There is a reason that most movies don’t make it to super trilogies.
Namely, there isn’t much to add. Once a movie has established itself, there is only so much that can happen in a sequel (or a trilogy) that can stay true to the loved parts of the first film and not alienate those who enjoyed it in the first place.
Let’s take a classic example. Perhaps the greatest movie trilogy of all time, the grand-daddy of them all: ‘Star Wars.”
Yes, ‘Star Wars” had six movies. And while I am in no way advocating not releasing the trilogy that I actually was alive to see in theaters, I think it can easily be said that Episode I, II and III never really came close to the magic of the original trilogy.
So if ‘Star Wars” couldn’t pull off six perfect movies, I am a little, let’s say, puzzled, at how a movie that couldn’t be further apart on the spectrum of good movies from ‘Star Wars” thinks it can somehow commit this movie malady without ever being called out on it.
Well, tonight, ‘Saw,” I want to play a game with you.
Let’s look at the first ‘Saw.” A killer who wants to teach his victims a lesson. A killer who has selected his victims by certain traits or flaws that they had. A giant twist at the end that was supposed to leave people’s minds blown. A cop who will stop at nothing to figure out exactly what is going on.
True, movie fans will remember this premise in the superior- in-each-and-every-way movie, ‘Seven,” about a serial killer who selected his victims based on the seven deadly sins.
But ‘Seven” did not continue on to have six more sequels. It knew it had a good thing and didn’t decide to overkill it, just as ‘Saw” has overdone and totally reshaped the horror genre.
Does anybody remember when horror meant scary and wasn’t just movies where buckets of blood spilled on screen? Or how about when a scary movie was more than cheap thrills and an effort to show how many different ways there are to dissemble the human body?
And while ‘Saw” has indeed had many casualties over its many box office runs, the one that you don’t see on screen is really the one that needs to be talked about the most:
How ‘Saw” has decapitated, murdered, torn limb by limb, destroyed, killed and snapped a bear trap around everything that made the horror genre good.
Well, I’m sorry, Jigsaw, but really, your movies have killed, killed and killed again what good horror movies once were, and have created the stigma that softcore porn snuff films can be marketed, made kiddy-fresh and sold to the masses yearly.
Eventually I would think that they would run out of ways to brutally slaughter people on screen, but I guess that the human mind really has no limits for violence.
‘But! But!” you might say, ‘”Saw’ has an epically enthralling storyline that makes it so there needs to be another movie. How will I be able to live if I have to wait another whole year to find out what happens in the next awesome super cool “Saw?'”
That’s fine. I can completely understand wanting to know what will happen next. But I guarantee that in ‘Saw VII,” or VIII or VIIII or CLXIX, we will still be left hanging, just to make sure that we will, yet again, come out next Halloween for another rousing adventure through the miscalculated mind of Jigsaw (or whoever happens to be continuing on this time).
My biggest problem with ‘Saw,” besides its undeserved popularity and neverending sequels, is how it has really made a complete resurgence of movies that are more torture porn than anything. These movies live and die by how much pain and suffering they can take the human body through, not on acting, not on real scares and not on any writing talent or Hollywood skill. But somehow people are eating it up. All ‘Saw” really is is actors playing out a snuff film, so how that became not only acceptable, but the regular trend for horror movies is beyond me.
It’s really got the good old scary monster movies playing second fiddle. I don’t recall Dracula ever strapping a bear trap on a person’s head, or making them saw off their own leg, but hey, that’s just me.
So, yet again, last weekend we saw another entry in the ever- fresh ‘Saw” series, marking the sixth year in a row this series has somehow managed to live on.
Will what I say change the inevitability of ‘Saw Bazillion?” No, but at least I can hope that one day, actual scary movies will come back and finally be a force that even ‘Saw” can’t cut through.
But really, come on ‘Saw,” it’s long been time now for your game to be over.
Clark is a member of
the class of 2012.
