An excerpt from my script review for Final Destination which will be available 05/05/25:
2.) Plot Stability
With Final Destination: Bloodlines coming out later this month, I wanted to take a look at the original.
In fact, I was surprised we’ve never reviewed any of the scripts from the franchise before.
Imagine my surprise when I sat down to read and this was drastically different from the version I watched a month or so ago with the youngest.
After about halfway through the script, I realized what we watched was The Final Destination which came out in 2009 and was actually the fourth installment in the franchise.
Silly me…confusing Final Destination with The Final Destination that actually wasn’t the final destination at all, because they made a 5th in 2011 and now Bloodlines will be number six…
Now, I should have realized, when there was no plane in the fourth one we watched, that I didn’t have the original, but as I read yesterday I began to wonder how this script led to such a successful franchise.
The original script, as written, really isn’t that good.
It drags along…the “death” scenes aren’t even close to the setups we have in later installments…and lastly the whole “rules” which are fantastic in horror films seemed to be followed arbitrarily at best.
One thing the script does well is allude to Death coming with all the foreshadowing.
Thunder storms. Shadows. Cold breezes.
Those sorts of ominous things.
Once we’re finally on the plane and Alex has his first “Death vision” on page 19, we hit the premise we’ve been promised.
He and some other kids getting removed from the plane, it eventually taking off, and then exploding, killing over a hundred people.
Now, I say “finally” because this script is so fucking condensed (something we’ll talk about in a later section) that it took me forever to get here.
If the rule of thumb is one page of a script takes a minute to read and translates to a minute on screen, this script easily took double that on most pages.
Anyway…once they’re off the plane and it explodes, everyone looks at Alex like he’s a terrorist, which realistically sounds more plausible than what actually happened.
But instead of being detained for anything more than a few hours, he and the remaining survivors go off on their merry way.
Again, a more realistic approach would be the FBI holds him until they prove it wasn’t a bomb…but I guess 9/11 hadn’t happened yet…and our main character sitting in a jail cell for a few days straight doesn’t make for great drama.
Alex and Clear (and her name is really “Clear”? I just assumed it was “Clare” constantly misspelled) head off to see if they can figure out just what happened once Tod, Alex’s best friend, dies.
Did it work?
I guess, and maybe seeing the campy killfest of a more recent version takes away from any “charm” the original had, but I had a hard time getting through this one.
Lastly, was the “order” that they had to die in, which serves as the rules for this horror.
Mentioned above, having your horror set inside certain parameters or a set of rules is good, but you need to stick with it.
The order here was a bit arbitrary, especially at the end when Alex was supposed to be next, even escaping death a time or two in the cabin, until he decided he wasn’t and had to rush to save Clear.
One thing that would have been good is if they use Clear and Alex’s baby, now all grown up, in the new Bloodlines film.
But from what I’m reading the movie ended differently than this script.
Missed opportunity!
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