ChineseDownhill wrote:
I appreciate the thoughtful response. You definitely know more about this franchise than I do. I've seen 'em all except Saw X, but many of the later sequels I've only watched once and couldn't name any characters beyond obvious ones like Jigsaw and his wife.
Then you are missing out. William Easton is a great character and his game is one of the series absolute best. I was an active member on the franchises official forum House Of Jigsaw and after Saw 6, both director Kevin Greutert and Easton's actor Peter Outerbridge engaged with fans on the forum. Saw 6 has one of the best scenes in the series that proved just how crucial the fans were.
- One of the oft-repeated lines by fans after Saw 5 was from the opening trap, "
Right now you are feeling helpless," and the writers wrote that into the script.
THIS SCENE utilizes it and symbolism very well. The building tension as Hoffman paces the room looking for a way out as he undoubtedly knows he will be caught, the double meaning of his line of being anxious about the decoding of the tapes voice goes hard, for sure feeling helpless. It also applies to the other agents because they’re in the room with whom they suspect might be more involved, up to and including being an accomplice. The way Erickson talks about scientific findings regarding uric acid levels and Eccrine gland residue acts as a perfect crescendo of the ever building tension before mayhem ensues. But I suppose that masterclass scene in using symbolism to build tension before exploding with a horrifying evil of Hoffman murdering three people, one of which he sets ablaze while still alive, is inferior to a scene of a person levitating and another throwing squirts of magic water repeating the line, "
the power of Christ compels you."
Excuse me while I call the Academy Awards.
ChineseDownhill wrote:
We'll have to agree to disagree on this point:
Quote:
... you ask a fan ( like myself ) or a critic ( throw a dart ) there is unanimous agreement that the sequels are what people think of ... ... when people think of Saw ALL of the elements they mention as either loving or hating, as brilliant or stupid, began or was solidified in the sequels ...
I can't prove this, but my sense is that general filmgoers would associate the Saw franchise with
Tobin Bell's character, clever traps, more explicit violence than the typical R rated horror flick, flawed characters who get 'taught a lesson,' and a big reveal at the end. All of which were established in the first movie.
I have been following the series since before the release of Saw 2 and besides the twist ending, everything you listed originates in the sequels. No one knew a thing about
Jigsaw from the first film other than his name was John and he fancied himself as different from serial killers, despite being the very definition of one.
Clever traps? The original film is 103 minutes and you know how much time is spent on the traps? 9 minutes! 9!!! The film is also inexplicably tame so I am not sure where you are getting
more explicit violence from. The original NOES had buckets of blood and that was 20 years prior, furthermore you know what film came out just 246 days before Saw and makes it look like a Sesame Street episode by gory comparison? Passion Of the Christ. That film is nothing BUT torture porn and people were supposedly emotionally wrecked by it despite it being manipulatively shallow and boring.
Flawed characters? The first real flawed character in the franchise was Eric Matthews, who originated in Saw 2, the only character in the original one could claim was flawed was Amanda and that is a stretch. Jigsaw is no better than the people he sets up in traps, unless you are talking about hypocrisy.
ChineseDownhill wrote:
Put differently, I also suspect (again, no way to prove it) if you told mainstream audiences "Describe the final moments of any Saw film," a whole bunch of them would say the 'dead body' on the floor was alive the whole time!
The twist in the original is one of the dumbest and poorest excuses for a twist ending ever put to film. The story is a Whodunit and you know what the number one rule of a Whodunit is? The observer has to be given a fair chance at figuring out the mystery. A good example of a Whodunit would be the board game Clue, ever played it? If so, you would know it is not fair if someone just pulled a random person out of whole cloth and claimed that was the killer. So maybe the Jigsaw killer was Dimebag Darrel, or maybe it was Fred Flinstone, or maybe it was your own front door. The twist has to be something that was right there in your face the whole time, to where when you watch it again knowing the twist, you can point out all the ways in which the film(story) fooled you the first time. A GREAT example of a twist ending is 2009's The Uninvited. I knew the film had a twist ending and it still completely fooled me. The killer in Saw was just some guy laying in the background the whole time and, with that, I feel the need to write something on this... Obviously you can skip this next part if you want but it needs to be spelled out to strengthen my original post about how awful James Wan's movies really are.
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I saw the original film in 2005, before the release of Saw 2, when me and my closest friend watched it. He loved the movie and brought over the DVD, talking about how much I would like it because of its 'realism'. About 35-40 minutes in or so I turned to him and said, "I bet you I know who the killer is not," and when he asked I answered, "
the guy on the floor." ... Now my friend paused the movie and with better acting than ANYONE in the film claimed he only paused the movie because he did not want me to miss anything and kept a poker face in that he did not lead on I had correctly guessed the ending. He asked why I thought that and my exact response was, "No one would be stupid enough to write that because NO ONE could ever pretend to be dead that long."
Seriously, the film's story takes place over 8+ hours and Jigsaw never once had to fart? Never once had a really irritating itch on like his foot or something? Never did the pathogens in the air make him have to sneeze? Laying face down for long periods of time is a bastard on ones bladder and yet he never had to take a piss? He is also laying in a water substance atop a concrete floor. Both Gordon and Adam were electrocuted BY HIM ( proving he was conscious the whole time ) and the ONLY possible way they could have been would be through their shackles, which were always on the floor. Jigsaw should have been at least jolted by the electrical current since both concrete and water are electrical conductors.
Zepp is worst red herring in the movie by far, perhaps in horror history. Try to see where I am coming from with this here. The whole time the film wants you to believe he is the Jigsaw killer, which I did not believe for a split second. He commits the acts of kidnapping and attempted murder, aggravated because he is using a weapon. That is two felonies with one of the victims being a young minor. You do realize that those charges would bring about a life sentence, right? There would have to be some pretty powerful dirt on you to make you do that, right? Yet the ENTIRE motivation for doing something THAT illegal was that Jigsaw had poisoned him. He could have done ANYTHING else instead of what he did, yet I know some will claim he did not have enough time, but... ...It was, again, after 8 hours and he still has the strength to fight off a woman, get stabbed in the outside of his knee with a pair of scissors, get in two shootouts with a cop ( with a high speed chase in between those ) and then get into a physical fight with 6'5 Danny Glover before winning, and then opening a very heavy door to the bathroom. That sound like someone who is barely able to live due to a poisoning?
He could have gone to an ER with his evidence(see: cassette tape) and informed the police officer that is ALWAYS on duty there. Considering he would now be a direct link to the cities notorious serial killer, the hospital would there ( or after transporting him to a poison control clinic ) give him the greatest care imaginable. Within 3-4 hours they would have identified what he was poisoned with and EXACTLY which antidotes were needed to inoculate him. But I suppose none of this would have occurred to him to do, considering... HE WORKS AT A FUCKING HOSPITAL!
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See what I mean about how unforgivably stupid Saw 1 is? NONE of the sequels besides Saw 7 EVER had that much brain-bending stupidity, in fact they were mostly very intelligently written. So as I said people often think of aspects that were introduced in the series ( a la rapid editing to exhibit raw emotion, signaling out a corrupt police precinct, multiple victims in a 'game' needing to work together to survive, one person being responsible for the lives of others in traps, incredible transitions and traps befitting of the persons perceived evil, etc... ), rather that is because they love them or hate them. Find them smart or dumb, find them entertaining or boring. James Wan made a terrible movie that had just enough of an original idea that the producers found a different director ( Darren Lynn Boussman ) in order to spice it up and make it more appealing. This has been my entire argument that even if you love and worship on the ground of Saw, the series belongs much more so to Boussman or Greutert than it EVER did to James Wan.