All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Read on or go back — make your choice.
For the main Narm page for Saw, go here.
In general:
- For starters, it's clear that Lionsgate wanted to use the then-recent 3D film format due to its popularity after the success of Avatar. It would be acceptable if not due to the fact that it's emphasized everywhere in this film, using overelaborate effects that make it seem like Lionsgate was attempting to show that it's awesome for just about any film (alongside the lack of a non-3D version, as explained in the entry below).
- While the same blood from previous films was used for this one, it was edited to a hot pink color so that it wouldn't look off in 3D viewings. However, no versions of the film adapted for non-3D viewings were made at all, and thus the pink color is very noticeable in such viewings. Because of this, the blood can be seen like liquid cotton candy instead of actual blood, and is likely to make the bloody moments look ridiculous and hard to take seriously.
- Many fans were looking forward to finally see the result of the Reverse Bear Trap, only to be let down by the pink blood ruining the shot. Granted, it's still immensely disgusting, but that one Special Effect Failure prevented the whole scene from having a stronger impact.
- Hoffman becomes a ridiculously successful and overpowered mass murderer in this film. He drops all pretense and subtlety as Jigsaw's successor and instead focuses on getting revenge on Jill while leaving a massive trail of bodies in his wake with overly elaborate traps and tricks. No mention is made of how he's able to do all this, how he's carried on with the tests on his own, or how he can find time to set up a game for Bobby while hunting down Jill and murdering about half of the police force. Yeah, John, he's not a true killer at all.
- However, the notion that Gordon may have had the majority responsibility for Bobby's game rather than Hoffman may account for some of this.
Specific moments:
- Brad and Ryan are in a terrifying trap in which at least one person is about to get horribly maimed in front of their eyes. When they decide to let Dina die, they're not too terrified to give her a sassy Pre-Mortem One-Liner.Ryan: I think we're breaking up with you, Dina.
- The trap in Jill's dream sequence. While it might be somewhat realistic in how it's depicted, there's a Special Effect Failure wherein we get a quick, silly glimpse of Dummy!Jill's boob on one of the body segments getting torn apart.
- In the Horsepower Trap, a racist skinhead named Evan is glued to a car seat, with his three fellow gang members trapped around the car or its garageSpecifically . It is scary, but Hoffman's lecture about racism on tape is juxtaposed with shots of the victims struggling in panic, which can unintentionally make the scene quite amusing as his speech becomes background noise to the skinheads flailing around during their struggle. Additionally, Hoffman's speech sounds like something out of a Saturday morning PSA about racism, especially the kicker that a trap for racists is built to involve skinning because "we are all the same color on the inside".
- As a bonus point, when the memetic Saw-related Twitter user jigsaw_quotes (who sometimes posts actual character quotes from the series) tweeted "you and your friends are all racists", which is almost verbatim from this film (only removing "your girlfriend"), many people who didn't watch Saw 3D understandably assumed it was one of their many original jokes.
- When they first enter the safe house, Gibson rants to Jill about her being insane for trying to kill Hoffman with the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0. His tone (which he keeps after the rant) doesn't sound rather stern for his mood by then, and his wording consists almost entirely of either him calling Jill "crazy" over and over, or making unnecessary clarifications to her."You're crazy, you know that? I knew you were crazy the minute I laid eyes on you... crazy.""It's called a safehouse! SAFE! HOUSE! Get it?"
- Gibson returns to the Horsepower Trap's scene when Rogers tells him over the phone that an explosion just happened. The way he asks "Is anyone hurt?" just before another explosion comes off in an amusing way.
- Bobby's sudden change in tone when he fails to save Nina in time. He calms down immediately afterwards."Why couldn't you just SHUT THE FUCK UP?!"
- Jigsaw in a hoodie and a backwards baseball cap. Enough said.
- Even more ridiculous is that Tobin Bell doesn't even try to make John talk to Bobby with a more normal tone in order to conceal to him that he's the actual Jigsaw watching him, instead settling on his typical Creepy Monotone voice. One could just wonder why Bobby didn't suspect the way John spoke over the entirety of their conversation.
- The tense moment that begins with Bobby's discovery of Suzanne's trap is quickly interrupted by Billy the Puppet smashing through a glass window to deliver the trap's instructions. It makes one wonder what sort of mechanism was hidden behind the walls in order to make such a dramatic announcement.
- This exchange between Bobby and Cale when the former finds the latter during the trial:Bobby: Do you know where Joyce is?
Cale: I can't fucking see, man! How am I gonna know where Joyce is?! - All the drama put on Bobby's final test to save Joyce is practically a waste, considering that Joyce had no role in publishing or advertising Bobby's false story, nor did she have the most screentime in the flashbacks to it. Besides, the fact that Bobby had already failed to save Nina, Suzanne and Cale would make you give up hope that he can succeed for once, and he ends up failing anyway.
- The shot in which Lawrence throws the hacksaw away from Hoffman's reach is purposefully framed so that the hacksaw flies in dramatic slow-motion towards the camera, reminding the viewer one last time that they're watching a 3D film before it ends.
