Final Destination

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Final Destination is also the name of a stage in the video game Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Template:Infobox Film Final Destination is a 2000 horror movie. It was followed in 2003 by Final Destination 2 and 2006 by Final Destination 3. Distributed by New Line Cinema, it was directed by James Wong. The film is loosely based on the crash of TWA Flight 800, which acts as a startout point for the rest of the film. The plot was based on an unused X-Files episode. Notably the director James Wong acted as a writer, producer, director of the series [1]. Final Destination's DVD was released on September 26th, 2000.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast & Characters 3 Deaths 4 Alternate Ending 5 Trivia 6 External links

Plot

The movie begins with a group of teenagers on their way to a class trip to Paris. One of them, Alex Browning (played by Devon Sawa), has a vision that the airplane, almost always referred to as Flight 180, is going to explode after takeoff, and causes a commotion over it. He, along with a teacher and several students with whom he subsequently argues, is kicked off the plane. As the group continues the dispute in the lobby of the airport, they soon witness the plane exploding right after takeoff outside.

The FBI soon investigates the circumstances of the tragedy, suspicious of Alex's "premonition" and soon suspecting that he may have had something to do with the explosion. Later, the fortunate few go on to live their spared lives. One month after the plane accident, one of survivors soon meets a grisly end in an accident. Shortly after, another survivor dies horribly.

Alex deduces that Death has a specific design for everyone, and Alex and the other plane survivors cheated the design once by getting off the flight. However, they are now all stuck in a new vision as Death sets out to claim them once and for all. When the cause of the plane explosion is discovered, Alex figures out that Death is targeting him and his friends in the same order that they would have died had they stayed on the plane.

With his new girlfriend, the skeptical Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), Alex decides that the only way they can thwart Death once more is to figure out each new design and escape their predetermined fates again. After one of the survivors escapes his seeming inevitable end and another is immediately claimed, the remaining ones figure that they are safe if a death is intervened by someone else and the design skips ahead to the next person. Alex takes precautions when he inevitably comes to the head of the line, but must hurry when he realizes that the person next in the design is really Clear.

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.
• Clear Rivers (Ali Larter): Clear was not very talkative and open with people, but she felt some sort of connection with Alex at the airport. She believed Alex's premonition and curiously followed him off the airplane to discover that Alex was correct. She at first does not believe the concept of Death's design, but eventually does. Clear falls in love with Alex.
• Carter Horton (Kerr Smith): Carter is a jerk 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 airplane is going to explode.
• William Bludworth (Tony Todd): After Tod's death, Clear and Alex want to examine his body at the morgue. They meet a very mysterious mortician who tells them about Death and its design. Alex takes this information and uses it to prevent future deaths.
• 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 from the memories and also 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.
• Billy Hitchcock (Sean William Scott): On Flight 180, Billy was unlucky 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Agent Weine (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 deaths afterwards.
• Agent Schreck (Roger Guenveur Smith): Agent Weine's partner.

Deaths

Death's original design is Tod, Terry, Ms. Lewton, Carter, Billy, Clear, Alex. The order in which they actually die is different because some get saved and moved to the end of the order. The actual order of death is as follows:

• Tod: First, a gust of wind blows through an ajar window and blows shut the door to the bathroom while Tod is in it, so as to minimize intervention. Water leaks out of a poorly screwed pipe in the back of his toilet, creating a puddle that he doesn't notice while grooming himself in the bathroom and is listening to the radio. He then walks over to the tub and slips on the puddle, causing him to fall on a clothesline cord, which snaps off the wall and, pulled by the velocity of Tod's fall, wraps around his neck and strangles him in the tub, while he struggles to stand up but only manages to kick over bottles of shampoo and soap, spilling them inside the tub and making it slippery and preventing him from getting to his feet. Upon his death, the water snakes its way back under the toilet and disappears as if it never leaked.

Note: While Alex is researching the plane accident online, a magazine falls and is shredded into a fan and blow pieces of paper everywhere. A strip that lands right in front of Alex says "Tod". Additionally, when Tod turns the radio on, he hears Rocky Mountain High by John Denver, the song Alex hears just before the plane explodes whilst in the airport bathroom. In the opening credits, it shows a doll hanging by a string in Alex's room as a foreshadowing. Also, Tod makes a strangling motion when he's mouthing his words to Alex.

• Terry: Terry stops in the middle of the street, cursing at Carter for always fighting with Alex, when a speeding bus hits her, splattering her blood on the others.

Note: Alex sees a bus's reflection on a café window while sitting with Clear. He turns to look for the bus, but there isn't any there. Alex has just left the police station and sees a man blowing leaves. The leaves appear to catch on fire and he realizes Ms. Lewton will die in some sort of fire. Additionally, there is a very hard-to-miss foreshadowing earlier in the film. Right after Flight 180 explodes, a close up of Terry shows a picture of a bus on the wall behind her.

• Ms. Lewton: Pours ice-cold vodka into a hot mug, causing the mug to crack. She then inadvertently holds it over her computer monitor, causing the liquid to leak into the monitor and spark the inside. When she sees the smoke, she goes to check on the monitor, which explodes, blowing a piece of glass from the screen into her throat. She pulls it out and attempts to hold the blood in. Meanwhile, the spilled vodka on the counter catches fire and eventually lights up the whole kitchen. She is weakened by her loss of blood and falls to the floor in her kitchen, and attempts to grab a cloth draped over a knife block. She pulls the cloth, thereby pulling down the knife block and causing a huge butcher knife to fall into her chest. At this point, Alex has entered the house to try and save her, but just as he reaches her, the stove explodes and a chair falls onto the knife, lodging it into Ms. Lewton, and killing her. The gas from the stove, among other things, is caught in the fire and the entire house explodes right after Alex comes running out of it.

Note: She suffers the most violent and longest death. Ms. Lewton also hears Rocky Mountain High. Also, some of Ms. Lewton's glass-stained windows have knives depicted on them.

• Billy: Carter's car is smashed by a speeding train immediately after Alex pulls him from it, sending pieces of metal everywhere. While Billy is standing screaming at Carter that he was next and that he isn't staying around him, a sharp piece of metal is whipped up and out by a chain dangling down from the speeding train, sending it flying through Billy's head as he is turning around, cutting off the top half of his head, killing him instantly.

Note: There is a brief foreshadowing of Billy's death in the opening credits, when a book opens to a page with a guillotine. Also, Carter was meant to die before Billy, but since Alex used his visions to foretell that Carter's seatbelt would rip, Carter was saved and was bumped to last on Death's list. This made the list now go in this order: Clear, Alex, Carter. Note also that Clear almost dies after; later on in the film, Alex figures out that it was actually Clear who was next, and not himself. His lantern blows out, but when he tries to relight it, the lighter shoots off a small spark resembling lightning, and thunder can be heard in the distance. He knows that this is another sign, and figures her death will be caused by lightning, or something electrical. Afterwards, lightning strikes a telephone pole outside of Clear's house, causing one of the electrical wires to start whipping around. The wind is blowing hard enough to make her clothesline spin around at a great speed. Clear runs outside to save her dog from the whipping wire, and the wire crashes into the clothesline, knocking it out of the ground. Once it lands, it starts to roll on the ground towards her raised pool, and penetrates it with one of its sides, causing the pool to break, and spill water everywhere. Sensing danger, Clear jumps up onto a wheelbarrel, and jumps again onto her bower of her house, just as the wire hit the water, sending electricity across the ground. The wire starts to whip around again, this time working its way closer to Clear as she climbs up the side of her house, into her second story window. But, as soon as she jumps in, the wire hits another wire on her house, causing all of her electrical appliances to spark, explode, and shoot out electricity. As she runs out of her room, she dodges all of the sparks and runs downstairs, with the electricity still chasing her.

She quickly runs outside, and into her garage, where she tries to get away in her car. As she starts her car, the wire repeatily smashes into the closed garage door, trying to break through. Clear puts the car in reverse, and floors it through the closed garage door. But, as she breaks the door, the gears controlling the door break and the pole smashes through her windshield, stopping her car died in its tracks. While she tries to get the car unstuck, the door accidentally knocks over a can of Turpintine. At this point, Alex arrives at her house, dodging the wire. She finally breaks free, pulling out the door's motor and track pole out from the ceiling with her, but the wire snaps around and whips it under the back of her car, stopping it, then landing again on the hood of the car, short-circuting the engine, and the car dies. The wire then whips inside the garage and knocks over an axe, which lands on the can of Turpintine, making a long trail of turpintine leading to underneath the car.

Alex shows up and tells her not to touch anything in the car, or she will get electricuted, then tries to knock the wire off of the car with a shovel. The wire then flings the shovel out of his hands, and right into the top of a tank of some sort of flammable gas, causing it to burst open, and shoot underneath the car, with the gas still shooting out. The wire then lands on the line of the spilled turpintine, making a line of flames lead up to the car, and set fire to the escaping gas. At one final attempt to save Clear, Alex grabs onto the wire, shocking him, but releasing it from the car's hood. Clear quickly opens up the door, and runs out of the car, seconds before it explodes, knocking Alex into the garage, and Clear into the dirt, thus skipping her. (Although Alex does not die, he was meant to in the alternate ending) Then Clear is placed last on the list, making Alex next, then Carter. There is another foreshadowing of this earlier on when lightning strikes outside of Alex's house.

• Carter: Six months later, after Death's list was fully ran through, Clear, Alex, and Carter have finally got to Paris and are at a café. They all believe that since all three had been skipped, they can now have a chance at a full life. Alex is still pondering the chance of Death going after them again, but Carter assures him that as long as Alex is alive, Carter and Clear would be fine. Alex gets a feeling that something is about to happen, and leaves the restaurant quickly, not wanting to endanger the others. As he's crossing the street, a passing bus swerves to avoid him and runs into a street lamp, which is knocked out of the ground and hits a large illuminated sign above the café, knocking it off its standpoint and causing it to swing towards Alex back on the ground. Carter pushes Alex out of the way just as the sign swings past him, saving him. As Carter stands up to wonder who is next in the design, the sign swings back across the street directly behind him, but the film cuts away to credits right before the audience sees Carter smashed by the sign.

Note: The sign reads "Le CAFÉ MENO 81", but only the part reading "O 81" breaks off. When it twists backwards as it swings to the ground, it reads "18 O", a reference to Flight 180. Again, Rocky Mountain High is heard, played by a busker across the street just before Alex leaves the café.

• Alex: Since Carter saved Alex from death, Alex was skipped and put after Clear on Death's list. Alex and Clear do not die in this film, but Alex dies in between Final Destination and Final Destination 2. According to the sequel, Alex is killed by a falling brick.

Note: Again, Alex did not die in this film, but his death wasn't a major plot to the sequel, as it was mentioned only briefly. Since he died shortly after Carter, it makes sense to include his death for this film page. In an alternate ending, Alex actually dies saving Clear; he is electrocuted and then burned to death. Additionally, there was a scene filmed where Alex is decapitated by a stray rudder from a downed police helicopter, but it was decidedly cut from the film, thus allowing Alex to survive in this film.

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 wasn't 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 a jerk like Carter gets to live and Alex ended 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.

Note: In the original script for this 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.

Trivia

• This film was originally entitled "Flight 180", but was changed at the last second due to a dispute with New Line.
• 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.
• The brother characters Tod and George Wagner (George stayed on the plane) were originally going to be sisters. Brandy Norwood was to play the surviving sister (Tod's role), but the filmmakers went with brothers. Norwood instead appeared in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.
• Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were the first choices for the role of Alex and Clear.
• Although it is not confirmed, it is thought that the number 180 in "Flight 180" is a reference to a 180° turn, as in someone or something is behind you (backed up by the Vogues song "Turn Around Look at Me" used throughout Final Destination 3, which starts with the lyric "There is someone walking behind you, turn around, look at me.") It is also believed, though less commonly, that 180 alludes to an arc in the circle of life, representing death.
• In the bus scene, right when Carter and Terry arrive in Carter's car, Nine Inch Nails is playing on the radio and the words "final destination" can be heard in the lyrics.
• Blake Dreyer (Christine Chatelain), one of the plane passengers Tod likes at the beginning, is cousin to Carrie Dreyer (Gina Holden) of Final Destination 3, who dies at the start of the film.
• The song Rocky Mountain High by John Denver is constantly played in this movie, always before someone dies. This concept was used again for Final Destination 3 when the song "Turn Around, Look At Me" was played before many of the deaths.
• According to the shot of the memorial shown in the alternate ending, the Flight 180 crash occurred on June 21, 1999.
• Vancouver International Airport stood-in for John F. Kennedy International Airport.
• The crash of Flight 180 has a great many similarities with another plane crash, TransWorld Airlines Flight 800. Both planes were 747's, both were bound for Charles de Gualle after leaving JFK, and both exploded right after take-off due to electrical equipment short circuiting. The scary and sad part is that among the passengers of TWA 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.
• It is probably no coincidence that the name 'Tod' is the same as the German word 'Tod', meaning 'death'.

External links

• {{{2|{{{title|Final Destination}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Databasede:Final Destination

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