mark hoffman. character analysis

If you steal this, I will know. Ty and don't, please <3

"Do you like how brutality feels, Mark?"

Of course, we'll have to start with his backstory.

He was a cop for a long time, and it was relatively normal before he lost his only family: Angelina Acomb, his younger sister and the only person dear to him.

We see that his colleagues treat him with respect because of his control and authority. Do we see any genuine friends? Rigg is the closest we get, and it's still professional enough not to be called friendship. When Angie died, his colleagues bowed their heads and said their condolences. Was anyone there for him when he drank himself until he couldn't walk straight? No. And I think it was always like that. Angelina was the only one who saw a person in him, and they both had no other relatives.

After she died, how often do you think Mark blames himself for not protecting her? How often does he remember her smiling at him, and how often does he think that he could've done something to prevent it all? I think guilt is the feeling that lives with him every day, like a little beeping noise in his head.

One of his main traits is wanting to control everything. For example, we need to remember how, when he killed Seth and made it look like Jigsaw did it, Hoffman asked to be given any information on that case. To control the evidence and the direction. To ensure they wouldn't even suggest it was not Jigsaw. When he first got a note that someone knew, he was on high alert on his way home. He needed to control that too. When he got that note a second time, remember what he did? "From now on, I control all aspects of the game." Everything he did was a desperate attempt to twist everything so much it would fit in his hands. When he realized John and Amanda had become too much trouble (and that he could never be the one who carries the legacy), he controlled that too. One time he didn't control enough, and it became the reason for his dearest person's death. So I think he was controlling even before that, but he spiraled more into it after.

Just as with his desire to control, we see that Mark Hoffman has his own moral compass. He always had. I think he chose his job to try and bring justice in the way he saw fit, because the conventional justice system never felt right to him. He uses brutality, he protects his colleagues, HE decides who is deserving of life and death. I think that, in a way, is his inner monster feasting as much as it could (before he unleashed the beast fully, of course). "If he's a criminal — he deserves to die. He is an animal." And in his worldview, it's the right thing. Just how many bad guys do you have to kill before you would be considered a killer yourself?

That system of morals and desire to bring justice becomes even stronger after Angie. She was one of the people whom he saw as good, and, more importantly, she was his precious sister. So, Seth Baxter is to blame. The world's justice system released him after five years in prison due to a technicality. Hoffman thought that he had never learned anything and decided to teach him. He made a trap. A cruel one. And even when Seth did what he had to do, Mark still killed him. Because that, in his world, was an eye for an eye. Because Seth, even after tearing his fingers off, did not deserve to live. (That was one of the main differences between Mark and John. John wanted to see if a person had the will to live after they toyed with their life. Mark wanted to judge that person as undeserving of life if they toyed with their life.)

Is Mark suicidal? I would say a bit. I don't think he would ever commit suicide. Moreover, I do think that in his mind, direct suicide is weakness. But we see a small detail. When John held him captive to blackmail him, he said, "You sit in bars until closing. You drink so you can sleep. You stagger to your car and then you start it all over again the next day." He would drink too much. He would drive while drunk. Mark Hoffman is not stupid enough to be so sure of his driving abilities. So he knew what he was doing. And that is risky behavior that could lead to death. Indirect suicide, because he didn't see a point in living after Angie. He continued just because if he died, he would've proved to himself that he wasn't that strong.

Mark was never detached emotionally. Not before John, not during John, and not even after John. First, I'll talk about before John. He smiled when Angelina hugged him. He screamed when he saw her body. His voice would tremble, and he would be on the verge of tears when John finally "caught" him and was reminding him of everything that had happened. The things he tried to drown for so long. During John. His first mission with Kramer was the Razor Wire Maze. After they knocked out the man who was self-harming, Mark cried under his mask. Mark said he hadn't expected to feel any remorse. Why do you think he felt that remorse? Because in his mind, they were similar, he and that man. In the shadows, away from prying eyes, they couldn't bear the pain and tried to shut it off with something that felt simple and painful enough. For Mark, it was burning liquid. For that man, a razor blade. I don't think that, in Mark's mind, that man was deserving of death.

Mark's inability to look sometimes is puzzling. But I should talk about his brutality first.

Many people think that Saw 3D just ruined Mark Hoffman. I am not one of them. In my opinion, it was a depiction of how a person can lose their mind for revenge and be in such a profound state of anger that it feels permanent. He became a madman because he lost control once again. He became a hunter, letting something that had always been there come out. I briefly touched on that theme already. His traps were always brutal. Punishing, dare I say. "Do you like how brutality feels, Mark?"

"Let's be honest. You want him to suffer just as much as I do." That was the rawest and most honest dialogue. Yes, Mark likes how brutality feels. Because it is righteous. Because it is suitable. Because it gives him a thrill. Life had treated him with cruelty. So he would treat it with cruelty right back.

So, we see something confusing. He would look away when he performed his most gruesome acts. For a second, he couldn't look at the mess he made. Was it just a physical reaction? Or was it the way Angelina's eyes lit up for him? Or was it how she never turned her back on him? Or was it the ghost of her voice, asking how he had become this? This thing?

Do you think he ever looks in the mirror and, for a second, sees the face of Seth Baxter? Do you think it scratches at the corner of his mind? "You are just like him."

Because that's what he became. I don't think this feeling can be called guilt, but I can't find the word.

Also, his relationship with John. It's a hot take, but I think he was affected by him. Maybe not as much as Amanda, but close. He joined him because of the blackmail and manipulation John used. I think it wasn't just that. Mark Hoffman had just survived a 50/50 chance, only to throw his life back into the old police routine that closes its eyes to bad people? No. And John gave him that chance to do something he wanted. They never agreed on the philosophy, even if Mark pretended to do so (John noticed, of course he did. That's why Mark would've never continued the legacy in the way John wanted. He would bend the rules). John made Mark watch how a person, ungrateful for his life, was fighting for it. John taught him about anticipating the human mind. And I think, in Mark's mind, there was a small need for his approval. "Amanda will fail you," "Because I didn't take my life for granted," "You want him to suffer just as much as I do," "Then why do you need Amanda here?" Sounds a bit too much like "Don't you need me here too?" Though Mark would've never admitted it. And when he saw that John's preference was always Amanda, do you think he felt used? Amanda won her test and Kramer took her because he wanted to rebuild her. Mark just... happened to be useful. That's why Mark Hoffman never would've become the one who carried the legacy. So he decided to end it all in the way he could. To destroy the puzzle he never fit into.

Mark Hoffman is also the second smartest. I do think he failed because his frantic irritation from loss of control and the upper hand clouded his mind. But he fooled Strahm, analyzing the depth of his obsession and stubbornness. He fooled Rigg. He came up with a plan with coffee when his voice was close to being deciphered on Seth Baxter's tape, in seconds. When he woke up in a bathroom, it was just a moment before he reached for the saw. He survived a rigged trap. He survived Russian roulette. He connected to the police department's base, watching them. He killed John and Amanda. His mind is brilliant, but his cold emotions often get in the way (the ones he thinks of as cold; in reality, they are burning).

Amanda and he are two sides of the same coin, both emotional. One hides it behind a mask of detachment but goes on a killing spree for revenge. "The heart cannot be involved. Emotionally, there can be nothing there. It can never be personal." As much as we see Mark try to put up a facade that emotionally there is nothing there, it is not true. Amanda just wears her heart on her sleeve. And Mark locked it away from people's eyes and ignores the noise of the captive it creates.

Are monsters born or made? In Mark's case, the finality of him was made. But the darkness in him was there ever since he was born. It could've just stayed at breaching protocols and judging the system he worked within. But the world took everything away from him, and that made him break. He is only human, and he wanted justice for his sister; humans are prone to losing their minds.

Another moment that I want to discuss is how sacred Angelina is. She is everything. So, when he gets a promotion after "catching" Jigsaw and receives an award, walking into his office with it... he just throws it on his table. Because he would've never traded a frame with Angie for some stupid award. His hand touches the shelf with the frame. Never.

His traits are not always used in a bad way. He is overprotective. He often stands up for his colleagues if they are in danger (just as he did with Rigg and Gibson). His control makes him a fierce cop. When he saved that little girl, Corbett... yes, he did it to be the hero in the narrative, but I also think he would've never let an innocent child be harmed. It was always about her father and mother, not her.

Is there hypocrisy? Maybe. You can decide for yourself after I analyze a few scenes. When he grabs Amanda's hand to point out her scars: "Because I didn't take my life for granted." Because he sees Amanda's problems as performative and thinks she was ungrateful for her life. His own problems were grief, hidden in the dim light of the bar. He was never taking his life for granted; he was just processing the loss. But isn't his behavior just as reckless? He felt sympathy when he watched Paul (the Razor Wire Maze guy) and maybe even projected. He couldn't feel sympathy toward Amanda.

He is broken beyond repair. But the mechanism was different from the start. Functioning just acceptably, but differently. And now, when it has become this lonely, agonizing self, it rebuilds itself to be the one with power.

But the rebuilding is so frantic that it causes him to lose. The mechanism was too sure that it was all set now, so it forgot to be cautious enough.

He is cold enough to freeze the entire universe and hot enough to burn it, leaving nothing but ashes. He is a paradox in the form of a man. Mark lost the only light, so he became absorbed in the darkness.