Final Destinationwent through some changes during pre-production, including one key character change that saved the franchise, but this also created a huge mystery. Back in 2000, during the peak of teen horror movies,Final Destinationarrived, directed by James Wong. Although it wasn’t the critics’ favorite and got mostly negative reviews, it was a big box-office success. Thanks to the latter,Final Destinationspawned a movie series with five movies and a sixth one, titledFinal Destination Bloodlines, coming out in 2025.
Final Destinationfollows Alex Browning (Devon Sawa), who has a vision of the plane he just boarded with his classmates exploding in midair. Alex panics, leading to him, his best friend, some classmates, and a teacher being taken off the plane, which they then watch explode. Not long after,the survivors begin to die in bizarre “accidents”, as Death begins to claim their lives, and it’s up to Alex to stop it. A big part ofFinal Destination’s appeal is its villain, who went through a major, key change that saved the franchise.
8 Harsh Realities Of Rewatching Final Destination, 25 Years After The Horror Movie Released
Final Destination marked the beginning of a franchise and established key elements for the sequels, but some of them haven’t aged well.
Death Was Literally Going To Appear
TheFinal Destinationfranchise doesn’t have a villain in the traditional sense – there’s not a character who goes around chasing its targets with a weapon like in slasher movies, nor a demon possessing others or a monster lurking in the shadows.The villain in the world ofFinal Destinationis Death itself, but in all five movies in the saga so far, Death hasn’t actually appeared, but this was going to be different in the original idea for the first movie.
Final Destinationstarted as a spec script forThe X-Files, written by Jeffrey Reddick. The idea forFinal Destinationcame to Reddick after reading the story of a woman who was on vacation and her mother called her to not take her flight the next day because she had a bad feeling about it. The woman switched flights and the plane she should have been on crashed (viaBloody Disgusting). Reddick worked on his idea and wrote a script, but instead of submitting it toThe X-Files, he was convinced to write it as a feature film (viaDen of Geek).
Wong revealed that Death was “sort of personified” in that first draft, and remembers there was a “guy with a scythe”, but they didn’t want to do that.
New Line Cinema bought Reddick’s treatment and hired him to write the first draft, with writers James Wong and Glen Morgan later joining in to polish the script. Speaking toBloody Disgustingin March 2025, in celebration ofFinal Destination’s 25th anniversary, Wong revealed that Death was “sort of personified” in that first draft, and remembers there was a “guy with a scythe”, but they didn’t want to do that.They decided to change the killer with the idea that death is around all of us, but it’s also sadistic, and that’s how Death ended up being the invisible villain ofFinal Destination.
Why Death Works Better As A Presence Rather Than A Person In Final Destination
Final Destination Benefits From An Invisible Villain
Death is never seen intheFinal Destinationmovies, though at two different points in the first movie, it appears as a shadow right before it attacks, but that’s the closest the movies have come to showing Death. ChangingFinal Destination’s villain from a personified character to an invisible one was a wise decision, asseeing Death as a materialized character would have been too distracting, and would have killed the build-up and suspense of the bizarre and creative deaths.
As Wong said, the idea of Death being around all the time and just waiting to unleash its plan on the survivors adds to the suspense and paranoia ofFinal Destination, as neither the audience nor the characters (at least not the victims themselves) know when and where Death will attack. Surely, not all horror movies would work with an invisible villain, butFinal Destinationhas the perfect premise and concept for it, and I don’t think the franchise would have come this far with a personification of Death.
Death’s Change Created A Bigger Mystery In The Final Destination Saga
Someone Else Might Be Death Itself
Death is an invisible but lurking and sadistic presence in theFinal Destinationmovies, but the changes made to the character in pre-production led to the franchise’s biggest mystery. InFinal Destination, Alex and Clear (Ali Larter) meet William Bludworth (Tony Todd), a mortician at the funeral home where Tod’s corpse was taken.It’s thanks to Bludworth that they learn about Death’s plan, and Bludworth continues being a mysterious but very knowledgeable presence in theFinal Destinationfranchise.
The mystery of Bludworth has led to the belief that he is Death itself, which would completely ruin the above-mentioned change in this villain.
However,none of theFinal Destinationmovies so far have properly gone into Bludworth’s character, so his backstory is unknown, as well as why he knows so much aboutDeath’s rules, plans, design, etc. The mystery of Bludworth has led to the belief that he is Death itself, which would completely ruin the above-mentioned change in this villain, but at the same time, if Bludworth isn’t Death, then it’s unknown who he really is. Luckily,Final Destination Bloodlinesis expected to solve all Bludworth mysteries, so it’s to be seen if he’s Death or not.
