Final Destination

Final Destination series
Directed by	James Wong (1, 3) David R. Ellis (2, 4)
Written by	Story: James Wong (1, 3) Glen Morgan (1,3) Jeffrey Reddick (1, 2) J. Mackye Gruber (2) Eric Bress (2, 4) Screenplay: Glen Morgan (1, 3) James Willie (1, 3) Jeffrey Reddick (1) J. Mackye Gruber (2) Eric Bress (2, 4) Characters: Jeffrey Reddick (2-4)
Produced by	Glen Morgan (1, 3) Warren Zide (1-4) Craig Perry (1-4) James Wong (3) Associate Producer: Chris Bender (1) Sheila Hanawhore (2, 3) Co-Producer: Art Schaeffer (1, 3) Justis Greene (2) Tawny Ellis (4) Executive Producer: Richard Brener (1-4) Brian Witten (1) Toby Emmerich (2-4) Matt Moore (2, 3) Jeffrey Reddick (2) Walter Hamada (4)
Cinematography	Robert McLachlan (1,3) Gary Capo (2) Glen MacPherson (4)
Edited by	James Coblentz (1) Eric Sears (2) Chris G. Willingham (3) Mark Stevens (4)
Music by	Shirley Walker (1-3) Brian Tyler (4)
Production companies	Zide/Perry Productions (1-4) Hard Eight Pictures (1,3) Matinee Pictures (3) Practical Pictures (3) Road Rebel (3) LivePlanet (4)
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date	2000 – 2009
Running time	363 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$316,577,307

The Final Destination series is a series of horror films created by James Wong, Glen Morgan and Jeffrey Reddick. Distributed by New Line Cinema, the films are centered on the themes of determinism, predestination, and precognition, in relation to death (i.e. how to foresee, avoid or control it). In a more practical sense, each film portrays a series of elaborate, often gory death scenarios that can resemble Rube Goldberg machines in their complexity and convolutedness. The franchise has also spawned a related book series (published by Black Flame) and comic series (published by Zenescope Entertainment Inc).

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 afterward, 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 and often improbable accidents until the same visionary notices a pattern and concludes that, while surviving the initial disaster, they are still destined to die. 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. By the end, however, most or all of the survivors are dead. In the subsequent movie, the previous survivors are revealed to be dead, or die in the film. For example: in Final Destination 2, Clear returns from the first Final Destination only to be killed later in the film.

Cheating Death

A recurring theme in each film is the concept of truly defeating Death. Constant intervention proves to merely restart the list from the beginning. When someone saves the targeted person, death immediately moves on to the next person on the list. Once the list of Death's Design runs through, it returns to the beginning. A key element of the films is that the protagonists always think they have found a way to cheat death; for example in the second film, it is suggested that a child born of a survivor will break the pattern. However, the ending always implies that there is no way to indefinitely cheat death.

The films have yet to explain what is sending the protaganists the premonitions and more importantly why, as it seems it does no good to escape the particular accident only for the entity of death itself attack the survivors.

Literature

Novels

Throughout 2005 publishing company Black Flame released a series of Final Destination books which faithfully follow the premise of the films, with each involving a group of people who find themselves targeted by Death after surviving a catastrophe of some sort due to a character experiencing a precognitive vision. Set in Los Angeles the first novel, entitled Dead Reckoning, has punk rocker Jess Golden saving herself and several others from the collapse of Club Kitty, earning Death's ire. Set in LA as well Destination Zero has magazine employee Patti Fuller and few others survive a train bombing and afterward, while being stalked by Death, Patti learns this is not the first time her family has been hunted by the entity. End of the Line has a group of New York subway crash survivors, led by twins Danny and Louise King, trying to escape Death, who uses an unknowing agent to hasten its acquisition of the survivors.

In Dead Man's Hand a group meant to die in the crash of a Las Vegas glass elevator are stalked by both Death and the FBI, the latter believing the group's savior Allie Goodwin-Gaines was responsible for the elevator crash. Looks Could Kill has beautiful New York model Sherry stopping her friends from boarding a yacht when she has a vision of it exploding, but is left horribly disfigured and comatose by flying debris moments afterward when her vision comes true; eventually awakening the embittered Sherry makes a deal with Death, aiding it in claiming her friends in exchange for having her good looks restored. After the run of the original series of books Black Flame released novelizations of the first three films in January of 2006.

Comic books

The first Final Destination comic book, entitled Sacrifice, was published by Zenescope Entertainment and came packaged with a limited edition DVD of Final Destination 3 sold exclusively at Circuit City. The premise of the story involves the survivor of a terrible accident, who continually experiences images of other people's deaths, isolating himself from the rest of the world to escape the visions that torment him. Zenescope later released a five issue miniseries, subtitled Spring Break, which involves a group led by Carly being stalked by Death after surviving a hotel fire and becoming stranded in Cancún, Mexico. The miniseries was later released in a trade paperback collection, which included the Sacrifice comic as bonus content.

Trivia

• In each of the films, at the climax, the main characters are having a get-together and are usually having some sort of snack. One of the characters realizes that the death chain has not been broken, and that leads to either someone or every one dying.
• The number, 180 seems to be the film series trademark (Flight 180, "180 feet ahead" Subway 180). Although, this number is absent in the forth film.

Reception

Box office performance

Film	Release date	Box office revenue			Reference
		United States	Foreign	Worldwide
Final Destination	March 17, 2000	$53,331,147	$59,549,147	$112,880,294
Final Destination 2	January 31, 2003	$46,961,214	$43,465,191	$90,426,405
Final Destination 3	February 10, 2006	$54,098,051	$59,172,557	$113,270,608
The Final Destination	August 28, 2009	$28,300,000
Final Destination film series		$154,390,412	$162,186,895	$316,577,307

Critical reaction

Film	Rotten Tomatoes		Metacritic	Yahoo! Movies
	Overall	Cream of the Crop
Final Destination	29% (80 reviews)	21% (19 reviews)	36 (28 reviews)
Final Destination 2	47% (105 reviews)	32% (22 reviews)	38 (25 reviews)	C (14 reviews)
Final Destination 3	45% (111 reviews)	33% (24 reviews)	41 (28 reviews)	C (13 reviews)
The Final Destination	30% (47 reviews)	N/A	34 (13 reviews)	N/A

External links

• Final Destination series at AllMovie