Why one log truck changed how a whole generation drives

This is a love letter to stunt teams.

It’s become such a common, recognizable reference that it barely even qualifies as a joke anymore: the automatic “NOPE” that bursts from your soul when you’re driving and you see a log truck.

Gatekeeping trauma. It’s what makes millennials millennials.

As of this writing, there are five entries in the Final Destination franchise, and almost half of them are good! They all follow the same ruthless plot to an almost slavish degree: the protagonist enters a mode of transportation or transportation-related entertainment venue, experiences a catastrophically deadly event, and then wakes up to realize that 1) said event did not really happen, but 2) it is a couple minutes away from really happening. The protagonist hysterically tries to warn people and manages to save about a dozen (all of whom are rightfully skeptical), only for the deadly event to still happen right in front of them. Shortly thereafter, the survivors begin dying in improbable ways, and the movie becomes a race to escape Death’s clutches a second time. Usually—but unfortunately, not always—our protagonists encounter Tony Todd’s creepy-cool mortician Bludworth, and he tells them cryptic riddles and laughs at their doomed attempts to fight their fate.

The only time I want a mortician telling me this is if the mortician is Tony Todd and he’s saying it in his Tony Todd-ass voice.

These movies exist to support two things—the Rube Goldbergian traps that kill the catastrophically deadly event survivors, and the catastrophically deadly event itself. You don’t come to these movies for the acting or the character development (except, weirdly, the pretty great 5th one). You come to see the ludicrous ways these people will go splat.

The catastrophically deadly events (last time) in this franchise are as follows:

• an explosion on Flight 180, a flight that gets name-checked throughout the series, but only to great effect in the 5th one

• a massive highway pile-up kicked off by some logs falling off a truck

• a rollercoaster crash that oddly doesn’t kill anyone who’s already on the ground (have y’all even played Rollercoaster Tycoon?)

• A NASCAR crash that spills into the stadium and somehow takes the entire structure down

• A swinging suspension bridge collapse that authorities chalk up to “high winds”

(Those last two are in glorious 3-D! So many pointy things comin at ya! And 5nal De5ination 5 , aka 5nal Goes West, is my fave of the franchise for ten tons of reasons. But one of them is that they spend the entire opening title sequence just HURLING items at the camera, including items from the most memorable kill scenes of the franchise, and the energy is like, “yeah, we know. Isn’t it great?”)

Of these five, none has lodged itself so firmly in the public consciousness as the one with the logs.

Some of that is due to the universality of the setting. Statistically few people have been to a NASCAR race, for instance, so that’s not a widely shared fear. And rollercoaster and plane crashes are a lot more rare than our fears would have us believe, even though it can be rather cathartic to see common fears like that depicted onscreen. But you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t been on a highway at some point, and the idea that things could spiral so gruesomely out of control in such a mundane place is uniquely upsetting. (Meanwhile, the bridge collapse is so exactly middle of the pack. Unless I’m three and on that one Universal Studios ride, I’m not particularly afraid of bridge collapses, and this one didn’t change my mind.)

But the big reason for this scene’s staying power that I want to talk about is how it was shot.

First off, there is very little CGI at play here. You’re seeing real cars crashed by real stunt drivers, and real explosions and fire. Like, people are slicking themselves in fireproof jelly and letting their coworkers light them on fire to get the shot. You’re seeing people interacting with their physical environment, which can’t be said for most of the big budget action movies that have come out in the two decades since Final Destination 2 dropped. Even the biggest CGI shot in the movie doesn’t feel like CGI. It actually feels very heavy.

More bounce to the ounce.

Turns out, logs don’t really bounce like that, no matter how many times the crew drops them. So those logs are CGI creations, rendered beautifully into an otherwise physical shot, and given weight with a nice camera shake on impact. They’re entirely unreal, but they feel terrifyingly real. Brilliant stuff.

The scene is also a very efficient example of setup and payoff. We’ve been introduced to all the main players in this disaster, and—most importantly—we’ve been given a clear sense of where they are in relation to each other. So when that first domino of a log falls, everyone falls into their place in the wreckage in a most satisfying way. Unlike, for instance, most of the climactic scenes in just about any MCU movie.

Ooh! Should I leave a note??

Final Destination 2’s director, David R. Ellis, was a stunt performer and second unit director (the ones on set typically in charge of filming big action or visual effects-heavy sequences) before he started directing films. This puts him in a fellowship with people like Chad Stahelski, who directed the John Wick franchise; and David Leitch, who co-directed John Wick and most recently directed stunt team love letter The Fall Guy. These are some of the loudest voices behind the push for more stunt team recognition, including a stuntwork Oscar. Even known showboater Tom “I Definitely Do All My Own Stunts” Cruise talks frequently and respectfully about his stunt team—as much talk as there is about the ongoing need for movie stars, the spectacles that keep us excited about going to the movies could not happen without the often anonymous people who literally risk life and limb to entertain us.

All of this to say: passionate stunt craft is the reason that one log truck changed the way an entire generation drives. So when you’re changing lanes away from an ominous log truck, don’t thank god—thank a stunt performer.