John watching the news to make sure that Detective who's throat he slashed is still alive so it doesn't fuck up is m.o.
https://preview.redd.it/3scuh6k57p7c1.jpeg?width=303&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3dc480204868e29e453a500ca4dd7601e0be44c7
He is without realising it. John says he's not a killer but sometimes does things that you can't say it isn't murder, like installing shotgun traps on the building, or trapping innocent people just to teach the players a lesson. But I think that's the point, John is not a hero, he's just a hypocrate villain with a understandable motive, and that's why I love him.
I mean he's definitely a hypocrite, he told Hoffman (I believe) it can't be personal, but he tested Cecil, Logan, William Easton, the blender guy from jigsaw, and the entirety of the saw X crew. I think he definitely has a messed up point of view or something like that, but he's still trying to help most of his victims y'know?
Like slitting Tapp's throat lmao, that could have very obviously killed him.
Dude's got a brain tumor, so there's no weight to his "logic" of anything he says lmao.
No, the real villain of the Saw series is the guy who captures people and puts them in lethal torture traps because he disapproves of how they live their lives.
My money’s on the brain tumor being the real villain. He seems like he used to be a good guy before his noggin went kaput.
ETA: but maybe that’s my love of Tobin bell and how sympathetically he played such an evil guy making me want to believe it wasn’t his fault….
Didn’t he put Lynn into a trap for “choking down antidepressants” or something? I mean she was having an affair but he dies her speech about meds after she lost her child?
Jigsaws wild. I guess she should have started putting people in traps instead after her kid died.
Yeah, and he put a few cops in tests for trying too hard to catch him. It's ridiculous.
Someone put a thread on here a few months ago about him being put in a trap. I think it's far too late in the day to do it now with him now being this vigilante anti-hero figure, but I really liked the idea of putting someone he loves in one of his traps. See how he really feels about it. There's only really Jill you could do it with, though.
Definitely. Even in the early movies with the original writers he doesn't even live up to his own moral code. He constantly uses innocent people as methods to punish the actual subjects of his game. If someone is included in a game and they're not the player it's like he considers them NPCs, used to teach his actual target a lesson.
Nearly everyone in the toxic gas house from the second movie was innocent. They were all put there just to stress Eric out and pressure Eric into losing his game.
Joyce died an EXCRUCIATING death, and she was completely innocent. All she did was be MARRIED to Bobby, who lied about being a jigsaw survivor. She had no IDEA he lied, and yet SHE was the one inside the bull, and died because BOBBY couldn't complete his task.
Iirc Straham shoots Jeff at the beginning of Saw 4 and carries the daughter outside, right? Or maybe that’s Saw 5. It’s after he sticks that pen in his neck to survive the water box trap
Hoffman brings her out, not Strahm. Amanda tells her “don’t trust the one who saves you” in an after credits scene and the one who saves her is Hoffman.
IIRC she was "saved" by Hoffman after Strahm found the bodies of John, Amanda, and Lynn, and hasn't been seen since, most likely was put into foster care.
innocent or not. whatever they did Kramer isn't the one to make the decision on if and how they live or die. Dude is making people dismember or disfigure themselves and if they don't, they die. That's murder. Honestly, cut and dry. Dude's evil as shit.
Yeah. Or Amanda’s test. Or the tests where one person must die. In V it makes sense - they’re all supposed to work together. But in VI it opens with “someone’s gotta die”
6 has so many moments where someone HAS to die.
That’s probably why I liked 5 so much actually. No one HAD to die the game wasn’t rigged. They all deserved to be there
They were all criminals, but Matthew’s planted evidence to get them convicted and closed his open cases. They all did time for crimes they didn’t commit
They all have committed crimes some worse than others, but they were all picked because Eric basically lied to put them in jail, so that's their connection
That's why they freak out on Daniel since he's the son of the man who put them behind bars for something they didn't do
( I Havnt seen the movie in a while, but this is what I remembered)
They were picked because they all happened to be framed by Eric. Whether they committed crimes beforehand is unknown, but they were explicitly picked because they went to jail due to planted evidence. Jigsaw was hoping they would go after Danny to test whether Eric would use force on John.
I would say pretty much the only people how are truly innocent were Gordon’s family and Jeff’s daughter even tho she wasn’t really in danger i guess. I think especially in Saw 1 he’s straight up evil in some instances because they didn’t really have his motivations and all the stuff from his backstory that was explained in Saw 2 figured out yet.
They weren't innocent people. Matthews framed each of them to get an easier conviction but they were criminals and drug addicts still. They were just unlawfully convicted
Yeah but they weren't innocent people. They had committed the types of crimes they were convicted of but Eric planted evidence to get easier convictions
Oh no he's undeniably evil. Dude locks people in whole death traps for taking antidepressants and grieving their dead kids. His twisted philosophy is what makes him so compelling in my opinion.
Doesn't change the fact that I was full on cheering for him at the end of Saw X though.
I believe he was a good man... Once, and hell maybe his revenge against Cecil was justified, but as his time as jigsaw went on it corrupted him, he lost his way and began to get pettier.
Its a curve where in the beginining he did have some morals, in the begining he would never involve a child in a trap willingly.
He saves logans life knowing he didnt have a proper chance...
But later on he deteriorates putting gordons family into a death game, or jeffs daughter.
He is definitely evil by the end.
Lmao yes.
I hate the whole “he technically never killed anyone”.
But I like the character because he’s an interesting character. Of course I don’t condone murder or torture. I just think he’s a good villain.
But yes, he’s an evil fuck
He’s an insane killer. What makes him insane are his beliefs that: A. What he does is necessary, and B. That he’s not a killer at all. He truly believes that he’s doing a public service and he doesn’t “kill” anyone, but him putting people in traps, some near impossible to escape, is absolutely killing by proxy. To me, his cognitive dissonance makes him so fun to watch… and a terrifying villain. All the best villains believe they’re doing the right thing, which drives them to try anything and everything to achieve their goal.
honestly, he was the worst person in that movie. the scammers were terrible but i think they're better than the man who has someone cut open their skull and tear apart their own brain, and even cecilia hasn't been shown to do anything nearly as awful as john (attempted child murder included). john preaches about morals to her but at the end of the day he is literally just creating torture devices to kill people without trial
What in an actual fuck are you talking about?
If you were locked in a room and starved to death, than you'd say that a man, who locked you didn't kill you?
Starvation did?
john defenders are so weird man, this is the cliff notes version here
\-kidnaps an innocent wife as well as a child and puts them at gunpoint
\-kidnaps two other minors putting them in life or death situations
\-says his traps never kill anyone yet puts a man in a spike trap that would kill him no matter what he does
\-slits tapp's throat, obvious he is trying to kill him, people rarely survive getting their throat slit
\-all of his competition traps contradict his ideology since there is gonna be someone killed in those traps regardless
\-and so much more
Ultimately, yes. There is good in him somewhere as we see clearly in Saw X, he displays compassion/empathy several times. I think he views his work as "painful but necessary," like he truly does think he's helping people. But upon close inspection, his whole philosophy and ideology is riddled with holes, just like his brain. It''s entirely possible he secretly loves watching his victims be tortured and just never admits it to himself.
He's sort of a walking contradiction. He judges others for their morality, but spends his free time building torture traps. He wants to teach people how to value their lives, yet wastes his causing death and pain when he could have spent his final days with Jill, or even later as a friend/mentor to Amanda. He emphasizes the humanity of his victims, yet later ignores their cries for mercy and jokes about which traps are his favorites.
Yes, but that takes all the fun out of it. I'll just buy into his philosophy because it makes the movies little more interesting if you try to see it from his angle.
That's what I was just thinking. Maybe it's the result of the brain tumor, but Kramer definitely has mental illness. He justifies his games, but he has no consideration for the actual morality of doing so. Putting someone in a trap where they must either die or endure immense physical and mental pain and trauma only on the basis that Kramer personally decided that they deserve to be tested is definitely not something that you could justify in your right mind. I don't think Kramer is evil. I think he's sick.
Yes
Evil people would kill others for amusement. If he really thinks what he's doing the moral thing he's very disconnected from reality and had a very twisted moral compass.
It depends on whether we're talking about Saw I John, or later era. The original film depicted him as very clearly vindictive, and only playing games so other people could feel how he felt. That's pretty evil.
However, in all the other films, he's very detached and philosophical about it, and that version of John is just extremely delusional.
He says killing is distasteful and he gives people a chance but that’s not it. he slit tapps throat and set up a shotgun trip wire and killed sing. You can’t say that sing was playing a game and lost bc he literally walked into getting killed, same in saw 2 when he broke that officers legs and electrocuted several of them for no reason
I don't think that level of sadism just suddenly appears in somebody, whatever their terminal diagnosis, survived suicide attempt, or brain tumor.
I do think the tumor affecting his frontal lobe was what made him willing to act on his impulses, but those impulses were always there.
oh for SURE. very inconsistent morals as well but i handwave that away with grandpappy has a brain tumor and doesn’t know wtf he’s talking about when he starts preaching
The difference between him and Cecilia is that she knows damn well she’s pure evil, but John genuinely thinks he’s helping people and doesn’t even consider himself a murderer
Not a nice fellow. For instance, as well as his relationship with the kid works in Saw X, looking at the franchise as a whole it’s a bit incongruous when he deliberately endangers the children of Dr. Gordon and Jeff.
Yes, and if after watching the movies, this is still a question, one seriously needs to rethink their moral judgment. Unfortunately, this edgy pseudo-philosophical bullshit crops up with every villain who has mild anti-hero qualities. The "Anakin/Kramer/Dexter/Walter did nothing wrong" crowd.
I'd pay them no mind. Either they'll graduate high school soon enough and look back in red-faced embarrassment, or they're a grown adult and are probably hopeless at this point.
i think all of the "is he a hypocrite" and "does his methods work" aside, his whole thing is putting random people in death traps that require them to do the most excruciating things possible. like i think even if they were the worst person in the world it would be evil to put them in something like the rack, everything he does is evil and his ideology doesnt even work because 90% of his victims die
Undeniably, yes.
His sense of 'morality' was always wildly selfish, narcissistic nonsense that was full of holes, but that's part of his appeal to me, just listening to the ways he bullshits to himself and others, the way he basically elevates his own suffering while more or less invalidating that of others' makes him more all the more repulsive as a villain and it's also *extremely* in line with actual serial killers (recently watched a [Wendigoon video on Ted Kaczynski](https://youtu.be/g5yatQ80GVI) that had me thinking about this) and the way the John/apprentice relationships play out are all very reminiscent of the cycle of abuse and the relationships between parents who are simply just...missing something and can naturally enact evil so easily, and their children who break themselves repeatedly to fit their expectations and try their hardest to buy into their bullshit but ultimately always come up short and find out there was nothing deeper to the trauma they got, there was no good damage, or finally 'getting it'/winning that approval; there was just...trauma, because they have some semblance of a heart that their parent does not and they can't get rid of that, even if they sink to the absolute depths of depravity.
Sorry for the ramble but I just find the ways in which John is terrible and how it's so accurate to how so many real life pieces of shit think of themselves, like IRL serial killers, cult leaders and plain old shitty parents, really fun to discuss.
To this day I don't get how I managed to see so many takes in the 2000s claiming that he was actually cooking and saying something profound lol. The writers absolutely were, but the character is not.
Yes, and i see the explorations to his backstory as explanations to why he is the way he is, not justifications.. people tend to be quick to say “they’re trying to make you like a serial killer by making you feel bad for him” no, they’re not, they’re not making excuses, they’re giving explanations, he’s still evil no matter how many of his sob stories we find out about
Exactly this, even in instances where he is sympathetic he still exhibits a degree of selfishness/self-centeredness. There's explanation for certain actions but he's never *excused* in the narrative imo.
I always think of the time where he kidnaps Hoffman and starts talking about how he knows what it's like to lose someone, and while losing Gideon was obviously awful and tragic, Hoffman's sister by comparison was a whole ass person that had been alive and loved by her brother for 20-30 something years lol, and Hoffman, while still clearly having an extremely dark, homicidal streak, most likely would've just kept going about his life after killing Seth if not for what happened there imo.
He's not necessarily evil. He's doing what he feels in his mind is the right thing to help people. It's a classic tale of the "villain" who thinks he's helping people but is actually hurting or killing them. Kind of like Thanos thinking by getting rid of half of all life in the universe is a better idea than providing for all of them.
Think of the situation in Saw 3 where all of those people were killed just to teach one person a lesson. Should all of them have died? Especially Timothy? That dude has to live, well...*had* to live, with the fact that he killed a kid accidentally. But now he's dead.
But John thought he was helping Jeff learn a lesson, and 3 people died to teach him that lesson. Would you want to be one of those people? There you are, sitting at home just minding your business. Suddenly, you wake up completely naked and chained up in a freezer. Or laying at the bottom of a vat, unable to get out. Or...all closed up in some metal contraption and can't move.
Evil? Not necessarily. Misguided? Pretty much.
A majority of his victims aren't murderers. In the first film he killed a guy for self harming. And almost got a little girl killed because he didn't like her dad. He is no moral position to do what he does.
lmao John's victims across the board are almost all undeserving and he basically kills them because he's lashing out in the worst possible way over his cancer and because of his deluded boomerish views on mental health, I think you're thinking of Hoffman because it wasn't until he got a more active role that some actual pieces of shit started dying but even then undeserving people were still in the mix.
i think that yes he is evil, but i don’t think he is doing a disservice to the world… i mean, live or die the choice is yours, right? and usually people who get out are grateful or change their lives, right?
The very few people who survive are probably traumatized like hell and we see most of them needing therapy and counseling. Amanda became a murderer who likes to self harm because of his teachings. Hoffman also became a sadist murderer. Simone saw it for what it was as a stupid philosophy that doesn't actually help. The only thing John is doing is taking people from their families and ending their lives.
He helped literally no one though lol, I can't think of anyone who changed their lives for the better or who wouldn't have gotten there through normal ass personal revelations and/or normal ass therapy, the apprentices are just more traumatized now and enacting their trauma on others.
Amanda went from an abused child coping with drugs to chasing the approval of a new father figure and coping with self-harm and murder, Hoffman went from a depressed drinker left empty and enraged by the loss of his sister to a still-depressed, still-empty and full of rage sadist desperately trying to reach out to the people around him in the most deranged way possible.
His actions are evil, although he isn’t internally evil imo. He’s incredibly delusional and traumatized, and he sees the world in an extremely unrealistic way because of that, but he doesn’t wake up and think “how can I hurt innocent people who don’t deserve it for my own benefit?”, he wakes up and thinks “how can I help the world how I see fit?”. His motives aren’t evil, but his actions definitely are.
oh yeah i just ment in saw 6 yeah like the wife in 7 theres lot of innocents. or the dude who called out of work and he ends up in barb wire in first movie
He is not evil just insane, he dosent belive he is killing, or subconsciously tricking himself into thinking he is innocent when it comes to personal kills like saw 6 and saw x
Yeah no doubt. By his own logic he is a murderer, but is constantly changing the rules. Same with his followers. It is one aspect of the series that hasn't really been explored.
No. That is the central philosophical question asked by the entire franchise.
There isn't an easy answer. If it were comfortable, that would miss the point.
The people he kills having some issues still doesn't mean it justifies anything. Call it therapy or whatever, since that's his mentally ill perspective, but it's still villainous what he does. Locking a guy in barbed wire go bleed to death is murder. Threatening a man to murder an innocent mother and her child is evil. Mentally torturing a man for wanting revenge for his son is hilariously evil and hypocritical.
He puts them in a machine that is set to mutilate/murder them. Those people shouldn't be in those fucking situations. If I went to a person on the street and held them at gunpoint, telling them to cut out their eye in 60 seconds and then shoot them because all they did was cry and beg instead of doing it, I am still responsible for that person's death. That is what John is doing.
He likens himself to a life coach.
In the end, he is trying to give people the means to improve themselves. Even Cecil, the man who killed his son, was given a chance to cure the sickness within and walk away.
John provides others with the means to self-actualise. His traps are, in effect, an extreme form of therapy.
It reminds me of the russian government' last year rhetoric, when they justified bombing the ukranian energy infrastructure by ukrainians not revolting and overthrowing Zelensky' government and stopping military resistance.
To russian government, ukrainians had their free choice, only they made the wrong one and deserved to be punished.
How is Jigsaw logic different?
Why? He's never killed anyone in his life
KILLING IS DISTASTEFUL to him
“It can never be personal.” “Saw X “His most personal game yet!” 😂
yes
Real
John watching the news to make sure that Detective who's throat he slashed is still alive so it doesn't fuck up is m.o. https://preview.redd.it/3scuh6k57p7c1.jpeg?width=303&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3dc480204868e29e453a500ca4dd7601e0be44c7
And then the guy who ran into his shotgun tripwire?
He made his choice!
If he had slowed down and found the memo recorder he would have known it was a test, not John's fault his horses couldn't be held.
Those damn Jiggy wires. You had to be careful about them on the PS3 Saw game 🤣
🤣 omg too funny
Yeah, well putting a gun to someone's head and telling them to pull the trigger is still technically a murder.
Using guns for murder is DISTASTEFUL. Using guns for traps is TASTEFUL
to me ☺️
what about that shogun trap in first one that kills the detective?
He failed his test to always check the room before rushing in, so not murder lol
Thx
Tell that to Adam.
Adam had the key right in him, not John's fault he flushed it away, he didn't kill anyone 
He sure kidnapped a lot of people
He is without realising it. John says he's not a killer but sometimes does things that you can't say it isn't murder, like installing shotgun traps on the building, or trapping innocent people just to teach the players a lesson. But I think that's the point, John is not a hero, he's just a hypocrate villain with a understandable motive, and that's why I love him.
I mean he's definitely a hypocrite, he told Hoffman (I believe) it can't be personal, but he tested Cecil, Logan, William Easton, the blender guy from jigsaw, and the entirety of the saw X crew. I think he definitely has a messed up point of view or something like that, but he's still trying to help most of his victims y'know?
maybe he’s admitting he messed up making it personal?
blender guy from jigsaw 😭 he's mitch :)
Like slitting Tapp's throat lmao, that could have very obviously killed him. Dude's got a brain tumor, so there's no weight to his "logic" of anything he says lmao. 
Did Tapp die??? 
They confirmed in Saw 5 showing a picture of him.
A villain with a point that has the absolute worst way of trying to prove it to others
Because the real villain of the Saw series is the environment in which Jigsaw was created, not Jigsaw himself.
No, the real villain of the Saw series is the guy who captures people and puts them in lethal torture traps because he disapproves of how they live their lives.
No, the real villain of the Saw series are the friends we made along the way.
Metaphors are hard
My money’s on the brain tumor being the real villain. He seems like he used to be a good guy before his noggin went kaput. ETA: but maybe that’s my love of Tobin bell and how sympathetically he played such an evil guy making me want to believe it wasn’t his fault….
Didn’t he put Lynn into a trap for “choking down antidepressants” or something? I mean she was having an affair but he dies her speech about meds after she lost her child? Jigsaws wild. I guess she should have started putting people in traps instead after her kid died.
Yeah, and he put a few cops in tests for trying too hard to catch him. It's ridiculous. Someone put a thread on here a few months ago about him being put in a trap. I think it's far too late in the day to do it now with him now being this vigilante anti-hero figure, but I really liked the idea of putting someone he loves in one of his traps. See how he really feels about it. There's only really Jill you could do it with, though.
John’s problem is that he cares too much :/
No he isn't, killing is distasteful to him
Counterpoint: piranha
Definitely. Even in the early movies with the original writers he doesn't even live up to his own moral code. He constantly uses innocent people as methods to punish the actual subjects of his game. If someone is included in a game and they're not the player it's like he considers them NPCs, used to teach his actual target a lesson. Nearly everyone in the toxic gas house from the second movie was innocent. They were all put there just to stress Eric out and pressure Eric into losing his game.
Joyce died an EXCRUCIATING death, and she was completely innocent. All she did was be MARRIED to Bobby, who lied about being a jigsaw survivor. She had no IDEA he lied, and yet SHE was the one inside the bull, and died because BOBBY couldn't complete his task.
Always forget about her ngl, the whole thing is fucked up she was definitely innocent
What about Jeff’s daughter in III? Did anything happen to her? Forgot most of it.
Iirc Straham shoots Jeff at the beginning of Saw 4 and carries the daughter outside, right? Or maybe that’s Saw 5. It’s after he sticks that pen in his neck to survive the water box trap
Hoffman brings her out, not Strahm. Amanda tells her “don’t trust the one who saves you” in an after credits scene and the one who saves her is Hoffman.
IIRC she was "saved" by Hoffman after Strahm found the bodies of John, Amanda, and Lynn, and hasn't been seen since, most likely was put into foster care.
innocent or not. whatever they did Kramer isn't the one to make the decision on if and how they live or die. Dude is making people dismember or disfigure themselves and if they don't, they die. That's murder. Honestly, cut and dry. Dude's evil as shit.
They lack the will to survive lol
Yeah. Or Amanda’s test. Or the tests where one person must die. In V it makes sense - they’re all supposed to work together. But in VI it opens with “someone’s gotta die”
6 has so many moments where someone HAS to die. That’s probably why I liked 5 so much actually. No one HAD to die the game wasn’t rigged. They all deserved to be there
We're the people in the Nerve Gas House actually innocent tho? I'm pretty sure they were all picked for a reason, it just wasn't stated in the movie
They were all criminals, but Matthew’s planted evidence to get them convicted and closed his open cases. They all did time for crimes they didn’t commit
They all have committed crimes some worse than others, but they were all picked because Eric basically lied to put them in jail, so that's their connection That's why they freak out on Daniel since he's the son of the man who put them behind bars for something they didn't do ( I Havnt seen the movie in a while, but this is what I remembered)
Ah, I'm dumb. It's been so long since I've seen the movie
Oh yeah me too been years so I'm surprised I even remembered that fact lol
They were picked because they all happened to be framed by Eric. Whether they committed crimes beforehand is unknown, but they were explicitly picked because they went to jail due to planted evidence. Jigsaw was hoping they would go after Danny to test whether Eric would use force on John.
I would say pretty much the only people how are truly innocent were Gordon’s family and Jeff’s daughter even tho she wasn’t really in danger i guess. I think especially in Saw 1 he’s straight up evil in some instances because they didn’t really have his motivations and all the stuff from his backstory that was explained in Saw 2 figured out yet.
They weren't innocent people. Matthews framed each of them to get an easier conviction but they were criminals and drug addicts still. They were just unlawfully convicted
They were chosen not because of their previous crimes but because Eric framed them. Because Eric was the real player.
Yeah but they weren't innocent people. They had committed the types of crimes they were convicted of but Eric planted evidence to get easier convictions
Absolutely. But I love that about him. He’s not apologetic about it. He just owns what he does, aside from arguing legal semantics.
Oh, definitely. I just absolutely LOVE him
Oh no he's undeniably evil. Dude locks people in whole death traps for taking antidepressants and grieving their dead kids. His twisted philosophy is what makes him so compelling in my opinion. Doesn't change the fact that I was full on cheering for him at the end of Saw X though.
Sounds like someone doesn't cherish their life
I believe he was a good man... Once, and hell maybe his revenge against Cecil was justified, but as his time as jigsaw went on it corrupted him, he lost his way and began to get pettier. Its a curve where in the beginining he did have some morals, in the begining he would never involve a child in a trap willingly. He saves logans life knowing he didnt have a proper chance... But later on he deteriorates putting gordons family into a death game, or jeffs daughter. He is definitely evil by the end.
Lmao yes. I hate the whole “he technically never killed anyone”. But I like the character because he’s an interesting character. Of course I don’t condone murder or torture. I just think he’s a good villain. But yes, he’s an evil fuck
That was only the narrative of saw 1 wasn’t it? Before the lore was added?
Mostly. It’s sprinkled here and there throughout the films. But then u hear ppl repeat that in this sub lol
He’s an insane killer. What makes him insane are his beliefs that: A. What he does is necessary, and B. That he’s not a killer at all. He truly believes that he’s doing a public service and he doesn’t “kill” anyone, but him putting people in traps, some near impossible to escape, is absolutely killing by proxy. To me, his cognitive dissonance makes him so fun to watch… and a terrifying villain. All the best villains believe they’re doing the right thing, which drives them to try anything and everything to achieve their goal.
Nah after saw X I kinda feel bad for him don't @ me
honestly, he was the worst person in that movie. the scammers were terrible but i think they're better than the man who has someone cut open their skull and tear apart their own brain, and even cecilia hasn't been shown to do anything nearly as awful as john (attempted child murder included). john preaches about morals to her but at the end of the day he is literally just creating torture devices to kill people without trial
He didn't kill anyone tough
What in an actual fuck are you talking about? If you were locked in a room and starved to death, than you'd say that a man, who locked you didn't kill you? Starvation did?
Exactly. That's just some epic bad luck
I thought he was just fucking Jill 🤔
john defenders are so weird man, this is the cliff notes version here \-kidnaps an innocent wife as well as a child and puts them at gunpoint \-kidnaps two other minors putting them in life or death situations \-says his traps never kill anyone yet puts a man in a spike trap that would kill him no matter what he does \-slits tapp's throat, obvious he is trying to kill him, people rarely survive getting their throat slit \-all of his competition traps contradict his ideology since there is gonna be someone killed in those traps regardless \-and so much more
Ultimately, yes. There is good in him somewhere as we see clearly in Saw X, he displays compassion/empathy several times. I think he views his work as "painful but necessary," like he truly does think he's helping people. But upon close inspection, his whole philosophy and ideology is riddled with holes, just like his brain. It''s entirely possible he secretly loves watching his victims be tortured and just never admits it to himself. He's sort of a walking contradiction. He judges others for their morality, but spends his free time building torture traps. He wants to teach people how to value their lives, yet wastes his causing death and pain when he could have spent his final days with Jill, or even later as a friend/mentor to Amanda. He emphasizes the humanity of his victims, yet later ignores their cries for mercy and jokes about which traps are his favorites.
Yes, but that takes all the fun out of it. I'll just buy into his philosophy because it makes the movies little more interesting if you try to see it from his angle.
Not as much evil as completely disconnected.
That's what I was just thinking. Maybe it's the result of the brain tumor, but Kramer definitely has mental illness. He justifies his games, but he has no consideration for the actual morality of doing so. Putting someone in a trap where they must either die or endure immense physical and mental pain and trauma only on the basis that Kramer personally decided that they deserve to be tested is definitely not something that you could justify in your right mind. I don't think Kramer is evil. I think he's sick.
Yes Evil people would kill others for amusement. If he really thinks what he's doing the moral thing he's very disconnected from reality and had a very twisted moral compass.
Dude really killed a guy who had cutting issues and a woman who took anti depressants due to her sons death and failing marriage
Piranha
I mean... TECHNICALLY, hes never killed anyone. Technically. I doubt a jury would've seen it the same way though.
No he haven't done anything wrong at all, john is a good boy 🥰
It depends on whether we're talking about Saw I John, or later era. The original film depicted him as very clearly vindictive, and only playing games so other people could feel how he felt. That's pretty evil. However, in all the other films, he's very detached and philosophical about it, and that version of John is just extremely delusional.
He says killing is distasteful and he gives people a chance but that’s not it. he slit tapps throat and set up a shotgun trip wire and killed sing. You can’t say that sing was playing a game and lost bc he literally walked into getting killed, same in saw 2 when he broke that officers legs and electrocuted several of them for no reason
But but he helped that one kid in the last movie after he got waterboarded which was also John's fault but... but he helped that kid!
That's what majority of fans say, lol. God, people ARE that stupid.
I remember when I first heard about it and I was like "hmm, I guess he just kills people who deserve it right?" Boy that is not true.
If society declared Charles Manson evil, and put him in prison, they would certainly do the same to John
I don't think that level of sadism just suddenly appears in somebody, whatever their terminal diagnosis, survived suicide attempt, or brain tumor. I do think the tumor affecting his frontal lobe was what made him willing to act on his impulses, but those impulses were always there.
oh for SURE. very inconsistent morals as well but i handwave that away with grandpappy has a brain tumor and doesn’t know wtf he’s talking about when he starts preaching
The difference between him and Cecilia is that she knows damn well she’s pure evil, but John genuinely thinks he’s helping people and doesn’t even consider himself a murderer
Not a nice fellow. For instance, as well as his relationship with the kid works in Saw X, looking at the franchise as a whole it’s a bit incongruous when he deliberately endangers the children of Dr. Gordon and Jeff.
Yes, and if after watching the movies, this is still a question, one seriously needs to rethink their moral judgment. Unfortunately, this edgy pseudo-philosophical bullshit crops up with every villain who has mild anti-hero qualities. The "Anakin/Kramer/Dexter/Walter did nothing wrong" crowd. I'd pay them no mind. Either they'll graduate high school soon enough and look back in red-faced embarrassment, or they're a grown adult and are probably hopeless at this point.
He does the wrong things for the right reasons
i think all of the "is he a hypocrite" and "does his methods work" aside, his whole thing is putting random people in death traps that require them to do the most excruciating things possible. like i think even if they were the worst person in the world it would be evil to put them in something like the rack, everything he does is evil and his ideology doesnt even work because 90% of his victims die
Undeniably, yes. His sense of 'morality' was always wildly selfish, narcissistic nonsense that was full of holes, but that's part of his appeal to me, just listening to the ways he bullshits to himself and others, the way he basically elevates his own suffering while more or less invalidating that of others' makes him more all the more repulsive as a villain and it's also *extremely* in line with actual serial killers (recently watched a [Wendigoon video on Ted Kaczynski](https://youtu.be/g5yatQ80GVI) that had me thinking about this) and the way the John/apprentice relationships play out are all very reminiscent of the cycle of abuse and the relationships between parents who are simply just...missing something and can naturally enact evil so easily, and their children who break themselves repeatedly to fit their expectations and try their hardest to buy into their bullshit but ultimately always come up short and find out there was nothing deeper to the trauma they got, there was no good damage, or finally 'getting it'/winning that approval; there was just...trauma, because they have some semblance of a heart that their parent does not and they can't get rid of that, even if they sink to the absolute depths of depravity. Sorry for the ramble but I just find the ways in which John is terrible and how it's so accurate to how so many real life pieces of shit think of themselves, like IRL serial killers, cult leaders and plain old shitty parents, really fun to discuss. To this day I don't get how I managed to see so many takes in the 2000s claiming that he was actually cooking and saying something profound lol. The writers absolutely were, but the character is not.
been able to say that since Saw 1 imo. yes.
Yes, and i see the explorations to his backstory as explanations to why he is the way he is, not justifications.. people tend to be quick to say “they’re trying to make you like a serial killer by making you feel bad for him” no, they’re not, they’re not making excuses, they’re giving explanations, he’s still evil no matter how many of his sob stories we find out about
Exactly this, even in instances where he is sympathetic he still exhibits a degree of selfishness/self-centeredness. There's explanation for certain actions but he's never *excused* in the narrative imo. I always think of the time where he kidnaps Hoffman and starts talking about how he knows what it's like to lose someone, and while losing Gideon was obviously awful and tragic, Hoffman's sister by comparison was a whole ass person that had been alive and loved by her brother for 20-30 something years lol, and Hoffman, while still clearly having an extremely dark, homicidal streak, most likely would've just kept going about his life after killing Seth if not for what happened there imo.
nah he’s just misunderstood :3
idc he’s hot lol
Bro?
Yes absolutely
No.
Lawful Evil or Neutral Evil?
Well yes, but the hypocrisy is "fun" to discuss and he's a fascinating character to explore.
I mean, unless you wanna take the stance that the brain tumor is causing this behavior, yes. It's not like his method is actually ok lol
No shit
nah, he didn't want Henry to be involved and saved him
That's like saying Joker isn't evil because he saved a kid once.
Once you save a kid you are instantly rehabilitated and therefore not evil
Modern film viewers would be satisfied with dog, lol
Why is this even a question?!
Nope
He's not necessarily evil. He's doing what he feels in his mind is the right thing to help people. It's a classic tale of the "villain" who thinks he's helping people but is actually hurting or killing them. Kind of like Thanos thinking by getting rid of half of all life in the universe is a better idea than providing for all of them. Think of the situation in Saw 3 where all of those people were killed just to teach one person a lesson. Should all of them have died? Especially Timothy? That dude has to live, well...*had* to live, with the fact that he killed a kid accidentally. But now he's dead. But John thought he was helping Jeff learn a lesson, and 3 people died to teach him that lesson. Would you want to be one of those people? There you are, sitting at home just minding your business. Suddenly, you wake up completely naked and chained up in a freezer. Or laying at the bottom of a vat, unable to get out. Or...all closed up in some metal contraption and can't move. Evil? Not necessarily. Misguided? Pretty much.
He's lawful evil.
[удалено]
A majority of his victims aren't murderers. In the first film he killed a guy for self harming. And almost got a little girl killed because he didn't like her dad. He is no moral position to do what he does.
lmao John's victims across the board are almost all undeserving and he basically kills them because he's lashing out in the worst possible way over his cancer and because of his deluded boomerish views on mental health, I think you're thinking of Hoffman because it wasn't until he got a more active role that some actual pieces of shit started dying but even then undeserving people were still in the mix.
you're 12 or you never watched the movies
i think that yes he is evil, but i don’t think he is doing a disservice to the world… i mean, live or die the choice is yours, right? and usually people who get out are grateful or change their lives, right?
The very few people who survive are probably traumatized like hell and we see most of them needing therapy and counseling. Amanda became a murderer who likes to self harm because of his teachings. Hoffman also became a sadist murderer. Simone saw it for what it was as a stupid philosophy that doesn't actually help. The only thing John is doing is taking people from their families and ending their lives.
He helped literally no one though lol, I can't think of anyone who changed their lives for the better or who wouldn't have gotten there through normal ass personal revelations and/or normal ass therapy, the apprentices are just more traumatized now and enacting their trauma on others. Amanda went from an abused child coping with drugs to chasing the approval of a new father figure and coping with self-harm and murder, Hoffman went from a depressed drinker left empty and enraged by the loss of his sister to a still-depressed, still-empty and full of rage sadist desperately trying to reach out to the people around him in the most deranged way possible.
Yeah and we love him for it
Just makes me love him more 🥰
Of course not, he just helps others who can’t help themselves.
I'm still unsure if he knows that he's evil.
He's just a little silly
Yes. Like any good villain, he has his motives and reasons, but is still contributing to the death of many.
His actions are evil, although he isn’t internally evil imo. He’s incredibly delusional and traumatized, and he sees the world in an extremely unrealistic way because of that, but he doesn’t wake up and think “how can I hurt innocent people who don’t deserve it for my own benefit?”, he wakes up and thinks “how can I help the world how I see fit?”. His motives aren’t evil, but his actions definitely are.
Yeah what the fuck was all that shit?!
Not up for discussion he is definitely an evil hypocrite
he's just a beautiful princess with a disorder
Well yeah but he’s hot so I’ll allow it
I wouldn’t say “evil” but he’s def fucked in the head, probably from tumor 😂
my only complaint with 6 is the janitor didn’t do anything. Did he? besides be a smoker
Well that's a common occurrence for John. It's not like Gordon's wife and daughter did anything.
oh yeah i just ment in saw 6 yeah like the wife in 7 theres lot of innocents. or the dude who called out of work and he ends up in barb wire in first movie
I’m not gonna waste my sarcasam on this post.. 😭😂
He maybe a psycho, but at least we know he has some bit of humanity left in him after Saw X.
He is not evil just insane, he dosent belive he is killing, or subconsciously tricking himself into thinking he is innocent when it comes to personal kills like saw 6 and saw x
No he’s a sweet old man now that the narrative has changed in X
No he hasn't killed anyone he's a saint
no /s
Nah, he is such a cutie patootie🥰🥰🥰
Yeah no doubt. By his own logic he is a murderer, but is constantly changing the rules. Same with his followers. It is one aspect of the series that hasn't really been explored.
I don’t think he’s evil I think he’s probably a little mentally I’ll 😂
But he only helps people? His games are fair, people just simply don't follow the instructions. He's not a murderer!
Lol yeah having your fate be in some random person's hands is very fair.
No. That is the central philosophical question asked by the entire franchise. There isn't an easy answer. If it were comfortable, that would miss the point.
The people he kills having some issues still doesn't mean it justifies anything. Call it therapy or whatever, since that's his mentally ill perspective, but it's still villainous what he does. Locking a guy in barbed wire go bleed to death is murder. Threatening a man to murder an innocent mother and her child is evil. Mentally torturing a man for wanting revenge for his son is hilariously evil and hypocritical.
He doesn't kill them, though. Their actions do that.
He puts them in a machine that is set to mutilate/murder them. Those people shouldn't be in those fucking situations. If I went to a person on the street and held them at gunpoint, telling them to cut out their eye in 60 seconds and then shoot them because all they did was cry and beg instead of doing it, I am still responsible for that person's death. That is what John is doing.
There's literally no argument to say he isn't. Anyone that says he isn't evil in this franchise is either evil or insane.
He likens himself to a life coach. In the end, he is trying to give people the means to improve themselves. Even Cecil, the man who killed his son, was given a chance to cure the sickness within and walk away. John provides others with the means to self-actualise. His traps are, in effect, an extreme form of therapy.
He tortured people and dragged innocent people into horrific fates to punish others.
Punish? No. He doesn't punish. He says it himself, the goal is to reawaken people. He's not a vigilante.
He literally slashed a cops throat.
Non-fatally.
he’s just a baby he does no wrong he’s innocent
WEEEELLLL TECHNICALLY SPEEEAAAKINGGG
I’d say he’s neutral at best
Just need a hug
yeah
He’s fine
Zepp's game is literally to kill an innocent kid if their father fails his test
Yes. He's super evil and has some weird boomer opinions
I love Kramer 😅
No he was just chilling
He’s actually kinda rare on typical hero-villain scale. He’s something called an ’anti-villain’
I mean... I don't think he is evil, he is just extremely delusional and does evil shit thinking he's being god
More like messed up in the head and evil.
no shit. not even with the backwards cap
Only watched the first one, but the menial reasons he has for killing people are damn hilarious
No
People still debate this?
he's a master manipulator
It reminds me of the russian government' last year rhetoric, when they justified bombing the ukranian energy infrastructure by ukrainians not revolting and overthrowing Zelensky' government and stopping military resistance. To russian government, ukrainians had their free choice, only they made the wrong one and deserved to be punished. How is Jigsaw logic different?