WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
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| If this poster doesn't give you chills, I give up! |
You would think, that I have the Final Destination franchise figured out. But like I said in the very beginning of my previous blog about the series, each film causes you to think and learn something new every time. And unsurprisingly, I was right. That entry has been updated several times since its initial upload, and I do not see that ending anytime soon. But we'll see. Even though every movie in the franchise feels like one - as if you're watching a really long film - there are various differences sprinkled here and there. They sometime help or (in most cases) hurt the franchise's continuity.
Case in point: what did surprise me was that I basically missed one specific moment from Final Destination 2. I'll get to that momentarily, but I can tell you right now that while the moment doesn't seem to have any real affect on the franchise's continuity, I can no longer ignore it.
So about Final Destination 2...
I'll start with the synopsis of the movie. A group of people - mostly adults - start dying one by one in the order that they would've died in a highway pileup on Route 23 if they were not stopped by the visionary, Kimberly Corman. Blah blah blah, basically the general synopsis is no different from the other films in the series.
A group of people - mostly/mainly [age group] - start dying one by one in the order that they would've died in [accident/disaster] had it not been for [visionary] saving them from the accident/disaster.
But as made clear before, the movies are not as similar as we think they are from a distance. All you have to do is break them all down. In the case of Final Destination 2, after the main characters cheated Death, the order in which they die is reversed. This is later explained to justify the film's interconnection with Final Destination. How, you may ask?
By giving most of the survivors a forgettable backstory!
Most of these survivors of the Route 23 pileup were previously supposed to die during the events of Final Destination, where the survivors of Volee Airlines Flight 180 die in strange freak accidents.
Kimberly Corman
"About a year ago, My mom and I were at the mall. I was supposed to meet her outside, but I got caught up watching this news report about [Tod Waggner] who committed suicide. I kept thinking, "How can you strangle yourself in the bathtub? That's... That's stupid." It felt wrong. And yet..., I heard some gunshots and I ran outside. Some kids were trying to steal my mom's car. She tried to fight them off, she was a fighter, and they killed her. After the funeral I kept thinking that it should have been me. I guess everyone must think that but, I guess I was right."
Officer Thomas Burke
"Last year my partner and I were heading out when a call came in about a train wreck. Frank decided to let me handle it alone. He died that night in a shootout. If that call had come in just... seconds later, I'd be dead too. Shit... The call about the train wreck, that saved my life? That was the night I scraped up, Billy Hitchcock."
Eugene Dix
"It's not the first time I cheated death. A kid came to school with a knife... killed his teacher. Teacher would have been me, but I was transferred to another school two days before. Wait, wait. The teacher I replaced, her name was Valerie Lewton. She was from Mt Abraham. She died in an explosion."
"It's not the first time I cheated death. A kid came to school with a knife... killed his teacher. Teacher would have been me, but I was transferred to another school two days before. Wait, wait. The teacher I replaced, her name was Valerie Lewton. She was from Mt Abraham. She died in an explosion."
Rory Peters
"Hey, do you guys remember that theatre in Paris that collapsed last year and killed everybody inside? Well, I had tickets to go but one night, I'm in Paris and I'm just tripping on acid and sipping lattes and such. And then all of a sudden, [Carter Horton] out of nowhere just get WHACKED by this falling sign!"
"Hey, do you guys remember that theatre in Paris that collapsed last year and killed everybody inside? Well, I had tickets to go but one night, I'm in Paris and I'm just tripping on acid and sipping lattes and such. And then all of a sudden, [Carter Horton] out of nowhere just get WHACKED by this falling sign!"
Kat Jennings
"So last May, I'm supposed to go and stay at this cheesy little bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania. Anyhow, there's this major gas leak that no one knows about, and all the guests suffocated during the night. I never made it; the bus I was on splattered [Terry Chaney] all over the road."
"So last May, I'm supposed to go and stay at this cheesy little bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania. Anyhow, there's this major gas leak that no one knows about, and all the guests suffocated during the night. I never made it; the bus I was on splattered [Terry Chaney] all over the road."
As you can see, those five people were going to die somewhere else but ended up getting distracted by the tragic events of the Flight 180 survivors. According to Clear Rivers, the only reason Death's Design is backwards is because she and the others from Final Destination survived the plane crash.
So if Clear and the others never got off the plane, none of the Route 23 survivors would've survived their near-death experiences prior to the pileup? How do we even know that to be true?
Going by my belief about Death's Design, you could say that they would've had a similar situation to fellow Final Destination 2 character Brian Gibbons who just randomly died despite (allegedly) never being a part of Death's Design. But because they were eventually on Death's Design it's even more possible that they were on the same boat as Molly Harper from Final Destination 5. If so, that means that they were really never meant to die before the Route 23 pileup, similar to Molly never actually being a part of Death's Design until she became a passenger on Flight 180.
Whatever the case may be, the fact that the characters of Final Destination 2 were apparently supposed to die during the events of Final Destination makes no sense, and adds nothing to the former flick (or the whole of the franchise, really) and is never brought up again after just one scene. A scene that came in way too late into the film's runtime for anybody to care. But at least it makes the characters from both Final Destination and Final Destination 2 seem more "connected" than we think.
As for the other Route 23 survivors - Evan Lewis, Tim Carpenter and Nora Carpenter - we don't know what their deal is. Where were they when Clear was nearly killed? Where were they when Alex Browning died? You tell me, WRITERS!
Still lost? I don't blame you.
For years, I watched that scene over and over and over again, and could not understand the point that Clear was trying to make until now. But luckily there's a slightly less ridiculous and less convoluted way to figure out why Death is working backwards. I don't know how many people actually noticed, but I did. According to Kimberly's vision of the pile-up, the order of deaths were Officer Burke, Eugene, Rory, Kat, Nora and Tim (both at the same time), Evan, and Kimberly and her friends (who died the same time as her) - Shaina McKlank, Dano Estevez and Frankie Whitman.
When the pileup finally happened in real time, the main characters were already safe because Kimberly deliberately blocked traffic on the on-ramp. However after Officer Burke asked Kimberly to step out of her SUV, the highway accident had already happened. And less than a minute later, Kimberly nearly gets ran over by an oncoming truck, whose driver didn't think to stop for some reason. But Officer Burke quickly pulls her out of the way. Meanwhile, her friends Shaina, Dano and Frankie were still in the SUV, and were ultimately hit by the truck. Remember: Officer Burke intervened and saved Kimberly, while her three friends were too late and were hit and killed by the truck. So far, I was able to find three Death-cheating moments that could have caused Death to go backwards: (1) Shaina, Dano and Frankie cheated Death with Kimberly, because Kimberly did not drive them into the area of the pile-up. (2) Kimberly cheated Death twice by not driving into the area of the pile-up, and later dodging the truck that hit her friends. (3) Officer Burke nearly sacrificed himself to save Kimberly, but ended up cheating Death as well. What do all moments have in common? Kimberly's friends, whose Deaths would have been enough to cause Death's List to go backwards, as death would move on to Evan hours later, followed by Tim, then Nora, then Kat, then Rory, then Eugene, then tried to come for Officer Burke and Kimberly.
Done and dusted!
Well, for now, at least. I don't think Final Destination 2 is a bad movie; it's actually one of my favorites. I just don't think that the characters' backstories were necessary at all. The return of Clear and Bludworth should've been all the writers needed for the sake of interconnection. But whatever. What's done is done, as I always say.
For what it's worth, the poster for Final Destination 2 tops my list for the best posters in the franchise!
For years, I watched that scene over and over and over again, and could not understand the point that Clear was trying to make until now. But luckily there's a slightly less ridiculous and less convoluted way to figure out why Death is working backwards. I don't know how many people actually noticed, but I did. According to Kimberly's vision of the pile-up, the order of deaths were Officer Burke, Eugene, Rory, Kat, Nora and Tim (both at the same time), Evan, and Kimberly and her friends (who died the same time as her) - Shaina McKlank, Dano Estevez and Frankie Whitman.
When the pileup finally happened in real time, the main characters were already safe because Kimberly deliberately blocked traffic on the on-ramp. However after Officer Burke asked Kimberly to step out of her SUV, the highway accident had already happened. And less than a minute later, Kimberly nearly gets ran over by an oncoming truck, whose driver didn't think to stop for some reason. But Officer Burke quickly pulls her out of the way. Meanwhile, her friends Shaina, Dano and Frankie were still in the SUV, and were ultimately hit by the truck. Remember: Officer Burke intervened and saved Kimberly, while her three friends were too late and were hit and killed by the truck. So far, I was able to find three Death-cheating moments that could have caused Death to go backwards: (1) Shaina, Dano and Frankie cheated Death with Kimberly, because Kimberly did not drive them into the area of the pile-up. (2) Kimberly cheated Death twice by not driving into the area of the pile-up, and later dodging the truck that hit her friends. (3) Officer Burke nearly sacrificed himself to save Kimberly, but ended up cheating Death as well. What do all moments have in common? Kimberly's friends, whose Deaths would have been enough to cause Death's List to go backwards, as death would move on to Evan hours later, followed by Tim, then Nora, then Kat, then Rory, then Eugene, then tried to come for Officer Burke and Kimberly.
Done and dusted!
Well, for now, at least. I don't think Final Destination 2 is a bad movie; it's actually one of my favorites. I just don't think that the characters' backstories were necessary at all. The return of Clear and Bludworth should've been all the writers needed for the sake of interconnection. But whatever. What's done is done, as I always say.
For what it's worth, the poster for Final Destination 2 tops my list for the best posters in the franchise!
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