Debapriya Bhattacharya
The ‘Final Destination’ franchise began in 2000 with the eponymous film directed by James Wong. The inaugural film follows a small group of teenagers on their way to a college trip to France who escape imminent death in a flight crash when one of them gets a premonition of the event and persuades others not to board the flight. However, the survivors soon meet bizarre and gruesome accidents which end their lives, even as they do everything they can to escape death a second time.
Since its inception, the supernatural horror franchise has spawned a novel series, a comic book series, as well as six installments, all of which follow the same premise and are loosely connected by fate. Over the years, it has developed a cult following owing to the high-tension storylines, innovative death sequences and the overarching theme of inevitable death. It has also garnered acclaim among critics and audiences for creatively touching upon real phobias, unlocking new ones with each film.
The Concept of Final Destination Was Conceived From a News Report
Jeffrey Riddick is hailed as the creator of the ‘Final Destination’ franchise, which is largely a work of fiction. While the first film is based on his original story, he shares the screenplay credit with Glen Morgan and director James Wong. In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Reddick recalled how he came upon the idea for the series. While flying home from New York to Kentucky on an unspecified date, the screenwriter-director read a news article about a woman whose life was saved because of a fateful warning by her mother. He mentioned that the woman in the news was returning from a vacation in Hawaii when her mother called her up and said, “Don’t take the flight tomorrow, I have a really bad feeling about it.” She heeded the words and changed her flight, and the flight she was originally supposed to be on ultimately crashed.
After recalling his inspiration, Riddick posed, “I thought, that’s creepy- what if she was supposed to die on that flight?” He initially penned the script under the title ‘Flight 180.’ It was a speculative script for ‘The X Files,’ a hit paranormal science fiction television series that premiered in 1993. While employed at New Line Cinema, a colleague persuaded him to rewrite it as a feature-length film, following which it caught the attention of ‘The X-Files’ writing partners, Morgan and Wong. They decided to rewrite the script with him and direct the film, launching one of the most successful horror franchises in the entertainment industry.
As Riddick noted in an interview with Collider, turning his script into a film was not easy. He had to work on his original script many times before it was obtained by New Line Cinema and reworked by Morgan and Wong. The changes they made include turning the survivors from a group of adult strangers to high school friends. This was reportedly a creative decision made following the success of another teen-driven slasher horror franchise, ‘Scream.’ However, Riddick remains a fan of the ultimate product and shared that his work was inspired by a classic of the genre, the 1984 film ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street.’ He firmly believes that “there are people out there that have gifts, whether it’s psychic kind of gifts or whatever. I’ve never been able to levitate. I’ve tried it. After reading X-Men, I tried it many times and failed. But I do believe that people have gifts, and I do believe in fate.”
The Franchise Continues to Draw Loose Inspiration From Elements of Real Life
While he is hailed as the creator of the ‘Final Destination’ franchise, Jeffrey Reddick is the writer of just the first two films. Directed by David R Ellis, ‘Final Destination 2’ is based on a story which Reddick penned along with screenplay writers J Mackeye Gruber and Eric Bress. The scene of the opening accident shifts from the sky to the highway, as a woman stops herself and a group of other people survive a dangerous highway pile-up by having a premonition ahead of the event. “I wanted to expand on the mythology and not just tell the same story over again,” Riddick explained to Bloody Disgusting about coming up with the new story. The plot started to form in his mind when he saw a large, overstocked log truck on the road while driving.
The team carefully observed the elements that made the original a great success and added their own spin to it. They effectively combined the high-octane death sequences with the individual stories of each character to make it an exhilarating ride for the audience. The installments that followed have carried the same spirit, ensuring that despite the similar core plotline, each film feels fresh and stands out on its own. Loss of control serves as the integral theme of the third film, directed by James Wong. Interestingly, the involvement of the iconic roller coaster derailment sequence was the contribution of New Line Cinema executive Richard Bryant.
Co-writer Glen Morgan actually spent quite some time at a home improvement store to come up with Erin Ulmer’s death scene. “I was at the home improvement store on Sunset Boulevard for three or four days in a row for three hours a day, walking through those shelves, looking at the hydrochloric acid, writing notes… I’m like, poking things going, ‘Could that kill you?’ Never did anyone come up and go, ‘What the hell are you doing?'” The classic Lasik-gone-wrong scene in ‘Final Destination 5’ (the prequel) is rooted in writer Eric Heisserer’s experience of watching a doctor perform Lasik surgery on his wife’s (then fiancée). “I foolishly scared the Hell out of myself watching someone cut open her eye. It timed out well with the fact that Final Destination fell in my lap,” he told Bloody Disgusting.
The Legacy of Final Destination Thrives on its Invisible Antagonist
According to Jeffrey Reddick, the ‘Final Destination’ films stand apart from other horror fictional features by having death itself as the antagonist who operates with a pattern, instead of a random “slasher.” Expanding on the subject, producer Craig Perry added, “We don’t have a visible bad guy. The bad guy in some ways is a metaphysical idea, a thesis. Is it fate? Is it destiny? Is it death itself? By not providing a concrete answer, you can bring your own background to the viewing experience. It’s really a reflection of what you believe.” The franchise has presented viewers with many iconic death sequences which take place in everyday situations, thus mining the terrifying thought that it may creep up on anyone at any point.
The grand opening sequences in ‘Final Destination’ films 3 to 6 are, in order, a roller coaster accident, a crash at a race car rally, a collapse of a suspension bridge and the falling of a high-rise restaurant tower. These, combined with other sudden, smaller yet fatal accidents, tap deep into existing phobias that audiences may already have. The co-director of ‘Final Destination Bloodlines’ explained the perspective in an interview with Time. He said, “One of the very first things we talked about when we started working on the movie was, what can we ruin for people? So a big part of the creative process was identifying those common, everyday experiences that will stick with people for the rest of their lives.”
Stein continued, “It can be something as simple as a cup full of ice or something as specific as the song ‘Shout,’ which is going to make you think about this movie anytime you hear it at a wedding from now on.” Echoing the sentiment passed by Perry, he concluded, “There’s no killer in a mask running around with a knife. But Death does have a personality. Death is very clever and plays a long game. That’s why people love these movies. The kills are so much fun to watch that you end up rooting for Death in a way.” With this philosophy forming the core of all the ‘Final Destination’ films, the audience is encouraged to get caught up in works of fiction on a personal level.
