Why Saw 3 just didn't CUT IT!

Rating: 5/10 (27 October 2006)

Saw 3 is an average horror/slasher flick which had an intriguing social commentary regarding change in the individual. This combined with a killer who technically does not kill anyone led to this fresh take on horror and what made the Saw franchise successful.
However, the 2 problems I have with the culmination of this series were 1) The incomplete connections with the previous two films and 2) Focusing entirely on the plight of the killers, leaving the victims as afterthoughts which the second half of Saw 2 was all about.
First the connections: I liked the extra exposition regarding Jigsaw and Amanda's allegiance, but ultimately found it to be extended redundancy of what we learned in Saw 2. What would have been more thorough would have been the inclusion of Detective Tapp (Danny Glover) and Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) in the flashbacks. James Wan, for some reason, finds it necessary to reveal to us the true fate (death) of Adam (Leigh Whannell) but NOT Dr. Gordon?
In fact, none of the major players from the first Saw have any impact on the rest of the story outside of Jigsaw and Amanda who, of course, play bit parts at first. Simply revisiting that disgusting bathroom/dungeon doesn't do enough to acknowledge the events of the first film and this leaves a sour taste in my mouth because I still feel that Saw 1 was superior. I truly hope the reason for this was incompetence, because deleting these characters entirely due to budget issues would be even sadder. . . because we all know how pricey Cary and Danny are, especially when it results in an extra 5 minutes to the final product.
Which leads me to my second criticism, focusing on the villains. Saw 1 set out a clear and interesting formula. A killer imposes his sense of morality on society and forces the unworthy to change or die via trial by fire; some live, most die. This forced the audience to think twice about what makes a criminal, a villain, a good citizen, a good person. And this change is only experienced twice in the trilogy, the 2 survivors: Dr. Gordon and Amanda. By the end of Saw 3, Dr. Gordon is moot and Amanda is exposed as a weak fan-girl of Jigsaw's who talked a good party line, but whose actions regarding the execution of Jiggy's "games" were the opposite.
THERE WASN'T ENOUGH DEPTH FOR JIGSAW AND AMANDA! And this simply cannot be if the story is really about the villains. Jigsaw and Amanda have no arc. They are the same, aside from Jiggy's declining health. His experimental torture "games" are exposed as complete failures when Amanda fails the final game and we are left with the one truth we knew before Saw was ever conceived: people won't change for anyone unless THEY are the ones who want the change; coercion has unreliable outcomes, even if it's a matter of life and death -> case in point: the perpetual violence in the Middle East due to its inscription in the history and social conscience of its people.
Guess what that means? Saw really wasn't this fresh new idea, it was your basic gore/slasher in disguise due to serious holes in plot. Two things would have solved this and allowed the story to make more sense: 1) We need Dr. Gordon and 2) We need more WHY from Amanda and Jigsaw. James Wan could always write Saw 2.5 to fill in the gaps, but then I'd rather get front row seats at the local slaughterhouse to satisfy my blood lust. At least that would be real.