The Most Mad Max Moments From the ‘Maze Runner: The Death Cure’ Trailer

Kim Taylor-Foster
Movies
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It’s the final film in the Maze Runner trilogy, and it looks set to be the grittiest. Its release date was put back almost a year to allow star Dylan O’Brien to fully recover from the injury he sustained on set. And this first-look trailer showcases the kinds of spectacular stunts that O’Brien fell prey to.

With a focus on a sequence involving a train hurtling at top speed through a barren landscape, there’s more than a touch of Mad Max about this. And not just because both are dystopian actioners. Here’s our pick of the trailer’s most Mad Max moments.

It Has That ‘One, Long Vehicle Chase’ Vibe

Maze Runner The Death Cure
The trailer focuses on a Mad Max-style vehicle chase.

“Three years we spent behind walls trying to break out and now we want to break back in,” says Thomas Brodie Sangster’s Newt. “Alright, I get shotgun.”

It cuts to a jeep speeding alongside a high-speed cargo train, with Jorge and Brenda buckling up inside.

These battered all-terrain vehicles aren’t a million miles away from those in Mad Max either.

Dylan O’Brien Jumps From A Moving Car

Maze Runner The Death Cure
Dylan O'Brien jumps from one moving vehicle onto another moving vehicle.

The next shot is of an all-terrain vehicle riding along behind the train in the same desolate landscape. O’Brien’s Thomas emerges, clinging onto the roof of the moving vehicle to attach a hook to the back of the train. He succeeds. As he leaps for the in-motion train, the car flips and winds up on its roof.

Revisit practically any part of Mad Max: Fury Road and you’ll see similar stunts.

Incidentally, this could well be the sequence that resulted in O’Brien’s accident, since we know it was when he was on a moving vehicle when it happened. The harness that was holding him malfunctioned, pulling him off, and he was hit by another vehicle.

Channeling Furiosa

Maze Runner The Death Cure
Brenda gets her Furiosa on.

Next, there’s a troop of armed, armoured men running along the top of the train, and Brenda shoots at them out of the top of the off-road vehicle she’s riding in, driven by Jorge. She’s definitely a little bit Furiosa. The bad guys shoot back. There are explosions. Snap.

It’s Got a Grimy Looking Vince

Maze Runner The Death Cure
Vince is looking more Mad Max by the day.

OK, so he’s not exactly Fury Road’s Immortan Joe but Right Arm leader Vince definitely has more than a passing resemblance to many of the unwashed dudes from the Mad Max films here.

Max Rockatansky meets Mitch Rapp

Maze Runner The Death Cure
Is that Max Rockatansky? Is that Mitch Rapp? Dylan O'Brien brings both.

That’s right. Two roles combine when O’ Brien takes a sensibly stable stance to fire rounds from a handgun atop a shipping container that’s being airlifted. All of a sudden, he’s in American Assassin again – as CIA operative Mitch Rapp. But there’s no denying the resemblance to Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky too.

Also notable is the peculiar futuristic yet functional flying vehicle here – there are weird and wonderful vehicles in Mad Max, too.

In the epic finale to the Maze Runner saga, Thomas leads his group of escaped Gladers on their final and most dangerous mission yet. To save their friends, they must break into the legendary Last City, a WCKD-controlled labyrinth that may turn out to be the deadliest maze of all. Anyone who makes it out alive will get answers to the questions the Gladers have been asking since they first arrived in the maze.

Maze Runner: The Death Cure hits screens in January 2018.

Kim Taylor-Foster
Kim Taylor-Foster is Entertainment Editor for Fandom in the UK. She was raised on an unsteady diet of video nasties and violent action flicks.