did he try to save her?

i have no idea why, but for the last week i've been on a major kick of watching the saw movies.

it's funny how they're supposed to be these gory, shocking horror flicks and i see them as the complete opposite. not only are they more psychological thrillers and require you to have an IQ in order to understand them, but they have deep meanings and underlying themes. you have to pay attention to catch this stuff, though.
i feel like a complete nerd actually looking into the character developments and everything, but it really got to me for some reason...

i'll be the first to admit that saw didn't really have any true deep character development or anything because i don't think the writers/producers/etc. were expecting the reaction it got. it started as a little 8 minute short film that turned into a low budget movie of two guys sitting in a grungy bathroom with their feet chained to the wall. not something you'd make expecting to continue with sequels every year, right? but it got a great reaction, including from me, and people wanted more. they wanted to know what happened to the people chained up, to the police investigators, to the elderly cancer patient that layed in a pool of blood the whole movie only to get up at the end and say "game over." the only character other than jigsaw that was brought in with any possibility of continuing their story was amanda.
personally, i think amanda is the second most important character in the saw franchise (when the movies mattered) right behind jigsaw. i read into character pages to maybe see why he picked her in the first place and found something interesting. apparently there's a saw comic book that discussed jigsaw's life before his cancer diagnosis, which contradicts his occupation in the fourth movie, and his time in a rehab hospital after his cancer diagnosis/suicide attempt discussed in the second movie. it says that while in the hospital he is confronted with a disgruntled orderly (zep, who we're tricked into thinking is jigsaw in the first movie), a man who had attempted suicide (paul, the man from the razor wire trap in the first movie), a con artist (mark hoffman, the detective that is in the third and fourth movies), and a heroin addict who had overdosed (amanda, his apprentice in the second, third, and fourth movies). it says that these are the people that woke jigsaw up to how others waste and don't appreciate their lives. realizing how little time he has left, he decides to research these subjects and test their appreciation and will to live.
with that said, there's how and why he picked amanda.

in Saw II the characters really start to become prominent and really important. the way the movie begins with the venus fly trap test is typical jigsaw. nothing special. the movie takes off when it involves detective matthews. the audience is left wondering why him, what's so important, all that stuff... but a couple things really got me in the second movie. the first thing being when jigsaw is introduced sitting at his desk reading and eating a bowl of soup or something, he seems so sick and frail. he can barely lift his arms when the swat team comes in to put him in handcuffs and states that he can't even get out of his wheelchair to get down on his knees. how can a man as sick/weak as that carry on with his work? if he can't even get out of a chair or get a glass of water for himself, how could he possibly go out, capture these people to test, and implement the tools for the test? someone else had to be helping him and that's what the police missed the entire time. i noticed it when i saw the movie for the first time in theaters and thought it made a mockery of the intelligence these police officers apparently had of jigsaw's whole profile. especially allison kerry who gets completely owned in the third movie, but i'm not there yet.
the second thing was amanda. the other plotline in this movie apart from jigsaw and detective matthews was the 8 people in the house with the deadly nerve gas. everyone else is awake, freaking out, wondering where they are, looking around for reasons, and amanda is still unconscious on the floor. no movement or anything. people begin to talk and when addison discovers the ticking noise outside of the door that is the exact moment that amanda wakes up and makes a dramatic entrance to, i think, distract them from the door. it works, too. she immediately begins throwing a tantrum and looking for the tape recorder. the interesting thing about this was when she was tested in the first movie with the reverse bear trap mask she didn't have a tape recorder to find. she woke up in a chair and had the television video with the puppet just like the man at the beginning of the second movie with the venus fly trap mask. how would she immediately know to look for a tape recorder? to me, that was the main clue to her being involved in a different way. by saying the tape had everything they needed to know was another hint. more hints and clues came in as the movie progressed.
examples:
how she's constantly walking around looking for objects instead of doors/tapes like everyone else.
how others are weak/in pain/sick looking/and coughing up blood while she looks fairly healthy and never coughs once
how she waits for daniel to spill the beans about who his father is (you can tell in her facial expression)
she yells "he had a choice" as she walks away from obi being burned to death.
the list continues, but the last one is very important. throughout the movie she begins to appear terrified by the sight of death and at the sight of these traps. why would she be so cold to the first one and just say someone had a choice? that is the introduction to the problem jigsaw talks about in the third movie... amanda's emotion is her weakness.
the only difficult one to decipher is the hole full of needles she's thrown into by xavier. she makes no attempt to run or get out before xavier spots her and i think notice her emotion regarding them. that scene is also after her telling daniel about her drug addiction which is probably why he is so shaken up by her being thrown into the needles and tries to comfort her afterwards. to me, the only unfair part which you think about after her partnership to jigsaw is revealed is why would be put that test in the house and who put it in the house? i don't think she would have been too happy about that one knowing she was going to be involved in the test, especially when you see her emotional reaction to the needles. is amanda just a continuous test to him?
but in the end, you find out she is the one who will carry the jigsaw torch after he is dead through the tape left for detective matthews after he is locked in the bathroom. i think that jigsaw led matthews to the house on purpose so amanda could get her first test subject/revenge. but was that by sheer accident or because he knew he'd never get him there any other way?

sure, they could have ended with just one sequel but they left the important characters too open, yet again. Saw III is really the last one worth talking about because not only does the storyline with a jigsaw successor get shot to hell (literally lol), but they kill off the two most important characters.
i don't feel the need to give a summary of the movie but just to continue the importance and meaning of amanda's character. again, it's little things that you have to catch and pay attention to in order to really get.
the thing i really liked about the third movie is that they showed the whole background of amanda's involvement with jigsaw and her evolution into a true killer, not into a jigsaw successor/copycat. the flashbacks are essential to this.
if you notice in the flashback of her helping him set up the bathroom test in the first movie, she seems extremely terrified and possibly under a stockholm syndrome type attitude. she's an emotional wreck from what seems to be before she captures adam in his house up until she has the nightmare of adam escaping and trying to kill her. that's when you get a first glimpse at her transformation because she sneaks away from jigsaw's room while she thinks he's asleep, goes to the bathroom, and performs what she thinks is a mercy killing (her saying, "i'm going to free you"). i think she killed adam as a safety precaution because of her nightmare. regardless of the reason, that was the first mistake and jigsaw witnessed it and knew what she went to do because he was awake when she left. like allison kerry says at the beginning, the point of jigsaw's test is to escape a better person at your own will. amanda takes away their free will and traps them in inescapable tests.
her evolution continues as you see her flashbacks to her own test with the mask, her swearing her life and dedication to jigsaw regardless of her obvious uncertainty and fear, her physical and emotional violence toward lynn, her underlying anger toward jigsaw, and her self injury practice. the self injury is an important thing to notice. in the flash of her swearing herself to his practices and him saying every mark on her body is from another life is key. the tools she uses to burn and cut herself are not only kept hidden behind the curtains in her own space in his lair, but they are kept locked in a box hidden under her pillow. not to mention the cuts on her body were on her upper thighs, and who knows where else. places where he couldn't see them. her loyalty to him was never untainted. when she left her heroin addiction behind she resorted to other forms of self destruction and used guilt and pain from the tests on herself. i think her realization that she couldn't be him was the part that got her the most and that's what made it so hard for her.
but regardless... she had a deep connection to jigsaw and maybe even a love for him. this is shows in her desperation and anger toward lynn to keep him alive along with her completely breaking down emotionally after his seizure and back-alley brain surgery. it's obviously showing that she isn't ready to let go and isn't ready for him to die.
however, it quickly morphs into anger with him saying "i love you" to lynn after he comes back from a vision of his ex-wife and to the comment made by lynn saying he couldn't hear amanda and didn't know she was there when she was hugging him on his bed. it made her snap and nearly pull a gun on lynn. even after he wakes up, tells her to put the gun away, and commands her to leave she still has some resistance and it takes her a minute to snap back and walk away with her hand still gripping the gun. definitely not someone you want to piss off. it is at that moment that he reveals his knowledge of amanda's emotional behavior and weakness. the question is, why does he want for her to succeed and carry on his legacy when he knows she's too emotionally unstable to do it?
when it is revealed that jeff completed his 3 tests he tells amanda to release lynn and she refuses. this is the part you need to pay attention to. by amanda saying lynn didn't deserve to go free because she didn't learn anything is really amanda preaching to the converter. amanda was the one that didn't learn anything from her test. by her saying no one is reborn, that people never change, and mocking jigsaw by telling him to fix her is all the proof you would need. it's all underlying anger due to the fact that she knows she can't continue on the legacy the way he would want her to.
i wonder what would have happened if she wouldn't have gotten killed by jeff. what would jigsaw have done with her then? or an even better question, what would she have done with him? i think she planned on killing both lynn and jigsaw because of one reason that i don't think very many people catch... the door to the lair that jeff was supposed to come through after he unlocked the fence was originally locked. when lynn was dismissed after amanda refused to leave the room she does some snooping and unlocks the door by picking the lock open. when amanda returns she angrily asks why the door was open. was it just another example of amanda making a game unwinnable or was it a plan of her own that got ruined and ended with her getting fatally shot in the neck? jeff wasn't supposed to get through the door. he would have had to waste the only bullet he was given on opening the door leaving no bullets left to kill amanda or jigsaw. that means amanda with a presumably fully loaded gun would have had the option and availability to kill all 3 people and walk away with his legacy. he was too helpless and sick to defend himself against her and i think that's what she was counting on.
the line that is most important is when amanda is talking about jeff's first test with the woman in the freezer. she begins to break down into tears when she tells jigsaw, "he tried to save her."
i think that's symbolism for what he tried to do with amanda. he tried to save this young woman and give her a fighting chance... i think in that sense he failed his own test. someone should have said "game over" to him.


with all that said, they should have ended with Saw III. it had the best plotline, underlying themes, and symbolism that actually linked to the other movies. with Saw IV, they were just stretching in order to continue with the movie franchise. you can't make movies after the two main/important characters are gone.