[gbk33]

OK, I watched Saw 4 last night and WTF? Can someone explain to me what the hell happened at the end there? Was the stuff from Saw 3 happening at the same time? Where the hell did Earl The Bruce come from at the end? I was totally lost.

please treat me like a 3 year old and explain it to me.

[Paper Pills]

saw 3 and saw 4 are occuring at the same time.

while jeff is going through his test and jeff's wife is keeping jigsaw alive....rigg is going through his test.

hoffman is jigsaw's apprentice before amanda...that's how he was getting all the info on the criminals...from hoffman.

so in saw iii, amanda shoots lynn, jeff kills amanda, jeff kills jigsaw, in turn killing lynn. jigsaw knew he would die (either by jeff or cancer) so he set up games to test the police/fbi, amanda, rigg and jeff all at the same time.

so in saw IV, we see the tape jigsaw swallows that will set up hoffman's test in saw V (currently in pre-production). hoffman plays this tape at the beginning of saw IV and the entire movie then becomes a flashback from the time he is playing the tape at jigsaw's autopsy...until the ending scene when we see him in the autopsy again.

then in the flashback we see that hoffman set up the fbi agents, see that hoffman was part of the reason that dina meyer got killed, and see that hoffman was the guy that kept donnie wahlberg alive for 6 months. when the fbi chick perez is shot in the face by the exploding billy doll...fbi dude strahm becomes enraged with solving the case.....this occurs at the same time that hoffman is pretending to be held hostage with donnie wahlberg and at the same time that jeff is going through his trials in saw iii. also, you have to ask, as i did, during saw IV...just how jigsaw knew the names of the FBI agents....it is clear that hoffman had to tell him. so....i guess what you can think is that in the time that you don't see hoffman and amanda in either saw iii or saw iv, that's when they were setting up the FBI agents games like the billy doll in the principal's office, etc

so....when hoffman reveals himself at the end as jigsaw's apprentice, confirming strahm's guesses at the beginning of saw iv, that amanda couldn't have acted alone, hoffman leaves rigg to bleed to death then he goes to make sure jeff did his part as jigsaw was to die...either by jeff's hand or due to his terminal disease. strahm walks in and does his part in the play as jigsaw forebade by shooting jeff who wouldn't drop the gun since he was pissed that he just killed his wife and his daughter was trapped. strahm doesn't see hoffman after shooting jeff so hoffman then locks strahm in the room with jigsaw, he doesn't kill him for unknown reasons....

perhaps it is because when we see hoffman outside, he says everyone is dead...presumably because he wants to play the innocent officer so that no one thinks he is involved. when the rest of the cops go in to discover jigsaw, setting up the autopsy that opens saw ive, they find strahm in there alive. he has to be alive because of the timing...there was no one left in there to kill him (at least that we have yet seen) and agent strahm is also appearing in saw v (same actor as long as he can get out of shooting "aliens in america" in the summer when production will begin.) the only reason strahm might not be alive in saw V would be that jigsaw had another apprentice that kills him after hoffman locked him in there. then strahm would appear in flashbacks in saw V at best. makes sense a little since there has to be at least 1 more apprentice that will set up hoffman's game in saw V. i am not sure that cecil is dead....maybe he was turned after lots of pain and torture...even though jigsaw hated him.

saw v and saw vi are being filmed back to back as per the current rumor mill

now...there is a possibility that one of the next saw's will concentrate on the search for jeff's daughter...but there is also a possibility that she was trapped somewhere there, presumably where amanda could look after her...so she might have been found in the process of finding jigsaw's body when all the cops were in the factory.

finally, jigsaw's wife has yet to finish her part in this....the buildings in question where co-owned by her and art blank. there is more to her character than what has been explained so far. i wouldn't be surprised if her role isn't flushed out until saw VI...so you go through saw V thinking she was innocent...to build up to it.

[gbk33]

Hot damn, that's a lot of stuff to figure out. Thanks for the explanation Dr. Pills, makes a lot more sense now. I guess I'll have to see V and VI to figure it all out now. What a confusing fucking movie.

[enrage13]

i still didnt fully get the ending.
saw 4 was a let down IMO but thats what i get for watching it.

[Paper Pills]

i got everything...but it annoyed me. the first time you see jeff in saw IV is when he is banging on the lights walking in the halls....then as he walks up to jigsaw's death bed....so i knew at that point, they were merging the story lines....but what really pissed me off was that...

1) the whole keeping eric (wahlberg) alive didn't make sense.....that isn't with keeping in jigsaw's character...he wasn't being tested anymore...he failed his test....he should have been allowed to die...keeping him alive just to test rigg is clearly just a way to move the plot along...it doesn't keep with jigsaw's character

2) hoffman's motivation or relationship to jigsaw wasn't explained....i think when the montage of realizations was occuring...we should have had some indication of why they were related...i don't like having to wait for saw V to see that

3) the most important part of these movies are the twists at the end....but this one was the most convoluted...even more than saw ii. obviously saw iii and the original were fairly straightforward endings, even though there was a twist...but the beauty of those was that there were few players at the end.....for saw ii and saw iv to work..too many people had to do exactly what jigsaw thought they would do...and the plots are too grandiose. i hope they don't try to make saw V bigger in scope....make it more character focused and limited like the original and iii and it will be better.

4) finally....the last thing that pissed me off is that the traps are getting too elaborate. the stuff in the original could be made by 1 engineer....saw ii...a little less believable but non the less...nothing too outlandish that couldn't be done by 1-2 people.....but now in saw iii and saw iv...we are supposed to believe that either hoffman, amanda or some other apprentice had the technical and surgical know how to build all this stuff...its too much of a leap. i mean the rack in saw iii or the ice block trap for eric in saw iv....come on...that's just too much to beleive

5) the game for the 2 teachers didn't make any sense...the chick was equally guilty of the abuse since she let it happen and didn't do anything to stop it. in that game, the dude was clearly going to die...so the test was only for her??? expedite the death of her husband or die with him? that's hardly a game.

6) i know the film makers thought they were being cool...but really enough with the flashbacks of most the test subjects being at jill's clinic. it got to be too much...i get it...he tested those that jill couldn't help...those that need to help themselves...but it was like a tour of all the previous saw movies in those clinic scenes....enough already.

one final observation......art blank's final trap was retarded. first off...this is the 2nd character that jigsaw allows to go and come in his game while knowing he is in a game...the first was the guy from "lost" in the original saw...who was out and about....who could have easily left town...gone to another hospital and gotten treatment for what ailed him. art blank has to just go to home depot....get some supplies...sheet metal...re-bar...steel...anything thick that can withstand the chopping power of the spine cutter to block it...or go to the police, or MIT and get an engineer there to reverse engineer the boobie trap....so that the trap can be taken off. it wasn't surgically implanted....yet like an idiot....he complies with the game. also...the art blank character doesn't keep with jigsaw's character. he never tests the same person twice.....art won his game by killing the dude in the beginning and ripping his mouth open....why is he being tested a 2nd time??? like the use of eric above....this is clearly just a way to advance the plot that wasn't well thought out because of the character jigsaw is.

each of the successive saw movies have reinforced what jigsaw stands for...more and more...right or wrong...but the games in saw iv clearly violated those rules just a bit....even when jigsaw was trying to teach rigg to see as he sees.

[hypobunny]

When the ballistics person walks into the office room & tells the other ballistics person that she knows whose fingerprints were on the bullet casing (remember the bullet casing that was found at the start of Saw IV - the policewoman who was found hanging). My husband pressed paused on that scene and looked at the ballistics report - the report detailed that the fingerprints belonged to Officer Rigg! Saw V looks to be an exciting chapter... especially since we don't know whether Rigg is alive or dead...

[gbk33]

damn...that's some good eyes