25 Years Later, ‘Final Destination’ Still Has Us Pondering Death’s Master Plan
The year 2000 made society panic that Microsoft Excel was about to destroy the world.
Okay, maybe not Excel, but the whole Y2K paranoia got a bit too much, as everyone stressed about computer systems failing and leading us into digital anarchy. What would happen when the clock crossed the midnight mark and a new millennium was ushered in? The answer: Not much.
A few months after this anxious event, James Wong’s Final Destination hit theaters. This supernatural horror featured a novel premise at the time: High school teenager Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) experiences a premonition about the plane he’s on exploding. In a panic, he leaves the plane, along with a few of his classmates. As Alex predicted, the plane explodes and kills all those on board. Alex and Co. quickly realize that Death has a plan, and they cheated it. That said, while they escaped this time, Death’s design can’t be beaten for too long.
‘Final Destination’ isn’t a slasher
By 2000, teen slashers were all the rage in Hollywood. Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer dominated theaters, and every studio clamored for the next big slasher franchise to milk for decades to come. That was never the plan with Final Destination, though.
Writer Jeffrey Reddick wrote a script that he had planned to submit to The X-Files but was convinced to send it to New Line Cinema instead. To cut a long story short, New Line hired Reddick, and he penned an updated version of the script. In Reddick’s draft, Death is never seen onscreen – much like in the final movie. “New Line couldn’t get their head around not having a physical antagonist,” Reddick told Entertainment Weekly. “They’re like. ‘We just don’t get it. Death, you can’t see it, you can’t fight it.’ We’re like, ‘That’s the point!'” Reddick added how the Final Destination producers told New Line that if it didn’t want the project, they would shop it to Miramax, so New Line backed down.
When writing partners Glen Morgan and James Wong officially boarded the project – Wong eventually directed the movie as well – they rewrote the script and changed certain elements of Reddick’s original story. However, Death was still kept as an unseen entity. Morgan and Wong made it clear that Final Destination was never meant to be a slasher with a supernatural boogeyman chasing after a group of teens. Instead, Death was an invisible inevitability.
What sets ‘Final Destination’ apart from other horrors
In the press book for the movie, James Wong wrote, “I became very excited when we decided to make the world at large, in the service of Death, our antagonist. Everyday objects and occurrences then take on ominous proportions and it becomes less about whether or not our characters are going to die and more about how they will die and how they can delay their deaths. The entertainment value is in the ‘ride’ not in the outcome, and by placing the premise of the film on the inevitability of death, we play a certain philosophical note.”
This is clear in Final Destination, because – deep down – the audience knows that no one can outrun their own mortality. At some point, everyone dies; however, it turns into an experience watching their attempts to delay fate. Even so, human optimism refuses to dissipate, as people ponder the big what-if. What if someone does figure out how to cheat death? As Final Destination proves, it’s impossible. Delay all you want, but everyone is doomed to be a goner.
A franchise that still gives people the heebie-jeebies
Even though Final Destination didn’t receive great reviews upon arrival, it turned into a fan-favorite film that raked in serious moolah at the box office (over $112 million from a $23 million budget). Expectedly, studio execs saw dollar signs in their eyes. Final Destination received a plethora of sequels, featuring gnarlier deaths and lethal situations. In fact, an entire generation can blame Final Destination 2 for the reason they change lanes when they drive behind a logging truck now.
While there was a 2009 film titled The Final Destination, which suggested it would be the last in the series, we all know it was lying since Final Destination 5 arrived two years afterward. From 2011 onward, there were murmurs of a new movie, but nothing materialized until 2025, with the release of Final Destination Bloodlines. If anything, it demonstrates how this franchise still has legs and doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon – even if it takes almost a decade-and-a-half in between movies.
All things considered, the original Final Destination remains the movie that set the gold standard 25 years ago. Even though we have watched it enough times to call the moments when the characters perish, it never gets old. It also reminds us that Death is never too far away, so you can run, but you can never hide from it. Although, you should always trust your gut when you feel like something doesn’t feel right, because it might buy you a bit more time.
