traps were mid in this

It’s fine. It’s better than the saw movies since 4 but I understand now why critics loved this so much. It’s morally very black and white and does it’s best to justify the sadism of the traps (which are also relatively tame). Critics are plebs and overly sensitive dumbasses so obviously they gravitated more towards this.

I still love the first the most. The tension and mystery elements of that are incredible

I also miss the rawer aesthetics of saw 3 and the traps here were kinda simplistic compared to the older movies. I also miss the more morally ambiguous elements of the characters from the first 3 saw movies. Jigsaw has always been a complicated character because he’s obviously sick in the head but there’s also a reason for why he does what he does. And in this movie, he’s just straight up turned into a good guy which betrays the raw, twisted feel of what a good Saw movie is supposed to give. It’s whatever, the movie was fun. But it’s clear to me that the objective here is to make money and not offend people. The days of that raw and gritty feel of the first 3 saw movies are over because of todays politically correct age.

reminds me of the meme (which I then had to recreate lmao)

Greutert did a fantastic job. X was so well shot. Especially at the beginning before the action began. Felt like an indie drama. Just everything about this was so well shot. If X indicates the direction the Saw franchise is gonna go in, I’m all for it tbh.

That’s cool though that he seems to really love this franchise!

Yeah I seen one of the dudes that wrote the screenplay for X is active in the Saw Reddit. He seems so excited and happy at X’s success and response from critics / hardcore fans

X definitely reinvigorated the franchise.

I’m so excited for XI now

Naw you’re foul for this lmao

Also I don’t remember the title card for Jigsaw and Spiral but Saw X has a different theme for it’s title card. 1-7 all had the same style / font but X is like super different

We're so back

it was aiiiight

I don’t understand how he could possibly be a good guy if he’s torturing people lol

Pretty good

I’m gonna make Saw my October franchise I’m kinda invested even though this sets up another inbetweenquel

This was flaaaaaames

This. Idk wtf they smoking

This s*** gave me chills as soon as i pressed play

i hear you but i think there's something going on under the john vs cecilia surface like it starts off as a straight up revenge movie but u always end up feeling bad for the victims and thinking their traps are unfair bc this time around the victims spend way less time complaining and do what they're asked and still die for a matter of seconds, this doesn't really happen in any other saw movie

it's probably the best one of the saga wrt confronting john's methods even though the depiction of john himself is not good

Inbetweequel is smoother but I like your word

Yeah I really don't think the movie makes him a downright "hero" - there's a big difference between being a protagonist and being heroic.

The movie does a great job of making you think of him as despicable and disgusting during the main traps - he's cold, calculating and heartless when it comes to the victims' tests, and so whenever they fail by a matter of seconds or whatever you see John as the horrible individual he is.

This is emphasized even more later on with the Cecilia stuff as you say - even though she's presented as a downright supervillain basically, they still have stuff like her calling him out as a hypocrite, or that clever little reversal of the dialogue from earlier ("A moral lecture, from YOU?")

iit gets complicated because there's stuff like every Carlos scene where John is indeed heroic imo, but even the revenge movie setup requires a hero to root for, like yes he's despicable but during the bloodboarding trap u're still rooting for him 100% or atleast the movie wants u to... I'm gonna rewatch it soon but for now I think he only gets truly challenged during the traps, which is enough for me anyway

u make a good point wrt the Cecilia scenes, but i'm not sure how much credit her speeches are given by the movie considering at that point he's super in danger but yeah I need to thin k about this

I just binged the first three Saw movies

Haven’t seen em since the theaters so there’s a lot I didn’t remember
This is a good f***ing franchise so far
Let’s see how it goes

The first one is a straight up classic
Massively influential, iconic, tense
Love the rules, love the humor, love where it leads us, and it moves along fast
Still perhaps the greatest twist of all time

The second one is excellent
Oh my god the LORE
Sure, the traps are fun, but the real draw of this series is the soap opera plot

The third one is pretty flawed because Amanda has to act like a different, more nonsensical character out of nowhere to make the plot work
Still, the way they portray her as this crazy jealous b**** in love with John is super camp, it’s like she’s in High School having her emo phase, I love it
The way they mythologize things with ambiguity, teasing out the key players, leaving you in the dark…
You feel a connection to characters by virtue of sheer continuity and narrative momentum
Returning to that fated Bathroom is like returning to the Garden of Eden
And when you receive a new piece of the puzzle… a new piece of sacred text… you want to stand up and cheer

There’s never been anything like it, and there will never be anything like it ever again

Yeah, you're 100% on the money at the end there especially - I think the way franchises work these days is so different, and the expectation from most modern audiences is different too, so I don't think we'll ever again see a horror franchise which is as crazy convoluted while still feeling balls out at all times like this series did from the 3-7 era.

By the time you hit 4 and 5 and they're just bringing in all these DEEP cuts every 20 minutes or so it's just bonkers - someone walking into the theatre on a whim on a Friday night and having their first Saw movie be 4 for example would be so insanely lost. Yet at the time it was just par for the course for the fandom - we'd be hitting up the forums the day of release and discussing every tiny little facet like it meant the world.

they would have the asian mf in the vacuum trap smh

I disagree here with necessarily feeling bad for the victims and I don’t think the movie wants you to feel bad for them either. If you removed the Saw name and we didn’t have the cultural context to what Jigsaw is, this plays for the most part like a revenge film.

The victims are all supremely detestable human beings with exception to Gabriela, which the film has a clear soft heart for and wants the audience to root for her and I’d argue even plays up the identity politics to show a woman of color at the mercy of the much worse white people who employ her (leading to her literally being killed by her white employer in a very heavy handed moment). The whole movie feels like a Liam neeson movie honestly

also i despised the final trap between the woman and that dude. Jigsaws traps are meant to be poetic and a way for the victims to reawaken themselves for their horrible mistakes. This one just enables the piece of s\*\*\* snake to be a piece of s\*\*\* snake

He’s torturing awful people who deserve it. I think you also gotta realize the movie is pretty aware of the cultural love for Jigsaw and plays up the traps very much like fun fan service rather than something truly diabolical and f***ed up. The best Saw movies (particularly the first 2) recognized its victims were not good people but also depicted the terror and f***ed up nature of Jigsaw and the traps they were dealing with. It’s a battle of moral complexity where you’re never truly sure who to root for and that’s what made them so effective. This by comparison feels like they want me to root for Jigsaw. In fact the movie literally contains a third act where you see Jigsaw trying to save a little kids life and succeeding which is devised to make you root for him and think of him as a badass hero who gets his revenge on those awful scammers

Saw 5 gets too much hate
The traps for the group are conceptually weak, sure
But I actually enjoy the cat and mouse game with Hoffman and Strahm
And the ending is one of the series best, so iconic