10 Biggest Ever Movie Franchise Mistakes
7. Killing Amanda WAY Too Soon - Saw
Where to even begin with the Saw franchise? What started out as a low-budget $1 million horror film ballooned into a mammoth franchise that counts nine entries among its number to date, with box office grosses totalling over $1 billion.
Many fans will cite Saw's big mistake as killing off villain John Kramer aka Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) at the end of Saw III.
Kramer's presence was so magnetic that most of the subsequent sequels shoehorned convoluted ways for him to linger on the periphery (typically through pre-recorded messages and flashbacks).
Yet the bigger screw-up was in presenting a fitting successor to Kramer, only to kill them off in the very next movie.
Saw II's biggest twist is that Kramer's victim Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) from the first film is actually his apprentice, and was evidently set to take up the Jigsaw mantle after he succumbed to his cancer.
Yet Saw III made the utterly bizarre choice to not only kill off Kramer but also Amanda, who is shot dead by test subject Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) at film's end.
As a result, Saw IV had to go to the effort of introducing yet another apprentice, Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who remains a fairly divisive figure among the fanbase.
Given that Amanda was well-liked by fans, it was extremely silly to kill her so early, leaving a colossal void which the filmmakers scrambled to fill with Hoffman.
Having Amanda and Hoffman battle over Jigsaw's legacy would've made for a far more intriguing finale than the convoluted mess we ended up with, but for reasons that will never really be clear, Amanda got offed in bizarrely premature fashion.