Final Destination 3: Omens, Signals and more!

[X-Nightcrawler]

Final Destination 3: Omens, Signals and more!

Ah-HA! I bet you guys were not expecting this. What happens is that after having re-watched the movie (twice . . .) I’ve learned to cope with what I had disliked of the movie the first time I saw it. And since I have a lot of free time, no homework, writer’s block and an obsession tumor lodged in my brain, I decided that I’ll just do this.

So for all you newcomers who weren’t on the boards circa 2003 when “Final Destination 2” came out (shame on you) and I was driven into a downward spiral of FD junkiness, I’ll just go out and explain. The “Final Destination” franchise (my favorite maybe), though seemingly mindless, possesses a certain level of forgettable and faux smarts, most of which can only be seen by people like me and a few mortals with a good eye. All these are just clever, hidden, inconsequential and most likely unintentional signs and omens that can be directly linked to the concept of death or the deaths themselves. I had done a list for all the omens and signs and more for the first two Final Destination movies and now I sit to do one for numero 3.

Here are the two previous analysis. Sadly, I never posted the complete FD2 analysis and it has disappeared from the face of the earth.

*SPOILERS FOR ALL THREE MOVIES*

Final Destination: Omens, Signals and more!
Final Destination 2: Omens, Signals and more!

With Final Destination 3, I’ll have to take a different approach, since the foreshadowing is very different from the other two, now it’s done with pictures, which I’ll also post. Enjoy (all two of you who care).

Death Omens/Foreshadowing
-The finger of the “psychic” game points at the card “Death” just as the title “FINAL DESTINATION 3” appears.
-The opening credits show many signs and such (horses, etc) which will be later addressed with the individual death analysis.
-A small picture of the devil (as in “Devil’s Flight”) placed over the ride that seems to be going wrong when accelerated.
-“Do You Believe In Fortune?”
-The metal ball rolls down the luck game evading “Luck”, “Fate” and finally falling on “Death”.
-Before Wendy checks her camera as Kevin, Carrie and Jason are in “High Dive”, someone yells “Let me get off!” in the background. It sounds suspiciously like Wendy’s screaming.
-The camera snaps the picture as the “V” in “High Dive” flickers off, showing the words “High Die”.
-Jason says that if he missed riding Devil’s Flight, it’s “going to kill him”.
-Kevin: “It won’t kill us to ride it.” And “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
-Kevin snaps the picture foreshadowing Frankie’s death.
-Wendy snaps the picture foreshadowing Kevin’s death.
-The balloon ominously explodes as Wendy is getting ready to take the picture.
-Wendy snaps the picture foreshadowing Ashley and Ashlynn’s deaths.
-Wendy snaps the picture foreshadowing Julie and Perry’s deaths.
-Wendy snaps the picture foreshadowing Lewis’ death.
-The weight blows the games’ guys’ head as it reaches the top.
-Tony Todd/Bludworth (widely considered ‘death’) voices the Devil in “Devil’s Flight”.
-Probably unintentional, but “Devil’s Flight” might deviate from “Flight 180”.
-Wendy snaps the picture foreshadowing Jason’s death.
-Frankie (to Ashley and Ashlynn): “You guys are smoking hot!”
-Devil: “You may never return from the Devil’s Flight.”
-Sign above turnstiles: “I’ll see you soon.”
-Ian: “A few million people die in roller coasters.”
-Ian mentions someone he knew who died in one.
-There’s a small grim reaper statue in the waiting line.
-Skulls decorate the pillars.
-The four discuss who will sit on front (the two who will die next).
-Wendy notices the “6”. It’s similar to Alex noticing the “666” right before he boards the plane.
-Jason: “I’ll meet you at the end.”
-Wendy has a premonition that shows them all dying when the roller coaster goes wrong.
-Kevin gets his hand stuck in gum, indicating that the premonition is accurate.
-The crash does happen, killing everyone who didn’t get off, including Jason and Carrie.
-Not really a sign but an interesting fact. Carrie Dreyer is Blake’s cousin (from FD1).

Roller Coaster Sitting Order

“Devil’s Flight” is a steel-corkscrew roller coaster, which can have cars from six up to twelve rows, depending on the number of cars per train. Devil’s Flight has one car (eventhough it’s labeled “2”) and has 12 rows. This is the seating order:

-Row 12: Kevin and Wendy.
-Row 11: Julie and Perry.
-Row 10: Erin and Ian.
-Row 9: Lewis and no one.
-Row 8: No one and Frankie.
-Row 7: Ashley and Ashlynn.
-Row 6 to 2: Unknown, but characters named “Leon”, “Marcus” and “Khalil” are supposed to be sitting here.
-Row 1: Carrie and Jason.

From front to back is the order they will die (which is also the order they die in the roller coaster).

Individual Death Analysis

Jason Wise and Carrie Dreyer
Picture:

Jason’s picture (in the computer) shows him “flexing” his arm imitating the devil above “Devil’s Flight”. The tracks above seem to be ‘bent’ and pointing straight to his head. Carrie’s picture doesn’t show any omen or I haven’t look hard enough.

Death:
Both of them die in the way they were supposed to die, the car they were riding was supposed to fly off the coaster, killing them.

Ashley Freund and Ashlynn Halperin
Picture:


Their picture shows them holding a plastic palm tree and looking at the camera as the siren’s light flashes at it. It looks as if there were flames underneath them. There is also the “Electric Twins” poster in the park that shows two girls getting electrocuted. I also thought it was interesting that the tanning beds look like coffins (so all right, it’s that clever transition but still).

Death:
They are burnt alive in their tanning beds. The palm tree in the tanning room is what falls and in a way, causes their deaths. They are burnt to death, which makes the ‘flaming’ visuals of their picture accurate. Also, I thought it was funny that both her names start with the word “Ash”.

Frankie Cheeks
Picture:


His picture shows his gratingly stupid face looking down and a ventilation fan right behind it. It looks as if the fan was ‘slashing’ the back of his head. Take also into account the poster in the park that looks like a guy eating a saw blade. It’s not incredibly similar but worth mentioning.

Death:
Frankie gets a running motor tossed at him as the cooling fan still spins and cracks the back of his head to pieces.

Lewis Romero
Picture:


Lewis’ picture shows him hitting the “Test Your Strenght” machine. It’s taken exactly as the weight elevates over his head (which isn’t seen in the picture). There’s also a sultan holding two swords on the back and a bear.

Death:
Lewis’ head is crushed by a pair of weights in the ‘Sultans’ gymnasium after a dumb mother chips off the bear (mascot?) claws, which make some dude drop his weights, which make the two swords above Lewis (which hang on a plaque that reads “What doesn’t KILL you, makes you stronger!) cut the cables supporting the weights.

Ian McKinley (skipped)
Picture:


The shape of the roof above Ian, which read “(S)KILL” looks like some sort of wooden pike looking downward, towards him.

Death:
Ian was supposed to be crushed by the falling wooden construction pikes that did fall. However, Kevin jumped in and intervened in the final moment and saved Ian, sending death towards the next one in the list, Erin. Ian’s real death, however, has him being killed by a sign in the Three Centenial fair, which isn’t foreshadowed in the picture.

Erin Ulmer
Picture:


In the picture, Erin seems to have a gun pointed at her face and her hand on her face as she flips the finger at the camera. The same “(S)KILL” pikes that foreshadow Ian’s death are there. Notice the poster of the nail girl in the fair, which shows the drawing of a girl with nails in her hands, mouth and up her nose.

Death:
After death sent Ian to the back of the line, it came for Erin, who was also in the BuildIt hardware store (making the pikes still accurate). She has several nailed shot at the back of her head, nailing her palm to her face.

Julie Christensen (skipped)
Picture:


The hints for Julie’s death in her picture are: the horses of the Merry-go-round behind her and her two long, flipping fingers pointing upwards and at her face.

Death:
Although she didn’t actually die, her death was supposed to go like this: A horse (foreshadowed in the picture) would go berserk after a firecracker explodes behind him and makes it run towards Julie, tying a rope around her neck (foreshadowed by her necklace?) and pulling her towards some sort of machinery I’m not sure what it is. Point is that she would get grated to death by a bunch of upward pikes as the horse pulled her. However, Kevin intervened and it skipped her.

Perry Malinowski
Picture:


One of the hints for Julie’s death is also a hint for Perry’s death. That is, of course, the horse. The other hint is the American flag behind her (which isn’t very obvious in the picture but it’s there).

Death:
After Julie was saved by Kevin, Death was quick to go to the next one on the list: Perry. The horse goes berserk once again and pulls with the rope an American flag. As Perry wonders why Wendy needs to know who was sitting next to Julie, the flagpole bursts through her chest. She falls forward and slides down, dead.

Kevin Fisher (skipped)
Picture:


Kevin’s picture shows him getting a big flash of light (the camera’s) on the face, making his face look very pale (dead?) and white.

Death:
Immediately after Perry’s death, Death’s kill-a-thon continues with Kevin, who gets a bunch of fireworks explode in front of his face. However, Wendy was very ready. Ready enough so to pull him out of the explosion before he got burnt to death.

Wendy Christensen (skipped)
Picture:


Wendy’s picture shows her outside the park, holding Jason (who’s face is blurred) with a dark background. Notice that she’s using the McInley High School shirt.

Death:
Wendy was also supposed to get blown up by fireworks gone awry. I still cannot link her picture to her supposed death. However, in the later scene in the subway, she sees her blurry reflection in the subway window and immediately links it to her picture. Either way, she is saved by Julie. No wonder death is so pissed. Death didn’t waste time and used the very same fireworks to crush Ian to pieces. The original plan was supposed to have Wendy killed by the “McInley” sign, which is foreshadowed by Wendy’s shirt. Of course, Wendy had thought that McInley meant that Ian was going to cause her death. In the end, death chose to kill her via fireworks (which she avoided anyway).

Subway Crash:

Five months after the fair, we find Wendy riding a subway train with Sean and Laura, a friend and her roommate (lets not forget that Wendy is in college now). There are several signs in this scene, some of which include ‘flashbacks’ to already dead characters:
-“Andy’s” fast food restaurant: Frankie
-“BuildIt” hardware store: Erin and Ian
-“Phoenix” Tanning Co. Ashley and Ashlynn
-“180” on the reflected outdoor.
-“Montgomery and Glick” insurance. The sign reads “There Is No Escaping Death”.
-Tony Todd/Bludworth reading the “Last stop is the end of the line.” message.
-Front of the train reads “End Of The Line”.
-Wendy: “I had a sense that you were coming down.”

Death gathers up all the ‘loose ends’ (Julie, Wendy, Kevin and Kimberly Corman and Thomas Burke are supposedly also in the subway train) and kills them all in one big shot. Wendy has a premonition of their deaths in the subway and tells Kevin. Did they escape the crash? We don’t know, only “Final Destination 4” will tell.

Turn Around, Look At Me
Much like in "Final Destination", this movie uses a song to foreshadow when a death is coming. This time it's The Vogues' "Turn Around, Look At Me".

-At the fast food drive-through, when the radio goes crazy before Frankie's death.
-When Wendy is driving towards the fair, the radio also goes crazy.
-In the subway, a guy sings an acoustic version.

Okay so that’s all I got for now. I hope you enjoyed this boring read and feel free to tell me if I missed something. Peace out brothas.

[zombievictim]

Wow thats really cool. How did you figure that Kimberly and Thomas were on the train?

[jackson13]

I really only had one big problem with this movie, and to talk about it I need to warn:



SPOILERS FOR ALL 3 FILMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Thanks to the second movie, we know that every person who got off Flight 180 died. Clear was the last survivor and she ate it in the second. In this movie, its pretty much assumed that everyone who got off the roller coaster died thanks to the subway wreck at the end. But in the second movie, there were still 2 survivors of the car crash; the chick and the cop. How's come they were allowed to live? Or did they end up dying and this movie just forgot to mention it. One thing that is a big part of the Final Destination movies is the fact of 'You cant cheat death'. Flight 180 survivors found that out, and so did the roller coaster suvivors. Why weren't the car crash survivors covered? Maybe it'll be revealed on a deleted scene on the DVD because Wendy did research on the topic and in the movie she only talked about Flight 180 and the people who died after it. There was no mention of the highway wreck, so that leads to me think, hopefully, it was a longer scene where she mentioned the highway wreck and that it was just cut down for theaters and will be reinstated on the DVD.

[Duke Nukem]

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!!







Yes, they say "you can't 'cheat' death," but there is an unofficial loop hole in it. The last two people in FD2 survived Death through life-and-death (her drowning and coming back). That's why they weren't in FD3 - because they survived and their stories were over. Their survival also wiped out any "ripples" of other people in Death's replanning. Death's list was now a clean slate, leaving the characters in FD3 to be completely fresh and unrelated to the characters/victims of the last two movies.

In other words, you have to take "you can't 'cheat' death" with a grain of salt. There are unspoken rules within it, kind of like MPAA's unspoken rule that one F-word is allowed in a PG-13 movie. The basic idea of this franchise is "you can't 'cheat' death," but the point of movies is to show how the characters deal with it and possibly find loopholes to survive. Sure, the theme is "you can't 'cheat' death," but the movies aren't going to spell it all out for you. You have to rationalize on your own. The last two characters in FD2 survived the movie and that is that.

But, that doesn't mean that FD3 is set in a different universe outside of the first two films. They did refer to the events of Flight 180 and also refered to the events of highway 180. They referred to Flight 180 more, though, because that was the first time this "cheating death and paying for it" thing ever occured. They referred to Highway 180 quickly (it was one of the pictures in the girl's photos/homework of their debacle) and it didn't need to be referred too as much.

[X-Nightcrawler]

Originally posted by Duke Nukem
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!!







Yes, they say "you can't 'cheat' death," but there is an unofficial loop hole in it. The last two people in FD2 survived Death through life-and-death (her drowning and coming back). That's why they weren't in FD3 - because they survived and their stories were over. Their survival also wiped out any "ripples" of other people in Death's replanning. Death's list was now a clean slate, leaving the characters in FD3 to be completely fresh and unrelated to the characters/victims of the last two movies.

In other words, you have to take "you can't 'cheat' death" with a grain of salt. There are unspoken rules within it, kind of like MPAA's unspoken rule that one F-word is allowed in a PG-13 movie. The basic idea of this franchise is "you can't 'cheat' death," but the point of movies is to show how the characters deal with it and possibly find loopholes to survive. Sure, the theme is "you can't 'cheat' death," but the movies aren't going to spell it all out for you. You have to rationalize on your own. The last two characters in FD2 survived the movie and that is that.

But, that doesn't mean that FD3 is set in a different universe outside of the first two films. They did refer to the events of Flight 180 and also refered to the events of highway 180. They referred to Flight 180 more, though, because that was the first time this "cheating death and paying for it" thing ever occured. They referred to Highway 180 quickly (it was one of the pictures in the girl's photos/homework of their debacle) and it didn't need to be referred too as much.

To correct a mistake, it's "Highway/Route 23", not 180.

But that's the second movie's explanation to having its two main characters survive, while it might make sense inside FD2, it doesn't make the least sense in the FD universe as a whole Because if you could 'escape' death like that, then Alex, Clear and Carter wouldn't be dead in the first place, since Alex pulled the 'clean slate' stunt at the end of the first movie when he saved Clear by taking the powercable with his hands, dying, and coming back.

My theory is that 'new life can defeat death' is a crock of it. Burke and Kim were allowed to live just long enough so death could kill them all off with one big blow which is the subway accident. Remember the subway accident was going to happen even if Wendy, Kevin and Julie didn't get off the roller coaster (many others died in the subway, people that were meant to). Maybe death just waited until it could gather Wendy, Kevin, Julie, Kimberly and Burke in one spot with no escape and kill them all off.

Wow thats really cool. How did you figure that Kimberly and Thomas were on the train?

It was said in an interview that A.J. Cook and Michael Landes were supposed to be in the scene but couldn't because of time restraints or something. Shame, it would've been fantastic to see the five deaths in the same subway crash.

[slasherfan]

I just went to see the movie again and I noticed two new things.
1. While this isn't an omen or anything, I noticed on the grave, Jasons full name is Jason Robert Wise.
Also in the drive through scene, you know that truck that backs up and blocks them in from Wendys side, after they got out you get a good look at the truck and you can see it's the same truck they drove past in the opening of Final Destination 2, the one with "Drink Responsably" written on it.

[X-Nightcrawler]

Has anyone read that interview with James Wong that said that Amber was originally supposed to have a bigger part in the movie where we saw her in the coaster, getting off, and getting killed on a treadmill. She was supposed to be sitting next to Lewis, odd that they cut out her entire scene.

But it makes sense, because having her sit next to Lewis would give away the fact that Amber, Perry and Julie were in the coaster, which was like the only real twist in the movie.

[Duke Nukem]

The only thing that bothered me was how Julie never told her sister about being on the roller coaster. Her sister's friends die on the ride and she never consoles her about it. She just acts as a cold bitch. Sure, she gave her back the bracelot, but she should have turned to her and told she was also on the ride and understands how she feels. Something like that.

Interestingly, I heard that the novel goes more into detail and supposedly explains that Julie had a heart condition. She wasn't supposed to go on such a ride at all. And from that standpoint, one could assume she was being rebelious and thought it was best to not tell her sister about being on the ride at all, after she freaked out.

So in my eyes, the only real plot hole is the filmmakers failure to address this. Hell, they could have had Julie tell her sister in the finale after "Death" goes crazy on them. But no, they left it as if they tacked that on last second as a final twist.

But, unless I'm mistaken and there are lines between them that disclose this that I missed, I would love be proven wrong.

[X-Nightcrawler]

Originally posted by Duke Nukem
The only thing that bothered me was how Amber never told her sister about being on the roller coaster. Her sister's friends die on the ride and she never consoles her about it. She just acts as a cold bitch. Sure, she gave her back the bracelot, but she should have turned to her and told she was also on the ride and understands how she feels. Something like that.

Interestingly, I heard that the novel goes more into detail and supposedly explains that Amber had a heart condition. She wasn't supposed to go on such a ride at all. And from that standpoint, one could assume she was being rebelious and thought it was best to not tell her sister about being on the ride at all, after she freaked out.

So in my eyes, the only real plot hole is the filmmakers failure to address this. Hell, they could have had Amber tell her sister in the finale after "Death" goes crazy on them. But no, they left it as if they tacked that on last second as a final twist.

But, unless I'm mistaken and there lines between them that disclose this that I missed, I would love be proven wrong.

You're talking about "Julie". Amber is Julie's friend whose only line is something like "Look who I got to sign my yearbook!"

And yeah, I'm interested in reading the novel.