History Headscratchers / Saw

[[folder:How much sedatives?]

** This gets into the AlternateCharacterInterpretation surrounding John; he claims to be a WellIntentionedExtremist, at least some of the creators have affirmed this, and the films stopped challenging his philosophy after the third film if they ever did at all, but most of his actions only make sense if he does indeed just [[TheBully enjoy torturing people to death.]] The traps also may not be meant to be as hard as they are, since victims often do better than they have any realistic right to; notably, multiple characters lose whole limbs and are alright for minutes to hours without medical attention, and John Kramer himself gets put in, and succeeds in a trap in the tenth film, which may be meant to show he isn't a hypocrite and will is all you need to beat them.

* Doesn't this seem unfair? Realistically, wouldn't most people panic if you tell them to cut off their own limbs under 3 or 5 minutes? They are going to waste time freaking out. In Jigsaw, John even makes his victims solve a riddle under a short time limit, which is not possible in real life for most people, especially drug addicts and thieves.

** This gets into the AlternateCharacterInterpretation surrounding John; he claims to be a WellIntentionedExtremist, at least some of the creators have affirmed this, and the films stopped challenging his philosophy after the third film if they ever did at all, but most of his actions only make sense if he does indeed just [[TheBully enjoy torturing people to death.]] The traps also may not be meant to be as hard as they are, since victims often do better than they have any realistic right to (notably, multiple characters losing whole limbs and being alright for minutes to hours without medical attention).

* ''Saw IV'' shows the origin of Billy the Puppet: John was making a smaller version of him (Bobby the Puppet) for the child his wife Jill was pregnant with at the time (and subsequently miscarried due to accidental harm from one of her drug clinic patients). While it hadn't yet achieved CreepyDoll status in-universe, it still looks pretty demented. What sort of sane father would plan to give that sort of thing to ''his own kid''?!

* What's with Jigsaw's obsession with pigs? His "volunteers" wear pig masks. Even the brazen bull-like contraption at the end of ''Saw 3D'' is in the shape of a giant pig.
** In ''Saw IV'', John is shown to kidnap his first victim Cecil (the druggie that caused Jill to miscarry) at a Chinese Year of the Pig Festival. He does so by stealing two plastic pig masks from one of the stands: one to conceal his identity, and the other with a rag of chloroform inside to use on Cecil. I'm going to assume he just kinda decided to stick with the motif while also making it a morbid tribute to his unborn son Gideon, who would have been born in the Year of the Pig. Also, as he explains in ''Jigsaw'', pigs are remarkably compassionate animals, showing distress whenever they see another animal, including humans, in pain. I guess he wished we could be more like them.

*** Kramer explicitly stated he could pay for it, but he was more angry with the principle of not getting the coverage.
*** Confirmed by ''Film/SawX'' where he literally does so, flying to Mexico to undergo the treatment on his own dime.

* Are we to believe the FBI just flat-out ''gave up'' after ''Saw VI''? ''Saw 3D'' has ''an Internal Affairs division'' of all people trampling onto what had become a ''federal'' investigation. A mass murderer who had just killed multiple agents doesn't seem like something that would be shrugged off and ignored, ''especially'' after Hoffman was outed, that evidence should have been immediately turned over to the FBI instead of the locals charging in and screwing up massively.

[[folder:Meta]]
* This has nothing to do with the ''Saw'' films directly, but the public perception of the ''Saw'' series (i.e., from people who never watched it). I'm trying to figure out exactly why these people loathe the series to such a degree. Yeah, you can debate the films may not be fantastically produced, but since when did gratuitous violence single out an entire horror series as utterly deplorable torture porn (which doesn't accurately classify the series, since there's no real torture performed), and its viewers as sadistic perverts? Hollywood is built on showcasing graphic violence, especially these days, yet ''Saw'' gets singled out as THE point where it goes too far, and is an indication of the impending apocalypse? Hello?! Ever heard of Marquis De Sade, whose literature jump-started the concept of sadism? Hell, before De Sade, public brutality (a la ''Film/{{Gladiator}}'') was a staple of entertainment. Human brutality has always been around, and even with new technology, people have always discovered awful ways to kill each other. Even more ironic, when the ''Saw'' video games were released, hardcore gamers saw it as an abomination. To say nothing of the survival horror genre, ''Grand Theft Auto'', ''Gears of War'', and especially Rockstar's ''VideoGame/{{Manhunt}}'', which predated the first ''Saw'' movie, AND even made people who're used to violent video games ''very'' uncomfortable. So why single out the ''Saw'' series to this extent? It's one thing to dislike a film series, but to absolutely trash it for simply being malevolent comes off as absurd and hypocritical.
** It set a terrible trend in horror movies, that's all.
** ''Which doesn't accurately classify the series, since there's no real torture performed'': So people getting slowly crushed to death, injected with large amounts of acid, slowly getting cut in half by a pendulum, their limbs twisted and broken, and their scalps torn off for the sake of punishing them for crimes they have committed doesn't count as torture?
*** This is probably splitting hairs, but that depends on your definition of torture. Torture, to me at least, means slow and painful. With very few exceptions, most of the deaths in the films are actually quite quick, if gruesome. Most are under a second (RBT, Angel, Shotgun Collar, Garage, etc.), and almost all are under a minute. Granted, that is an extremely unpleasant minute (The Rack comes to mind...)
*** The time it takes has nothing to do with whether something is considered torture or not.
*** However, as implied above, there are exceptions. The Freezer (''III''), and starving in the bathroom (I) are definitely torture. Of course, neither is particularly gory, and neither is what people are talking about when the describe the series as [[{{Gorn}} Torture Porn]].
*** Original poster here. With few exceptions - like The Rack from ''III'' and Scalping Seat from ''IV'' - many of the gruesome deaths don't exactly seem like ''torture'' in the traditional sense. ''Film/{{Hostel}}'' does, but most of ''Saw's'' tests involve lots of self-mutilation and the occasional murder. While the victims were highly coerced to harm themselves, what with the threat of impending death, they still have some control instead of being bound, helpless, and getting tormented by some third party. This pretty much classifies every death in the first two movies, and most deaths within the entire series. Hell, even ''Film/ThePassionOfTheChrist'' fits the torture porn bill more accurately than ''Saw'' does.
*** There are plenty of forms of torture where the perpetrator never lays a finger on the victim. The United Nations Convention Against Torture defines torture as 'any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as...punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person'. So torture is the use of pain and injury, or fear of pain and injury, to force another person to behave in a certain way or perform a certain action (ie the self-mutilation in Jigsaw's traps), or punishing someone for a perceived crime through severe mental or physical suffering (Jigsaw's entire reason for his actions).
*** Also, saying that because the victims are merely "highly coerced to harm themselves" is ridiculous as in pretty much every trap the victims are FORCED to MUTILATE themselves, there's no other solution. The fact they're not tied up means nothing- they have no control, since the absolute only thing they can do to save their life is what their capturer wants.
** Popularity is the answer. Why do you think people raged about ''GTA San Andreas'' having the "sex scene" (through hacking and it was pretty lame anyway) when ''Indigo Prophecy'' had a sex scene you could control with the analog stick (and necrophilia in a cutscene)? ''GTA: SA'' was far more popular, that's why.
** People being killed quickly= okay-ish. People suffering for a minute or 2 before death= OH MY GOD THIS IS DEMON I CAN DEVIL AND IS THE END OF CINEMA!!!!!!!
** For those at least casually familiar with the films' content, and not just their reputation, the distaste may stem from the presentation of Jigsaw's philosophy. Although Jigsaw is obviously a hypocrite and a murderer, the films rarely explicitly highlight those aspects of his character, preferring to focus on his charisma and sympathetic backstory. This may leave viewers with the impression that the films excuse or even endorse his philosophy and the horrific violence it entails.
[[/folder]]

*** This one's confirmed as of VI. He tried to argue his case but was told that they wouldn't cover it and if he did go out of his way to fund it himself, his policy would be terminated.

** Saw X will actually cover this. He went for an experimental program but got scammed by its operators, by which time it was too late to do anything.

* Jigsaw is never characterized as insane or sadistic; on the contrary, the films portray him as a wise, highly intelligent, sympathetic, honorable man, in contrast to his sadistic (Hoffman) and dishonorable (Amanda) aprenntices. And the series shows you definitely don't have to be insane to believe his philosophy, as plenty of people without brain cancer joined him, including his wife, who's presented as the [[OnlySaneMan Only Sane Woman.]] [[WordOfGod The creators]] have affirmed multiple times that John is a true believer in what he does. Whether or not any major creators ''agree'' with his philosophy is up in the air, but we do know some of them see him as a "vigilante" and a "scientist" as opposed to a serial killer or villain. All his apparent hypocrisies in his actions can likely be chalked up to either writing oversights and/or [[DependingOnTheWriter the many different minds behind the scripts,]] or the fact that, however honorable and well-intentioned John is supposed to be, he's human, and human philosophies have contradictions and blindspots.