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duh 
"catpurrs"
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 Posted - 04/27/2008 : 17:29:11
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
Because it's stupid. The killer could have turned out to be Ernie from "Sesame Street" for all the sense it made.
I suspected The Count myself. Think about it. |
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Montgomery 
"F**k!"
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Posted - 04/28/2008 : 20:54:25
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quote:
Originally posted by duh Improper Username
quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
Because it's stupid. The killer could have turned out to be Ernie from "Sesame Street" for all the sense it made.
I suspected The Count myself. Think about it.
That's typecasting. Too expected.
EM :) |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 05:33:12
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Well, I've already said I hated the twist, benj. It... I mean, yeah, it's surprising, but what does it MEAN? Nothing, pretty much. It seemed pretty cheap.
Not only the twist, but the whole movie as far as I'm concerned means nothing. The great thing about Se7en, and even to a (far) lesser extent, Hostel, was the sense that the victims deserved exactly what they got. It's like they went to hell on earth, they had their sins visited upon them. In Saw... I mean, yeah, Jigsaw is supposed to be punishing Cary Elwes and... the other guy whose name I can't remember for wasting their lives, but ultimately the punishment has close to nothing to do with their crimes, and the victims don't ever have to consider their own transgressions like they do in all the sequels. The other three are undeniably more powerful viscerally, but they're also more powerful emotionally. |
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Sean 
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 05:38:59
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SAW 3 SPOILERS
OK, I watched Saw 3 last night. I won't go on about it, but I gave it 6/10 (same as No. 2), was pretty bored for the first half, but it picked up at about the time of the skull surgery and was OKish after that.
PLOT
Stretches credibility like the first two. Such as why the woman didn't stop her husband killing Jigsaw knowing it would cause her death - she only needed to tell him. And of course the perfect timing of everything at the end was completely implausible, Jeff's entry a few seconds earlier or later would have rendered the 'test' a complete failure. But, I don't care, it's no more or less plausible than Star Wars. I have no real complaints about the plot in any of the Saw movies, this is entertainment fiction after all.
ATMOSPHERE
There wasn't any, as per Saw 2. This movie only became moderately interesting when I had some plot to think about, i.e., half way through. Both sequels lacked the tension and claustrophobia of the original. One point that annoyed the crap out of me was the 0.3 second scenes, i.e., the "flash flash flash". This forced me to turn the light partly on after a while, the flashing was simply tiresome. I'm really glad I didn't see this in a cinema. Scene changes reminiscent of strobe lights did not add anything to the atmosphere other than to make it unpleasant on my eyes.
CHARACTERS
Every character waking up to find themselves in a test has the same reaction: they scream and shout. This is boring, and also a giveaway that they will inevitably fail their test. Screaming and shouting is also all they did in Saw 2. Jigsaw was a decent enough character though.
In a nutshell, Saw had plot and atmosphere, whereas parts 2 and 3 had nothing but plot, hence only scrape through with a passing grade. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 05:41:08
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
The other three are undeniably more powerful viscerally, but they're also more powerful emotionally.
I found the sequels emotionally vacuous. I could not have cared less what happened to any of the characters. |
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MisterBadIdea
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 06:23:52
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quote:
And of course the perfect timing of everything at the end was completely implausible, Jeff's entry a few seconds earlier or later would have rendered the 'test' a complete failure.
quote:
One point that annoyed the crap out of me was the 0.3 second scenes, i.e., the "flash flash flash".
Both absolutely valid. For me, the torture scenes were so physically painful that the 0.3 second flash scenes were like a blessed relief that actually dialed down the intensity because they were so unnecessary and badly done -- I'm pretty sure that's not how they were intended.
quote:
Atmosphere: There wasn't any, as per Saw 2.
And there was in Saw 1?? I'm sorry, this just makes no sense to me. What exactly is different here?
quote:
I found the sequels emotionally vacuous. I could not have cared less what happened to any of the characters.
I simply do not understand this, especially considering how underdeveloped the characters in the original are. I find plenty of scenes in II and III that have tons of emotional impact. Jigsaw forcing Donnie Wahlberg to remember the last thing he said to his son was an angry scream. Jigsaw's pain at realizing that Amanda -- his pupil, his only ally, his sole success story and very likely his lover -- has failed the big test. Ex-junkie Amanda tossed into a pit of rusty needles. A grieving father forced to burn the cherished possessions of his dead son. The same father pushed to save the lives of those responsible for his son's death. What could you possibly point to in Saw that matches them? Not only are the characters far more developed, they're developed in a way that makes dramatic sense. Were you even watching? |
Edited by - MisterBadIdea on 04/30/2008 06:25:00 |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 10:25:51
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
quote:
I found the sequels emotionally vacuous. I could not have cared less what happened to any of the characters.
I simply do not understand this, especially considering how underdeveloped the characters in the original are.
The best way I could explain this is that different people like different people. I bet if I met some of your friends I'd find them uninteresting, and vice versa. So, in Saw 2 & 3 the scriptwriters, directors, and actors didn't give me any characters that I could give a toss about, or that I could even conceive as existing. None of them were even remotely interesting to me. If I met them in real life I'd say "Nice to meet you, goodbye" and would never give such irrelevant people a second thought. Hence I could not care less what happens to such fictional characters in a work of fiction.
Whereas numerous characters in movies such as LOTR, Fucking �m�l, Lost in Translation, The Godfather, Grave of the Fireflies etc seemed very real, and whether I liked them or not I could relate to them as human beings. How someone relates to fictional characters (as in real life) is obviously going to vary greatly from person to person.quote:
I find plenty of scenes in II and III that have tons of emotional impact.
That's great. They obviously made the movie for you, and not for me.quote:
What could you possibly point to in Saw that matches them?
I could relate to the characters. I didn't like them, but I could relate to them as people who I could conceive as existing.quote:
Were you even watching?
I watch movies in my lounge, with the lights off, and nobody else in the house, and the phone unplugged so I'm not disturbed. When I watch a movie, the rest of the universe is blanked out. So yeah, I did watch it.  |
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 10:39:13
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Oh, no! The myth is finally broken ... here I was thinking that Mr BI and Sean were the same person. But this thread definitively proves I was wrong!  Honestly, I don't know how I'm going to ever live this down. 
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benj clews
"...."
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 11:51:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
What could you possibly point to in Saw that matches them?
I could relate to the characters. I didn't like them, but I could relate to them as people who I could conceive as existing.
Exactly- I couldn't help but think "What would I do in that situation?". For a large part of Saw I was just looking for any possible out- any way that, if that were me, I could get away from that miserable room.
I never once had the same experience during any of the sequels. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 13:09:14
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That's a good way of putting it. Something in Saw made it personal (for me). But nothing in the sequels was personal (for me). Hence there's no point worrying about whether others liked the same movies as me or not. 
@BB, I'm old enuf to be MBI's Dad! |
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MisterBadIdea
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 15:27:11
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All right -- if you can relate to those characters, I can't dissuade you from it, I guess.
But I really just don't see it. Cary Elwes's performance is universally regarded as his career-worst, I think Danny Glover actually matches him in terms of badness, and The Other Guy has rather predictably not picked up many more acting jobs. As far as I'm concerned, Saw has about as much interest to me as a crossword puzzle -- once you have the solution, there's nothing there that merits any further attention. I think it's a very shallow experience; "How do I get out of a locked room" means much less to me than "Would I destroy the cherished possessions of a lost loved ones in order to save the life of a personal enemy?" |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 15:41:55
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| But is that interesting? Either one thinks one shouldn't kill anyone at all, or one doesn't. The scenario in the first one, being less extreme and thus more imaginable, is more frightening. |
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duh
"catpurrs"
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Posted - 04/30/2008 : 16:58:41
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
Whereas numerous characters in movies such as [i]LOTR,
...
etc seemed very real, and whether I liked them or not I could relate to them as human beings.
or relate to them as hobbits, dwarves and elves.
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 05/01/2008 : 00:29:22
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
As far as I'm concerned, Saw has about as much interest to me as a crossword puzzle -- once you have the solution, there's nothing there that merits any further attention.
Agreed. But the solution comes at the end, which is fine. I seldom watch movies again, and this one is no exception. It was two hours of good entertainment which is all I was expecting.quote:
I think it's a very shallow experience; "How do I get out of a locked room" means much less to me than "Would I destroy the cherished possessions of a lost loved ones in order to save the life of a personal enemy?"
A non-psychopathic human shouldn't need to think about this for more than a tenth of a second. It wasn't like this guy had murdered his family, all he did was give someone a lenient sentence. That's no justification for a 'normal' person to watch him die to save a few soft toys. Hence I didn't find the character of Jeff credible as he had to think about this.
@duh: Good point! |
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MisterBadIdea
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 05/01/2008 : 22:48:51
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quote:
A non-psychopathic human shouldn't need to think about this for more than a tenth of a second. It wasn't like this guy had murdered his family, all he did was give someone a lenient sentence. That's no justification for a 'normal' person to watch him die to save a few soft toys. Hence I didn't find the character of Jeff credible as he had to think about this.
The point isn't that it's a difficult choice, it's that it's a painful sacrifice. I think you're trivializing this character's grief and anger, which has consumed his life; granted, I did explain the situation pretty badly.
I don't know, I just think a movie, even horror movies, should have a dramatically consistent story arc. Like 21; I didn't like it because it has the structure of a morality tale but has no moral. Or sticking with the horror movies, I found Silent Hill to be wayyyy scarier and more intense than Saw, but when you look at it and ask what this movie was ABOUT, what it MEANT, you come up with nothing. That's how I feel about Saw. |
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Saw, probably crammed with spoilers
