10 Movie Sequels That Avoided Obvious Mistakes

The moment that Saw became a surprise box office smash, it was inevitable that Lionsgate would hastily greenlight a sequel. And though Saw II was ultimately released less than a year after the first, it impressively avoided one potentially fatal pitfall - trying to top the original's legendary twist.

The first Saw movie ended with the jaw-dropping reveal that antagonist Jigsaw aka John Kramer (Tobin Bell) had actually been posing as the "corpse" in the middle of the grotty bathroom all along - a twist so brilliantly unexpected it was basically impossible to out-do.

And so for Saw II, writers Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman smartly decided to not try and top the nobody-can-guess-this insanity of that ending, opting instead for two more modest twists which were themselves incredibly satisfying.

The first twist is that Detective Matthews' (Donnie Wahlberg) son Daniel (Erik Knudsen) was actually safe the entire time - due to his game taking place days prior - while the second revealed that Amanda (Shawnee Smith) was Jigsaw's secret apprentice.

Both twists are well-executed and genuinely surprising, yet the writers clearly knew there was no way to beat the original twist while still maintaining internal credibility, and so they didn't even bother trying.

It's just as well, because later films in the series eventually strained for more outlandish twists in an attempt to keep fans interested, yet these reveals mostly fell flat.