WES BALL: And here we are, the final journey.
T.S. NOWLIN: Indeed.
Hello, everybody. This is Wes Ball.
Sitting next to me is T.S. Nowlin, writer.
NOWLIN: Hello. JOE HARTWICK JR.: Hmm. T.S.
BALL: And producer, Joe Hartwick Jr. HARTWICK JR.: Hmm.
BALL: I think I've never said "Junior" before.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it's weird. BALL: It's true.
BALL: I just have your email in my head.
(HARTWICK JR. CHUCKLES)
NOWLIN: So, here we are, doing the last movie...
Commentary for the last movie.
BALL: The opening. You should talk about that.
NOWLIN: We had a different opening, I think, at first, right?
- It was the... - BALL: There's different versions
but it always centered around a train. (LAUGHING) Remember?
NOWLIN: No, no, yeah, but I mean like the very beginning,
there was the idea of opening on a microscopic view of the virus,
it was a title card sort of thing.
BALL: Yeah, sure. No, actually originally,
I wanted to open up on a solar flare, remember?
- That was... - NOWLIN: Well, that was before we had...
BALL: That was the original version.
That I wanted to open up on the title on a solar flare.
I had this really cool design and set it up and it just didn't work,
and then I started doing this virus thing.
It was about the virus,
and at one of our test screenings,
someone complained about how silly it looked.
And so I lost my nerve and we cut it out and just went straight into this,
which is cool, opening up on the ruins.
But this basic opening was, I think, always kind of the idea.
NOWLIN: It was always the idea.
BALL: We were gonna just be thrown into this sort of rescue attempt.
NOWLIN: Yeah, I think, as soon as we knew the ending of the second movie,
that it was gonna end with Minho getting taken
and the group deciding that they were gonna stop running
and fight back against WICKED.
It was always the idea that we would be...
With the time jump opening up with a mission already in progress.
BALL: Yeah, I had two things in my mind. It was Return of the Jedi
- and Last Crusade. (LAUGHS) - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Right.
BALL: Last Crusade, obviously the train thing,
but Return of the Jedi was that whole...
That first little chunk of the movie
really isn't connected to the rest of the story.
It's just it's own thing.
And it is about rescuing.
In that case Han Solo and here it was ours about Minho.
And I thought it was cool
'cause that right in the very first three minutes
you knew what this movie was about, which was about rescuing Minho.
Of course, it evolves into being much more than that,
but it was just a good, simple, I think, device.
And I think fans were always ticked off with us on the last movie
for stealing Minho,
but I think we felt like we needed it, even in the second one,
to give this movie stakes.
NOWLIN: Right. Well, there was a point before the second movie came out
where we had a couple of drafts of the script
where we actually did rescue Minho earlier in the story
and he rejoined the group.
And it was like an early instinct I think you had
that they can't get Minho.
They can succeed in the mission and get a bunch of kids
and there are gonna be familiar faces like Aris and Sonya,
but if they don't have Minho, if he's in the city,
that's the emotional hook.
That's what's driving them together.
BALL: It's a very powerful carrot to dangle in front of our characters.
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: Yeah.
BALL: Nothing will stop them until that happens.
And after that happens you feel like everything's over
and I think we do a good job of, as soon as they get him, it's not over.
There's something else that comes next.
NOWLIN: Right. And there was a question, too, of like,
"Well, what are we gonna do with Minho
"if he's gonna be in captivity for a lot of the movie?"
And we started talking about Teresa's storyline
and the idea that she's not just experimenting
on nameless, faceless kids that we've never met,
but someone that we know and love and someone that arguably she knows.
And how does she justify that to herself and how does she justify that to him?
And it just started creating all these little opportunities
that felt like a lot of fun to play with.
HARTWICK JR.: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: So, the movie was all shot in South Africa.
HARTWICK JR.: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: This is in the Kalahari Desert.
Looks very much like an old Western.
I don't know, there's something cool about it.
I think early on, I don't know why a train always popped in my head.
It's just some kind of a cool vehicular...
Like an old Western,
except with horses, they have old beat-up trucks and vehicles,
as they attempt to basically steal a train car.
And this also came about partly from in The Death Cure when they're escaping.
I think one of the differences is
they wind up back with WICKED in the second book,
at the end of the second book.
And in the third book
they have this escape from WICKED headquarters or something.
And they steal a Berg, Jorge steals a Berg
and we still incorporated that into this sequence. But...
NOWLIN: We also felt like we did that sequence
at the beginning of Scorch Trials.
That was how we launched into that journey.
BALL: Something else worth mentioning here, and just on a technical level,
this stuff is... Almost every one of these moving vehicle shots is CG.
That's all CG.
Every one of these shots with the train,
except for some of the second-unit stuff is a CG environment,
which Weta did a good job on.
NOWLIN: Looks good.
(GRUNTING)
Shit!
Let's go!
Hey! Berg!
PILOT: Zero-one-niner, be advised. You've taken on boarders at the rear.
We're engaging the truck now.
BALL: There's only one shot, or two shots in here I think
that we actually used from Vancouver
when we first started and the rest of it's all re-shot.
Like all that, all those explosions, those are all CG.
That wasn't really there.
Weta did a good job with that, too, I thought.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, they did do a really good job.
NOWLIN: But remember, you did... Some of those were practical, right?
BALL: That's real. Yeah, only that one's real,
but you can tell it doesn't look quite the same.
NOWLIN: It doesn't look as good as the CG?
BALL: Not as big. (LAUGHS) NOWLIN: Yeah. Bigger.
BALL: But it was a good sequence. It's long.
It's a super long cold open basically.
It's a 10-minute-long open of...
Thrown in the middle of a rescue attempt
and you get to meet all the characters again,
and it was kinda fun to come up with this thing.
NOWLIN: I think it's all little... It's all fun I think.
I think what's interesting, too, is comparing it
to the way the first two movies opened,
because the first two movies are really about
putting the audience in Thomas' point of view,
putting them in his shoes.
He's completely disoriented, thrown into a world he doesn't understand
and here you see that they've... They know their place in the world.
They've evolved into this kind of tactical position.
BALL: Yeah, exactly. I think
it's really setting up the rest of the movie, I thought,
was like all these characters are capable but limited.
You know what I mean? They work together as a team,
they can do pretty accomplished things
and you saw some of these things
being set up in the earlier movies is their capabilities,
but now they're working as a unit together.
I thought it was cool.
Get down! Get down!
Vince?
We're set! Cover your ass!
GUARD: Go, go, go!
VINCE: Take cover!
BALL: And they steal a train.
So like all these shots, they're all on a green screen,
you know, parking lot basically.
We shot it in daylight cause that was very important VFX wise.
A lot of the big problems...
Like Dylan there is on green screen
and the other train was shot for real actually in the background.
That's a real train obviously.
And we actually really did separate the trains while it was moving.
That was our train we had for what, like a week?
NOWLIN: A week, yeah.
BALL: It was our train and our tracks to use for
however long we wanted.
And it was cool.
We had our own train to run around on.
NOWLIN: And that was the difference
between Vancouver and South Africa, right?
Like, you didn't have tracks in Vancouver.
BALL: Yeah, we didn't have tracks. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: We had to build 200 freight tracks and tried to make them work.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, this wound up being better.
BALL: This stuff, we did shoot all this.
This whole sequence here, we actually did shoot this in Vancouver,
but we couldn't use it because it was so different,
so we had to reshoot it all.
So all this is still... All this is new stuff,
but it's all pretty close.
If I were to compare frames from Vancouver to this stuff,
it's pretty close.
It's maybe a little bit more efficient I guess
- in terms of what we got. - HARTWICK JR.: Hmm.
But still... I could have spent another two days on this stuff out here,
but we ended up cutting up a lot of stuff in this,
in this sequence.
But I think at one point it was 18 minutes long
and now it's 11 minutes or something like that.
So this stuff, like here, more technical stuff I guess,
but there it is being towed on a truck.
And the guys aren't really driving,
but that is real backgrounds and stuff.
And all of this stuff here
is all one little ranch basically in the desert,
we found all these different locations for this opening sequence.
So it was right on the corner, so right around that little ridge
was where we'd do some of the train tracks stuff
and bouncing around for five days shooting all this stuff basically.
Stop right there. Don't move.
I said freeze, asshole!
Whatever you say, hermano.
NOWLIN: I just like watching Giancarlo here.
BALL: Yeah, Giancarlo's fun.
Yeah, it was fun to come back and do all this stuff,
and the locations were cool.
Probably cooler than what we had in Vancouver actually.
Just the look and feel of it is very desert, you know?
- Old West. - NOWLIN: It's kinda good that
you're opening with the environment of the second movie
before we start venturing out into a completely new terrain.
BALL: It's pretty much like we did in the second one, too.
I think end of the first one
we opened up into the Scorch, and you kinda tease that world.
And then we start right back where we left off in the second one
and kind of pull back further
on that world of the Scorch and the desert and all that stuff.
And then we kinda finish it here
and then start setting off towards the city,
which is like a big player in the books.
NOWLIN: I think that was one of the first things we talked about in the book
is the idea that a lot of the action was centered around a city
and that's something that we haven't seen in the movies.
BALL: Yeah, a new stage.
NOWLIN: And you had an instinct early on that it had to be a discovery.
It couldn't be something that we just cut to
- as if it was no big deal. - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: It was so different from the ruins
that we had seen in the Scorch.
It's a reveal to the audience and it should be the characters as well,
but there is a place like this
that is protected and that exists in the world.
BALL: Yeah, hopefully it just kind of expands on the universe of these movies
where you've got these giant mazes with robot spiders and...
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: You know, destroyed civilization
and you got one last city that's kind of...
I think that the big design thing there was trying to make sure that that city
still felt like it belonged in our world,
so that's why we kind of designed it
very much like the maze in the first movie.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
Yeah, it needs to feel a little bit like a homecoming.
It needs to feel like you're going back to
where it started, to the same sort of environment.
But at the same time I think it's fun that...
It's a hard thing with a story that's so interconnected and serialized,
that builds off each other from 1 into 2, and 2 into 3,
that the movies are also distinct and that they have their own identity
and their own palette.
- Like we always talked about looking... - BALL: I always liked that...
NOWLIN: The box... BALL: Yeah, the posters, you know?
NOWLIN: Like the boxed set, yeah. BALL: Each one's so different.
NOWLIN: Like the green and the concrete of Maze Runner
and the orange and the desert of Scorch,
and then the kind of Blade Runner sort of world of Death Cure.
BALL: Yeah, it's cool.
And I don't know,
I'm really happy we got to do that
because I just don't know if I could just keep doing the same thing
over and over again for each movie.
It's fun that we got to explore different things in all these movies.
NOWLIN: Well, it's funny, people say "Oh, I like the maze in the first one.
"Bring the maze back."
I'm like, "All right, well, what do you want us to do in here?"
BALL: Yeah, what do you do differently?
- Well then, you get silence because... - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: There's nothing else to do.
And it wasn't just about the maze.
It was about the mystery of who gets to go back to what's outside.
BALL: You don't go back to the maze in the books either really, except...
- They kinda do at the end, but... - BALL: Yeah.
BALL: But it's...
The maze only is effective as long as there's mystery around it.
And as soon as you pull that out, it's...
- NOWLIN: You can't rebottle the ketchup. - Exactly.
BALL: It's not very interesting anymore.
Like it's another thing here, too.
That's a giant drone shot.
I do a ton of drone footage or drone shots in this movie this time.
It's the first time we actually used that.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, that's true. BALL: It's a really cool tool,
where it's not really a helicopter shot, not really a crane shot.
It's kind of in between.
And that wasn't always the case, too,
putting the title in the middle after that.
Originally we had it in the beginning,
but it just felt like it separated that opening
from the rest of the movie in a cool way.
And also it followed what we've done in the previous movies
where we have this little throw-the-audience-in cold open,
and then, the movie begins after that opening.
Same thing with Thomas coming up in the box
and then Thomas and the group being brought into that
in the second movie, into the bunker, you know?
So it kinda fit with us I guess.
Just in this case it's a 10-minute little cold open that we have to watch.
Hopefully you enjoy it.
NOWLIN: People might not realize it's 10 minutes watching it.
BALL: It's a very fast scene. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, for sure it's fast.
BALL: And I remember John's score,
that was a really tough one to get 'cause it's a solid score.
It's a real battle between sound and music there.
I think they did a good job.
HARTWICK JR.: That was a cool location.
BALL: Yeah, another cool little spot in South Africa.
- Saint Helen's Bay? - HARTWICK JR.: Look at the... Yeah...
BALL: Was it Helena's Bay?
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, it was like an old lobster thing?
BALL: Yeah. HARTWICK JR.: An old fish...
BALL: It was basically in the middle of nowhere.
And it was just this building that was just falling into the sea
and we obviously put all the boats in
but like that boat behind Barry was not really there.
Surprisingly being in Cape Town on the ocean,
there was no boats for us to use, at least that we liked.
And so we had to just do it all CG.
Thought it worked out really well.
I think it's for the most part pretty seamless.
Like you'd ever know that that boat behind him is full CG.
He's actually just standing on blue sky there.
Well, I don't.
So in two days...
when we get this tub of rust seaworthy...
we're getting the hell outta here.
We're gonna go to a place where WICKED will never find you.
BALL: And this is also kinda bringing back the second movie, too.
You know, the idea of the safe haven and that there is a place for them to go
and they have this chance to basically be done with it all.
You could literally end the movie right there if you want to.
If they all just got on that boat and left.
They'd never have to deal with this ever again,
but of course Thomas' character and his friends,
- they aren't done yet, you know? - NOWLIN: Right.
NOWLIN: There was a little work that kinda had to be done
because they had joined up essentially with an army at end of the second movie.
But what you really want is to get to
your core group of characters on a mission,
so the idea they've succeeded, the mission is over,
but not for Thomas because he doesn't have Minho yet.
BALL: Yeah, and it centers it,
which I think this movie's much more centered around character
and the emotional track of this movie
is stronger I think than the last one for sure.
NOWLIN: Well, it's not as driven by the question of
- what is this world? - BALL: Plot.
NOWLIN: And why are they important?
What Vince does in that previous scene
is pretty much a scene that we
never really let ourselves have in the other movies,
which is laying out very clearly
the essential conflict of the two different sides and...
BALL: And how like Thomas in particular is kinda caught in the middle.
NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: I always liked how this stuff looked here.
It's really good-looking stuff.
Again, it's not a set, we like locations,
so this is just one of those buildings in that location
that we were shooting in and it just has a great feel.
We did knock out some walls.
All that brick stuff back there, but that texture was really there.
It was really a great place to be.
All I know is...
they kept talking about a city.
BALL: And we had Nathalie and Kat come back.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
Well, it was a shame we weren't able to get more of them in,
- but it's just... - BALL: Yeah, there's two things.
BALL: Remember when we were in Vancouver,
someone wasn't available.
- It was like two days. - NOWLIN: It was Nathalie, yeah.
BALL: We had two days with her,
so we had to kinda figure out that in the script.
And then when we got back, Kat was on another shoot.
- She was doing her TV show. - HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: So we had to really...
I think we had a couple of days with them,
so we had to just make what we had with them work.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: But I think they did a good job and they went back.
NOWLIN: They at least have a clear role in the story,
but, I mean, I think when you get...
BALL: That was the main thing I think. NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: We didn't wanna find ourselves,
you know, I felt that a little bit in the second movie
where we have so many characters standing around that
it's all they're doing is standing around.
And it's hard to give everyone some kind of dramatic, you know...
- Agency in the story. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: But this, we just wanted to keep this very simple and focus on
rescuing Minho, and Thomas, and the gang, you know?
So it works out, but...
NOWLIN: It's also a different type of movie,
like in The Scorch Trials
it was a fugitive story, they were on the run.
And so we've talked about this,
the idea that is a shape for a story
where it's hard to explore the dynamics
of an ensemble of seven or eight main characters
'cause the situations just aren't varied enough.
But in a mission movie,
it's easy enough to split them off and say that
everybody kinda has their role in the mission.
With Nathalie and Kat,
and Jacob, who was I think a really good addition in the second movie,
I think as soon as we decided that Minho was not going to be on the train,
that he was gonna be in the city, you wanted familiar faces,
which is Aris and Sonya on the train.
And that would have been Nathalie's reason or Harriet's reason
forgoing on the mission with them, as if her friends were in the city.
Otherwise she would just be in the shot.
BALL: Right.
HARTWICK JR.: It was a good scene.
NOWLIN: But, yeah, I mean, that's the hard thing.
You get three movies deep here.
You got all this big ensemble from the first movie.
BALL: It's a lot to wrap up. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, it is.
NOWLIN: You have all the new characters in the second movie.
And I think if you just make a list at the start of this
of all the characters we have and the plot threads we have...
BALL: And service, yeah.
NOWLIN: And that's where it can get away from you, you know?
Because you have all this business you have to attend to,
questions that have to be answered, threads that have to be addressed.
There was an earlier scene with Jorge and Brenda
that's basically just to remind the audience
that she got infected and that she's living on borrowed time.
And there was an idea that we sort of removed from there,
that because of that she's not planning to go to the safe haven.
But you just have to find opportunities to weave that into something like this.
'Cause we just wanna tell a story, you know?
You're not trying to do franchise homework.
HARTWICK JR.: Right, right. BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: But it was good to make that list early on
of every question we wanted to answer
and every beat we wanted to hit
to really make sure that we're wrapping up the story
because this is the finale, the conclusion.
And then put that aside, just try to tell a good story,
and then realize there's an opportunity to tie that up or, you know?
BALL: I also think we probably said
we had at least a rough idea of what we wanted this third one to be.
- NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. - On the second one, we didn't,
- on the first one... - NOWLIN: No.
BALL: I mean, we assumed there would be more,
but had we known, if we put a little bit more thought
into the second and third movie during the first one,
we probably would have done this a little differently
just to set ourselves up.
NOWLIN: Yeah, definitely. We definitely...
BALL: And that would probably, honestly, it would have been going
a little further away from the book just because it...
And it's not to speak negatively about the book at all,
but it's just difficult sometimes, these books,
there's so much in them that it's hard to put that all into a movie.
So you end up putting the narrative in this kind of pretzel shape
to try to hit all the beats,
and it makes things kind of complicated in terms of movie viewing.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: But we always spent a lot of time
trying to keep as much from the books as we can,
even in some form or fashion.
Even if we changed something, we tried to keep something in like that,
for instance, stealing the Berg,
we still tried to keep that idea and make it a part of the story.
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: Same thing with drones and all these different little things
and the idea of guns and the WICKED defenses
and things like that we'll see later.
We take it very seriously.
The book fans are really important to us.
But sometimes we just have to focus on the movie experience.
Again, CG boat back there.
Obviously, all that stuff back there.
I always liked this scene, too.
This is kinda to me like what...
It's really the heart of the movie in a way.
It's about these friends that are willing to do anything for each other.
And that gets to the core
of what that first movie I think it was all about,
that family coming together and willing to die together
and that's this, you know?
And it's kinda fun that Newt gets to have the surprises.
He knows Thomas so well, he's waiting for them.
And then this little cool surprise, which was I think...
I think it was actually Gyula's idea,
the idea of Frypan sitting in there and just opening the door for him.
I remember in Vancouver we talked about this idea,
like, we had some other version that revealed Frypan
and then he gave me that idea of
opening the door and he's already sitting there.
NOWLIN: Yeah, I think it was Frypan kind of announcing himself into the scene
- or walking up like, "I'm here, too." - BALL: Yeah, something like that.
BALL: It thought that was a funny. It was a good visual gag though.
It's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna steal that."
It's something a little different and then we ended up doing that...
NOWLIN: Well, what's nice about him being motionless and just sitting there
already behind the wheel.
The tone of it is like, "Of course I'm coming.
You don't need to say anything."
BALL: You don't need to sit there, have a big discussion.
NOWLIN: Right.
HARTWICK JR.: Our cow pasture. BALL: So, yeah, this scene
I don't know, this scene actually
more or less came together after Vancouver I think.
I remember we had some version of this,
but it was after Vancouver when we went to...
NOWLIN: I think you had a problem finding a Glade in Vancouver.
BALL: Yeah, exactly, so we were doing something else.
But in here, we went twice as big
- I think than we originally planned. - NOWLIN: There were so many options.
NOWLIN: I remember location scouting with you guys.
- There were so many Glade options. - BALL: Yeah.
BALL: But no matter what, we felt...
I felt it was really important to see this image again of
someone in the maze with the walls.
I thought that was a really cool kinda throwback.
I always felt like they would put this in the teaser
and people would say, "Oh, my gosh, we're going back to the maze," but...
NOWLIN: No, they did. It's in the trailer.
BALL: Yeah, part of it.
Not the good part of it. (LAUGHS)
But it was interesting.
This was the very first day of shooting actually.
It was actually considered a pre-shoot, which is not really an official shoot,
but we steal time and we shoot two days early basically.
NOWLIN: You just did all the key...
You did like this, and then the Griever stuff the first two days.
BALL: Yeah, those are the first two days
so all this stuff here was done in a day.
Actually, about seven hours or something.
We didn't really spend all day.
But it was fun to kind of revisit
the textures and aesthetic of the first movie again, you know?
It was a weird feeling.
I remember Wyck called me, 'cause he didn't come to South Africa,
but he called and he had watched the dailies,
and he said he felt this weird feeling of seeing that imagery again, you know?
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: It's cool. It's fun.
NOWLIN: Now, this actually, I'm gonna tell a story about this.
So we actually had...
And there was a part of the opening dream sequence,
the memory in the beginning of Scorch Trials.
We start with Thomas a young man.
As a little boy getting handed over to WICKED,
and then suddenly he's in the box.
And then we were gonna have another little section...
BALL: Yeah, him up top.
NOWLIN: He was gonna be in the Glade, and that shot of Alby and Chuck
turning to him from the walls was always a part of that script.
I think it was the same thing of no Glade in Albuquerque.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: And so we finally got that. BALL: And also it was a time thing,
we abandoned it.
NOWLIN: Actually, yeah, the pace of it works better without it.
BALL: Yeah. NOWLIN: That single rising crescendo.
BALL: That shot was really cool, too, going into the hut
and it just kinda seamlessly transitions into this tunnel.
That was fun to do.
NOWLIN: This was something you discovered later
was the idea of the doors,
almost like the doors of the maze opening in the hallway.
That wasn't in the script.
BALL: Yeah, originally, it was just a long hallway
and it felt like we needed something.
And that imagery of the maze,
of those walls, those doors were so iconic
that it'd be nice to include that kind of concept.
NOWLIN: Yeah.
This feels like the first night in the maze with Thomas.
BALL: It was different 'cause we never had fluorescent lights.
Again, we're starting to bring in some of the world.
If you notice, the color schemes of this are the same color schemes of the world
that we're gonna see him in when he's dreaming in that lab set.
So, there's super bright greens and these cool blues.
It was cool to... It's the maze,
but it's more tech-based.
It was just a way to...
Obviously, what we're getting at here is that
his dream is starting to fall apart and become more his actual...
Circumstances of being tied up and tested on in this lab setting.
This was a cool shoot, too. I love this shot.
We actually really did hang him up.
HARTWICK JR.: We did that for real, yeah.
BALL: He was on a wire, basically, and we just yanked him up.
He's using his strength to keep his arms attached to the ceiling.
But he has a couple of wires there,
just yanked him up to the ceiling and he really did it.
Gyula was up on an apple box walking around up there.
(HARTWICK JR. CHUCKLES)
NOWLIN: Something I hope you can clarify here.
- This is not a simulation. - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: This is an induced nightmare.
BALL: It's for whatever people want, but I always thought, yeah,
it's not like they're projecting images into his brain.
It's actually just
they're stimulating some part of his brain that they needed to stimulate
which is kind of the mythology, I guess,
is that the brain is the important part of finding a cure here.
That might be his own invention in his mind, that world.
NOWLIN: But the idea is, yeah, you're stimulating something in the brain
that produces the antibodies
that are separated from the blood, which we thought we...
We had tried to be a little more subtle in communicating that
in the second movie with the hanging bodies.
Here now, we realized you need to see it happen,
- that someone needs to say... - BALL: Say it.
NOWLIN: "Not as effective as the maze,
"but it seems to be working."
BALL: Hit it on the nose and be done with it.
- It is what it is, but... - NOWLIN: It is what it is, but yeah.
BALL: I think people can go back and look at the second movie
and they'll see, "Oh, this all lines up.
- "It still is the same stuff." - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: It might be more clear now when they watch that movie,
that we don't really hold your hand as much.
'Cause maybe we should have, but, you know...
NOWLIN: Something that's really satisfying for me watching this movie
is the kind of organic way you get to re-introduce
all of these characters throughout the story,
like the way Teresa comes in, the way Ava comes in.
BALL: Without dialogue, which I think is fun.
NOWLIN: Without dialogue.
- Yeah. It's the storytelling. - BALL: Visual storytelling.
NOWLIN: And we've never done this before.
We've never really cut away from Thomas in these movies.
We've never shown multiple points of view.
Even just the way you open with these big overview shots
of the Scorch and the ruins,
it was much more, it's subjective, the word I guess.
Just subtly preparing the audience for something
that feels very structurally, tonally different from the other two movies.
BALL: It also comes to just being a bigger movie.
It's like, part of that first movie was all a singular point of view.
I liked that.
I liked the intimacy of that movie,
but we just couldn't do that again this time.
So it needed to be bigger and finish off in a big way.
- This was a cool location, too. - HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: There was a ton of great locations in this country.
Right to the right of that building,
there is actually a freeway or a highway that goes underneath the mountain.
This is a giant seven-kilometer long service tunnel
that goes along for emergency access to the main highway in there.
I had Weta go and create in that wide shot
a lot of destruction and stuff on the building itself,
but that building was really there.
It's a good example of real footage
that's been extended and enhanced digitally
instead of just being a full CG thing.
But it was cool. It was fun.
This was our first five days of shooting,
or I think first three days,
and then we had a couple of days on the weekend
to clean up some of the stuff.
HARTWICK JR.: That was a tough location.
It was so dusty in there.
It would really mess with your lights.
BALL: Yeah, all the crews would just suddenly drive in
and then, we'd be sitting there for 10, 20 minutes
just waiting for the dust to clear out of the tunnel.
NOWLIN: This was another scene that I think changed
when we changed from Vancouver to Cape Town.
BALL: Yeah. It got way bigger. NOWLIN: It got way bigger,
but also, there were no tunnels like this.
I think we had a sequence that was more on a bridge.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, it was on a bridge with some stalled-out cars and stuff.
BALL: Honestly, it was kinda weak.
It wasn't very interesting,
but that's when we found this location.
We just, "Okay, yeah, we have to do something here."
We wrote this scene to take place in here,
just come up with a cool little...
We needed to, again, remind people of the Cranks.
There was a conscious effort this time
for us to not make Cranks just monsters this time.
They were actually human beings that were infected.
NOWLIN: It was always the plan, right?
It was always the plan that we would see them as monsters
and then we would see them as infected patients.
BALL: Then we started to see... And that ties us into Teresa's story
and how she views the Cranks, these monsters,
that we witnessed in the second movie.
The whole goal is to set up why WICKED's doing this
and blur that line between good and evil again, right?
Make it gray, that maybe you would agree with the fact
that maybe it's worth breaking a few eggs
to make an omelet kinda thing. (CHUCKLES)
NOWLIN: Yeah. That ties into the...
- (EXHALES SHARPLY) That's good. - (BALL LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: That ties into what we were talking about,
the structure of incorporating multiple points of view.
It actually works thematically to what this movie's about,
which is that it's not all black and white, good and evil.
BALL: Which was honestly why we changed, a little bit, Teresa's betrayal.
We made it have real teeth, like she really did do something bad,
because of her views.
NOWLIN: Dashner's books are all about that kind of ambiguity,
and that's why he keeps repeating, "WICKED is good, WICKED is good."
And so, you know you need to give a voice to WICKED's side of the story,
and it's easier to do that through a character like Teresa.
BALL: That you know. NOWLIN: That you know,
as opposed to a remote authority figure...
BALL: And hopefully care about.
NOWLIN: ...like an Ava or a Janson.
Like it wouldn't work as well.
It was also important to see the Cranks
the way we saw them in Scorch Trials here
before we get to the stuff with Teresa later
where we see them a little earlier and it's a little girl and she's scared.
BALL: But even here, they're not quite as far gone
as we saw in the second movie,
- which was straight-up horror. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: This is more like...
That lady that bangs on the door was a great actress.
NOWLIN: She's desperate.
BALL: She's a real person who's scared, but, in fact, that's scary.
NOWLIN: This might be my favorite shot in the movie.
BALL: So this shot was actually an accident, which is fantastic.
Originally, the plan was for the car just to flip over on its side
and I had this whole thing about how they were gonna
crawl, punch out, or kick out the sunroof and climb out.
So, we did a couple of practice takes and got close
and we did this take,
we had to leave, it was almost time to go.
The cargoes.
We set up the shot and the car flips over
and it rolls over and everyone held their breath.
"Oh, my gosh." Someone was about to call, "Cut."
I said, "Don't! Don't call cut!"
I said, "Is everyone okay?
"Move your flashlights around.
"Take the camera, start pushing in. Slow, slow, slow.
"Okay, go in. Okay, now, cut."
It was this great little happy accident
that turned into a great, great shot that's all in-camera.
There's nothing CG about it.
You'll see that there's a person in there that you see...
If you turn the frame upside down, it's actually the stunt double.
It's not Dylan.
NOWLIN: That's my favorite part of the shot.
- You see the truck roll over. - BALL: Yeah, you see people in there.
NOWLIN: The pull back becomes a push in and there's someone in there,
- and they're acting! - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: It's pretty horrific. I don't know.
(ALL CHUCKLE)
- Come on! - Hold on!
- Frypan gotta go! Come on! - Wait!
Come on!
BALL: This is the most Scorch Trials-y scene in the movie, I think really.
NOWLIN: But we get it out of the way in the first half hour or wherever we are.
BALL: It also serves the story.
It's setting up the issue that we're about to be faced with, of the infected.
Also, it brings Jorge and Brenda back into the scene.
NOWLIN: You need them to bail them out. I like the idea, yeah, it's...
There's something a little cavalier.
"The three of us, we're gonna go and take on WICKED."
BALL: Let them get in over their heads a little bit.
NOWLIN: Giancarlo has this... BALL: You're lucky to have friends...
NOWLIN: "I'm impressed you made it a day," and it's kind of a funny line.
But yeah, so there's more to...
(SIGHS) I remember... We tried to do so much with Brenda,
the idea that because she's infected, and she's gonna turn eventually
if she's not going to the safe haven,
we had an idea in the script that Thomas didn't know that.
So when Thomas leaves Brenda, he's not just abandoning her.
He's leaving because he assumes
that she's gonna go to the safe haven with everyone else.
That part, I think, would've worked.
The problem is then you have to do...
Thomas has to find out and then he has to confront her.
You don't really feel a ticking clock here.
You don't really feel like they're trying to get Minho back
with enough time to get back to the boat and get to the safe haven.
They're just trying to get Minho back.
That's why it's such a decision for them to leave earlier.
They're walking away from paradise.
BALL: Those hills back there are all CG.
It's actually the same entrance they went into the first time.
They just replaced the background.
This was the only entrance or exit we had.
NOWLIN: This was day one, wasn't it?
BALL: This was official day one. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: Ugh, I hate shooting...
I mean, I certainly love the look of real car stuff,
but it's so hellish shooting this stuff on a real moving car,
and it's just slow, so slow.
It's painful, but it's worth it, I think, visually.
You've always seen those fake process shots,
they're on green screen.
It just never works.
That's actually Jorge. He really did drive that.
That rock, if you see there, it's actually his mark to try to hit.
He really did all that several times.
You've probably seen a couple of times now
where I do a lot of long shots this time.
I wanted to...
Something... As a filmmaker, I hate being forced into coverage.
It feels like almost like a TV show where it's like
close-up, close-up, wide master, you know, that kind of stuff.
I like letting an audience sink in
and see the close-ups when it really, really mattered.
It's hard to do sometimes when you're shooting a movie
because you're looking at a little tiny monitor on set
and so you wanna get closer.
But on a big giant screen, that is a close-up right there.
You can read everything on his face that you need to read.
So, I tried to make it a conscious effort this time
to just be a little more cinematic
and a little bit bigger aesthetically this time,
which I like personally.
I think it has a good flow to it.
It's really simple shots. There's nothing crazy.
Everyone doesn't need their own shot,
their own coverage, you know what I mean?
NOWLIN: I like that. You write in the script
these little moments between characters
and you just let it play out in the frame
rather than like rack focus to Brenda, then reaction, then close-up.
BALL: Right.
We still shoot lot of that stuff.
I just don't end up using it.
Here, you can see the design of the city.
It was very much, if you saw the last shot of The Maze Runner,
it's very similar in design
in terms of the walls and the structure of it.
So, it has that echo of the first movie.
I think it was cool to meet Teresa in this new world,
a way we've never really seen her before.
I think that first scene also with her and Minho being tested on,
I think it was a great little thing where you see her having...
Maybe it's regret? Maybe it's doubts?
It's like she's not just, "I'm evil now,"
or, "I'm with the bad guys now."
She's still doing what she believes is right, but it does affect her.
It's this little look right here when she sees his picture,
she's obviously reflecting on what she's done.
I think that's the cool thing about her character is that she did it anyway.
NOWLIN: Yeah, she's torn, but...
BALL: She did what she thought was right.
Whether we agree with that or not, I think there's something that...
Something cool about that.
NOWLIN: That's why it was important that she had this scene,
that she had a mission-statement moment.
Like, this is why we're doing what we're doing.
Oh, there's James by the way.
BALL: There's James Dashner, author.
NOWLIN: Actually, there's consistency.
He played the board member in the first movie.
BALL: He was in the first movie in the boardroom, yeah.
- Here he is again. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Now there's many less.
so we assume that it's gotten worse out in the world.
We're gonna put a skeleton in one of the chairs.
- BALL: Only three board members remain. - (ALL LAUGHING)
NOWLIN: Just a skeleton in one of the board chairs.
That was Harold.
He didn't make it.
Two thousand?
And that's assuming your protected areas...
stay protected...
which we know they won't.
BALL: Yeah, it was good to give Kaya a scene.
Like you said, a statement of what she believes essentially.
Again, it's also setting up
what we tried to start telling in the second movie,
was the story of WICKED's search for a cure to the virus.
And that's why the maze, why the kids have been rounded up,
why the immunes, all that stuff.
And hopefully now, we're just giving clarity out to all that,
that if it wasn't there,
hopefully it's concrete enough now to let go of that
and just enjoy the experience and the ride of this adventure.
NOWLIN: I'll admit, I was a little surprised
when the second movie came out
that people, even fans, weren't a little bit more understanding
of Teresa and why she did what she did
'cause I thought Kaya was so good in the betrayal scene.
She tells the story about her mother who died of this virus.
But it's a generational thing, where the younger audiences,
they're... I don't know what's the word.
Tribalists. They're about their squad, their group.
The worst crime you can commit is to betray your group, your friends.
I think what this movie's about, it's kind of...
That's part of the appeal of the series.
It's not about just a Katniss or a single hero raising the army.
It's about a group.
This movie's an argument against that
saying that you also have to think for yourself
and make your own decisions.
BALL: And also it's like... HARTWICK JR.: That's all CG.
BALL: Yeah, all the city's CG, yeah.
Again, one long shot here. (CHUCKLES)
It's the only way to really shoot this scene to be honest.
But also it's, I think, along the lines of Teresa.
It's like there's nothing much...
Redemption stories are really fun.
(CHUCKLES) They're fun to watch.
And hopefully... We have no idea
because the movie hasn't come out yet while we're recording this.
Hopefully, the people that maybe were against Teresa vehemently
in the start of this movie,
hopefully they're won over a little bit by the end.
I mean, at least if nothing else, even if they don't agree with her,
can appreciate her stance on it, and, obviously, her sacrifice,
which I think was necessary narratively,
but hopefully earned it.
HARTWICK JR.: The abattoir.
BALL: Yeah, this was a really cool abandoned meatpacking area or something.
HARTWICK JR.: Slaughterhouse. BALL: Yeah, slaughterhouse.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: This is the most extras I've ever had,
like 400 extras or something.
It's huge.
NOWLIN: I always like that throw from, "I hope you're right,"
down to, "What's outside the walls?"
BALL: Yeah, again, that's what was fun about this stuff, too,
- is the transitions. - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
It's like she's talking about Thomas.
She's looking out at the world and what they're fighting against.
And then you cut down to it, body bags of infected people,
and you also see this intro of the group that are...
They're not a Right Arm Glader group. They're not WICKED.
They're someone else on the other side, the far extreme.
So it's interesting that our characters
are caught in the middle of these two forces,
the people outside that are just angry and scared,
and then WICKED on the inside that are just probably as scared, too.
NOWLIN: There's no bad guys in the story, really.
Other than Janson, speaking of which...
BALL: Janson's the true villain, which is fun.
NOWLIN: But what makes him the villain honestly, this is a spoiler,
but he's a sick guy who wants to make sure
he always has his medicine.
That's not all that evil.
BALL: I always thought that boils down to selfless versus selfish,
- you know what I mean? - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: That's really what this movie stems from.
NOWLIN: And Janson, I think,
he fundamentally just misunderstands Teresa,
- like, he thinks that she is like him. - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: That she made a decision for her own survival.
She was joining the winning side of a conflict.
But she was thinking about the world.
She was putting the needs of others over her own desires, I guess.
HARTWICK JR.: Which is why you see her turn later
when he's talking about, "Tough choices will have to be made."
NOWLIN: He misjudges her.
I think that moment in the elevator.
We're getting ahead of it now.
BALL: Another one of the biggest green screens we've ever had.
- We had this huge, really cool location. - HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: That's real,
except for on the left, those buildings are CG,
but that main structure is real.
We had this gigantic green screen in front of them.
So, the background's all real, and the foreground stuff is all CG.
Set up those gates and the wall.
I asked Aidan once, "It's fun playing a villain, right?"
He just smiled at me and he said, "Of course, it is."
(ALL CHUCKLE)
It is fun though to watch him 'cause he does do it well.
We needed someone good to root against, you know what I mean?
'Cause so much of the movie, Ava, Teresa,
they're painted in a way that it's not easy to hate them.
NOWLIN: Right. BALL: You disagree with them possibly.
BALL: We needed someone to really just wanna and get what's coming to them.
NOWLIN: I think that's something we knew,
you mentioned this before, the idea of planning ahead.
I think we knew in the second movie with introducing Janson
that he was gonna be the main villain,
and that ultimately, we had with Ava this character that we...
BALL: An adversary.
NOWLIN: We had... We would hold her up as the typical corporate,
- ice-queen kind of villain... - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: ...but always with the intention of eventually subverting her.
BALL: Yeah, we were gonna let her hair down, which you see in this movie.
BALL: Her hair's down this time. NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: We meet her first with her hair up...
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: ...but it's fun to...
She's not the person you think she is.
NOWLIN: Peel back the layers a little. Yeah.
We had a great scene at one point.
It was when the board meeting was a different kind of moment.
It was later in the story.
but the idea of her putting her armor on,
pulling the hair back,
becoming the Ava Paige that we know from the first two movies.
Oh, that's cool, that little body in there.
BALL: Yeah, that body's actually a CG double.
- It's not even there. - NOWLIN: Of course it is.
BALL: Well, actually, in that shot there, with the wide shot,
there's a lot of CG people that you can't tell.
We did a lot of that in this movie. I'll try and point them out as we go.
NOWLIN: "Gee, I wonder why they're so upset."
- BALL: Yeah. - (LAUGHTER)
That's the thing. He obviously did something not good.
He's just stoking the fire of the rebellion outside.
NOWLIN: But it was also important to understand
why they couldn't go through there.
BALL: Right.
- Yeah, it's super important. - NOWLIN: There's nothing we can do.
NOWLIN: Gally says it.
"There's nothing we can do against those guns," which means
they need a way to get inside WICKED and turn the guns off.
And Thomas can do that for them.
BALL: Yeah, I'm curious, when the shots that we have of Gally and the mask,
- I'm curious how many people... - NOWLIN: Yeah. "How obvious is it?"
BALL: I don't know. I have a theory on it.
I think some people won't remember it.
I think some people, the big die-hard fans, they know it's him.
And they actually enjoy knowing that it's him
and waiting slowly for the... This is a great shot.
NOWLIN: Whoa! Where'd that come from?
BALL: This shot's really great.
It's full CG, which was great.
And it sets up that world of these migrants essentially
that have come to the outside of these walls
begging for mercy or for help.
They set up basically a shanty town essentially on the outside.
They're just camped out in a city that's been cut off,
which is really cool, that...
I was looking images of Brazil going from rich city to just a line.
And suddenly, it's just poor in the favelas.
I thought it was a cool contrast of the state of the world.
NOWLIN: Driving around Cape Town tells that story, too.
BALL: In terms of my thing with Gally though
on our first test screening we did,
Gally got a huge reveal,
- I mean, a response to his reveal here. - NOWLIN: Response. Yeah.
BALL: I think it's because they were just waiting for it.
It's that famous definition of suspense of knowing what's gonna happen
and waiting for it to happen, right?
You tell them the bomb's on the table...
You show them the bomb on the table and they wait for it to go off.
So, I think there's this feeling of, "When is he gonna show himself?
"When is he gonna show himself?"
So, when he finally does, it's this big thing
- rather than it being just a surprise. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: I think it might work in our favor.
NOWLIN: I think you get away with it, too, in terms of who remembers
because at this point,
your audience are people who have followed you to this point.
- They've seen the first movie at least. - BALL: Yeah, exactly.
BALL: At some level though,
this can't be a movie that stands completely on its own.
I mean, I think it still does. You can still enjoy it and go with it,
but it does require a bit of knowledge of the previous movies
to really fully enjoy it,
- to really appreciate it. - NOWLIN: It's a different experience,
but I think we worked as hard as we could to make the movie work,
especially knowing there'd be a big gap between 2 and 3.
We did as much as we could, I think.
BALL: Yeah. And I think if you'd never seen any of the movies,
we did do in our test screenings,
there were people that had never seen the movies,
and they fully enjoyed the movie.
In fact, some of them rated it higher than the others.
So, I think going in knowing that it's the third one
and you have to go with it,
but if you never knew anything,
"Oh, that's a guy that I guess did them wrong somehow.
"They thought he was dead and he's not. Okay."
That's all everybody needs to know really.
- He's an old foe. - NOWLIN: Right from the beginning,
like, "Okay, there's some... They're trying to rob a train.
"Why? There're kids on the train.
"They're chained up. Oh, that's their friend.
"They're trying to save their friend
"because you're immune to a plague wiping out the human race."
BALL: Yeah. You get the pieces you need if you've never seen them before.
HARTWICK JR.: This Werdmuller building was a tough place to shoot
'cause of sound.
BALL: Yeah, it's another cool location, too.
There's a giant street right outside.
It's just a ton of noise, but the location is fantastic.
A lot of really good locations in Cape Town we looked at.
It's good stuff.
NOWLIN: It's a good-looking movie. BALL: Yeah, Gyula.
BALL: Gyula came back to DP the third one again.
He did the second one.
He's kind of become my DP man.
We have very similar aesthetics,
and we really get each other really, really well in terms of our style.
We both really like to sink into shots.
He's really good at lighting, I think, too.
I think it really shows.
It is probably the best-looking movie, I think, of the three.
After the maze, I got picked up by a group headed to the city.
They realized I was immune, patched me up...
and they brought me here to Lawrence.
This group's been at war with WICKED
ever since they took control of the city.
BALL: This is, again, setting up the idea that
there is another group that we're introducing
in this universe of Maze Runner, which is the angry mob, essentially,
- the have-nots, that we're setting up. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: And Gally has somehow fallen into them.
We try to fill in the blanks a little bit with what Gally says,
but for the most part, it's for people to make up for themselves,
but he obviously found his way into this group.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
Well, it makes sense if he was immune.
I like the idea that he was brought here as a commodity,
but instead, he was taken under the wing of these people
because he was a fighter.
BALL: There's an element of being exploited
the same way WICKED exploits the others.
Lawrence uses him to go get inside the city to do his spying,
and as they figure out a way to storm the castle,
look for their opportunity in.
Like here, he talks about the walls.
There's no way to get past those walls with those guns,
but they're looking for an opportunity.
Thomas ended up being that thing.
- This is a cool thing. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Rose took his nose?
BALL: My original concept for him was gonna be
the Rose-took-my-nose character in the second,
but everyone was mad that I didn't incorporate...
I always had this idea in the back of my mind
that we would do it in the third movie.
It would make him a really cool character.
So, we got Walton Goggins to play it and I was really worried about R.
So I actually didn't...
When we were shooting this,
I didn't think we were going to be able to take off his nose.
But as we were going,
I had concept art drawn out with him without a nose,
and he just looked so cool.
And so, we shot it as is
and we had all the makeup on the right side of his face and everything.
I asked Weta, I said, "Guys, what could you do?"
We didn't do any tracking markers, no nothing.
And they came back and showed me what they would do to take off his nose,
- and it's fantastic work. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: I mean, it looks totally real.
And the fact that we didn't really shoot it safely,
thinking about markers and, "We can't do that shot,"
it just has this feel like we're shooting it
as if the character has no nose.
So, it has this really great natural approach, I thought.
And the fact that Weta didn't have any tracking markers or anything,
and they had to rebuild his face practically
and seamlessly take off his nose, it was really, really great work.
And it looks really cool, too.
Obviously, it's a little throwback to a character,
that for people that don't know,
Mr. Nose is from the second movie who's gone a little bit crazy,
he's a little nuts,
and he keeps repeating, "Rose got my nose, Rose got my nose."
That's why there's roses in the background.
In the very beginning of the scene, you can hear these little whisperings,
- these little mutterings of... - NOWLIN: He's whispering it, yeah.
BALL: "Rose took my nose I suppose."
He's just gone a little crazy.
NOWLIN: That was always the fun idea of this character,
- someone who's half mad, but half sharp. - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: His eyes are different.
BALL: Yeah, he was that idea we wanted in this movie.
We wanted to show a Crank that's not monstrous this time
but is a real human being that is suffering.
He was very much that.
He's the guy right in the middle.
He's half Crank, half human.
NOWLIN: Right. In the books, they call it "you go past the gone."
There's a point where you become more monstrous.
BALL: Yeah, and we see that with Newt and all that stuff.
NOWLIN: Yeah, and I think it was interesting to say
if there's a character that is straddling that line.
But we couldn't do that with the second movie
'cause, I think, we purposefully wanted that to be a reveal in movie three,
- that they're not just monstrous. - BALL: The different shades, yeah.
BALL: To keep expanding on the depth of the...
NOWLIN: There's a lot of criticism in the second movie,
like "They just turned them into zombies."
I kept wanting to say, "Wait, we're not done!
"The movie's... You're in the middle."
BALL: That is one thing that's for right or wrong,
I don't see these movies as sequels.
I see them all as one story, which I think is...
For the fans that have stuck with us
and will continue to revisit these movies,
it's gonna feel interesting to watch all three movies as one saga
instead of just, "And another one, and another one."
There are things that are set up in the first movie
that aren't paid off until this movie, or vice versa.
It's cool that we get to do that kind of stuff.
For some ambitious people out there that are gonna have a marathon,
it'll be a cool experience, I think, to watch six hours of a story.
We're ready.
BALL: Now, the virus.
It's probably one of our first views.
There's another scene we cut out
where we really get to see the hallways and the lab setting
that we have in this movie.
Which is cool. It's a big giant set we built.
Dan Dorrance again returning as a production designer
from the second movie.
Again, this was obviously the thing of showing the...
NOWLIN: The humans side. HARTWICK JR.: The state of the world.
NOWLIN: The face like a little girl who's scared.
- And also for Teresa to be... - BALL: The caretaker.
NOWLIN: To have a good bedside manner, to be affectionate and caring.
BALL: This little girl, we found her in South Africa.
HARTWICK JR.: Mmm-hmm.
Remember how we couldn't find anybody in Vancouver?
BALL: She'd never acted in anything before.
This was the first thing she'd ever done.
NOWLIN: So, this was one of the big steps forward we made with the script
between Vancouver and Cape Town because in Vancouver,
we were asking too much of this little girl.
We were asking her to get the injection,
to start to feel better, and then to crank out, all in one scene.
I think we realized,
- "It'd be so much more effective..." - BALL: Yeah, wait.
"...to let Teresa live in that hope for a little bit."
When she goes to see Minho,
she's thinking they might have found something.
And then, right when he attacks her, you see this girl deteriorate.
The audience needs to feel that.
It can't just be, "Oh, I guess they don't have a cure."
BALL: We need to let Teresa live in the moment of,
"We've won" for a little bit.
- "We've found a cure." - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: Obviously, all her eyes are made red.
Another thing you notice is that when she opens her eyes,
you see the red slowly just disappear.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: The midpoint is basically
- when Thomas finally meets Teresa. - NOWLIN: Kidnapped, yeah.
BALL: Which is cool.
It's these two collision points of the story, these narratives.
They're both talking about, or at least,
on different ends of the spectrum of this one story,
and then they collide in the middle,
and then, the story really jumps forward.
And missed, apparently.
The patrols never found a body.
Thomas is still out there.
What about her?
Does she know?
NOWLIN: It's fun to do scenes like this.
So many scenes in this movie that we just couldn't have done in 1 or2.
BALL: Mmm-hmm. Yeah, it's a full movie, that's for sure.
I mean, we went in going in
we were never gonna split the movie into two parts like it's the trend.
We wanted it to have a good trilogy.
Beginning, middle, and end.
And that meant that this movie had to be packed,
and there are a ton of scenes that we cut out.
There's actually a scene right before this one of Gally and Thomas and Newt
breaking into an underground subway
and basically racing a train that almost hits them,
a subway train.
That was their first little adventure before they got into the city.
NOWLIN: Which we had so many...
There were people who told us that we were gonna cut it,
and I think where we justified it was that
it had to be hard to get into the city.
BALL: I miss it still, for sure.
It's just, a two and a half hour movie,
we had to find time somewhere, and it was a five-minute chunk.
And, and for the most part, you don't question it too much,
but it is something I miss.
Hopefully, people will get to watch either in deleted scenes
or hopefully as an extended movie.
I think that would be really fun
to really experience it in its full, uncut form.
NOWLIN: I think it makes sense though, too, the challenges of just
- getting into the city. - HARTWICK JR.: Cool sets here.
NOWLIN: The challenge is getting into WICKED and turning off those guns.
That's what Lawrence has to do.
BALL: That was Cape Town. So a lot of those buildings are CG.
But it's good work by Weta again transforming this...
I don't know, I wouldn't call it a modern city,
but a city into a real modern future.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
It's like, you've seen the outside, you've seen the squalor
and the tightly-packed people and the desperation,
and now, you come into this place that's beautiful.
BALL: I just love the color palette, too.
This fluorescent, harsh, sodium vapor.
It's a real city.
An urban adventure.
It's very similar to, think, in the first movie,
to where Minho is taking Thomas on a journey to the maze.
Here, Gally's doing the same thing through a new kind of maze,
which I thought was a really cool thing,
and it happens right around the same time in the first movie.
There's another scene that was cut out here
where they actually end up on a freeway.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it was a really good scene.
BALL: And they make a jump
from the freeway onto the wall, which was cool,
but it was cut for time.
They're really giant shots.
This is another drone shot
we shot in a shipping yard where boats are repaired.
So, that's a real wall there,
but obviously, it's hugely extended by Weta.
That's really our guys running along the concrete wall.
NOWLIN: That's a great-looking shot.
BALL: Yeah, and replaced and extended by Weta,
which really did a good job setting up this world, making it real.
NOWLIN: I remember that dry dock.
- It was so cool. - BALL: It was cool.
HARTWICK JR.: That was another hard night of shooting, remember?
We had the gas leak,
and then all the noise from the boat being worked on.
BALL: I was up there in this... Two stories up with the guys,
and all of a sudden, we smell something funny.
Our nose starts burning.
I'm like, "What is that? That's strange."
And all of a sudden, we hear over the PA,
"Everyone, get to the stairs and get to the surface immediately.
"Don't panic. Just go."
- I'm like, "What's going on?" - (ALL LAUGHING)
Turned out, it was some kind of ammonia leak.
And because we were shooting at night,
ammonia's heavier than air, so it sunk into this pit that we're in.
And ammonia can be really dangerous.
Eventually, it cleared out and we went back to shooting.
Not only that, but we had a gigantic, huge shipping vessel, I guess,
parked right next to where we are here, being worked on.
And the crew had to work 24 hours a day,
so they're just sawing and welding right next to us
during all these scenes, and we couldn't ask them to stop.
So, a lot of this dialogue is all ADR.
It's never preferable, but they did a good job.
This is a cool moment where, finally, the two stories connect I think.
Like what? You've seen the building. She is our only way in.
NOWLIN: The fun thing, I think, of telling a story,
where there's all these different points of views and threads,
is the anticipation for them to tie together and collide
into one propulsive track.
BALL: This is more necessary work of exposing Newt
as something's wrong with Newt.
Yeah.
I still wonder sometimes.
We experimented with actually cutting this scene once.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it was the idea of,
"Are we revealing Newt's infection too soon?"
BALL: I always thought it would be cool to save it for later,
like, hint at it and save it for later,
but we just didn't have time to reshoot anything.
It is what it is.
It is a cool scene to see the two guys...
See a side of Newt we've never seen before.
"What's going on here?"
You see he's slipping, he's losing himself a little bit,
which is a tragic thing for him.
NOWLIN: I feel like the movie wants this type of a scene here,
which is the interaction of the group and conflict between the group,
which we haven't really had since they left the base.
There's been a lot of plot.
BALL: It was a good throw going from Thomas looking at Teresa
- to Minho going to talk to Teresa. - NOWLIN: It was really good, yeah.
BALL: It was nice. NOWLIN: That was really nice.
BALL: It was the momentum that was really nice.
You missed all this stuff.
And there's one scene I miss here.
We had Newt talking about...
NOWLIN: The story of how we got his limp.
BALL: The story about how we jumped from the wall and tried to kill himself.
It was good. It was just long.
NOWLIN: It was Minho who found him. The point of the story is that
it was Minho who saved him and gave him another chance.
The point of the story is that,
if there's anything we can do to get him out, we have to do it.
That's more important.
BALL: It's already a three-minute scene,
- then it was a seven-minute scene. - NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: It just had to go, unfortunately.
Being in the middle of the movie, it's where most movies sag,
and you have to do everything you can to keep it moving.
You got the information you needed here and you got the kind of connection,
but it is one of those scenes that I think
people, fans, will really like to watch again,
either as its own deleted thing
or hopefully as an extended experience to the movie
because I always loved it.
Newt did a great job with that reading and that story,
and it naturally flows in.
Get a little bit more to it.
As an extended thing... In the theater, I think it's right to be gone,
but when you're in the comfort of your own home and stuff,
the real fans who wanna enjoy that kind of thing,
they would enjoy a 15-minute longer version of the movie.
NOWLIN: This is our campfire scene from Scorch Trials.
BALL: Yeah. Yeah. HARTWICK JR.: That's right.
BALL: Unfortunately, another one of those.
It's still a regret for me. I still regret cutting that scene.
NOWLIN: I think we regret not figuring out a way to protect it in the story.
- BALL: I know what I would've done now. - I know. Yeah, we've talked about it.
BALL: We might have talked about it on the commentary of the last one.
NOWLIN: But this throw works, too, though,
the idea that we have to get Minho out, cut to Minho.
BALL: Yeah, it just doesn't have quite the momentum,
but it is still good.
(LAUGHING) Then we see poor Minho being just totally...
He's gone through hell.
Hopefully, it's just reinforcing the idea of like,
"Oh, man, get in there and save him!"
- So, you're just really... - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: You're really waiting for that chance.
"Are they gonna get him in time?"
NOWLIN: Can I say, whoever made him wear that shirt is a jerk.
(LAUGHTER)
BALL: It's funny.
NOWLIN: Poor kid. He's been through enough.
BALL: We have a sense of humor in this movie. It's good.
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: It's a good scene to have.
I told Teresa, "This is the first time you've talked to him."
NOWLIN: I think she's been waiting for good news.
She's been waiting to be able to tell him that we're making progress.
This is why we're here.
HARTWICK JR.: To allay some of her own guilt.
BALL: A thing we kept talking about in the script is this idea of the cost.
She kept saying it's worth it, which is cool.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: Kaya does a really good job in the movie in general, I think.
She's really good.
NOWLIN: So much of her character in the first two
- has been building up to this movie. - BALL: This. Yeah.
NOWLIN: I'm excited for people to see the movie
for what she does, and for Teresa's arc as a character.
BALL: There'll still be plenty of people who will not like her and just say that.
But I think there'll be some people who genuinely find an interesting depth.
NOWLIN: As long as there's one person in your opening weekend group of friends
- that is making the case for her... - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: ...then you're arguing in the parking lot.
- That's all we want, is the discussion. - BALL: Yeah. (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: This isn't about how she's the best.
BALL: Yeah, we're not saying that she's right or wrong.
It's just that she's complicated, and they're all complicated.
I think even Dylan, he might...
Or the character of Thomas,
he might be doing things wrong actually.
He might be putting his friends in jeopardy coming here,
but he's doing what he feels is right.
NOWLIN: We ended the second movie with, "I'm gonna kill Ava Paige.
"We're gonna take on WICKED and I think..." (LAUGHS)
This is fun.
BALL: A little sneaky thing.
I don't know if people are gonna catch this or not,
but he actually steals the hairpin that was in her hair.
NOWLIN: If you look it at. It's a chestnut.
(BOTH LAUGH)
The idea that Thomas ends the second movie,
his growth, I guess, is figuring out what his purpose is
and what he's gonna do now that he's out of the maze.
He's gonna fight WICKED,
but he has a very black-and-white understanding
of who's right and who's wrong.
A lot of this movie is challenging that certainty,
whether it's having to work with Gally who killed Chuck,
or having to confront Teresa
and then trust Teresa and then go back to WICKED.
It's just about chipping away at that, and it's all a coming-of-age story.
Starting from the blank slate that he is at the beginning of movie one
to becoming a leader, getting out of the maze,
and then that final step of maturity,
of seeing the world from someone else's point of view other than your own.
BALL: This just turned into Teresa's worst day ever.
HARTWICK JR.: (LAUGHS) Yeah. NOWLIN: (LAUGHS) Right.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, she gets like triple punched.
BALL: Originally, it was just, Minho attacked her and she walked off.
And here, the fact that we put that little... That thing broke down,
it really helped to... You really felt her...
Everything she's done, everything she had to go through,
betrayal, everything she's done it for is wasted.
NOWLIN: It's a dead-end, yeah. BALL: Yeah.
BALL: She's lost. NOWLIN: It was for nothing.
BALL: Then, of course, opportunity shows.
NOWLIN: That's what she says in the boardroom.
"Please don't let those sacrifices be for nothing."
She's talking about her sacrifices as well.
We talked about this, how important it was,
the first time Thomas and Teresa see each other in this moment.
We're in her point of view, not his.
He's not stalking her.
BALL: Originally, it was not that way, remember?
It was in Vancouver we came up with that idea.
We were struggling with it for a bit, I remember.
And it was Thomas...
It was seeing from Thomas' point of view going after her, I remember.
We went out to location one day,
and I remember having this idea that it'd be nice to follow her for a bit.
NOWLIN: We're chasing him. BALL: And then she sees him.
BALL: Suddenly, the scene, for me, clicked into place I think,
you know what I mean?
NOWLIN: Yeah, I don't remember that other version, but it's possible.
We went through, that's something to say...
We went through so many iterations of the story.
More than the second movie.
I think the reason why we didn't think as much about 2 writing 1
is 'cause one was so contained.
It was about getting out of the maze.
And the big reveal we were planning is that
the world outside the maze is a ruin. It's a bigger world.
BALL: By the way, that movie could be the end.
- For all we knew, that was the end. - NOWLIN: That could be the end. Right.
BALL: But when the second one came out, we didn't know there'd be a third one.
HARTWICK JR.: We didn't have as much time, too.
Our second movie started shooting a month...
After the first one came out.
NOWLIN: A month after the first one came out.
But also with the decision to open the second one
right where the first one ended, we're immediately...
You have that great opening,
and now we're in a corner
that we have to wiggle our way out of a little bit.
BALL: We had to explain that, "Wait, so she's not dead?"
It's just this weird thing that we have to tie up unfortunately.
NOWLIN: The hardest scene to write in that movie, frankly,
was Thomas spying on that conversation between Ava and Janson.
That was such nightmare.
They did it well.
Here, there were so many possibilities.
We did a draft, I swear to God, where the solar flares came back.
BALL: Yeah, right, I remember that, yeah.
NOWLIN: We did a draft where they leave the city at one point,
where WICKED had another... Closer to the book.
They had another, like, their version of a safe haven.
HARTWICK JR.: Like an underground vault thing.
BALL: It just felt like every time...
NOWLIN: You want it to end at the city.
BALL: It was just too much. NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: It was like you felt you wanted to split off and do another movie,
and it's like it's better to make the city the stage
and make WICKED's headquarter in the city.
NOWLIN: And if it's the last city, this is the last stand of civilization,
- when WICKED falls, it's over. - BALL: Yeah. "There's another place."
BALL: And you have to go there.
And then you have to spend time doing that.
NOWLIN: I thought about that watching...
I shouldn't say this,
- but we'll talk later. - BALL: Okay.
I think I know what you're talking about.
I always remember loving the idea of this scene, too,
just the two people coming together.
And the trick, essentially, of him kidnapping her.
It's like, they get to actually meet and talk to each other for a moment.
This quiet...
Originally, in Vancouver, it was gonna be an alleyway.
But we found this little spot.
NOWLIN: Something else, if we had been able to reshoot
the Newt infection reveal,
which, let's talk through that,
because if you would cut right from seeing Teresa
to her point of view.
BALL: You wouldn't know what's going on.
NOWLIN: What's going on here? This isn't part of the plan.
He could just be genuinely concerned like,
"You gotta get out of here. They're gonna come and get you."
BALL: Yeah, there's a lot of good mystery there.
NOWLIN: A lot of good... Yeah.
BALL: But even there, there's still a surprise
that Gally comes around and takes her.
NOWLIN: Yeah, that's cool.
This is a little structural change you did.
Originally, we go from the bag over her head
- to the scene with them at the church. - BALL: Yeah, the church scene.
NOWLIN: This would've come right before the heist, but it works well here.
BALL: Yeah, we did this in editing, 'cause you wanted to...
Again, the off-screen movie is transporting her to somewhere secret.
So, we get to go away somewhere, a different point of view.
NOWLIN: This is also one of the slower moments in the movie
where it's good to have that,
"What's going on with Teresa in the back of the..."
But I love this scene.
BALL: It's another one where they really talk about
the state of the affairs of the movie.
NOWLIN: But the fact that Ava's done, that that was her last chance,
and really clarifying the fact that they're on their last leg,
that the virus is inside the city,
and this is the kind of split moment between Ava and Janson.
I think going into the heist from this scene,
I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know what I want to happen.
BALL: Yeah, you get that idea that, "No, not this time."
The virus is airborne.
There's a little reaction to Janson,
it's because he knows he's infected, that's how he got sick.
NOWLIN: Yeah, he's ahead of her on that.
There was a lot more about that, too, like little setups that Janson...
BALL: Yeah, I cut those out, some of them unfortunately.
- Mainly just for time. - NOWLIN: I think all of them, right?
BALL: Yeah, there was a scene we had earlier
right before Teresa was testing a little girl where Janson steals some serum,
and you're not quite sure why.
I think you get it.
There was a scene early on between the two characters here
talking about Thomas after they rob the train
where Janson's hand is shaking.
We're obviously just setting it up.
I think pretty much any audience member would know what we're doing there.
It's another little thing that I miss
that I think actually would be good in a longer version,
'cause he was really good.
He made a lot more of a character in the beginning.
But even this line here, maybe it won't mean much to people,
but the fact that she says, "Everything we put them through,
"at least we gave them the tools they'll need to survive."
What she's talking about is
everything they've put them through in the maze and in the Glades.
These kids know how to fend for themselves.
They know how to grow food. They know how to build shelter.
They know how to have democracy.
They know how to start a new world together, which is cool.
NOWLIN: We've had that in the back of our minds for so long.
It was always, for me, the most satisfying explanation
for why they're in the maze beyond...
- 'Cause the problem is the experience... - BALL: They trained them
for a world on their own.
NOWLIN: Right. And for the eventuality for their own failure,
that they're gonna have to carry on and rebuild civilization.
So, whatever they needed to do to them to get to test them for the cure,
they also had to prepare them for starting over.
BALL: Which I thought is the cool concept to me, really.
The concept of the movies we always said,
the first movie's like being in school,
and then the second movie's graduating.
NOWLIN: Into the big world and to college.
BALL: And then the third movie's finally, "You're on your own."
And that first thing in the Glades,
it's really about preparing them for the state of the world out there.
These young people have to start a world together in some way or another.
NOWLIN: Right.
There's a little bit of a disconnect, I think,
between, when people watch the first movie,
the explanation feels disconnected
from the experience that these kids actually went through
of working together and building the food and the shelter.
I think that's why it took a little while
to get into the world of the movie in Scorch Trials.
BALL: There's definitely those...
There's one great critique.
"It's a great movie with a terrible ending."
I think for a lot of people, or some people anyway,
we still, I think, are pretty successful as a movie series.
The people that we lost, we probably lost them at end of the first movie
where the answer wasn't satisfying for them.
They wanted it to be aliens or they wanted it to be some other explanation
to where they were and why they were there.
It is what it is.
NOWLIN: It wasn't an answer to the questions they were asking.
- It was just new information. - BALL: Mmm-hmm.
NOWLIN: And it wasn't always that way.
We originally had an ending where we didn't talk about the Flare...
BALL: Yeah, we didn't go into that stuff.
NOWLIN: ...or the Cranks.
The whole device
- of rushing them out that door. - BALL: But at the same time,
we have two more books that we have to follow.
So we have to hit that stuff, and hopefully by this movie,
that it just becomes a part of the universe
and a full experience of not just mazes,
but a world of destruction and infection and the ultimate cure here.
NOWLIN: It's the idea that the future belongs to these kids.
You're either going to support them or you're going to exploit them.
They're ultimately gonna decide their own path.
BALL: This scene worked out really well, too.
Just in general, I'm kinda proud of the way it flows
from point of view to point of view throughout.
Just the way it's cut and everything,
I thought it came together really, really well.
NOWLIN: All this stuff from...
BALL: Yeah, just like that one shot, it goes from his...
He's been worked on, too.
NOWLIN: And now they're watching him and then she walks over.
BALL: They have all their... And then this little shot becomes...
It's all one shot, too, which I always love, too.
NOWLIN: This is one of my favorite shots in the movie.
It's also because of their performances in the scene and...
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: I just like watching. I'm just gonna watch this.
(BOTH CHUCKLE)
BALL: Yeah, it was good.
It was a pretty fun day.
It was a cool real church that we shot in Cape Town.
We had to clean it up every day, didn't we, or something?
I forget.
- To get access to it, it wasn't easy. - NOWLIN: Uh...
BALL: We weren't sure if we were gonna shoot there for a while.
They were doing services and stuff, yeah.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, in the front corner, they were still doing services.
BALL: They let us keep parts of it still messed up, there's churchgoers,
- "What's going on over there?" - (LAUGHTER)
HARTWICK JR.: It was hard for Gyula to light.
BALL: Yeah, but it turned out good I thought.
HARTWICK JR.: It was good.
NOWLIN: We struggled with, "Where are they laying low before the heist?"
There were different ideas.
BALL: I always like the idea, it's very subtle,
but the idea that people have given up on religion
- in a way in this world. - NOWLIN: Exactly.
BALL: That people don't go to church anymore, so that it's safe to go there.
NOWLIN: It's a world that's lost faith. BALL: Yeah.
BALL: I thought there was something cool about that.
Brenda.
I didn't think she'd still be alive.
BALL: Kaya did a really good job here.
This is a really tricky story moment to have here.
NOWLIN: Because it's such important information,
but she also needs to be clever.
She's fishing for information, too.
HARTWICK JR.: She did a good job.
BALL: That realization there, too.
I think she did a really good job with a scene
that could have been...
It could have not worked very well.
NOWLIN: This is the other reason why it was a big step forward
to show the limit of the serum that they're getting from the kids,
seeing them turn.
- This is such big news for her. - BALL: We know what she's talking about.
NOWLIN: It's big news for us, too.
BALL: The real challenge here is that you have to remember
that Thomas gave Brenda his blood.
NOWLIN: Or even if you don't,
the way she chips away at him through the rest of the movie,
- you start to figure out. - BALL: You at least connect it,
but the people that remember that scene
between him giving his blood and saving Brenda
for two, maybe three months.
Then that scene with Jorge and Brenda saying, "How's it looking?
"You're looking pretty good."
She's like, "I'm gonna turn eventually."
The pieces are there.
If they're strong enough, we'll find out, I guess.
But it all does all start to come together now.
A perfect example of where something that's set up in the second movie
that pays off in the third.
NOWLIN: I wonder if people notice her taking the blood sample there.
BALL: Yeah. NOWLIN: They do?
NOWLIN: So, was that a misinterpretation on Gally's part?
He thought she was reaching for the knife,
- but was really reaching for the... - BALL: That's the idea.
NOWLIN: Yeah, okay, that's cool.
BALL: The idea is, yeah, he's like, "Nice try."
He always gets a laugh, too.
I've been surprised in all of our test screenings
that people love Gally's character in this movie.
I think Will did a good job.
HARTWICK JR.: This is a good scene, too.
You can't save everyone, Thomas.
BALL: I don't remember why we came up with this line.
I'm still on the fence about it, but...
NOWLIN: It was part of another arc for her where she was talking about...
She was supposed to be talking about herself.
BALL: Every time we went into it, it's like we stopped the scene again,
the momentum of the scene to talk about their relationship.
And it's just, ugh...
It's just like you hit the brakes again.
NOWLIN: It's not where you are.
BALL: And I love how it's after these 15 minutes of slow pace.
NOWLIN: Yeah, here we go. BALL: Boom! Here we go.
BALL: It's like we're going in. The heist is beginning.
It's like, "I'm just ready for it."
So, from here on, the movie basically doesn't stop.
It just goes.
NOWLIN: But I will say, just to go back to that earlier point,
the idea of Brenda's relationship with Thomas
and the fact that she's gonna turn eventually,
it was supposed to be our vessel of reminding the audience
that it was his blood that saved her, that gave her this time.
BALL: I think you get it.
This is another one of those cases
where it's like less is more, I think, in this case.
But this is a cool thing, too.
Again, no dialogue. Just, you get it.
They all got in.
They're just slowly meeting up in one little smooth kind of way.
HARTWICK JR.: This is a cool location, the convention center.
We shot all over this place.
NOWLIN: This is great.
Just one by one they're all trickling in...
BALL: None of the lights matched. (LAUGHS)
Gyula really had a tough time lighting this one.
If you notice, our go-to trick to make something look sci-fi
is we put fluorescent lights in the background.
- Everywhere we go, that's what we do. - (LAUGHTER)
NOWLIN: Her little ID badge that just says "Teresa"
Does she not have a last name? (LAUGHS)
BALL: I think it says "Teresa A," doesn't it?
NOWLIN: Oh, it does? Okay. BALL: Yeah, I think so.
NOWLIN: "T," Agnes? BALL: Agnes, or whatever her name is?
BALL: Which, I guess, we don't do that,
but in the books, you find out
that all these characters' names are not their real names.
HARTWICK JR.: Can't do it.
NOWLIN: You just can't do it. Like... BALL: Yeah, we just couldn't do it.
NOWLIN: You fall in love with Newt as Newt.
BALL: Yeah. NOWLIN: Thomas is Thomas.
BALL: Yeah, but this...
HARTWICK JR.: She notices he's sick here.
NOWLIN: I think maybe in the book that's easier. You just read, you know?
BALL: Yeah, exactly it is.
It's just one of those things where in a movie it just kind of spoils it.
You know, it's like, "I don't want that."
HARTWICK JR.: That was good.
NOWLIN: This is good. We're kind of back to the opening train now,
- except you know, we're, we don't... - BALL: Yeah, exactly.
NOWLIN: We know there's something unfolding.
We don't know exactly what the plan is.
BALL: Yeah, which is cool I think, you know?
It's unlike a typical heist movie.
It's just a heist movie where they get to really lay out all the problems
and how they cleverly get around them.
We're not so much of a heist movie, you know,
as we are just a mission movie.
NOWLIN: It's a rescue mission. BALL: Yeah.
And it is fun to be a little behind the characters in a way
and we're kind of piecing together what's happening here.
NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: Now there is a scene that we cut out
in that scene where Newt flips out where Lawrence
offers them this little device to get them in.
If they can get inside, he can help them get past the security.
But I felt like we just didn't need it.
And like you kind of, you've seen enough of these kinds of things before
and this is kind of stems of the book
where Thomas' thumb drive, I think,
that he plants into the WICKED system and disables their...
NOWLIN: Their weapons, yeah.
BALL: Their weapons or something.
So that's where this came from. But yeah.
NOWLIN: Well, you need to know, like,
they can't just be walking around to the point where...
BALL: That's my voice there saying "Check it out." (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: Oh, really? I could tell. BALL: I'll check it out.
NOWLIN: But I also like that moment of where
with Lawrence not giving them the device
it's like... Oh, yeah, he's a part of this, too, yeah.
He'll know what's going on.
NOWLIN: Yeah, but it's good that he's a part of it.
NOWLIN: Keystone Kops here. BALL: Yeah.
BALL: But I love this little off-stage sound.
- (BALL IMITATING GUNFIRE) - NOWLIN: Yeah. (LAUGHS)
BALL: It's pretty silly.
I don't know why, but I always loved the shot of Newt.
- I just like how he looked. - HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Let's go.
BALL: You can see his veins just starting to show a little bit.
- He's getting sicker, you know? - NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: Trying to track all that was crazy.
NOWLIN: That's something else, that if we had waited to reveal his infection
that moment in the stairwell of Teresa noticing that he's sick.
- That's important either way. - BALL: Yeah.
- But it did work really well actually. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: We didn't know, but we kind of, like,
something's going on there and she knows.
It did work really well.
Next time. (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: So you know, there's always one or two of those things when you're...
You get later into the process.
BALL: Yeah, you know, someone said it. "Movies are abandoned, not finished."
NOWLIN: Right.
BALL: We basically ran out of the clock on this one. Beyond, I think.
NOWLIN: Well, I think we learned a lot of lessons on 1 and 2
that I think we incorporated really well in writing this.
And then we learned still more lessons
in this one that we'll incorporate into Maze Runner 4.
- BALL: Yeah, you never differ. - (NOWLIN CHUCKLES)
BALL: Yeah, good luck with that.
NOWLIN: Yup.
BALL: Tell me how it goes. NOWLIN: Yup.
BALL: I'll be there, opening day.
NOWLIN: Probably paying matinee price, you jerk.
BALL: Yes. (CHUCKLES)
Thomas, that's on the other side of the building.
NOWLIN: So yeah, here things start going wrong.
BALL: Yeah, the little issue in the plan
where it wasn't supposed to go this way...
It was important to get Newt to go with them, too, you know?
Yeah, the group slowly starts splitting up.
Like Return of the Jedi, you know? All these different characters,
they kind of start splitting up, and are they gonna come back together?
Are they gonna see each other again,
like that scene with Jorge and Brenda, you know?
I'm worried I'm never gonna see you again.
Hopefully you're thinking "Oh, my gosh,
"something's going to happen here that..." You know.
NOWLIN: They're about to do something stupid.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: So, I wonder if the audience is wondering what's in that vault.
'Cause earlier, when we see Janson stealing the serum from the vault,
that's kind of when you reveal what's in there.
BALL: Mmm-hmm. I don't know, it says "serum vault." (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: Does it? BALL: I think so.
NOWLIN: Why would you put the sign up? (LAUGHS)
BALL: It's for your question right there.
NOWLIN: Yeah, okay.
BALL: But again, I think people just kind of go with it.
I don't think...
HARTWICK JR.: Well, and Thomas also has a line about the serum, so...
BALL: I think Gally even says so. Yeah.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, "I'll get the serum and meet you guys out back." Yeah.
BALL: I think you just go with it.
HARTWICK JR.: This is a good scene.
BALL: Yeah, this is a cool scene.
NOWLIN: So this was something... We had outlined the heist,
the major beats of the heist.
And this was one that was kind of missing.
And it was like you were just riding through...
They get in the elevator. All right, what if Janson walks in the elevator?
And then the scene just kind of writes itself.
BALL: Yeah, this is one of those cases where it works
because of what's come before.
Like, on its own, this is one of the longest shots in the movie.
I just sit here in one shot, you know, and just watch them,
you know, be uncomfortable. (CHUCKLES)
Our sound designer Ai-Ling did a good job on the movie, too.
She'd been on all three movies.
You know, actually mixed the movie, too, this time.
She had this really subtle, kind of like a high-pitched whine
that's getting louder and louder over the entire scene
so it adds to this kind of level of tension.
As the floors go.
It is the longest elevator in history, but who cares. You go with it.
NOWLIN: Yeah. 'Cause it's also Janson... BALL: But what was so funny
- is right here... - NOWLIN: The little look? Yeah.
BALL: When he says, you know, "Thomas is here."
And then in the background you see the two guys look at each other.
I put a little squeak of a sound effect, you know?
- (LAUGHTER) - It's just funny.
And I remember in our last test screening
people just kept laughing through the entire scene, in a good way.
NOWLIN: You're supposed to, yeah. It's that type of scene.
BALL: An uncomfortable laughter thing, you know?
NOWLIN: There's also Janson there at his most Littlefinger.
BALL: Yeah. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: We give him a better death though.
NOWLIN: I liked his death. BALL: I said we give him a better death.
NOWLIN: I said I liked his death in Game of Thrones.
BALL: It was okay. I thought they shortchanged him.
(HARTWICK JR. CHUCKLES)
Are you going to kill him?
Would that be a problem?
(ELEVATOR DOOR OPENS)
This is me.
BALL: Yeah, it's a good little fun scene.
NOWLIN: Also, that little moment, this is a little subtle thing,
but when she says, "Are you going to kill him?"
She's obviously thinking about the situation. She...
BALL: Thinking about the size there in a way. Yeah.
NOWLIN: Well, she's... It's setting up...
BALL: She's starting to.
NOWLIN: It's setting up a decision she makes later,
she's not willing to let Thomas go, but she needs to protect him.
She needs to make sure he doesn't get himself killed.
BALL: There's a line...
Even in the second movie, she says, "I can't...
"I made a deal with them to protect you guys."
NOWLIN: Well, no, now that she's suspecting
that he's the cure is kind of what I mean,
is the idea that she needs to make sure that he doesn't get himself killed.
BALL: What I'm saying also there's a line for her.
There's a line she won't cross, that she won't betray.
You know, at some level, I know that they're...
That's the start of it, she's starting to kind of feel that out I think.
And us as an audience, that there is, regardless of what she believes in,
there is... She won't...
NOWLIN: Kill him. BALL: Yeah. She won't kill Thomas.
NOWLIN: She'll just put them through hell.
BALL: Mmm-hmm.
NOWLIN: But you'll live.
BALL: We even had a thing though, that was her design
of the new procedure on Minho.
Instead of putting him in the maze again...
It was her more humane way of...
You know, extracting the serum.
NOWLIN: It's just a little hard to swallow. It's like, who is this girl?
- (NOWLIN LAUGHS) - BALL: Yeah, right, exactly.
It's a little silly, but...
NOWLIN: How many PhDs does this 22-year-old girl have?
BALL: Yeah, right.
Well, in the books, they all designed the maze, you know?
When they're 14 or something.
I think the movie's always been a little bit more grown-up than the books.
We've tried. And that's been the challenge, and I think it's fine.
That line, you know, of believability.
So I think we take the movies fairly seriously.
There's not as much fantasy as maybe the books were. So I...
NOWLIN: I think it came to the first movie...
BALL: We make it very real, and especially the first movie. And...
NOWLIN: Well, you had this vision, I think,
of this rustic kind of handmade world.
There weren't pre-existing structures in the Glade, and so it kind of put...
BALL: Yeah, there's no holograms. There's no underground maze.
NOWLIN: Yeah, so ideas of like the Flat Trans and the telepathy...
BALL: Trying to make it as believable as possible.
And that kind of echoes throughout all the movies.
And sometimes it's hard where some of the concepts
are difficult to portray in such a realistic light, you know?
But we do our best.
NOWLIN: It's a nice moment. It's kind of, "Why did you do that?"
BALL: Again, there's something nice about, in this movie,
it has a lot of unspoken moments between the characters, you know?
Which is nice.
NOWLIN: Well, it's something we learned, too,
on the second movie that it's not always about scenes.
It's about moments within scenes.
Janson, I need them alive.
- Come on. Come on! - GUARD: All right, let's move!
GUARD 2: Yes, sir! Level three, now!
NOWLIN: He should have told the soldier, "She doesn't tell me what to do."
BALL: (LAUGHS) Who is she?
NOWLIN: This is one of my favorite little Gally moments. (CHUCKLES)
BALL: Yeah, he gets a laugh. This always gets a laugh here.
And that kid was really good.
This whole group here of these extras, they were fantastic.
They were really... Hats off to them all.
They were really fantastic.
They sat in the train with us, on the bus with us.
Hung off the bus upside down with them.
They were great. They never complained.
They just had a great time.
It was one of my best experiences with extras I've had on a movie.
The score here I love, too. This is like one of John's early scores.
He just kind of like... Just whipped it out one day real quick.
It was just like, "Try this out. See how it feels."
And I said "This is great."
And I put it all over this scene,
this whole reel, reel five, that's just basically the building heist.
And then he started kind of going and tinkering with it
and adding more stuff to it.
I said, "No, no, no." Just go back to... Just something very simple.
And there's like a beat to it.
It has, like, a rhythm to it.
It kind of reminds me of Heat or something in a way, you know?
NOWLIN: Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the bank heist.
It's more of a pulse and a kind of tone...
BALL: Yeah. NOWLIN: Like a pace.
BALL: See, even the way it's shot though, the movie isn't...
it's shot very real. It's not super slick.
It's very handheld and, you know...
The wandering cameras, you know?
It's not like...
It's got its own kind of energy and tension to it,
you know what I mean?
Which was fun to do. I really liked this little section of the movie, really.
NOWLIN: But how are they gonna get out of this, you know?
BALL: Yeah.
That was another thing. That little shot of them hiding in the closet...
NOWLIN: That was new. That wasn't in the script, yeah.
BALL: I just felt like when we were shooting it, I needed an out.
If we weren't gonna... I didn't know if I was gonna use it or not,
but I needed like some way to say
for the time I was gonna be down here with them, where were they?
And if I just left them in a place,
I feel like it gave us a little bit of license to just, you know...
Not just have them walking the halls for five minutes, you know what I mean?
GUARD: Got someone here.
BALL: I always saw this scene this way, too,
where it's like you see it from her point of view
and then you know, don't really go into a close-up of the guys
walking closer.
There's something scary about it from her world.
Except this shot. It's a funny shot.
Hold on!
BALL: And so there's a driver, a stunt driver right behind Brenda here.
And that's who's driving, looking over her shoulder.
And so that bus is really moving and that guy really almost got hit.
It was fun. It was fun to do.
GUARD: Load up! Load up!
Let's go! Move it!
Move! Move!
ANNOUNCER: All R-16 personnel, report to their assigned stations.
BALL: Yeah, I thought we needed this moment, too,
just, like, Thomas finally coming face-to-face with Ava,
that idea of "I'm gonna kill Ava Paige" and he has the chance here in a way.
And I think it's still ambiguous
whether or not he does take a shot or not, you know, is the question.
Before Janson starts shooting.
And this is really where everything just spirals out of control and...
I mean, the bus is gone. The way out is gone.
They haven't gotten Minho yet.
We don't know where he is, you know?
How are they gonna...
NOWLIN: Now they're just shooting their way through. Right.
BALL: Yeah, and now they just... It's just crazy.
Now they're running in the maze
instead of the Grievers chasing, it's Janson with his army.
And it's just fun.
The walls are kind of closing in around them, you know?
And then...
NOWLIN: This was always one of my...
I thought would be one of the coolest moments of them just...
They lose control and they're just screaming for Minho
and then him hearing them, you know?
It was cool.
BALL: Yeah, and building that tension of
What's gonna happen to Minho? And then you kind of call back.
That thing he did with Teresa.
He's still got it, and you know...
Kind of a little bit of a Sarah Connor thing from Terminator 2.
NOWLIN: It's also, for Minho, it's the moment we've been waiting for.
Where the Minho we know and love comes back.
BALL: Yeah, right. It'd be a shame if it was just the guys come in and free him.
NOWLIN: Yeah. He can't be a damsel, yeah.
BALL: Yeah, he's gotta do his part, too, in a way,
which I thought was cool.
- And I always love this. - NOWLIN: Oof!
BALL: (LAUGHS) I think you don't know it, but it's cool.
NOWLIN: Sure seems like he shot him.
BALL: Well, that's what it's supposed to... (LAUGHS)
But Minho's fast, so.
NOWLIN: Yeah. BALL: He ducked.
BALL: And pay attention to the next time you see that guard.
Yeah. That's Jake, the actor Jake, and...
You see he's all beat up,
so there's a little off-screen story that took place there.
NOWLIN: Minho just gave him a little...
BALL: So this is kind of calling back, sort of those things from the book
and the second movie.
There's kind of, you know...
James described these kind of electrical grenades.
You know, that we tried to keep.
These are non-lethal kind of weapons that they would use.
NOWLIN: But it's also this is how WICKED captured...
BALL: That was a real shot by the way. He, Newt... That was the third take.
Newt really threw that thing and it just perfectly spun out right in that spot.
It was just awesome.
- And this moment is... - NOWLIN: But that's the same weapon...
BALL: In one of our test screenings anyway,
was the biggest, "took the house down" reaction.
It was amazing, you know?
Like when he just, you know, Minho hulks out,
just there they are.
They just screamed.
They were screaming over this entire moment here.
They couldn't even hear what he said there.
Hopefully we'll get that in the wild, out in the wild.
A little lighting stuff.
This little moment here was actually meant for earlier,
but I put it later so that it felt like Janson's closing in.
Which I thought worked really well.
And if you actually look what Janson's seeing,
there's actually only two guys running away.
It's not all three of them 'cause it was from earlier.
But I don't think anyone notices.
In here, in here.
(GRUNTS)
Newt, come on.
BALL: Let's see. We had another version.
- It wasn't them jumping out, right? - NOWLIN: Sliding, yeah.
BALL: Yeah. I had this version in Vancouver
where it was gonna be they were gonna jump out of the window onto a sloped...
The design of the building was gonna be kind of angled, sloped.
They were gonna slide down this gigantic huge glass slide.
And it just turned out to be a really complicated thing to pull off.
And so when we went to Cape Town and we had that year off,
I found this pond outside of the convention center.
I was like what if they did like
a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid-style thing
and jumped out of the place?
And then we started slowly working our way into this one shot,
you know, of just them falling out the window and into the pond.
And I think it turned out really cool. It was fun.
NOWLIN: There was a moment in the test screening
where this shot hadn't been done,
so they turned into naked white mannequins,
- just motionless dropping and... - BALL: Hmm... (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: You know, it's one of the hard things
about testing a movie with so many visual effects, right?
BALL: That's why every time you get your scores,
you always think about, you know, you'll go up a bit
when your VFX and your mixes and your sound and everything's done.
You know, so...
But the fact that we got such high scores, you know...
NOWLIN: Yeah, it's worth pointing out. We scored well with no effects.
BALL: Yeah.
Actually we had probably a rougher test screening
than we had in the previous two because it was...
Our post window on this was so much shorter than our other movies.
NOWLIN: There you go, book fans.
BALL: Yeah, that's right. We added those lines in there for them.
I know they're out of order. They're not exactly like it was in the movie...
in the books, but they're the best we could come up with.
NOWLIN: Well, when you grow up you can make your own movies.
BALL: And that's the shot.
So the guys really did jump out
of something onto a 20-foot little pad.
And the camera really did jump out with them.
And then WETA took over in CG
and kind of went CG doubles and went into the water.
And this night, man, it was freezing cold.
It was winter when we shot this.
It was summer in the United States,
but being on the other hemisphere, it was winter in Cape Town.
And it was freezing cold in this water, and they kind of...
They suffered through it.
And we had just off camera a Jacuzzi
that in between takes they would jump into to get warm.
NOWLIN: That's a good idea. 'Cause they stay wet, you know?
BALL: But, you know, tensions always run high on these days
and there were a lot of, you know...
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Yeah. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: People yelling sometimes, including myself saying,
"Let's go faster. Come on."
But another good little moment just to bring Gally back into the fold.
Here.
Uh-uh-uh! Don't even think about it.
Get on your knees with your hands in the air.
You son of a bitch. (SCREAMING)
NOWLIN: That's good, the... BALL: That little voice there.
NOWLIN: Yeah. BALL: You son of a...
- That's our editor Dan doing that. - NOWLIN: That was great.
BALL: He did a really good job in temp.
And we just ended up using it in the movie.
Too bad he didn't have long locks of hair
that just flew as he pulls his mask off.
NOWLIN: Sure, it would have been nice. BALL: It would have been amazing.
NOWLIN: Unfortunately Will couldn't grow the hair out.
BALL: This is a funny moment, too.
It's just, you know, "What!"
We could sit there and explain everything to him, but it's better...
- To just let's leave it and move on. - NOWLIN: Explain later.
Well, of course we're not going to.
- But that's something we kept realizing. - BALL: See, there you can see, Jake.
He's all beat up to hell, like you can imagine.
Minho did a number on this guy.
NOWLIN: If we get so caught up in the story,
like even in the script, we're like "Oh, yeah, shit, you know, we have..."
People have to keep reacting to the fact that Gally's alive.
BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: Meanwhile...
BALL: Yeah, and that little fun little side set piece thing.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Now, in terms of run time, this was the one thing
that was kind of potentially on the chopping block, you know?
BALL: Yeah.
Who knows, maybe in a couple of years I'll look back and regret not cutting it
but it is a fun sequence and it's fun to know what happened,
what was Brenda and Frypan's contribution to this heist, you know?
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. Yeah. Without this, you lose Frypan completely.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: And it's also the idea that...
Yeah, we leave her getting chased by a bunch of vehicles.
BALL: That I don't question.
You know, you imagine they went off-screen and went into the tunnels.
NOWLIN: Sure. BALL: Its fine, but...
NOWLIN: We set up the problem of these walls.
You're now escaping within a walled-off city.
BALL: Yeah, but you saw him easily walk into the city... (LAUGHS)
So I just feel like you go with it.
But it is a nice little bit of fun
before the movie gets really heavy
with a lot of emotional stuff with Newt and Teresa.
So it's nice to just have one last little shot in the arm
of fun adrenaline victory, you know what I mean?
A complete victory, you know?
You actually... Thomas and the gang got out
and Brenda and the kids got out in this kind of spectacular way, you know?
NOWLIN: It's also one of those really sticky, memorable kind of scenes...
BALL: Yeah, and the idea was...
NOWLIN: You're not just shooting. You're fighting, you know?
BALL: And the idea was that we originally were gonna have Brenda say,
"Don't worry, we do this all the time."
Which is kind of the callback to... We did something similar
with the Berg lifting the train off the things.
NOWLIN: Yeah. It didn't really land.
BALL: Yeah, it didn't really work,
but hopefully it comes across that it's very...
It's somewhat similar to what we set up in the opening sequence with the train.
- And if you look closely, there's an X. - NOWLIN: Or we're just out of ideas.
- BALL: Maybe. - (NOWLIN CHUCKLES)
There's an X on the ground.
Only I regret calling it out, but whatever...
Is that when Brenda stopped the bus, I wish I had the cars pulling up
and not already sitting there.
- So, this is kind of convenient. - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: (LAUGHING) They're sitting right where the X is.
I don't know, we just ran out of time.
NOWLIN: No. I wouldn't have noticed that if you didn't.
BALL: Yeah, you kind of go with it,
but if you really think about it, it's a little convenient.
NOWLIN: It is like where they hijack the Berg.
You're going to one point where you know that you have an advantage.
That's fun.
BALL: So, we really did hang the kids up.
We didn't do this. That's obviously a CG bus up there,
but we actually did hang the bus up 90 degrees,
and all these kids were in there, for real.
Very uncomfortable, but they're wired in
and we just shot this sequence.
Shit.
BALL: A lot of the city, it should be known, that's all CG behind 'em.
Obviously, this is CG.
NOWLIN: (CHUCKLES) These poor kids.
BALL: You see their hair and all that stuff. It's really real.
Some people think we're just cheating. We actually really did it.
It's only five feet off the ground,
but they've been hanging up for 10 minutes at a time.
And you say, "Okay, guys, just one more time!"
And then we do, "One more take! One more take!
"Just keep the camera rolling!
"Okay, let him down!" And they all have to get off
and let the blood rush back to their head.
NOWLIN: Hurry, Frypan. (CHUCKLES)
BALL: Yeah, it's just a fun sequence, I think.
Hold on to something!
(ALL SCREAMING)
(SCREAMING CONTINUES)
(THUDS)
BALL: And we really dropped the bus. We really did drop this thing.
And this is actually the same wall that we used.
We shot Thomas and them when they're on the wall.
And we really towed a bus in there and hung it upside down.
And hung it up 90 degrees and actually dropped it.
No one was in it, of course. But yeah, it was fun.
And that was an accident. That out-of-service sign. (LAUGHS)
It was not planned. It just worked out.
I had it planned to come on in this shot where I had control over it.
So, while the bus was hanging 90 degrees...
It's too hard to get to it.
No one was allowed to go near the bus in case something happens or falls.
So, we had to go and pre-program the sign.
Of course, we turned off all the lights and all that stuff.
And we dropped the bus and something shorted out,
- and the light turned on. - (LAUGHTER)
And that was one of those perfect little
serendipitous things that was meant to be.
And that's our first real view of the vault room now.
But we have some other scenes where we got to see it in there.
And this is cool, too, just seeing him and her.
They don't like each other.
He obviously already decided he's not with her anymore.
She's given up and he's not going to.
NOWLIN: I couldn't hear. Did he still say his line?
- "They're not out yet?" - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Okay, cool.
That's another good throw though.
HARTWICK JR.: This is the last location we ever found, I think.
BALL: Yeah, it was a tough one. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
BALL: It turned out okay. HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, it's cool-looking.
BALL: Just looking for that place where they're hiding.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah. BALL: On the run still.
BALL: Anywhere we could go that kind of suggests that...
They weren't outside the walls, they're still inside.
We had to do something that was bright, but still secretive somehow.
And it's nice to... We actually struggled...
Talked about cutting this scene, too,
but it's nice to have Minho and Newt
actually have a moment together, you know?
NOWLIN: Yeah. And Minho and Gally,
it's like you gotta appreciate Minho back with his friends, you know?
BALL: Mmm-hmm. Yeah, it's good.
How long has he been like this?
He'll be okay. We just gotta get to Brenda.
She's got the serum.
Come on, let's go.
Hey, Newt.
Come on, bud. We gotta get you up. Let's go.
- (NEWT GRUNTS) - Whoa, whoa, whoa!
- You okay? - NEWT: Yeah.
NOWLIN: But this would have been where we would have revealed
the infection if we had held it off.
BALL: Yeah, right. We would have shot this scene here
where he's like, "What's going on, Newt?"
And then he would have shown it.
And then all three of them would find out here,
and then suddenly after having that victory we get,
oh, my gosh, a new development,
which could have been really good, but at the same time, who knows?
It might have been maybe the fact that knowing Newt's sick earlier
- helps people go with it. - NOWLIN: Yeah, maybe it's too late.
Maybe people don't want a new development, you know?
BALL: We never got really a chance to test it, so we'll never know.
Yeah, the moment where she...
I actually like that we don't see it at first.
We just see her reaction.
And let's just prolong this, the moment later.
BRENDA: Lawrence!
BALL: Hopefully this reads. I do miss...
There's one scene that I miss that we cut,
and it was Brenda calling Thomas on the walkies and seeing,
and basically explaining that Lawrence is gone
and going into detail about what's going on
and Gally being surprised by that.
We cut it out here and just says Lawrence is gone, that no one's here.
And we just cut to where Lawrence is.
I think people go with it, but it isn't...
It certainly isn't as good of a throw as the other one, but...
Again, it was just, unfortunately it was a...
a pretty big pressure to cut the movie down.
And it's already two hours and 21 minutes
so it's the longest movie of all of them.
NOWLIN: It's the same sort of transition that's basically question/answer.
Where's Lawrence? Here he is.
What's he doing? We're about to find out.
BALL: It works.
If you ask the question, it's just it'd be nice to see
I think Gally's reaction saying, "What do you mean he's gone?"
There's something cool about that, this wasn't quite...
NOWLIN: Gally's not in on it, I think, is important.
BALL: Which I think still comes across, but it's not as effective.
NOWLIN: But Walton's so much fun.
BALL: Yeah, Walton, man. He is awesome.
He is so great to work with.
He just really throws himself into this stuff.
And actually the first night...
'Cause he had that hood on his head and he was walking through that tunnel.
When he's first walking through.
And there was a really low beam and he couldn't see it
and he smacked himself right in the forehead.
You know, gashed his head.
It was bleeding and he was like, "Ah!"
We're like, "Oh, no, what happened?"
And we didn't know what we're gonna do
and he says, "All right, let's go again, come on."
And so for all these scenes, basically, there's this welt on Walton's forehead,
- which kind of blends into the makeup. - NOWLIN: It works, yeah...
BALL: But he just acted through it, man.
He's a trooper, man. He's just fantastic.
And he just really commits and he got this whole crowd wound up.
And he was like in between takes
and he was just keeping them, kind of, you know... He was just great.
He's an awesome guy to work with.
- Everybody, actually. - NOWLIN: Just in general, actually.
I think he played it a little differently.
Remember when we first cast him...
We were watching The Hateful Eight and I think it was just...
- We're writing dialogue. - BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: It was a really big performance and he came in
- and did it really kind of quiet and... - BALL: Differently, yeah.
Determined.
But it's cool. It's draws attention to it
and it's kind of sets up what his real plan was.
His ultimate agenda was just to, you know,
his time is up, but he's gonna go out with a bang.
That's all CG behind him, everything. It's kind of crazy.
It's a cool little music cue, too, from John.
Has a good, building tension
that's just like, oh, my God, something huge is about to happen.
And I love that he's just kind of...
NOWLIN: But this is the payoff of,
"I'll help you get past the cameras and the security.
- "You put this device in... " - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: But it also gives him control of their guns.
BALL: Right, which I think comes across. NOWLIN: So now he can do what he wanted.
Yeah, it does, but I mean...
BALL: That was the intent, that he was looking for an opportunity.
Thomas presented him an opportunity.
He used Thomas to get access to the guns
and now he's gonna blow everything up with this huge gigantic explosion.
(LAUGHS)
- (EXPLOSIONS) - (ALL SCREAMING)
NOWLIN: This was kind of Gally's moment of...
BALL: And the sirens go on.
NOWLIN: This is kind of the culmination here.
It's the idea that he had a new family.
BALL: Yeah, yeah.
NOWLIN: But they weren't what he thought he was.
HARTWICK JR.: I miss the line though, you know, "Gally, come with us."
NOWLIN: It was a blocking thing, right? But I mean, it was the...
At the end of the first movie, Thomas says, "Gally, come with us,"
and Gally refuses.
And now he goes with his friends and...
By this point in the story, he's kind of proven himself and...
He gets to go with them.
BALL: Yeah, I mean, now basically, Dylan says, "Gally, come on."
It's kinda much more subtle,
but it is the idea of Thomas telling him "Let's go."
NOWLIN: I think maybe what doesn't work about "come with us"
is it doesn't feel like as big of a decision.
Like, of course he would go with them. I think we're there already.
BALL: That's the problem, yeah.
We didn't come up to a place where we never had a scene
where he says, "Well, we'll go our separate ways."
NOWLIN: Whereas in the Maze Runner, we literally
had the line that people crossed to stand with Thomas, you know?
BALL: That's why it didn't work on the day.
It just felt unearned or something.
And this is the culmination. Thomas is the cure.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: Which is a tricky thing to do.
NOWLIN: It's the one idea that really stinks of "YA." The one, you know?
But it also gives us so much. It gives us so much.
- It's the answer. - BALL: It's the books, too, yeah.
NOWLIN: It is the books, but it's... It's also very different though.
In the book, the idea that Thomas is...
BALL: They had to dissect his brain or something like that.
NOWLIN: Well, yeah, they need to kill and it's still the idea of sacrifice.
But I didn't feel in the books that there was as much of Thomas wrestling
with the implications of that.
Basically, that means that they can use him as bait
to get him in, so he can plant the device and turn on the gun,
- so they can attack WICKED. - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: And in this case, I think it's interesting that
when he does find out right when he's losing Newt,
which is also from the books,
that it creates this implication of what is my responsibility, you know?
BALL: Yeah, right. I can actually save...
And he starts to come over and see Teresa's side.
If you can save the world, do you, you know?
NOWLIN: Teresa's story at the end of the second movie...
BALL: He needed his version of that.
NOWLIN: He needs to lose someone close to him.
BALL: He needed to lose someone to the virus that he could've helped.
As a movie, it was a more efficient way to get...
NOWLIN: Did you put a Wilhelm in there? BALL: Yeah, I put a Wilhelm in there.
I love that.
And there's a CG guy flying off with the smoke on him and everything.
It's awesome.
But this stuff, we shot it in four hours. It was crazy.
We took over the street and just went crazy.
NOWLIN: This was something you couldn't have done in Vancouver.
BALL: No. And there's another big giant drone shot I just love.
Everything's in CG except the buildings, basically.
So, it was a clean plate.
So, all the crowds, all the smoke, all the explosions, it's all CG.
NOWLIN: Maybe it's because drones are kind of still somewhat new.
I'm still trying to get used to drone shots in movies.
I get used to the movement of a crane, you know,
and what you can do with a crane.
Suddenly, the camera's doing things that seem impossible, you know?
We're not gonna make it.
Wait, what are you talking about?
- Don't let them get away! - (GUNFIRE)
Just take the others. Get everybody out...
while you still can.
No.
Brenda.
I'm not leaving you.
Okay?
So forget it.
BALL: I thought it was interesting.
We shot this in one take, basically, one shot, you know?
Again, not doing much coverage and stuff
and just letting it play kind of in silhouette, you know?
With the war raging out behind them. I thought it was cool.
NOWLIN: And it helps Giancarlo's moment here.
You need that "all is lost."
He's coming in at just the right moment to give the right...
BALL: If they don't have a way out, they're not gonna make it.
Then that thing that we set up earlier. You got a long way to go, you know?
A long road ahead of you.
NOWLIN: And hopefully, if the audience tracks
before things go wrong in the heist,
they all should've been on that bus.
You know, they should all be there,
get on the Berg, fly away and everything's fine.
The fact that Minho wasn't where they thought he would be
is what separated them and now they gotta go back for him.
BALL: Yeah, and then we got to bring back Barry.
It was just a scheduling thing.
I couldn't get Harriet and...
Or Kat and Nathalie back.
For some reason, they weren't available this day.
And I wanted them to be in there, too.
So, the group that we left behind comes back to help, too, you know?
I think it is powerful to have Barry,
who was against this suicide mission.
He comes back and sees that, you know, they needed my help.
I'm gonna do it, you know?
NOWLIN: Look at what Thomas did.
BALL: Yeah, it's not just one man anymore.
It's a bunch of people.
It's the thing he fights and dies for, you know?
NOWLIN: In fact, these kids would've been lost
no matter what if Thomas hadn't come
and now he's stuck in there.
We owe it to him to do what we can to get him out.
BALL: I love Barry, too. He's great to work with.
Actually Giancarlo, all of them, everybody.
I'm really lucky to have such great actors that
give everything and do such a good job with everything.
NOWLIN: Really hard to give everyone their due.
So many characters.
BALL: We do it as well as we can though within the time we have though.
NOWLIN: While focusing and making sure that the priority is the story.
BALL: It's really Thomas and Teresa's story with Newt.
NOWLIN: Really, yeah. BALL: Really, that's the story.
BALL: This time.
But, fortunately, every movie has their own little feature, I think.
It's like Minho is kinda featured in the first and second movie
and he gets to...
He comes back in the story of course in this one in a big way,
and I think he makes a big impact.
But, this Gally guy has a nice role in this movie and then...
Hopefully, it'll be one of those movie series
that everyone has their favorites.
I'm a Temple of Doom guy.
NOWLIN: Like you said, when you put all three together,
everybody has their arc and their moment.
This is an important moment.
We get a lot of tweets about this, about the fact that Minho and Newt
would've known each other longer
than pretty much any other relationship in the story.
HARTWICK JR.: That's the shame about
having to cut out that other scene though
when he says about how Minho saved him.
That "Thank you, Minho" would've meant so much more.
NOWLIN: Yeah, I would've liked to have given Minho one more line there, but...
BALL: I think it works. Simple. Clean.
Not a lot needs to be said.
And I always like this moment of him drifting off.
I like this idea that, you know, something about lights
to infected people, as they're turning, the sun starts to hurt or something.
They kinda get mesmerized by lights or something.
Thought it was cool.
NOWLIN: Thomas is really, really good in this, this scene.
BALL: Yeah, he did a really good job.
We'll see what happens to some of the book fans.
I know I changed Newt's death,
but I think for the better, for in terms of movies.
This is where the "Tell me, please" fit in, was here.
NOWLIN: We've introduced this idea that WICKED has been
harvesting these kids for serum that can buy you time.
And they're looking for a cure.
We have to do something with that.
There is a way to save Newt.
If you're just inches away, it's more tragic.
You were minutes away from being able to save him,
which means that Thomas would never...
It would never make sense for him to intentionally shoot him.
BALL: Yeah, it just would have never worked
to just say, "Okay, I'll shoot you."
There's just no way to make it work.
NOWLIN: There's something more interesting
about, like, Newt makes his own choice.
BALL: Yes, right.
Newt sacrifices himself to help the group
and help get Minho out and all that stuff.
And Thomas also learns a valuable lesson from his friend's sacrifice.
And that's what kind of changes him as a person.
NOWLIN: Exactly, yeah. And he did what he came here to do and...
BALL: I think we milk it as much as we can, this...
Also the love the two... That he has for each other.
They have for each other, you know?
They'll do anything.
In fact, I always kinda felt that even reading the book.
I just never saw Thomas' character,
no matter what, he would never shoot his friend, period.
Even if he was chained up attacking him, I say he wouldn't do it.
I just couldn't see it happening.
NOWLIN: It comes from a completely hopeless place.
But if the movie and the books are, they're about a search for a cure.
You wanna collapse those threads, you know?
BALL: So hopefully, the fans will somewhat
at least forgive us and hopefully we...
While different, it's still just as effective for them.
NOWLIN: I just hope they, I don't know, think critically about it.
TERESA: (ON PA, ECHOING) Can you hear me?
BALL: And this was kind of an interesting idea.
NOWLIN: This was another post-Vancouver idea, I think.
- Was it? - BALL: Uh... No, no, definitely not.
I remember we were all very worried about this scene actually, 'cause...
It's on the edge of being cheesy, but I think it works okay.
Any kind of "You are the one" is...
But also we're kind of the idea that in the books...
Teresa can talk to Thomas in his head. They have telepathic kinda talking.
We obviously weren't gonna do that in the movies.
But this kind of feels like that in a weird way.
NOWLIN: Well, that's why I pushed the idea, originally.
It was just the moment of like... You're totally in that moment.
And suddenly out of nowhere, Thomas can hear me.
BALL: In some of these places,
we used some of the Thomasses from the first movie
where, when he goes into his dreams and he hears Teresa's voice.
NOWLIN: Really? BALL: Yeah.
BALL: So, some of that stuff is in here.
That "Thomas, Thomas, can you hear me? Can you hear me?"
NOWLIN: That's cool.
BALL: So, we're trying our best to bring all that stuff back.
But being subtle about it.
And this day, for whatever reason,
we had this huge wind, like 70-mile an hour gust, or something.
So, this whole scene with all this wind and fire and smoke,
it just is.
And it just was fantastic.
- It looks really great. - NOWLIN: Fortuitous.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: I think Dylan did a good job just listening
and taking in what she's saying.
I wanna hear this. Let me try to turn up my volume.
Newt?
BALL: Obviously we get into Newt that's not Newt anymore.
And this was take one of this moment that I never got back to.
I kept shooting more takes and... This is the one.
And he actually doesn't have the right contact lenses in actually.
But I just didn't care.
'Cause we had different stages of contact lenses.
But just his look on his face and everything,
it was just so chilling.
I thought it was great.
NOWLIN: Just kind of unaware, you know? Oblivious.
BALL: It's not him, you know? It just so felt like someone else.
And then this line, originally, he said, "Tommy, help me."
But I put in "Tommy, kill me," which was from the books.
I'm trying to help keep the fan thing down, you know?
I think it works still.
NOWLIN: There's something just brutal about a gun.
I think it feels like an execution.
BALL: I am teasing a little bit with the audience here.
The gun comes out and I think
maybe that's gonna happen and I knock it away.
I like the idea that even the book fans don't know what's gonna happen.
And, you know, it might be to...
Sometimes they'll be mad at me for not going the same way.
They don't know what's gonna happen, but that's the fun of movies.
It's like why would you wanna go into a movie knowing what's gonna happen?
Part of it's being swept up in it and enjoying the ride and...
NOWLIN: I think this is great. This, I don't know.
BALL: Yeah, it's good stuff I think.
I think it'll just be judged against what they're expecting, you know?
So we'll see how it goes. Hopefully it'll be okay.
NOWLIN: Oof!
BALL: And this was... Basically we shot Chuck
in the first movie when he got stabbed.
And in this movie we, instead of shooting Newt, we stab him, you know?
That's how we kinda went with it.
NOWLIN: (LAUGHS) That's a good way to, yeah.
We used that card and now we have to...
BALL: Yeah, put it elsewhere. NOWLIN: Yeah.
We did though. That was kind of our strategy
of just, tell the three stories.
Then we had all these ideas from the books,
like where can we fit stuff in?
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Oh!
BALL: Yeah, it's definitely an adaptation.
It's not a... Whatever.
NOWLIN: Think of it more of an interpretation.
BALL: Yeah, an interpretation I guess would be a good way to put it.
NOWLIN: Inspiration. BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: Yeah, the truth is we do start with the books.
I mean, every time we start with what's there
and what opportunities.
BALL: And the books still exist. We're not overriding the books.
It's just, for a movie we wanna make sure
that people that haven't read the books,
that it makes sense and tracks well for them, too, as an experience.
But, yeah, poor Newt.
And if you look there closely on his side of his face, a little tear drops.
Newt played a good, good, good...
It's a good death there I thought.
NOWLIN: That's a real tear?
BALL: Yeah. NOWLIN: Okay.
BALL: A lot of people crying in this movie. (LAUGHS)
- It's like they're crying everywhere. - NOWLIN: It's just so sad.
BALL: Yeah, to me that was the money shot. I told Dylan right there.
I'm right next to him and I'm like, okay, that's the money, dude. Cut.
(LAUGHS) You know, and I'm thinking I'm actually in the take there.
It was just that look on his face, it was so good.
And he was exhausted.
I mean, they were fighting the whole time
and we're running out of time I remember and he...
Dylan was actually getting a little frustrated with things,
but, you know, it gets that way sometimes,
but it's cool 'cause that's what we do.
We push things and hopefully get to places that are unexpected.
NOWLIN: So this is so interesting for Rosa because she's telling him,
you know, you can't save everyone.
I think the audience knows she's thinking about herself and now...
She's cured and Newt's gone.
This is not what she meant, but, you know?
BALL: Yeah...
No dialogue. Nothing needs to be said.
You know, I think we did that early on. It was gonna be this...
I always had this image in my head
of them being separated for some reason, like...
The equivalent of being on the edge of a canyon, you know?
- And I liked... - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: That, you know, you can still be there with him.
NOWLIN: She knows. He knows. They all know why he can't.
That's the other good thing about Teresa with the big broadcast message.
Everyone needed to hear it.
BALL: Yeah, it was the best way to...
NOWLIN: Did you cut all your close-up of the...
BALL: No, not anymore. NOWLIN: Bastard.
BALL: She has it in her hand. NOWLIN: Yeah.
(GUNFIRE CONTINUES)
BALL: Originally we had Teresa sitting here waiting,
and then Ava walks up.
And then Ava says you gotta leave.
And then a guy comes up and says, "Last transport's leaving."
- And Ava says, "Teresa, go." - NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: So originally we had Teresa waiting for him, but...
NOWLIN: She also said, "Meet me on the roof."
It was the idea that there's transport leaving from the roof.
'Cause Teresa takes him there later...
BALL: But I think, to really get it over with...
NOWLIN: Move it, yeah. BALL: Yeah, exactly.
It did feel like unfortunately you didn't want to stop again.
You know, you wanted to keep it going, but I do miss seeing Teresa waiting.
NOWLIN: Yeah, this is a moment where I think
he might actually pull the trigger,
more so than with Newt.
This is one of, I think, Dylan's best scene.
BALL: Yeah. I don't know how Dylan does it,
but basically for the eight hours that we were shooting this scene...
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah. BALL: He was crying the entire time.
And just as an actor he's gotta be there, you know?
He's gotta get himself in that place, and he can't leave,
so it's kind of exhausting for him.
NOWLIN: There was like some kind of construction or noise happening, too?
BALL: Yeah, there was like construction stuff happening in the background
'cause this is a convention center.
(LAUGHING) There was some kind of a convention thing
setting up in the background.
But anyway, yeah, it's interesting,
working with actors that, you know, they really commit.
And I'm talking to Dylan, like,
I'm giving him direction and stuff and his face is just puffy and...
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, swollen. BALL: And swollen...
And he has tears and he's like, "Okay, yeah, sure."
And it's still Dylan.
But he's just in this place that he's gotta stay to be authentic.
And you just love working with people that commit so much.
NOWLIN: I mean, for everything he went through
and then to come back and do a great job.
HARTWICK JR.: Wow. NOWLIN: So, what my hope
is that people have kind of forgotten about Janson.
BALL: No, it always works.
I remember in the test screenings, there's always a big groan of... "Oh!"
You know, Janson. And hopefully we set up that he hates her now.
With two scenes of that now.
NOWLIN: Well, it makes enough sense that he would wanna control Thomas
and control the cure on its own.
This next reveal of he's infected.
BALL: I think it works fine.
NOWLIN: That's a nice little, yeah.
It's actually kinda nice not teasing it throughout.
- 'Cause you do that with Newt anyway. - BALL: Mmm-hmm.
NOWLIN: But it sucks Newt dies, and he's gonna get the cure.
- That sucks. - BALL: Right.
BALL: It's tricky though.
It's like, in 30 minutes, we kill four people in this movie.
NOWLIN: Yeah, that's a blood bath.
BALL: I mean, it's called The Death Cure.
NOWLIN: But I mean Ava, Janson, you know...
Teresa and Newt I think are the big ones.
BALL: Yeah.
Hopefully we've earned it. That's the question, you know?
NOWLIN: Yeah. Boy.
BALL: This was cool, too. I like just...
NOWLIN: That's freaking crazy. They're taking buildings down?
Are those buildings up to code?
- BALL: No. - (HARTWICK JR. LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: The sound transition there was really cool.
BALL: Yeah. NOWLIN: That was a nice...
BALL: That's where I use a lot of that stuff in the first movie.
"Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, can you hear me, hear me?"
- It's that kind of stuff from his dream. - NOWLIN: Right.
NOWLIN: Yeah, so structurally between Newt's death...
BALL: And this moment, by the way, we do it in every single movie.
Thomas passes out
- and wakes up to find Teresa over him. - NOWLIN: And Teresa's over him.
- That's interesting. - BALL: Every single movie we've done it.
NOWLIN: Yeah, I think even in the second movie she even points out
we have to stop meeting like this.
BALL: Yeah, right.
NOWLIN: What if Thomas said that here? No, it's too jokey.
BALL: Yeah, at this moment, yeah, unfortunately.
NOWLIN: But the hard thing, you talked about this a lot
is going from Newt's death and then to Ava waiting,
Thomas shows up. Then Ava gets killed.
Thomas gets knocked out, wakes up.
There's a lot of stop and start, stop and start.
I think you did a really good job
just making it feel like a continuous movement.
BALL: Yeah. I mean the issues are still the issues.
But hopefully we did as deft a job as we could
to keep it flowing interestingly.
We'll keep you alive.
- Just. - (GRUNTS)
And in return...
you will give life to the rest of us.
The ones we choose to save, anyway.
NOWLIN: As far as monologuing goes, this is pretty good.
BALL: We cut a little bit of his monologue,
but, you know, you gotta do it. (LAUGHS)
There's a reason it's a cliché is because it's necessary sometimes.
NOWLIN: But the cliché for me is he's got the gun on him and he chooses
when he could be pulling the trigger.
What he's talking about is why he's not killing him.
Why it doesn't make sense for him to kill him.
I always like that line of the Flare burning itself out.
BALL: Yeah, which is there is an end to this at some point, you know?
Who's left standing?
And that's what gets into this character.
That's what separates I think WICKED from say, Janson. Janson's selfish.
He's thinking about himself, his survival.
Teresa's thinking about others' survival,
you know what I mean?
NOWLIN: That's also just very human.
BALL: She represents the good of WICKED, you know what I mean?
NOWLIN: Yeah, WICKED is good, but Janson is bad.
BALL: Yeah.
NOWLIN: But this idea, I think, from Janson's point of view,
in his mind, it's almost like he's more deserving of survival because...
BALL: He's fought for it, yeah. NOWLIN: He is willing to do
what is necessary, you know?
It's not the people who were born with a gift.
It's the people who do what they have to do to make...
BALL: Yeah, hopefully, this is where people start turning around on Teresa,
and like, you know, are cheering her on now.
She's come to the light side.
Some of this is stunt double. Some of this is Kaya.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm. That's Kaya.
- BALL: But this is stunt double. - (ALL LAUGHING)
THOMAS: Teresa!
NOWLIN: Yeah, good.
BALL: Now the reality, though,
is Janson's not doing any of the work there.
The stunt girl's doing it and he's just got his hand on her, but it looks
really convincing.
This was fun, too. I've never done a fight scene.
If you notice, there's not a lot of cuts.
Like Asian fight movies, they don't cut a lot.
So, it feels authentic and real.
And so, we tried to do that as much as we could
to do long takes for all these fights to make them just as real as possible.
And it means you have to do a lot of takes.
It means they actually end up hitting each other sometimes.
It's exhausting.
But it's fun to do.
I'd like to do more one day.
NOWLIN: There was a moment at the end of Scorch Trials
where it felt like they could have had more of an altercation.
I remember even talking like we saved that.
Like, they're gonna have a big fight at the end of the third movie.
BALL: They do it here.
And it goes for a while. It's not just this fight.
It's like they still gotta go into the Crank lab and see to his demise.
NOWLIN: Ooh. BALL: And hopefully we've
set up this whole thing with these guys. They've arrived.
NOWLIN: They've showed up, yeah.
BALL: You've seen out the window, hopefully,
that wave of destruction is getting closer and closer.
And we've set up that the buildings are coming down around them, blah, blah...
NOWLIN: But also, this is their real target anyway.
- Oh. Are they using the guns from the... - BALL: Well, that's the idea.
You don't realize is that gun that they have
was repurposed with some other WICKED thing.
It has like a WICKED symbol on it.
They kinda repurposed it and...
It's just a little side detail thing that, you know, these guys have been...
And that's why they have the masks.
They've been fighting WICKED for a while.
NOWLIN: So, this hopefully comes across.
Janson would not intentionally shoot Thomas.
BALL: Yeah, he tried to shoot Teresa. NOWLIN: He's trying to shoot Teresa.
BALL: And Thomas got in the way of her.
NOWLIN: Thomas does for her what Chuck did for him
- at the end of the first movie. - BALL: That's the idea.
BALL: Hopefully, that's obvious.
NOWLIN: Yeah, it's hard.
Blocking-wise, I could see it was a challenge.
BALL: Yeah, it's tricky.
He says, "Teresa," gets in front of her and pulls it out and he shoots.
NOWLIN: It's also like... It's not great. (LAUGHS)
Find something. Here. Here!
Just put pressure on it. Hold it.
(LABORED BREATHING)
You gotta go.
BALL: Yeah, it's just ultimately the culmination of their story, really.
It's like they're back together again essentially, you know, on the same side.
But is Thomas gonna make it now?
But she does have the cure.
I always liked this stuff, too. I like the feel of it.
NOWLIN: Teresa hasn't necessarily changed her mind
from where she was at the end of the second movie.
She's still protecting the cure,
except now that means protecting Thomas rather than betraying him.
BALL: But I think there is...
She came closer to Thomas a little bit, too.
You know, he went the other way, she went the other way.
And then here they kinda come back to the middle a little bit.
They both changed each other a little bit, I think.
NOWLIN: But I think through Janson, she sees kind of a darker reality.
BALL: Like, do you regret it? Sometimes, but I'd do it again.
NOWLIN: I think that's where she was, so I think she...
There was a part of her that regretted.
BALL: But maybe there's a different way, you know?
NOWLIN: Yeah, of course, yeah.
BALL: Yeah, but I always liked this.
I think we came up with this basic scene pretty late in the game.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah. Yeah. NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
NOWLIN: Well, it was always the question.
We knew we would kill him with Cranks.
HARTWICK JR.: 'Cause it was a button for her to press.
NOWLIN: Or something, yeah.
BALL: And it just wasn't very interesting.
NOWLIN: Well, there were two things.
Which is one, we wanted to give it to Thomas.
The actual killing.
Teresa has so much to do here.
BALL: Which came from Dylan, I remember.
Dylan has good insights, too.
And he's like, "I feel like I'm not doing anything in this scene."
And we kinda looked at it and said you're right.
And so we started thinking about how do we give it to Thomas?
Which is right.
And then it was about pushing a button, and it just wasn't very interesting.
Let the Cranks loose, so he came up with this gag of like...
NOWLIN: So, he wouldn't know what button does what.
BALL: And it's a little bit of a stretch,
the breaking the window thing, but I think it works.
If the audience is with us here, they're gonna go with it.
I think you have something of mine.
BALL: (CHUCKLES) Look how crazy he is in this one.
I told him. He's like he's a little off now.
He's a little bit further along in his like deterioration.
Maybe in another couple of hours, he'll be where Newt was, you know?
But he's just a little crazy.
He enjoyed it.
NOWLIN: If you watch the movie the second time,
knowing that he's sick throughout everything else,
the moment when he goes in and sees the serum is gone
has kind of a different meaning. There's a different desperation there.
He's good here, too.
He's a little, you know, off.
There's no character who can't justify their actions in this movie.
That's a good look.
He just kind of like disengages with her.
BALL: Yeah, he's like, "Okay. I know what I have to do now."
Like this shot, too.
The choice. What's he gonna do?
And, hopefully, you think he's really gonna shoot her.
Okay. Fine.
Have it your way.
(GUN COCKS)
THOMAS: Janson.
(GRUNTS)
Missed, you little shit.
Did I?
(GLASS CRACKING)
BALL: And it's all part of the plan. (SCATTING DRAMATIC MUSIC)
And Janson gets his demise.
NOWLIN: It's the right death for him, I think.
BALL: It's that, or he pops up in the end when the building collapses.
(ALL LAUGHING)
(BALL MIMICS JANSON YELLING)
BALL: It wouldn't work. NOWLIN: Are you kidding?
BALL: We want it to be emotional with Teresa.
No, he won't do that.
There's a larger scene here.
They originally were gonna go to the elevator
and it was gonna fall.
I always liked it, but anyway, it got cut.
This is the first shot that ever basically came to me
when we were talking about this third movie
was Teresa carrying a wounded Thomas through chaos.
At the time for me, it was an underground
lab thing or something. It was this big kind of place.
But we ended up winding up on the roof here.
But like that was the shot for me,
and it's coming up here in a second, the actual shot.
I mean, it was pretty much right out of my freaking brain,
what I kind of imagined.
It's like her on a walkway and everything.
It's like fire bursting all around them.
Always building up to. It's coming up.
NOWLIN: Let's see if I can guess it.
BALL: And it's like they're racing towards us.
It's like if we could get to that place in the movie
where Teresa's trying to save Thomas,
I feel like that would be a good close to this movie.
If we wind up there, along with everything else we had to do...
If we could earn that, it would be a satisfying kind of...
Close to all the drama of the series.
NOWLIN: Mmm-hmm.
BALL: It's interesting, we did have a set here
and we had a lot of fire all around them.
That wasn't all the fire.
We had some of the fire CG, but all the embers and stuff are CG.
There's kind of a beauty to it in a weird way.
That's kinda cool.
NOWLIN: I've never seen it with all that fire and embers.
BALL: Yeah, it's pretty, you know?
It wasn't planned.
- We'll see how people react to it. Yeah. - NOWLIN: A kiss?
BALL: We were doing a couple of takes where they just said their lines.
Smiled and hugged or whatever.
And we had somewhere, I was like, "Let's just kiss."
Finally, these characters deserve it. After all this.
These movies, they deserve one last kiss goodbye.
It's not like a super romantic...
NOWLIN: Ooh, that looks great.
BALL: Yeah.
It's pretty cool.
HARTWICK JR.: Good score here.
BALL: Yeah, this is a really tricky cue.
NOWLIN: One of the big music moments for John, really.
BALL: And well, the trick was our first cue, which wasn't working,
and me and John would argue about it a lot.
He wasn't playing Teresa. He was playing the situation.
NOWLIN: Was it that shot, Wes? BALL: No.
BALL: It's this one. This one right here.
Right there. (EXCLAIMS)
I swear like right out of my mind from all in Vancouver time.
But anyway, John, it was like, you know,
it was when he started to play Teresa, the girl who's trying to save the boy.
You know, that's when it suddenly started to work emotionally.
And it wasn't just about the danger.
It's about, she's doing everything she can to save him and he's gonna...
Or he's gonna die.
NOWLIN: It's also the moment that... It's people that she betrayed.
It's a moment where they're rooting for her.
You know, they're, "Come on, Teresa." That's really just satisfying.
BALL: And the kind of desperation of it all.
This is my favorite shot in the movie actually.
NOWLIN: Really? Oof.
BALL: That's great. NOWLIN: (LAUGHS) Oh, that's cool. Damn.
BALL: Dylan's doing a great... Everyone's doing a great job,
but Kaya just did fantastic on this scene.
I mean, you just feel it in her face.
NOWLIN: There's a way to look at this movie where she is the protagonist.
BALL: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then poor Teresa.
NOWLIN: It's gonna crush her.
Oh, I always think it's gonna land on her.
Teresa!
BALL: Yeah, and then, you know, time sort of slows.
All the sound goes away and it's just the two of them, you know?
NOWLIN: I'm very curious about this shot coming up.
BALL: But yeah, her demise. And this is like in the book.
Basically she pushes him out of the way and a boulder drops on her.
But we wanted to do something that was a little bit more...
NOWLIN: Less arbitrary, you know. Like she needs to...
Oh, man, that's so sad.
BALL: Yeah, something neat about that is that her arms were CG there,
'cause her arms didn't do something right in the take.
So we had them replace her whole arms and everything.
I guess the idea here was always to go
a little bit more of this kind of ethereal, beautiful thing.
Celebrate the sacrifice of it all, the loss of it all, rather than like...
Being too... I don't know what the word is.
I mean, it is still sentimental.
HARTWICK JR.: Too sappy.
BALL: I don't know if audiences are gonna accept this ending or not.
It's nice to see all our friends back together and worried about him.
And it's also kinda cool that the protagonist of our movie,
the main hero isn't actually doing the saving
at the end of the movie, which I think is a bold but cool choice.
NOWLIN: It's like he spent two movies saving everyone.
This moment it's their turn to save him.
BALL: Which I think is a cool thing.
It's not typical, but I think that's actually great that we get to do that,
that he had an impact on them,
enough that they're willing to sacrifice themselves for him, too.
Yeah, and then the question here, "Did he die"?
And you see what's left of that city,
the last city, it's gone, so the world now really is
gonna have to rise from the ashes, which is kind of cool.
Now it's up to these kids to create a new world, which is cool.
NOWLIN: Hey, good commentary, guys, that was a good movie.
BALL: Oh, wait! (CHUCKLES) NOWLIN: Wait a minute, it's not over.
BALL: Which is cool, I hope we trick people out. (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: Oh, what a horrible ending. BALL: I love it.
I heard at one of the screenings, someone started clapping there.
NOWLIN: 'Cause they saw a good movie. BALL: Right. And then, "Wait..."
BALL: I love how it's so quiet,
and this is very much like Thomas waking up in the box.
NOWLIN: Yeah.
It's like he's coming into another Glade.
BALL: We always talked about this as Glade 2.0.
It's the same kind of material, just a little bit cleaner,
a little bit more materials this time and a little bit more open.
NOWLIN: And the opposite of walls. BALL: Yeah.
BALL: Although, in a way, they're still trapped, but trapped on an island.
They're still surrounded by water.
But they have a boat.
NOWLIN: I always thought that was fun, especially after the Scorch.
We have these scorched-out, empty areas.
BALL: Because you see a beautiful landscape.
NOWLIN: To see the ocean is nice.
BALL: This was a really cool national park
or some kind of park in Cape Town.
And this shot. This shot was always the plan,
a 360 that takes you all the way from Thomas coming out,
all the way coming around to reveal this.
This is real. We built all this for real.
HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, that's a pretty shot.
BALL: Mmm-hmm.
HARTWICK JR.: What was that area called again?
BALL: It's another really... I forget.
But it's another really beautiful score from John.
It's an eight-minute cue basically.
It doesn't let up.
This is basically the end.
This is the farewell to the series, the characters, the fans,
the crew, even.
I think it wasn't the very last thing we shot,
but it was almost the very last thing we shot in the movie.
I think like a day or two, clean-up stuff after this,
but there was this kind of weight here
- where everyone knew this was it. - HARTWICK JR.: Yeah, for sure.
BALL: This is all over.
I think we shot our crew photo here and all that stuff.
HARTWICK JR.: Remember the bioluminescent water?
BALL: Oh, that was crazy. Yeah.
The waves were glowing while Thomas was reading Newt's letter.
This is cool, too. Another moment where there's no dialogue.
Nothing needs to be said.
It's this moment where Minho,
he doesn't know what to say.
You see it on his face.
"I don't know what to tell you."
And then, they just hug each other and you realize that's all they need.
I think this is a nice end
for Barry's contribution to how they all got here, too.
'cause he's the person, the custodian of this effort to
- to save the immunes. - NOWLIN: This is his dream.
BALL: He's the opposite of Ava. NOWLIN: Yeah.
BALL: He wants to save all the immunes,
not just experiment on them and find a cure from them.
He wants to let...
His view of the world is to let the world burn out
and save what's left.
Save what's worth saving, these immunes kids, the future.
Maybe that's a little dark, too.
NOWLIN: Or if there's a cure to be found,
but if it comes at the cost of exploiting these kids
who have been chosen, in a way, by nature to carry on.
BALL: I also think it's really important,
'cause we actually experimented with cutting this speech out once.
What it did was, it made it all really heavy.
And what's nice is that you get this moment of celebration.
NOWLIN: "We did it. We're here." BALL: Everyone's happy.
BALL: Everyone's excited,
but Thomas still has one last thing to deal with, and that's Newt.
And so, that's why it works so well, I think, to keep that scene in there.
It was a longer scene originally, but we cut it down
to just bare essentials I think.
I like this shot in particular.
It's just good. It's just one long shot.
It's the two guys that, arguably, we care about most now.
NOWLIN: Two people who need a moment.
It was all about rescuing Minho and it came at a horrible cost,
- but they're together now. - BALL: And in the books,
Newt's letter was a thing, but it wasn't like this.
NOWLIN: Newt's letter was what was
urging him to pull the trigger and kill him.
Newt was upset with him because he...
BALL: Because he didn't read it or something like that.
He didn't read his letter.
NOWLIN: He didn't read it at the right moment.
BALL: Yeah, or something like that.
It never really quite worked for me,
but this was our way of bringing that letter back
and doing it in a way that it gave you something to leave the theater with.
NOWLIN: It gives Newt a presence in paradise.
BALL: Words of hope and a future.
And promise, which I think was a strong,
again, interpretation of the idea of the letter in the books.
NOWLIN: What was hard about writing this,
we went through, even just up to about a month ago,
a couple of extra little lines,
'cause it also has to resonate with the choice that Teresa has left Thomas with.
- Which Newt wouldn't have known about. - BALL: Right.
NOWLIN: So it has to play a double meaning.
BALL: He doesn't know that they're safe,
but he knows if he's reading it, that he's probably safe.
NOWLIN: I think he's writing from the point that he's safe,
but he doesn't know that Thomas is the cure
and that he's wrestling with what to do there.
So the idea of talking about, "The future's up to you now,
"and I know you're gonna do what's right."
BALL: "Whatever the choices ahead of you,
"I know you're gonna choose the right way."
NOWLIN: 'Cause it also needs to work for Thomas putting Teresa's name on the...
HARTWICK JR.: Right. On the wall?
NOWLIN: That's another reason why we can't cut the Vince speech.
BALL: You can. You just assume it,
but it does have a lot more power when he says, "This is for them."
There's something nice about that.
You kinda know what they're doing when they're doing it.
That's really Thomas', or Thomas Brodie-Sangster's handwriting.
He really wrote the letter out.
- I have it. I stole it. (LAUGHS) - NOWLIN: Oh, good.
BALL: I have it at home.
I have Chuck's little totem, too.
I don't have anything from the second movie.
NOWLIN: Don't you have one of those little baby Grievers?
BALL: Yeah, I have one of those,
but it's not something you can hold or put on a wall. (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: They're incredibly heavy. BALL: Yeah, they are.
Another thing here is, John's score here is freaking amazing.
But like no sound. It's just very simple.
It's like there's something about leaving the audience
with basically just Newt's voice, and music
and the subtlest of waves crashing on the shore,
these kind of waves of everything washing away, essentially,
of the past movies.
There was something really nice about it all.
It was necessary for Thomas.
He needed that last thing that lets him let go and move on.
That's why it was an important line that we all have.
And then he looks up and he joins the group.
NOWLIN: He's been given permission.
BALL: Yeah, he's being given permission to be happy
and move on, and look to the future.
NOWLIN: Can I say how sad it is that Gally puts Chuck's name on the wall?
By the way, the name "Mary" that Vince puts on there
is Lili Taylor's character from the end of the second movie.
BALL: Yeah, just a little touch.
I mean, who knows what their full story is, but we all know.
NOWLIN: Well, they're obviously working together.
BALL: Yeah, but it's up for people to make up their own minds on that stuff.
NOWLIN: I think she shows up in one of the little prequel comics that they did.
BALL: This is all cool stuff though.
Just to see the group,
it's very reminiscent of that first scene or that first...
NOWLIN: Night of the maze. Night of the Glade.
BALL: Night of the maze or the Glade,
just happy and communal.
And it's all their friends, and just laughing and having fun.
It's like we haven't had this in the entire movie,
so it's a nice breath of fresh air.
You get to see this beautiful landscape,
and it feels like the world is full of possibility now.
The two people that we set up in the second movie
about this mythical safe haven and wanting to get there,
and Jorge talking about, "We're gonna use these kids to get there."
And he became a part of the group now.
They've wound up here, too.
It's all coming full circle.
This was obviously a big idea here with Teresa's name symbolizing that...
NOWLIN: Growth. BALL: ...full closure,
and yeah, the growth of, I think, again...
She gave him something, too.
Just as much as Newt did and the rest of the guys.
NOWLIN: Well, she earned her place on that wall,
and Thomas has grown to be willing to acknowledge that
- and put her up there. - BALL: Right.
Yeah, and a lot of our crew's names are there.
- I think it's a good ending. - NOWLIN: It's a good movie.
BALL: It's a small ending, which I think is cool.
We've always done the big, giant endings.
NOWLIN: Yeah, "Tune in next year."
BALL: But I think it's so cool that we end on... (LAUGHS)
NOWLIN: "What's the choice?"
BALL: Okay, I'm not even gonna answer it,
but people can make their own choice up.
But he's looking at the boat and he's got the cure in his hands.
You tell me what he's thinking.
There's always some question about that.
NOWLIN: What's more interesting to me is, "What would you do?"
- Ask yourself that. - BALL: That's the question.
NOWLIN: That's where you end.
BALL: We're not gonna answer it.
It's something cool about the choices ahead of him
and then that's for you to talk about in the parking lot. (LAUGHING)
NOWLIN: Good job, Wes. It's a good movie.
BALL: Yeah, good job, everybody. HARTWICK JR.: Well done.
BALL: It's been four, five years I guess.
- That's the end of that little journey. - HARTWICK JR.: Yeah. Five years.
BALL: So, I think this movie's a farewell for all of us
as much as it is for the characters I think.
It's been a fun ride,
but I think we're all excited to get out into the world and move on, too.
NOWLIN: It feels like graduating from college, in a sense.
You're sad to see it end, you're saying goodbye,
but you're also excited about what's next.
BALL: Yeah, but I hope everyone enjoyed.
Thanks to everybody.
Watch all the credits.
Appreciate everyone's work there.
A lot of the people in this crew worked really, really hard
for all the movies actually.
Some of these people worked on every single one of the movies.
Some people worked on just this one movie,
and some people worked on just two movies,
but appreciate everyone's effort
'cause it certainly can't happen without everyone's contribution.
It's been fun to be a part of.
So, hope you all enjoy, and thanks for listening.