Come, Learn Death's Design 🫠

When the first Final Destination came out, I was just about to turn sixteen years old. With a springtime release, it came out March 17, 2000, and it had some great headliners in Devon Sawa and Ali Larter alone. However, this wasn't the only thing they had up their sleeve with the presence of other greats and notables such as Seann William Scott and the legendary Tony Todd.

May he rest in peace.

Tony Todd

12/4/1954-11/6/2024

Just mentioning Tony's name, I got chills because of the length of time and influence his face, voice, and presence had on my life.

I will forever be a Candyman fan, and that was my entrance to the world of Mr. Todd's greatness. So, when I saw him in the first movie alongside someone I considered a crush and teenage heartthrob (I loved Casper, and Now and Then - Devon is great, he always will be.)

So, let's go over what my review had to say, shall we?

5 Stars🙌

As a lifelong fan of the Final Destination franchise and Tony Todd, this was something I was hugely anticipating, and from the start it began with a BANG!

This is a great movie, and if you have watched the others, you can't miss it if you want to fully comprehend the grandeur that is 'Death's Design.'

Let's start with the breakdown on why I feel it's important to watch this movie if you want to understand the legacy at the root of the stories here. I want to emphasize that Final Destination as a whole was created off of a spec script on death's design for an original X-Files episode, and that is what catapulted us to where we are now for the story development that has now created six film series, and nine total books.

The books having been written by multiple authors, including Natasha Rhodes, Jeffrey Reddick, Nancy A. Collins, David A. McIntee, Rebecca Levene, Steven A. Roman and Christa Faust were used to help shape the film series, and each of their titles correlates to the first three movies with others based on the premise of the series.

Additionally, the screenplay for the X-Files spec script was originally written by Jeffrey Reddick with an article he had read regarding a woman having a premonition before boarding an airplane that later crashed, cited as his inspiration for the script entitled “Flight 180.”

Most of the first film's fans are well aware that this is what shapes up to being the protagonist in Final Destination, when Devon Sawa's character, Alex Browning is waiting to embark on a class trip to Paris, when he experiences a vision and sees the airplane explode merely moments after leaving the ground. Alex, of course, is prompted to warn everyone of what he feels is impending doom, and nearly everyone shuns or ignores his warnings. However, he is able to convince seven fellow passengers not to board, and they all disembark together to watch the plane ascend into the air and burst into a flaming fireball.

Stunned by this, Alex and the other survivors believe that they have cheated death and that they can put this trauma behind them, but soon they learn that Death has another plan. In fact, a grand design and eventually they will all meet the Reaper face to face in order to restore that pattern.

Okay, so then how does Bloodlines connect to that?

Most obvious is Iris being the person who sees the future and a catastrophe, and saves multiple lives.

This is the common factor among all the series protagonist, but what makes Bloodlines different is it shows how family ties that bind can get you caught up in something that might take ages and generations to level out on, but the inevitable truth is no matter who you are or where you find yourself within that pattern, eventually Death will come for you.

This is a beautiful way of bringing everything full circle, some twenty-five years after the first came on-scene, and I have to say I am here for it.