Eric Matthews (Saw)

Eric Matthews, originally scripted to be named "Eric Mason", [cite video | year = 2006 | title = Saw II | medium = DVD | publisher = Lions Gate Entertainment] was a fictional character from the "Saw" series, with the first appearance being in a fake documentary entitled, "Full Disclosure Report: Piecing Together Jigsaw", featured on the "Saw: Director's Cut" DVD, before the character became one of the focuses of "Saw II". It was originally stated that Donnie Wahlberg (who portrayed Eric Matthews) would not be reprising his role in "Saw III" due to creative differences, but this turned out to be a hoax conceived by Lions Gate Films to throw off fans of the series trying to dig up details on the film. [ [http://www.dorchesteratheneum.org/page.php?id=817 Dorchester Atheneum: Donnie Wahlberg ] ]

Appearances

Full Disclosure Report

Eric's first appearance was in the fake documentary titled "Full Disclosure Report" which was featured on the "Saw: Uncut" DVD. A reporter stated that Matthews' extensive force and bad temper might be one factor that was holding police back from solving the Jigsaw case. A clip of Eric entering his car was shown as a reporter asked Eric for some information on the case, also asking about the reports of Eric's brutality. Eric responded by pulling out his gun and yelling, "What brutality?" A fellow officer then pulled Eric back to his car.

aw II

Eric appeared again in "Saw II" as the father of Daniel Matthews and as an ex-detective doing desk-work. He was called to the scene of one of the Jigsaw Killer's recently discovered "tests", where Eric was asked by his ex-partner, Detective Allison Kerry, to identify the victim, who turned out to be Michael, a police informant used by Eric. While leaving the scene, Kerry pointed out a message written on the ceiling, which stated, "LOOK CLOSER DETECTIVE MATHEWS". Annoyed with Kerry for bringing him to the scene to be goaded into the investigation by the message, Eric announced that he had enough work to do, while having to deal with his wife's divorce lawyers. Later, while trying to sleep, Eric remembered the brand-name of a padlock used on the device that killed Michael. With this information, he decided to tag along with Kerry and SWAT commander Rigg to an old warehouse that they believed to be Jigsaw's latest lair. Finally coming face-to-face with Jigsaw inside, Eric was put into a test. Eric was told that he had a problem to deal with, and uncovered numerous computer monitors that displayed a camera-feed that showed his son, along with seven others, being held captive in a house. Confronting Jigsaw, Eric was told that Daniel was in danger of the nerve gas that was being pumped into the house, but that if Eric were to sit and have a conversation with Jigsaw for long enough, he would get his son back. Eric, under advice from Kerry, reluctantly sat and began his test. During his conversations with Jigsaw, it was revealed that Eric had once been a ruthless and brutal police officer who used extreme-measures to complete his assignments, going so far as to plant evidence on suspects and shoot down unarmed suspects. However, Jigsaw seemed to state that Eric at least felt alive during those times, but was now cowering behind a desk. Eric eventually left the conversation with Jigsaw to watch his son's progression through the house with the seven strangers, only being convinced by Kerry, who was revealed to at one point to have been Eric's mistress, to return to the conversation, and to threaten Jigsaw's work as a way to find his son's location. When that did nothing, Jigsaw revealed that the seven strangers in the house with Daniel were in fact seven ex-convicts who had been arrested by Eric after being framed with false evidence. Eric, under Rigg's advice, began to aggressively attack Jigsaw, punching and kicking him repeatedly and breaking his finger in order to find out where his son was being held. Jigsaw stated that Eric's game was over, and that he would take Eric to the house. Together, they escaped from the building without Eric's team, and drove away in a van. Jigsaw gave Eric directions to the house along the way. Leaving Jigsaw in the van, Eric went through the back door of the house, and found the corpses inside in a state of decay, as if having been there for an extended period of time. He managed to get into the foundation of the house, where he stumbled across the bathroom from the first film, where his son had already been to. Expecting to find Daniel there, Eric was attacked by Amanda Young, dressed in a pig mask, and rendered unconscious. It was revealed that the feed of the house that Eric had seen was not in fact live, but had been a recording. Daniel had been locked in a safe that had sat a few feet away from Jigsaw during Eric's test. When Eric woke up, he was shackled by the ankle to a pipe in the bathroom. Amanda revealed herself to be Jigsaw's apprentice before sliding the door shut, trapping Eric in the dark.

aw III

Eric escaped the bathroom in "Saw III", mere minutes after having been locked away, by smashing and breaking his foot to the point that it could slip through the shackle. Limping into the halls of the foundation below the house, Eric quickly passed Amanda, who hid herself and began panicking. Screaming for his son, Eric attacked Amanda, and after a brutal fight between the two, he was left lying on the ground. As Amanda decided to leave him there, Eric mocked her by saying that she wasn't Jigsaw. She turned back and began walking towards him. It is not known what she did to him, but Amanda later confessed to Jigsaw that she 'returned the favor' for taking her life from her. However, Jigsaw told her differently, simply stating that he cleaned up her mistakes.

aw IV

It was revealed in "Saw IV" that Matthews survived his encounter with Amanda in "Saw III". He had been dragged away by somebody (it is likely that it was Hoffman, Jigsaw's second apprentice). Eric was then locked up and supplied with food, as well as a leg brace for his mutilated foot, for a period of six months. Eric was then put into another trap, hung from a chain-noose atop a melting block of ice on one side of a scale, as part of Rigg's series of tests. Eric was ready to give up, at one point stating that he didn't want to "play anymore", and instead trying to kill himself by jumping from the ice block.

His suicide attempt, however, was thwarted by Art, another man in the test who was forced to watch over Eric and Hoffman, who was sitting, strapped to a chair at the other end of the scale. Art told Eric that if he jumped from the block again, the runoff water could tip to Hoffman's end of the scale and electrocute him, as an electrode had been positioned close by to Hoffman's feet. Looking up, Eric and Art realized that two more large blocks of ice were aimed to swing down and kill Eric if the door to the room was opened. Art supplied Eric with a gun to shoot Rigg if he attempted to open the door before a timer, counting down from 90 minutes, had expired. Once the timer expired, Art would be able to release all three of the captives in the room. However, Rigg ran through the door with one second still on the timer, despite being shot in the stomach by Eric. The ice blocks swung down and crushed his head between them, killing him.

Removed and altered content

Eric had originally been written to be killed by Amanda in "Saw III" after she marched back towards him after his taunts. In the original script, Amanda had stabbed and slashed Eric repeatedly in the neck, killing him. According to the "Saw III" DVD commentaries, this scene was filmed but removed from the third movie, so that he could instead be alive for "Saw IV".

Donnie Wahlberg

Wahlberg said the following on his views of Eric Matthews: "I think he's a selfish person. He's the type of person who's incapable of concerning himself with other people's feelings, including his son's. In his mind, he probably has bigger issues. As we discover, he's not the most ethical person in the world. It all makes sense if you think about the first movie and what Jigsaw's mode is; what his MO is. This is a guy who doesn't really care anymore and he's kinda mailing it in. It's no mistake that he's brought into this case. It's by design and I think Jigsaw probably knew that this guy wouldn't want to get involved in the case and that's why he singled him out. When his name is on the ceiling, he's basically saying, "You are going to be my next subject." If my character was a little less selfish and a little less self-absorbed wasn't in a world of self-loathing, he might have been smart enough to realize that he was being pulled into something. That's sort of like life. We are at time so worried about ourselves we miss other stuff; and if you get carried away with that like my character does, it could really get you. In most cases and in real life, we figure it out before it's too late."

When asked if he found Matthews to be sympathetic in spite of his flaws, he stated, "I didn't think about whether the audience would care about this guy or not. My character didn't care about himself. I hope that audience would get that he cares about his son, but that doesn't mean I expected the audience to have sympathy for him. If they believe that he knows he made a mistake, that's good enough. I didn't want the audiences to say, "What an asshole!" I don't know if women in the audience care about Cary Elwes from the first "Saw" film. I think they still thought he was a bastard even if he didn't sleep with that woman. His mistake put him in that predicament and in real, if you mess around on your wife, you're probably not to going to end up chained up in the bathroom somewhere with a saw, but you can still make a mess out of things. What I kept zeroing in on with my character and his son is when I talk to my son, I tell him I love him every time I hang up the phone. I say, "I love you," when I drop him off at school, only because I want to make sure that the last things I say to him is something wonderful. That's one of the things we added to the script. That was one of the best moments for my character, to see what was the last thing he said to his son. When Jigsaw asks him that, that was something I had to have in that scene. If you are a parent, you will say probably say to yourself, "That's not good." That's the thing that you have to live with." [cite web|url=http://www.blackfilm.com/20051021/features/donniewahlberg.shtml|title=Saw II: An Interview with Donnie Wahlberg|author=Wilson Morales|accessdate=2007-10-12|date=October 2005|publisher=BlackFilm.com]

References

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