausted by the end of it.
Which is kind of what you want. You want this thing to be kind of...
NOWLIN: A ride. BALL: Yeah, a ride.
It's that curve that I love.
All these scenes, I just have this kind of philosophy of...
You know, there's a roller coaster-shaped curve to movies
and it's that slow kind of escalation
and then it gets gradually faster, faster, faster,
until it just gets that elbow and just peaks up.
And then, boom, crashes back down and starts all over again.
And it's kind of what the movie does here.
It starts very slow and then it just goes faster, faster, faster,
until it just, you know, it's just really intense.
But you wanted to feel, by the end of the movie, almost beat up and...
NOWLIN: I always say, when you look at people getting off
a really good roller coaster,
it doesn't necessarily look like they had fun. (LAUGHS)
BALL: They went through hell. NOWLIN: But you can't wait to go on.
BALL: And because we wanted to put the audience through this with them,
I think it's kind of part of the ride.
And all this stuff, we shot over the course of two or three days, over 30 minutes.
This is all natural...
Last 30 minutes of light kind of stuff and we were just scrambling to shoot this stuff.
It was absolutely crazy.
We would just shoot little pieces of it constantly
over a period of three days for, like I said, about 30 minutes.
And it all kind of pretty much worked out.
You know, so all this stuff is actually natural like that.
It's that gorgeous twilight.
It just looks amazing.
This is also an idea that changed from the book,
where there are four doors
that just open and close,
and it's a cool idea, but the problem is
it dramatically, for a movie, it totally kills you,
because what you wanna do is place all your fears through that door,
not that door, and that door, and that door, and that door.
You want that one door to be sort of where hell is and don't go through that door.
But we still wanted to have the four doors scenes,
so we kind of made it that there were three other doors that hadn't opened yet.
NOWLIN: There was a meeting at the studio,
I remember, when that was first pitched,
and it was that moment of, "What if it's in the Griever attack,
"and then all the doors open?" And everyone in the room went, "Oh!"
BALL: Then we were talking about maybe we should cut it.
And like, "No, no, no, you can't cut that. " (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: That's the thing. Everyone fights for the ideas
that are come up with in those rooms,
where everyone's there, to kind offtake this group ownership.
BALL: It's also good, you know, doom, like... You feel that "Uh-oh" kind of thing.
NOWLIN: It's also good for the pacing of the scene, from the doors not closing.
Is it a mistake? No, it's not a mistake. You know, they did something.
BALL: Yeah, basically they triggered the end, which is an idea in the book.
We never give it those words, but essentially this is the ending.
This is like, it's now sink or swim.
Maybe they're gonna all get taken away by Grievers
or they're gonna find a way out. It's now or never.
NOWLIN: Now that you mention that, there is still some...
People still debate, I think, when they watch the movie, and even we do.
It's the fate of these kids who get grabbed and pulled away.
Do these Grievers kill them, or are they like guard dog collectors
who bring them back to the lab for further testing?
BALL: I still say, you never see anyone killed.
NOWLIN: I'm gonna watch very carefully, 'cause I'm pretty sure you see...
BALL: I know what you're talking about. You see a shape.
Your mind fills in the blanks, but for the most part, everyone gets taken.
NOWLIN: We debate about this constantly, whether we have...
- We definitely see Alby get taken. - BALL: Taken.
No one gets... There's no blood.
NOWLIN: Originally though, we did have him get attacked.
BALL: Yeah. But that's all gone. I love the idea that these are...
By the way, these Grievers now are the tails.
We didn't have that in the first Griever.
No one ever really picks up on that.
But these are now like a new edition essentially,
these kids haven't seen before.
This is the one you're talking about, where you just...
NOWLIN: It looks like he's chowing down on his face.
BALL: He's just grabbing him, that's all.
NOWLIN: (LAUGHING) He's playing with him like a little chew toy.
BALL: Longer, it would have picked him up and carried him off.
NOWLIN: Like a dog. BALL: Exactly.
He might have a couple of puncture wounds.
NOWLIN: Yeah. (LAUGHS) BALL: But he survives.
This is me right there, actually.
NOWLIN: All right, so you're not in the sequel.
BALL: Yeah. I get killed.
I shot that on a little blue screen and put that in.
NOWLIN: That's cool. BALL: That was a fun shot.
That shot was my one money shot of the whole sequence that I was allowed.
It took forever to rig that thing.
This is a great shot. I loved it. They did a good job with this shot.
NOWLIN: Remember we kept talking in the script like,
"Maybe this is a big game-changing moment.
"They figure out how to beat the Grievers.
"Like, I don't know, fire. " I mean...
BALL: Right. NOWLIN: It's pretty basic.
BALL: It works, though. It gives Teresa a cool little badass moment.
NOWLIN: Yeah. Well, I like that it also keeps coming after her.
BALL: I remember that Teresa, right before she shot that take,
she put on her Beats headphones and she was listening to rap music or something,
and you see her just pumping herself up,
and I was like, "Are you ready? Let's do this! Okay!"
She takes her headphones off and it's like, "Action!"
And she's, "Ahhh!" You know, she did a good job.
NOWLIN: That's cool.
Come on!
NOWLIN: Now, originally, this is one of those things
when I talk about the sequence meetings
and things getting redone.
BALL: Oh, yeah. Basically, I think, even when I shot this,
I wasn't supposed to shoot this section right here.
NOWLIN: Really? BALL: I just shot it anyway, 'cause I was...
There's absolutely no way I was not gonna get that little moment in there.
NOWLIN: I would say, originally, there was a certain kind of...
It would have taken longer to shoot. We couldn't do all of it.
But, um, the idea was that people would kind of split up,
and you would track these different little groups.
And so the idea of Newt and the others going around to the woods...
BALL: Having their own little adventures also.
NOWLIN: So the idea is there, when the spears come into the Griever.
It's these two groups converging right before they make it into the homestead.
BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: Now they just come out of nowhere.
BALL: We had a little moment on the lookout tree
where some kids were climbing up that and Grievers are ripping it apart.
- It was awesome. - NOWLIN: That would have been fantastic.
'Cause you wanna feel like the...
BALL: Yeah, all the world's getting ripped apart.
It's one of those things where we didn't have the budget to do that.
NOWLIN: But this is another one of those good solutions
in terms of just hiding the Grievers. Like, get them inside the homestead.
BALL: Grant always talked about this one actually, when we were writing.
He thought this was a little, cool genre moment.
I remember he liked that.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it's just the sounds and like, yeah,
- they're on the roof. - BALL: Mmm-hmm.
NOWLIN: The ceiling gag. I remember that came up out of actually forcing them...
Trying to force them closer to these walls so they could get grabbed.
BALL: I also just needed something to compress the space.
It's like... It's not fun when you're just in this big, giant space.
So it was like, I kind of demanded we had to do something and...
And you can tell, we cheated the hell out of it.
You don't really do much with it, but at least something's in there.
NOWLIN: Now, people who actually hear this "No shit" line, it gets a laugh.
Sometimes people just don't hear it.
BALL: People will hear it. People hear it.
I remember what Justin said... One of our friends,
he watched it and he's like, he wasn't sure about Chuck
through the whole movie until that line.
And when he heard that "No shit," that was when he said,
"Okay, I like this kid. " (LAUGHS)
Which is cool.
And it's funny, I was talking to someone else,
the Chairman of the studio, Jim Gianopulos.
He's like, you know,
"I hated that kid at first and then you made me love him.
- "And then you killed him. " - (BOTH LAUGH)
And it's like, "Well, it's kind of in the book. "
NOWLIN: He's like everyone's little brother, you know.
BALL: So this whole stuff here,
Alby actually was not in this scene, 'cause he'd pulled his back.
So we had to shoot a lot of stuff with his double and this was like...
We shot this one little scene in a little pickup basically,
at the end of the shoot, when Aml got better.
NOWLIN: How did he pull out his back?
BALL: When he was swinging that machete, he was going crazy, absolutely going nuts,
and you hear him go, "Ow!"
It was that Indiana Jones moment you hear about,
Harrison Ford in The Temple of Doom, when like...
NOWLIN: He's throwing a guard over his shoulder and...
BALL: Yeah, so there's a lot of people that could maybe step through that scene
and you can kind of see where we had to do the cheats.
But it works fine.
(ALL SHOUTING)
Yeah.
NOWLIN: I like that punch.
He's gonna come up there and have another argument with Gally.
BALL: Yeah, right? Yeah, exactly. NOWLIN: Gally's done arguing.
BALL: And Will always hates it. He always wanted to redo it, but I liked it.
But there's a little moment in there where you hear his British come through.
He says "fault, " you know.
But I kind of like that stuff.
I like those little imperfections that you can talk about in the DVD commentary.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it gives us something to talk about.
BALL: That's right.
And this is a little bit of a change, I guess, from the book,
where Thomas, originally, jumps on a Griever.
Which obviously, we weren't gonna do.
But this was close enough, where you can use the stinger itself,
which is the same idea, just executed differently.
NOWLIN: And here, I like the look on Gally. Even Gally... (CHUCKLES)
BALL: I love that look on him. He just looks out of breath and he...
I think Will did a fantastic job for a role
that was really difficult, you know what I mean?
He could've easily just been the Slytherin House villain,
and I think he played a very well-rounded character.
In fact, I think what happens is a lot of adults like...
'Cause they come up to me and...
When they see it, they like Gally.
A lot of kids, they hate him. You're not supposed to like him.
He's the antagonist.
But I think he did a great job and I think it's different for him,
'cause most people know him from We're the Millers, you know...
This super-innocent virgin.
And now he gets to play this kind of tough...
And the thing most people don't know about Will is, he's really tall.
He's a really tall guy.
Um...
Yeah.
NOWLIN: Yeah, even the cast just, kind of, were down with him.
BALL: You were supposed to get the idea that,
"Okay, Thomas was sort of one of them, along with Teresa. "
We basically shot all that stuff in a day.
We just tried to do what we could
until we wake up.
NOWLIN: The tricky thing here is, just talking about two of the cast is like...
It's Thomas' movie, you're with him.
He's your eyes and ears for the whole story.
But you wanted all these other characters to be more than
just supporting characters in his journey.
You wanted them to have points of view.
BALL: It's supposed to be seen, their family dynamic, right.
NOWLIN: And so you essentially... BALL: How they need each other.
NOWLIN: Remember in casting,
you had to cast all these essentially main characters,
Newt, Chuck, Teresa, Minho, Gally, Alby... These are all main characters.
You had to cast all of them so fast, it could have been...
It could have not worked as well as it did.
BALL: Yeah, a lot of that comes down to Denise Chamian, our casting director,
who's done this a long time, and we talked early on...
We were gonna find good actors first,
and then faces or whatever, second.
Fortunately, I think all of our people...
One, they look great,
but they also fit, I think, the visual idea a lot of the fans of the book had.
They've always been very positive on our casting choices.
And, yeah, it's a tough one, 'cause like you said,
there's six or seven main characters that we have to juggle in this movie,
and the thing that's gonna carry you into the next one,
of what is hopefully, for the studio, a potential franchise,
is these characters, the casting.
And it's like you have to give everyone a little moment,
and so far, most people who see the movie during testing and all that stuff,
I have a lot of people coming up to me,
and they all have their favorites, which is great, you know.
Some people love Minho. Some people love Newt.
No one says anything bad about our casting, which is great.
Um...
So, yeah, we kind of lucked out there, I think, and Dylan did a great job.
There is the famous story of me almost not casting him because of his hair. Um...
We definitely lucked out, I think.
NOWLIN: It's not like you were like, "No, " because of hair.
You're looking at a hundred, like a thousand people in a day.
BALL: Yeah, and the basic story is that
he was one of the first tapes I ever saw
out of hundreds and hundreds of tapes when we were just starting.
I just saw him. I remember seeing this kid and he'd just finished Teen Wolf,
and he had the Teen Wolf hair.
And I had this particular image in my head, you know, first-time director,
not knowing what I was doing, really.
He just didn't fit the mold that I saw. This innocent boy, you know.
And I said, "Nope," and moved on and then...
And never found the right Thomas all the way through,
until finally the studio said,
"You should consider this boy, you know, Dylan O'Brien.
"We just did a movie with him called The Internship, he was really good in it. "
Dylan O'Brien. Okay, I looked him up online.
And I saw this Google image of him with his head shaved and I said,
"Wow, he's perfect. "
He didn't have the hair. And I was like, "Yes, that's him. "
And then suddenly, it all fell into my place,
and this told me something.
I looked back. I immediately remembered that audition tape of his.
Whatever he did, despite his hair, it stuck with me.
NOWLIN: Despite the hair. BALL: You know what I mean?
So, then I went back and looked at it, and this time I said,
"I realize what we could do, " and pulled down his hair, all that stuff.
And it's like, brought him in, talked to him.
And it's like, "Yes, this is the kid. Let's do this. "
Yeah, just thank God we got him.
He's a valuable asset to us on this thing.
NOWLIN: Sangster carries this scene.
BALL: Yeah, Thomas did a really great job,
and he's just one of those guys, man, you can just give him anything.
NOWLIN: Anything. BALL: He's just an acting machine.
NOWLIN: You have to be careful too, as a writer, you know...
You have to be careful, 'cause you just know anything you give him, he can do.
BALL: I like listening to him, you know.
I like what he does. He's really good.
NOWLIN: Yeah, they're... The whole cast, they're just watchable.
And what I like too, is that they're individually good,
but they're also good as a group.
BALL: That's the thing that's so special about this, I think,
is that they're all genuinely the best of friends today.
To this day. I mean, they really bonded in this movie.
I think a part of it is just that they're nice people.
They don't have a lot of ego.
They're just good, wholesome guys and girl.
Part of it was maybe that little boot camp that we had before the movie started.
We brought them out to the Glade and we got this guy, Giovanni,
an old, I think, Army Ranger to kind of put them through a survival training,
and just get dirt in their fingernails and get sweaty out there,
and make a fire and build a machete.
And it kind of, I think, bonded them
and they even had a little campout one night
with one of the biggest frickin', you know, electrical storms...
Thunderstorms we ever had, I think, ever.
And I'm from Florida, and I've seen some big ones, but this was massive.
Even blew down parts of the set
and they were just in these little flimsy tents.
And they're freaking out.
I think they even had to abandon this place and run into one of the trailers
that happened to be unlocked on base camp, you know, and...
NOWLIN: See, I heard the trailers were locked.
- I heard they were shut out. - BALL: No, I think they got in one, actually.
But what was great is that they had a little adventure together.
And it kind of, I think, bonded them forever.
NOWLIN: And they had to get back into the production office the next day
for costumes and whatnot, but you see them and it's like, "Hey, guys. "
BALL: They went through hell. They were set.
NOWLIN: "How was your night?" But I remember...
I had forgotten they were out there at first.
That storm woke me up from my comfortable hotel room.
BALL: Me too, and at 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, I'm like, "Oh, my God. "
NOWLIN: I forgot they were out there. It was such an amazing storm
I was actually shooting some with my iPhone out the window.
And you hear me in my recording remembering that they're out there.
BALL: Oh, really? NOWLIN: In the recording saying, "Oh no!"
BALL: That's awesome. Yeah, it's fantastic.
I mean, literally, yeah, we came the next day, went back and visited the set,
and most of the set got blown down.
It's amazing they survived in those little flimsy tents.
NOWLIN: Yeah, well, we can laugh about it now,
but it wasn't everyone's idea to send them out there, too.
BALL: Yeah, it was my idea. NOWLIN: It was your idea.
Look at Chuck running up there. He's kind of making his move.
This is another... I think the treatment of Gally and where we leave him
and his arc through this story is, I think, a little revised from the book.
You kind of lose him for a bit at the end of the book.
BALL: Yeah, he gives himself up during the Glade attack.
NOWLIN: Right. Which I think, the way we're characterizing him,
is sort of the last thing he would do.
BALL: Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Well, he also was, you know, he went through the Changing already,
and all that stuff, and we took that stuff out because it just didn't really make sense.
It's like, if you could survive the Grievers, it just took away the fear of them.
And it's like, it just didn't work for a movie.
NOWLIN: It's a good thing for Teresa to introduce to them, you know.
To actually trust her and to have that...
BALL: Instead of just having the serum that comes up every month, too.
It just didn't quite work for a movie.
NOWLIN: Yeah, let the Changing be something that...
BALL: Yeah, fortunately, James has been awesome.
NOWLIN: Yeah, he's been fantastic. BALL: He's been totally on board
for anything we want, felt that we needed to do.
NOWLIN: Very supportive of the movie. BALL: Very, very supportive, yeah.
NOWLIN: I remember meeting him in Baton Rouge.
One of the coolest things about James is that he's a movie buff.
He's a genuine movie buff.
So he was actually excited about the work
that was being done to turn his book into a movie.
BALL: I remember, I took him out in the Glade and took him on a tour,
and he was just like a kid in a candy store. It was awesome.
Really fun.
I like that line. That image too, of the line.
NOWLIN: Right, the battle line. BALL: Who's on whose side and stuff.
NOWLIN: It'd be fun to try to come up with a moment like that for the sequels
- where Thomas is now outnumbered. - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: If we can find a way to make that work.
BALL: Interesting.
NOWLIN: That's not a spoiler. That's not in there yet.
BALL: Hey, it might be a spoiler. It's okay though.
NOWLIN: Maybe it's a spoiler. Maybe we'll find a way to get it in.
BALL: If you see it, you'll know where it came from.
NOWLIN: But again, yeah, testing these bonds of friendship and it's like...
And also, the fact that they're on a journey. In this movie, you pointed out
since we're with Thomas, he kind of moves from Minho in the maze to Newt.
To Gally and Teresa...
BALL: Yeah, he's in his own little sections with each character.
NOWLIN: Right, whereas in this...
There are scenes in Part Two where we're looking at it.
- It's like, "My God!" - BALL: We have five people, six people.
NOWLIN: We have eight or nine speaking parts,
then you introduce Aris and Jorge and Brenda and all these new characters.
Like, there are eight or nine speaking parts in this scene
- and they're all main characters. - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: You can't have one of them just not do anything.
BALL: It's a little bit of a challenge.
NOWLIN: But a fun one is. Part of the fun is, now you get to see them interact.
Stuff like this.
BALL: Yeah, even here, it's like we were planning on them going
and the Grievers were starting to come out of the maze and it was getting darker,
and we were gonna have a little moment where Gally chases after him.
He's taken by a Griever and they end up here.
It's like we had all that stuff planned.
NOWLIN: We were really gonna... We had a lot for the whole third act, really.
The idea too, is we were gonna pay off
that initial wrestling match between Thomas and Gally.
Give them a real fight
in the narrows, in the walls of the changing maze.
And it would have culminated with Gally getting taken by a Griever,
so a particular twist coming up here would have at least connected a little more
to something we had seen onscreen.
And then, of course, the run-through into the Griever factory and the labs
and seeing the mechanics of the maze and...
Ultimately, what we knew when we wrote this is, you had two days to shoot it,
and a handful of VFX shots,
that you needed a final confrontation with the Grievers.
And you needed to feel like they had defeated the Grievers.
BALL: Right, exactly. We knew we wanted that part,
so that's why we were just coming up with what we could afford to do, basically.
NOWLIN: And if it's gonna be the charge through them,
this bridge becomes a really cool...
BALL: Unfortunately, that happened pretty much while we were shooting.
NOWLIN: What? BALL: This kind of change, essentially.
- Figuring this little scene out. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: The week or two before...
NOWLIN: It was a week or two before starting.
It was us in the parking lot and I remember that Sangster
was just kind of hanging out, kind of like... He was just listening.
He said, "Yeah, cool. I guess this is what we're gonna be shooting. "
"Yep. This is what you're gonna be shooting.
"For three days just pretending to... "
BALL: This was basically the only thing where it was basically a lot of blue screen.
For the most part, we had something real in the background, which you'll see.
A lot of the VFX, kind of, break down stuff.
NOWLIN: I think it's pretty good in that it gives the characters
like, you know, moments.
BALL: John did a really good job with the score,
has these really nice kind of crescendos.
NOWLIN: This is fun, it's like scraping. It's really cool.
BALL: Yeah, there's good little moments and stuff in here.
NOWLIN: But I also love the moment too...
Yeah, like this and seeing others come up,
and there's this great shot of them running
- into the protection of the rest of the group. - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: That shot. Yeah, that's an awesome shot.
BALL: And I remember, I had that shot really early on.
I loved that idea of that shot.
Um...
And yeah, just them sort of fighting back for a change, you know, which is cool.
NOWLIN: Which we would have had, I think, in any version of the third act.
When you kind of go back to those basics like you have to,
it's like, what do we absolutely need?
And you realize it's like three or four things you absolutely need.
And then you can build a scene just around that.
BALL: Yeah, just do the best you can with what you got.
NOWLIN: At the end of the day it works, 'cause you're ready to get out of the maze.
You're ready to see what's on the other side.
BALL: Plus the thing with this, this isn't the end of the movie.
NOWLIN: I know. This is ending number two.
(NOWLIN LAUGHING)
- Fighting through Gally and... - BALL: I love that shot though.
- It's a great shot. - NOWLIN: That's awesome.
Did I miss the part where the one comes down from above?
BALL: No. NOWLIN: I just like the way you set that up.
That, kind of, when Thomas and Minho first come in.
BALL: Looking up and seeing no... NOWLIN: Setting up the location.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: That's awesome. It's like a bitch slap.
What?
BALL: You can see we can't afford any more Griever shots there, so... (LAUGHS)
Yeah.
And this is basically the keypad from the book,
trying to bring that idea back in.
I even shot the thing where Chuck says, "Push, " but it just didn't work.
I had to cut it. So fans, I'm sorry.
It's in there. We just couldn't get it to work.
I love that we put that spear right through its body,
see it sticking out and it's going, "Wow! Wow!"
NOWLIN: It looked like it almost hit Minho. BALL: Yeah, right.
NOWLIN: Oh, Jacob.
BALL: Yeah, Jacob was...
NOWLIN: That's your Bill Paxton Aliens moment.
- Like... (SCREAMING) - BALL: Yeah, totally.
NOWLIN: You need one.
BALL: Yeah, and the music's just pumping through here.
It's just going crazy, you know.
It's funny. Very Aliens-like, you know what I mean?
And then they came up with this shot. I kind of pre-vised this shot first.
I came up with this shot almost last-minute.
It's just we needed something big and, you know, final.
And so, we're cutting to black and then we begin the next phase,
which essentially, really...
This next section can almost be considered
as a wrapping-up of the story of, "Are they gonna escape the maze?"
We're kind of now setting up the next movie.
You know what I mean?
This is almost a little fourth act,
- you know? - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: I love how this stuff looks here.
And I like that the texture and the look just changes.
That's what I loved about it more than anything.
NOWLIN: Stepping into a new world. BALL: Yeah.
This was the only tunnel in all of Louisiana that we could find.
It wasn't even a tunnel, you know.
It was just a service hall that we kind of extended.
NOWLIN: I love this location. There's gonna be tons
of this kind of stuff in Scorch Trials.
It's like a real location.
BALL: Yeah, just really gritty, cool-looking stuff and...
Yeah, I like the idea that the movie just suddenly unfolds and changes into
something else now, which was a lot of fun to do.
NOWLIN: I like the pace of this scene too, 'cause you can... You're just so...
- I love this shot. - BALL: You're just like, "What the hell... "
NOWLIN: You wanna know what they're walking into.
BALL: Yeah. Unfortunately, I just had to keep showing the same...
It's this tiny little stretch, you know, and it's just, you know, whatever.
NOWLIN: You didn't tell the story too, of way back, in the first night in the maze,
when Thomas crushes the Griever when he's running to Minho
through that closing wall. That closing corridor.
Like what did... The exit sign. That's awesome.
You had what, like 30 feet? (LAUGHS)
BALL: Yeah, I know. NOWLIN: It was the tiniest little...
BALL: It was crazy. Yeah, limitations were really nuts in this...
You know, everyone kind of pulls together and you figure it out.
NOWLIN: Also, this too, this was right at the end of shooting, too.
BALL: Yeah, this is the last couple days.
But, yeah, this is like good suspense, you know.
It's slow and measured and, like, "What the hell?"
And not quite telling the story of what happened.
It's just giving, hopefully, people enough to put the pieces together themselves.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: And maybe we went a little too far with that, but...
- That's supposed to be... - NOWLIN: Well.
BALL: Well, we'll see. NOWLIN: We'll see.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: And I like Newt kind of ushering Minho past there, you know.
The characters know each other really well and he doesn't...
Minho doesn't have a big, emotional outburst or reaction,
but Newt knows what's going on with him.
BALL: It's definitely kind of... We're now going into that world
that Thomas has been remembering, you know.
NOWLIN: Stepping into the world of his dreams, you know.
BALL: But then that question of, "What the hell happened here?"
This is changed from the book, where these people come storming in
when the kids arrive and... They originally...
They come in, everybody's just standing there, "Hello, come on in. "
I thought it was cooler to let that have happened before,
so when they show up, something went down and they don't know what.
And then you see that play out through this video message idea.
I thought that was a more interesting way to tell that story from the book.
NOWLIN: And you don't wanna feel that they're...
In a way, you wanna answer some of the questions from...
Enough to kind of satisfy the audience.
But you're really propelling into a new world and into a new...
So you want them to walk into the middle of a situation in progress.
BALL: It's a tough one. I mean, it's a tough freakin' ending.
I mean, it's a tough ending even in the book to do,
but that's why, hopefully, people wanna see the next one,
so that we can just continue telling this story
and wrapping some of these things up and just giving more to it,
you know what I mean? Um...
But, you know, we definitely close a lot of the threads.
NOWLIN: It's actually more than we originally...
We tried to do a little bit of a smoke and mirrors thing with this ending at first,
where the really cool idea about having this...
Now in this message, we see what happened that led to this kind of warzone.
BALL: Yeah, the world, the virus, right.
NOWLIN: It puts a clock on what Ava Paige can tell us.
So, she might not get to all the answers she ideally would have wanted.
So originally, we tried to do much more of a smoke and mirrors thing
where we don't so much go into the Flare, the virus,
the fact that these kids are immune to the virus
and they're being experimented on to find a cure.
That was all gonna be left.
You know, even in the books. Even in the books that's all left.
Really, I think, the beginning of book number three
is where you find out that they're immune to this virus.
But ultimately, it's just one of those things that became very clear,
when we started screening the movie.
You can't have the whole movie
of these kids trying to find their way out of the maze,
and at the end, not tell them what the point of the maze was.
- So, um... - BALL: Yeah.
Um...
NOWLIN: Ugh.
Brains.
BALL: Yeah, that's a little glimpse of what we might be dealing with.
NOWLIN: That's really horrific. BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: And that's not even a fraction...
That's not even a fraction of what we're doing.
BALL: Um...
NOWLIN: We have much more to do, too, I think, with Ava Paige in the next stories.
BALL: Yeah, it'll be fun to kind of keep playing...
I think she's not even in the other books.
I think we actually...
NOWLIN: You start to hear more about her at the beginning of book three
as Chancellor Paige.
BALL: Yeah, we're gonna basically really use her now in other stories.
NOWLIN: Oh, yeah.
...what makes you different.
BALL: Yeah, it's interesting.
Great shot there. I love this stuff.
Even the lenses changed in this scene here,
'cause it really sets up a different kind of world.
But I love this idea of a story happening behind the screen,
you know what I mean? I thought that was a cool idea.
You know, we only had one take, that's all we could do.
And then just make it work.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: But, yeah, I kind of liked how she was cut off, essentially.
NOWLIN: There was basically no reaction to what's happening behind her,
'cause she knows what's happening behind her.
BALL: Exactly. She knows what's coming. You can see these little cues
in the background when alarms start going off and she's still talking.
And you never actually see her shoot herself. It's a cutaway.
NOWLIN: She has a good little half-second of acting that I really like,
where she says, "Circumstances have prevented it. "
And she kind of looks off screen to somebody.
BALL: And she hears a little... We put a little sound effect in there.
You know something's happening.
In the background you start to see people running around,
getting ready for something, and what is it? Oh!
Now it's all catching up to where we are right now,
with the dead bodies, all that stuff.
And the door opens up and...
And then, we do our little false ending bit here.
And then we get into the part where all the fans are waiting to...
Someone had watched this movie and they forgot that we had to kill Chuck still.
You know, and when it happened, they're like, "Oh, no. No!"
NOWLIN: They thought maybe we were gonna let the poor kid live,
but that was always...
Yeah, it was one of those things that was on that list of things that can't be.
BALL: Yeah, you had to do it, you know, you have to do it.
NOWLIN: I thought it was also important too,
the way we propel into the next story,
that these kids, Thomas in particular,
had to be shattered by the time they got out.
They couldn't just walk out.
BALL: That's definitely gonna be shaping him
and what his decisions are like in his next journey.
NOWLIN: So, notice that Gally is dropping one of the Griever keys.
BALL: He must have gotten it somehow.
Either he had found one of the dead Grievers that they left behind outside
and it stung him before he could get away.
Or they didn't kill all of them, you know.
BALL: Or something else. NOWLIN: Or something else then.
BALL: Yeah, I guess it's more left to the audience to kind of put that together.
NOWLIN: Again, it's a cool little...
- Kind of an off screen story. - BALL: Mmm-hmm.
NOWLIN: And Will's really good here.
The whole group is good here, I like Ki Hong...
BALL: This was tough too, it's the last three days of shooting and everyone...
I mean, shooting these kinds of scenes is just really emotionally draining,
and Will was waiting to shoot this scene.
It's tough to be in this place for hours on end.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: Emotions were running high on the whole set.
For Will and Dylan and Chuck. And it was a tough one.
I didn't enjoy shooting this stuff, that's for sure.
But it was also kind of interesting that it was the last thing we shot,
so it was like, in a way they were all saying goodbye to each other,
this little family
that really got to fall in love with each other, you know.
Um...
Yeah, so I'm told you can survive that spear.
So it's gonna be important.
NOWLIN: Yeah, notice it did not quite hit the heart.
BALL: This is the only blood in the whole movie, actually.
- There's no blood anywhere else. - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
Was there any issue here with the Ratings Board?
BALL: No, there was no issue.
Look at me, look at me!
BALL: Yeah, poor little Chuck. It's like, he was...
He was crying all the time, you know.
'Cause he had to play dead, essentially, and...
NOWLIN: Oh, Blake? BALL: Yeah.
And... I keep calling him Chuck. I always call him Chuck.
And yeah, he'd come up to me and say, "What else do we...
"How long... How many more takes are we gonna do?
"It's really hard. I can't... " You know?
I'm like, "Buddy, come here. " You know?
And everyone was really...
NOWLIN: Oh, my God, that breaks my heart.
BALL: Yeah, I mean...
NOWLIN: 'Cause he's really good in this scene.
BALL: And he had to play dead, it was tough.
This is one of those things where the dailies,
everyone would come up to me and tell me that, "Oh, my gosh, it was like... "
I don't know if we ever really got to
the same feeling that was on set, you know?
But, yeah, everyone did a great job.
And Dylan's just... This is the part that I love him.
He's like, you know, when he's like,
you know, just that thing in his voice and he just can't believe it, in a way.
I think he did just an awesome job.
This was like, you know, we only shot two takes of this,
two, three takes and eventually...
You only get one or two takes of this stuff.
You can't keep... You can't stay in this place, you know.
And unfortunately, 'cause of the coverage,
this is one of those things, when you have all these groups, you have coverage.
So all these people are having to stay in this emotion for so long,
and it's not easy.
It's really not, especially for Kaya,
she was kind of, in a way, she wasn't in the group.
She was off on the side there, so it's like, you know, I had to...
I had to kind of shoot her after I shot everyone else,
'cause of the way the lighting worked, and, yeah, it was just...
It's never good for anyone, you know what I mean?
But, yeah, so this is pretty much from the book,
except that these guys kind of came in, you know,
a little earlier and shot Ava Paige.
But I thought it was a little bit more interesting,
and it kind of just, like, in that gut punch, just like, "What the hell?"
It's like a whirlwind, you know, of the adventure,
you're just gonna continue going and...
NOWLIN: Right, yeah, that you're kind of walking out into the middle of a war.
BALL: It's out of the frying pan and into the fire, and it's definitely a...
The trials are about to begin.
NOWLIN: Right. Yeah. BALL: So to speak.
NOWLIN: And then, um...
BALL: But John did a great job with the cue here.
It really gave this scene kind of a structure
- and a shape and... - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: You know, and just kind of like, boom, opening up.
NOWLIN: There's something kind of oddly shocking about that hard cut
- to desert, you know? - BALL: Yeah.
And then like, this is the shot that I did.
That stuff on the horizon or whatever. But...
NOWLIN: Now, in the book, you actually introduce the Cranks,
the people who were infected with the Flare at the end of the book.
It's weird, as much as we say we're setting up the next movie,
there's that balance between what feels like an ending
and what feels like the first act of Movie Two.
BALL: Yeah. Um...
NOWLIN: The helicopter is a nice touch rather than the bus.
BALL: Yeah, 'cause you want that. 'Cause again...
Everything is from Thomas' point-of-view, so you never get a shot of the maze.
So you wanted to get up in the air
and let them see the world that they're leaving behind,
you know what I mean?
So the helicopter was the right way to go.
I just wish it could have been a different kind of helicopter, like a...
Something a little more cool. But it's what we could do.
But yeah, that's pretty much the same maze
that we saw in the Map Room. It's pretty much it.
- It's this big, giant compound. - NOWLIN: Yeah, Minho nailed it.
BALL: Yeah, good job, Minho.
There's little solar panels on the top
that keeps the thing powered. Yeah, whatever.
NOWLIN: You like your solar panels. BALL: That's right.
- I like how they glint. They're cool. - NOWLIN: This is your...
You could talk about just panning over the exhausted faces
in the helicopter at the end of Jurassic Park, you know.
BALL: Right, yeah, exactly. NOWLIN: Kind of wanted that feeling.
- There's James Dashner. - BALL: There's James Dashner on the left.
Hey, James.
And then we do our last little twist, really, is that this is all part of the plan, and...
NOWLIN: All part of the experiment.
BALL: And they're gonna have to...
Something to deal with, pretty much on the next one.
This is all real. They're really up in the air.
First, we were gonna just do it on the ground,
but then we went ahead and shot it, went up into the sky,
and, man, it is just great-looking stuff when you do it for real.
You really get some cool shots.
Yeah.
And that's a good little touch there, of him, like, you know...
NOWLIN: I hope people are intrigued by...
Yeah, having that blood-encrusted totem, and he's gonna have that with him...
BALL: He's got blood on his hands now,
and it's gonna be affecting him as a character forever.
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: Yeah, and it's gonna influence what he does in the future.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. The immediate future.
BALL: And then, yeah, we start setting up The Scorch Trials,
which is gonna take place in this crazy world, which...
This is the most expensive shot in the movie,
and it's where the next movie takes place, in this bizarre landscape.
And that's... I guess that's it.
NOWLIN: That's the movie.
BALL: And then, there's this cool score thing here, I guess, and...
Um...
Yeah.
We got titles, and I don't know what else we can talk about.
NOWLIN: I don't know, man. It was a pleasure.
BALL: Yeah, it was a lot of fun to work on, I think. We all worked really hard on it,
and, you know, hopefully everyone enjoyed it.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it's a hard... You keep talking about how hard it is,
there's all these challenges and the puzzle, that you always remember
what a privilege it is to be able to make a movie.
And to put something out in the world that you're proud of.
BALL: We have the best job in the world, basically.
So, hopefully, audiences go to the theaters in a few weeks here
and enjoy the movie and...
NOWLIN: And you still have a job.
BALL: Yeah, I still have a job and they're excited to see the next one,
'cause we certainly are really excited to actually dive into the next one,
and I guess hopefully we'll see you there in about a year.
NOWLIN: Doing this one year from now.
- BALL: Yeah. - NOWLIN: Hopefully. Fingers crossed.
BALL: So, I guess that's it. Thanks to everyone.
Thanks to the cast and the crew.
All the hard work that everyone's done and...
NOWLIN: Yeah. Wyck, Ellen, Lee.
BALL: Yeah, all our producers. Joe and, um...
I guess it's farewell for now.
That's right. We should mention that too really quickly,
is how awesome the studio has been.
They really, for me being a first-timer,
they took a huge risk on giving me this movie. Um...
I couldn't be more thankful and...
NOWLIN: And all the... The only real... People talk about interference.
There's no real interference.
They only wanted the movie to be good, you know.
BALL: That's right.
Yeah, I mean, we were all basically trying to make the same movie,
so it was just, we were all kind of a team.
You always hear these horror stories
of the studio coming in and demanding things.
But they pretty much let us make the movie that we wanted to make,
and I gotta say, it was one of the...
It was an amazing experience, and I think it's probably 'cause of...
There was a bit of a regime change coming...
Happening as I was making this movie.
And all the people involved
were just anxious to make a new kind of studio,
and very artist-friendly, and I couldn't have been more happy.
And hopefully, we'll keep making movies together,
'cause it's been a real pleasure.
So, with all that said,
I hope you all enjoy, and we'll see you on the next one.
NOWLIN: Thanks, guys.