So few franchises can sustain their momentum for ten films. The Marvel Cinematic Universe currently consists of 32 movies, though spread across over a dozen series. Horror is the only genre capable of sustaining one idea, usually one villain, into the double digits.Saw Xboldly creates a tenth entry in a series that has been a mess since the second by ignoring almost every event in its 19-year legacy.
Sawhas threatened to end a few times. Someone gave the seventh entry the subtitleThe Final Chapterin an act of self-destructive confidence matchedbyFriday the 13th: The Final ChapterandJason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. None of those films were the end of their respective franchises.
Where doesSaw Xfit into the timeline?
TheSawtimeline is a disaster. James Wan and Leigh Whannell createdSawwithout intending to make sequels. By the third entry, their most iconic character was dead, and the timeline was already tied in knots.Saw Xwisely dispenses with 90% of the narrative by taking place shortly afterSawand beforeSaw II. The drawback of this approach is that it only distances the new film from the contemporary events of the old. Most of the runtime of any givenSawmovie takes place in flashbacks. Subsequently,Saw Xoccurs near the end of John Kramer’s life.
He’s been conducting his games for around a decade. The dates are questionable, but Kramer probably started his killing spree around 1995. In 2003,he recruited a detectivenamed Mark Hoffman to his cause after Hoffman attempted to disguise a murder as Jigsaw’s work. In March 2004, he put Amanda Young in the reverse bear trap contraption and added her to the team after she survived.Saw Xfinds him before he requires a wheelchair inSaw IIas he prepares Amanda to take over his work.
Saw Xsees Kramer at the endof his rope. His cancer is terminal, and his physicians have advised him to face death. He encounters Henry, a friend who survived a similar diagnosis and learns of an experimental treatment method. John travels to Mexico for the surgery. After a few days, John returns to the location to thank his theoretical saviors. He finds the site abandoned. The only thing left behind is evidence of the con that tricked John and several other terminal patients. John calls upon Detective Hoffman to hunt down the perpetrators and summons Amanda Young to help him capture them. He gathers the fake doctors and nurses into the medical site and forces each of them to play his game.
How doesSaw Xend?
Saw Xhas five central contestants. The supposed miracle surgeon, Cecilia Pederson, enlists Mateo, Valentina, Diego, and Gabriela to trick John. Diego was the cabbie who drove John to the site and a fake doctor during the mock surgery. John attaches Diego’s arms to pipe bombs and his hands to scalpels, forcing him to ruin his forearms to avoid blowing up. Diego survives and gives up the names of his co-conspirators.With Hoffman and Amanda’s help, he rounds them up. Valentina, a sex worker pretending to be a doctor, must cut off her leg with a Gigli saw and suck out some bone marrow before a larger wire decapitates her. She removes the limb but runs out of time and dies. Cecilia, a monster who loses even the facade of humanitywhen she enters the trap, cuts Valentina open and removes her intestines as a makeshift rope. She calls for help, but the phone is confiscated.
Parker, another patient defrauded by Cecilia, arrives with a gun and insists on getting his money back. Amanda knocks him out. John insists that Parker stand aside andallow the games to playout. Meanwhile, Mateo must drill into his skull, tear out a chunk of his brain, and put it into a beaker to free himself. Like Valentina, he does the deed too slowly, causing a sort of Panini press mask to close on his face and kill him. Gabriella is dangled several feet in the air while a machine burns her with radiation. She breaks her wrist and ankle with a hammer to escape her chains. She lands in a heap, injured but alive. Parker wakes up and holds Amanda and John at gunpoint. He explains that he was the person Cecilia summoned for help and orders John into a trap. Carlos, a local child, wanders into the site. Cecilia forces Carlos to join John. The game is a see-saw platform that dumps gallons of blood onto whoever is on the bottom. It requires a victim to choose who drowns. Through teamwork, John and Carlos both live. Meanwhile, Cecilia and Parker gather the cash stolen from terminally ill patients. John reveals he knew Parker was Cecilia’s partner. The room is rigged to fill with poison, and the only way to survive is a small hole. Cecilia lets Parker die and lives to see John, Amanda, and Carlos leave. They give Carlos the money. Ina post-credits scene, John and Hoffman put Henry in a trap to punish him for tricking John.
Will there be aSaw XI?
EverySawmovie is cheap to produce and inherently profitable. So long as Tobin Bell is still with us, there’s a chance of anotherSaw.Saw Xisn’t the kind of sequel that opens up a new world of potential options. It’s a story between stories. There has onlybeen oneSawmoviewithout John Kramer. It struggled at the box office and suffered terrible critical reception. These movies used to come out yearly.Saw XIcould very well come to the screen next Halloween, but it will have to build a new plotline from scratch.Saw Xset up nothing but what already existed.
Saw Xfeels much more like a movie than any of the previous entries. It’s still not very good, but it doesn’t hold down the same alien position in the market. Fans will undoubtedly turn out in droves. There’sno shortage of supportfor this franchise as it nears its 20th anniversary.Saw Xis more than more of the same, but there may still be games to be played.
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