Final Destination (series)

Infobox Film
name = Final Destination series


director = James Wong (1,3)
David R. Ellis (2,4)
writer = Story:
James Wong
Glen Morgan
Eric Bress
Characters:
Jeffrey Reddick
producer = Craig Perry
music = Shirley Walker (1-3)
distributor = New Line Cinema
released = 2000 – 2009
country = United States
runtime = 280 minutes
language = English
gross = $316,577,307
amg_id = 1:338041The "Final Destination" series is a series of fictonal horror films created by James Wong and Glen Morgan, based on an unused "X-Files" script and characters created by Jeffrey Reddick. The films, distributed by New Line Cinema, mainly center on the themes of determinism, predestination, and precognition, in relation to death (i.e. how to avoid, foresee, or control it), as well as a related series of books (published by Black Flame) and comics (published by Zenescope Entertainment Inc). Visually, they center around killing people in a variety of elaborate and gory ways. Many of such death scenarios also resemble Rube Goldberg machines, with varying complexities and convolutedness.

Basic story

Premise

The premise to both the film and book series about death is essentially the same: A group of people are gathered together at a venue, when suddenly a member of the group has a premonition of a disaster that will kill all of the people present. Horrified and motivated by the vision of impending doom, the person with the premonition then tries to prevent the incident by alerting the others. The other members have doubts of the incredible claims but the visionary is persistent, fracturing the group in hostile skeptics, dubious believers, or those that had no choice but to accompany the visionary. Soon afterwards, disaster strikes as foreseen, proving to the survivors that the visionary was right, and their opinions change drastically.

Over the next few days, weeks or months, the same survivors begin to die in a series of horrific accidents and/or incredible circumstances until the same visionary notices a pattern and concludes that, while surviving the initial disaster, they are still destined to die shortly. The visionary usually teams up with another fellow survivor of the opposite sex, and they are determined to once again cheat death; then the same group devises various plans to survive that usually fail until the protagonist visionary finds a solution to their fate, having salvaged two or three of the others. At the end however, there is one fantastic event that kills most or all of the survivors.

Cheating Death

A recurring theme in each "Final Destination" film is the concept of truly defeating Death. Constant intervention proves to merely "recycle" the list. Once the list of Death's Design runs through, it returns to the beginning. The only way to defeat Death is through "new life". This is first introduced by the mortician Bludworth in the second film. So far, one way has been determined to cheat Death once and for all, while another remains a theory.

Plot summary

Volée Air Flight 180 (2000)

Volée Air Flight 180 is the fictional flight route designator for the flight featured at the beginning of the film; most of the flight and subsequent crash were based on the real life crash of TWA Flight 800. It is assumed that the flight routinely travels from John F. Kennedy International Airport near New York City to Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, France. On the night of the crash, Flight 180 is conducted on a Boeing 747-200 aircraft when it explodes on a 9:25 PM take-off just off Queens and burns up in the Atlantic Ocean on May 13, 2000, with the loss of 287 lives. Among the passengers are 39 high school students from Mount Abraham High School and their four chaperones. Several days later, the National Transportation Safety Board rules that metal fatigue had deteriorated silicon insulation on an electrical connector to the plane's scavenge pump, sparking electrical wires in a fluid line. This ignited a fuel tank in the fuselage and caused the explosion.

Several minutes before takeoff, one of the passengers, Alexander Chance "Alex" Browning (Devon Sawa), has a premonition of the plane's explosion. He causes a minor uproar, and was forcibly removed from the plane along with his best friend, Tod Wagner (Chad Donella), soon-to-be girlfriend, Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), Carter Horton (Kerr Smith) and his girlfriend, Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer), Billy Hitchcock (Seann William Scott) and Ms. Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke). However, Alex is soon proved to be correct when Flight 180 explodes as predicted. As seen in the first film, the survivors soon learn that his vision went against Death's Design, which is not just a biological event but a nearly conscious force that causes people to die at a predetermined time, in a predetermined order. The survivors begin dying in the order they would have on Flight 180 (depending on the seating arrangement and a small diagram displayed on the news which explained how the engine exploded, bringing together the necessary information about death order and seating), and Alex sets out to save them.

Despite its total destruction within the first few minutes of the film, the plane’s predestined effects allows Flight 180 to serve as a MacGuffin, and a Chekhov's Gun — evidenced by the death-related imagery in the pre-flight part of the film. Later in the series, the plane's flight number appears frequently, and the characters occasionally associate it with the flight, taking it as a bad omen. Appearances in the second film include a car crash at mile marker 180 on a back road that leads to the death of three survivors, which happens after an electronic construction sign that reads NEXT 180 FEET. In the second film when Kim just saw the premonition she saw a sign that said "Next 180" the same sign is seen in the third film. As well as in the third film in which the ID on the subway is 081, becoming 180 in the reflection of the train’s windows before crashing. More examples include a large neon sign that reads Le Miro 81. When it falls apart, it swings backwards and hits Carter. From behind, the last letters read 18 o.

Route 23 Pileup (2003)

The second movie(set in 2001) begins on the 1st anniversary of the Flight 180 explosion, on Route 23. A log truck's chain supports break off and the logs crash into the cars behind, killing 26 people in the ensuing chaos. But Kimberly Corman (A. J. Cook) had a vision that allowed her to stop several people from gaining access to the highway. The pile-up happens but Kimberly's friends Shaina (Sarah Carter), Frankie (Shaun Sipos) and Dano (Alex Rae) are killed when a truck carrying cars drives off the roadway and smashes into their SUV, killing them instantly and nearly killing Kimberly, whom Officer Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) see this and successfully get her out of the way.

Afterwards, Route 23 is hardly mentioned, apart from a news report after Evan's (David Paetkau) death. The only other reference to the accident is while in the vision, Kimberly drives past a sign that says 'Next Service 23 Miles'. This film connects to the first when the Route 23 survivors visit Clear Rivers, who was the only survivor boarding Volée Air Flight 180 to Paris.

Devil's Flight (2006)

The third movie begins on the 6th anniversary of the Flight 180 explosion, on a ill-fated roller-coaster ride known as Devil's Flight. The roller-coaster breaks down, and when Frankie Cheeks (Sam Easton) drops a camera, the carts derail, plus the hydraulics rupture and the track is partially broken further on. However, Wendy Christensen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) foresees this, and gets a few of her friends off the ride. There are clues that death is coming including the letter "V" in High Dive. The letter "V" in Wendy's camera, had no light. Now the High Dive reads into High Die. In the end, Wendy had another premonition of a subway derailment which would be the cause of her death, including her best friend Kevin Fischer (Ryan Merriman) and sister Julie (Amanda Crew).

McKinley Speedway (2009)

On what should have been a "typical day at the races" for McKinley Speedway, Nick O'Bannon (Bobby Campo) has a grisly premonition of a race car fatally crashing and sending debris into the stands, gruesomely killing his friends, and causing an overhang to collapse on him. He awakens, not being able to shake the feeling of how real his vision appeared, he panics, and just in time, persuades the group of teenagers to leave the bleachers. Immediately afterward objects begin to fly into the public as his frightening dream turns into a tedious reality. Unfortunately for Nick, along with his girlfriend Lori Milligan (Shantel VanSanten) and her best friend Janet Cunningham (Haley Webb), this is only the beginning. As the survivors begin to die one-by-one in even more terrifying ways than they had originally, Nick must figure out how to cheat Death once and for all before, he too, reaches his final destination.

Confirmed cast

Critical reaction

Recurring elements

* Tony Todd is the only actor that has been in all three Final Destination movies. In the third film, he only plays an omniscient voice.
* The first death is always the most drawn out.
* Writers paid tribute to the band The Ramones in each installment of Final Destination.
* Each movie includes an unexpected death at (or toward) the end of the film (usually with a slightly comical undertone).
* Each movie references the number 180 in some way. For example, the people intended to die in the accidents that survive after, die in 180 degrees reverse order. In the third film when Wendy looks into the mirror she sees that the subway's number is 180.
* Wind is usually a sign that death is near, especially after various camera shots establish a lack of sources for wind in the area (closed windows, unpowered fans, etc).
* At least one death in each film involves fire. The first one was when the Ms. Lewton was burned because the stove blows up. The second one was when Clear opens Eugene's door, which hits a wire and jerks the plug from an outlet, creating a spark, which explodes the escaped oxygen, killing them both instantly. The third when Ashley and Ashlyn were burned because the tanning booth explodes. Also in the second movie, Evan Lewis dies in a house fire, although the fire has nothing to do with his actual death (a ladder impaled him in his right eye), but he wouldn't have been impaled on said ladder if not for the fire.
* In all three movies, the fourth death always has something to do with the head.
* In all three movies, a death has always revolved around someone being crushed or obliterated.
* In each movie someone is killed due to a car part. The first one was a decapitation by a jagged piece of a roof. The second one due to the air bag inflating causing the victim's head to go into a sharp piece of piping. The third one was a fan blade from inside of the motor slicing into the back of a man's head.
* At least one death involves someone losing their head. In the first movie, Billy was decapitated by a flying car part; in the second film, Nora, grieving over her son's death, accidentally gets her head caught in an elevator going up; and in the third film, Lewis gets his head crushed by falling weights.
* In each film, at least one death has something to do with water: the first film, the water in the bathroom in which Tod slips on, the second, when Kimberly drowned in the lake (but was revived shortly afterwards), and the third, where Ashley and Ashlyn died because of the water dripping into the machine warming the tanning beds.
* In all 3 films the character that had the premonition dies in the end (or between films).
* In all films there are some sequences that include a transport, either surprisingly crushing a character or just stalking. In the first one they were two buses and a train; the second three trucks and a motorcycle; and in the third one a truck and a subway train.

References