'Maze Runner': 7 Facts You Need To Know Before 'Scorch Trials'

Thought you’d had your fill of dystopic YA film franchises? Nope, not just yet.

While the movie adaptation of James Dashner’s The Maze Runner was received only modestly by critics, the franchise’s second installment still made it to the big screen. Scorch Trials, “phase 2” for our dear ol’ Gladers, hits theaters today – but it’s not too late to catch up.

The final Hunger Games flick is still a few months away and Allegiant isn’t due until next March, so how better to quench your wasteland needs than with a storyline that brings back harsh memories of middle school English (Lord of the Flies, anyone?).

In Maze Runner, if you haven’t yet succumbed to (the fetching) Dylan O’Brien during an HBOGo and chill session (or even just need a refresher), a group of adolescent boys are stranded in a wooded area at the center of a deadly maze. Once a month, a new boy arrives in “the Glade,” along with a box of supplies and no recollection of their previous life. When Thomas (O’Brien) appears in the makeshift community, he challenges the established status quo and immediately begins to search for a way to escape the treacherous maze. Eventually, the group’s first female pops up, pushing the well-oiled faction into dangerous disarray.

So in anticipation of Scorch Trials, we’ve put together some fun facts about director Wes Ball’s first outing.

Blake Cooper (Chuck) bugged Ball on Twitter until he was cast.

Have a Twitter account? Cool, you’re one step close to being a movie star.

After his agent failed to get him an audition, Blake Cooper, who was only 12 at the time Maze Runner began filming, found Ball on Twitter and sent him a message. Fans of the book took notice and began to bug the director to give Cooper a chance, as well. After enough attention, Ball publicly responded and gave the curly-haired pre-teen a chance.

“In the end, Wes took notice and gave me a last-minute opportunity to do a taped audition (from Atlanta where I live),” Cooper told Teen.com. “The rest was history because, from what I heard on set, the moment that the team saw my tape, they knew that I was Chuck.”

Maze Runner was Ball’s first feature film.

Ball came in with a bang: what better way to start your career as a feature film director with a blockbuster action book-adaptation? Ball has had a lengthy career working in graphics and visual effects (lot of Star Trek), but his only previous directing credits were three short films.

His animated short flick Ruin definitely prepared Ball for Maze Runner‘s setting, however. It takes place in an abandoned city where nature has mostly taken over. In fact, he won the gig because Fox took notice and acquired the short back in 2012.

The Glade had a serious snake problem.

The movie took over a large farm in Jackson, La. for its 44-day shoot. Despite providing ample space for all that running, there were a few problems (of the venomous sort) with the location.

The grassy setting was littered with snakes – there were so many that production had to hire special snake wranglers to come in. Twenty-five in total were removed, the largest apparently being a 5-foot rattlesnake.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Newt) told Vulture that one of his castmates was even bit by one of snakes. Luckily, however, it was a non-venomous.

“We had snake wranglers on set every day, and at the beginning, when we first started using that location, they were catching about ten or 12 snakes a day, and that’s including all the snakes, not just deadly ones,” the Brit said. “I think we had four — or five? — venomous snakes. A water moccasin. A rattlesnake.”

Oh, and there were spiders too – black widows, brown recluses. And you thought Hollywood was glamorous.

The male cast trained with a Navy SEAL before filming.

After watching hordes of venomous reptiles being removed, Ball expected the boys to have a good, old fashioned campout right in the danger zone. But don’t worry, there was a Navy SEAL on hand (bet he didn’t like spiders either).

The entire crew spent a night on the set (method acting), and with the soldier’s help learned survival skills that included throwing knives and chopping wood. There was even a cooking lesson.

Dylan O’Brien almost didn’t get the part of Thomas because Ball thought he was too “MTV.”

MTV now has a slew of scripted series, including a grittier reboot of Michael J. Fox’s Teen Wolf. In the show, which began airing in 2011, O’Brien plays Stiles Stilinski (above photo) – one of the show’s main characters. You’d think being a young, teen heartthrob would have worked in his favor when it came to Maze Runner auditions, but Ball was not team “yo MTV.”

O’Brien told Collider that after he auditioned he didn’t hear back for over a month. “Wes was like, ‘His hair is too MTV!’ That’s what he thought, which was so funny,” O’Brien said. Apparently, only after seeing a picture of the star with a shaved head did Ball decide to give him a call back.

So, what we’ve learned: “MTV hair” exists, and it’s not Miley’s weird, rainbow dollar store extension ponytail.

Maze Runner author James Dashner makes a brief onscreen cameo.

Unsurprisingly, one of Dashner’s stipulations for bringing his books to the theater was a little cameo. So, at the very end of the film, when Patricia Clarkson’s character is speaking, look to her right. The man standing silently nearby is the author himself.

Despite the use of special effects, almost all of the set pieces were really built.

O’Brien says that although yes, there was definitely green screen work in the movie, a lot of the critical set pieces were built and used.

“We actually had the doors, the threshold going into the maze, we actually had the box in the ground, they actually built a treehouse, they grew a cornfield,” O’Brien told website Flickering Myth. “It felt very very real, and then the visual effects is just the icing on the cake.”

In fact, Ball hired a team of greensmen to dress the set with natural materials. Dave Rhodes, one of a dozen who worked on Maze Runner, told Word and Film that in addition to planting corn and squash, they installed and created a pond. The maze itself was inside a soundstage, and was actually 15 feet high. Multiple parts were pieced together, and the greens men brought mud, vines and grass back from the Glad set to “make it come alive.”