The First Draft Of Saw II Featured Deaths Too Gruesome To Film
The "Saw" franchise can be a tad violent at times. The movies, which center on the crimes of fictional serial killer John "Jigsaw" Kramer, have been at times referred to as "torture porn." The movies portray the unique and sadistic murders of Jigsaw, who instead of just killing his victims sets up a series of games or tests of someone's will to live through various types of torture. The movies are a lot of people being put into horrific dilemmas and either dying or doing something awful in order to survive.
The films aren't everyone's cup of tea, but they've proven popular and successful, spawning a franchise that's currently nine movies strong, with its own confusing timeline and everything! Darren Lynn Bousman directed the second, third, and fourth entries into the series, and took a lot of unashamed pleasure in making such violent cinema, according to an IGN interview.
"First tagline was, 'How much blood would you shed?' Second was, 'Oh, yes, there will be blood.' We're not hiding what we are. We're not trying to hide so for people to get offended or upset, I just kind of laugh at [it]. We have dismembered body parts on the poster."
But even for a series that's so unabashedly gory, there were limits. According to an interview with Bousman and his writing partner, Leigh Whannell, multiple deaths had to be written out of "Saw II" for being too violent for the movie's producers.
You can't shoot that
Considering the kinds of disturbing deaths that make it to the big screen, it's a bit surprising that anything in the "Saw" series was left on the cutting room floor. How much more demented could some of these killings get?
Apparently, some lines were crossed in the original script for "Saw II," as Bousman described in an interview with Movieweb:
"There were some scenes that were written that the producers were repulsed by. The first time we had a roundtable discussion on the script, Gregg [Hoffman] was there with a black magic marker – you don't want to see that. So he opens the first page of the script and he makes a big 'X' on the page and rips it out. 'You can't shoot that.' There were two scenes in particular."
Bousman doesn't describe the two redacted scenes, possibly wanting to ensure that anyone in his life could ever look at him the same again. But, despite the removal of certain scenes, Bousman was actually quite happy with the freedom he was given with "Saw II." "All in all, they really stepped back and let us do our own thing."
Maybe you read this and think that it's a shame that those most violent scenes were removed from the final film. If that's how you feel, I'm taking one big step away from you.