Final Destination
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- Final Destination is also the name of a stage in the video game Super Smash Bros. Melee.
| Final Destination | |
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 Final Destination film poster |
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| Directed by | James Wong |
| Produced by | Glen Morgan Craig Perry Warren Zide |
| Written by | Jeffrey Reddick Glen Morgan James Wong |
| Starring | Devon Sawa Ali Larter Seann William Scott |
| Music by | Shirley Walker |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | March 17th, 2000 |
| Running time | 98 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | ~ US$23,000,000 |
| Followed by | Final Destination 2 Final Destination 3 |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Final Destination is a 2000 horror film which is very loosely based on the crash of TWA Flight 800 (which acts as a starting point for the rest of the film); the plot was based on an unused X-Files episode (director James Wong had been a writer, producer and director of that series) and has some intersting similarities with an episode of The Twilight Zone called Twenty-Two. The film is distributed by New Line Cinema. The DVD was released on September 26th, 2000.
The film was the first in the Final Destination trilogy, and was followed by Final Destination 2 (2003) and by Final Destination 3 (2006). It also spawned a series of related novels, the Final Destination books. Recently, Zenescope Entertainment has begun producing a series of Final Destination comic books mini-series called Final Destination: Death Never Takes a Vacation, featuring a trip to Cancun gone wrong.
The movie takes place on Long Island. Locations such as Jones Beach and John F. Kennedy International Airport are shown. Nassau County is mentioned. However, Vancouver International Airport stood-in for JFK.
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[edit] Plot
On his way to a class trip to Paris, Alex Browning (played by Devon Sawa), has a vision that the aircraft Volle Air Flight 180 is going to explode after takeoff. Alex tries to get off the plane and causes a ruckus; as a result, he, a teacher, and several students are kicked off the plane. Only moments later they witness the plane exploding through the windows of the airport terminal. While the survivors are initially relieved, their relief is short-lived. Over the next month, Death comes after them, killing them in the order they would have died on the plane. Tod was supposed to die first in the plane. Eventually, Alex works out that death has a design for them,and tries to believe that if they skip the design they can cheat death again. After the death of Tod, a teacher, and Carter's girlfriend, Alex helps avoid Carter's death by saving him from a train accident, but Billy Hitchcock does die in the accident. So Carter escaped from the design. After that Alex also saves his girlfriend as she was is about to die by electric shock. Alex intervenes and gets injured but soon recovers. Now after a few months all three friends go to Paris where they were all originally supposed to on flight 180 with all their school friends, Alex gets a premonition about the death design that it will reverse back. So this time Alex will be the first one to die, but Carter saves him from crashing off a huge sign. But Carter then dies when the sign falls back towards them. So Alex gets skipped and the film ends.
[edit] Cast & Characters
- Alex Chance Browning (Devon Sawa): Alex, the main character, has a premonition that Flight 180 will explode. Making a scene before take-off, he and six other people get off the plane and witness the disaster. He would have been the last person to die on the plane.
- Clear Rivers (Ali Larter): Clear is a loner who doesn't seem to have many friends, but she feels some sort of connection with Alex on the plane. She is not thrown off the airplane like the other students, but gets off of her own volition. At first, she does not believe the concept of Death's design, but eventually does. She would have been the sixth person to die on the plane (although presumed to be last to die throughout most of the movie).
- Billy Hitchcock (Sean William Scott): On Flight 180, Billy was lucky enough to get in the middle of Carter's and Alex's fight and got kicked off. He is the jokester of the group, but not really friends with anyone. He would have been the fifth person to die on the plane.
- Carter Horton (Kerr Smith): Carter is an athlete and a bit of a jerk (you can say he is a jock) who resents Alex throughout the film, thinking that he is some sort of freak. We are also led to believe Alex and Carter were not friendly even before Flight 180. He gets kicked off Flight 180 for fighting with Alex after Alex's premonition makes him cause a commotion about how the aircraft is going to explode. He would have been the fourth person to die on the plane.
- Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke): One of the teachers on Flight 180. When Alex and Carter fight on the plane, she and another teacher get off to settle the two students. Finding out that Alex, Carter, and Billy got kicked off the plane, Ms. Lewton tells the other teacher to go back while she stays behind and catches a later flight. When Flight 180 explodes, she becomes very depressed and wants to move away because she feels she sent the other teacher to his death by telling him to get on the plane. She resents Alex, thinking him as some sort of witch. She would have been the third person to die on the plane.
- Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer): Carter's girlfriend. A girl much kinder than her significant other who tried to break up Alex and Carter. She gets off Flight 180, because Carter got off. Terry is getting sick of Carter's constant bickering towards Alex and is on the verge of breaking up with him. She would have been the second person to die on the plane.
- Tod Waggner (Chad E. Donella): Alex's best friend. When Alex gets off the plane, Tod's brother, George, tells him to accompany Alex. George dies on the plane, and Tod's father somehow blames Alex for the crash and Tod's friendship with Alex is strained. He would have been the first person to die on the plane.
- Agent Wiene (Daniel Roebuck): Investigating the Flight 180 case. He follows Alex around, thinking that Alex might have had something to do with Flight 180's explosion and the subsequent deaths.
- Agent Schreck (Roger Guenveur Smith): Agent Wiene's partner.
[edit] Deaths
[edit] Alternate Ending
The scene on the beach where Clear tells Alex about her family's past was extended. Clear was telling Alex how they must take action and do something big while they still had the time. Clear and Alex ended up making love, and Clear later becomes pregnant (the scene where she finds out was deleted.) When Clear is next on Death's list, Alex saves her from the exploding car, but sacrifices himself to do so and dies. Nine months later, Clear gives birth to a baby boy (which she names Alex) and by doing that, she ruined Death's design because Clear created life that was not meant to be. She and Carter became close friends and they visit the Flight 180 memorial. Clear states that even though they defeated Death this one time, they only won a chance at a full life, because for everyone, there is always that one day. A falling leaf drops and the credits roll.
This ending did not go well in test screenings as Clear becoming pregnant made the film's ending predictable. Also, the general audience disliked how an antagonist like Carter receives a second chance at life whilst the protagonist, Alex, ends up dying. When the second ending was test screened, many people clapped and cheered when Carter was smooshed by the sign. Although this ending became the official one, the filmmakers actually liked the original ending better.
The concept of new life defeating death was incorporated into the storyline of Final Destination 2. Many also agree that if this ending were actually used, Final Destination 2 may not have been possible, since a new storyline would be required. A sequel was not completely outruled; however the plot of Final Destination 2 may have changed significantly to the point where it would have surfaced amongst different characters and ultimately a new storyline.
Note: In the original script for this, the ending had a much darker setting. Clear was able to defeat Death only because she had an innocent soul inside her. After giving birth to a baby girl (and now not having an innocent life inside), the hospital shakes, with suspense building up, and the camera zooms in on Clear's face, implying that Death had taken her.
[edit] Trivia
- Many of the characters have names that derive from actors and directors of classic horror films, including Alfred Hitchcock, Max Schreck and others. Clear was named after an assistant. Additionally, Clear's name was originally "Kimberly" in the early draft, this name is given to the protagonist in Final Destination 2. Tod Waggner's first name (spelled with a single "d") is also German for "death."
- In the bus scene, right when Carter and Terry arrive in Carter's car, the track "Into the Void" by Nine Inch Nails is playing on the radio and the words "final destination" can be heard in the lyrics.
- The song Rocky Mountain High by John Denver is constantly played in this movie, always before someone dies (fittingly, Denver himself was killed in a plane crash in 1997). This concept was used again for Final Destination 3 when the song "Turn Around, Look At Me" was played before many of the deaths.
- The crash of Flight 180 has a great many similarities with another plane crash, TransWorld Airlines Flight 800. Both planes were 747s, both were flying from JFK to Charles de Gaulle, and both exploded right after take-off due to electrical equipment short circuiting. Among the passengers of Flight 800, there was a group of students from Montoursville, Pennsylvania going on a class trip to France, just like Alex and his classmates in the film.
- The scene in Paris is actually Bastion Square, Victoria BC, Canada
[edit] See also
- Final Destination series
- Final Destination deaths
- Final Destination 2
- Final Destination 3
- Final Destination books
[edit] External links
