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The Prestige (Movie-Strut) Spoilers

mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
edited February 2007 in Strut Central
Who saw this and what was your opinion of the big reveal at the end (both of 'em)?

  Comments

  • twoplytwoply Only Built 4 Manzanita Links 2,915 Posts
    Are you sure you didn't mean the big reveal a half hour before the end?

    For real, the few people I know who saw it also figured it out pretty early. It would have been better if they'd dropped fewer hints.
  • JuniorJunior 4,853 Posts
    The reveal of multiple Jackman's was probably the most overdrawn twist I've ever seen. I would think that all but the simplest of viewers got a pretty accurate idea of what was happening in his trick from the moment you saw all the top hats outside. The continuous hints throughout the next hour became more and more unnecessary. By the time it got to the reveal of the chambers I was tired of the whole plotline.

    The Bale brothers reveal was perhaps slightly better done in that they didn't spend half the movie pointing it out and I guess credit to them for keeping it simple but I don't think I've ever seen a worse fake moustache than the one Bale was sporting and the whole we bot loved one woman bullshit was painful.

    I haven't read the book so I don't know whether this is a problem with the original story or whether the clumsy reveal is in a bad adaption for the screen

    Oh yeah, just got to say, Bowie really, really, needs to stop acting.

    Apart from all that I quite enjoyed the movie.
  • magpaulmagpaul 1,314 Posts
    pretty good movie i thought.
    some debate about the ending i thought they left it pretty open.
    some of the discussion I read postulated the following:

    what happened to Angier's original clone? (the drunk actor)
    does Angier get killed by his replica when he first tests the machine? (when he shoots himself?)
    did Borden use a version of Tesla's machine first? (hence his identical twin)
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    pretty good movie i thought.
    some debate about the ending i thought they left it pretty open.
    some of the discussion I read postulated the following:

    what happened to Angier's original clone? (the drunk actor)
    does Angier get killed by his replica when he first tests the machine? (when he shoots himself?)
    did Borden use a version of Tesla's machine first? (hence his identical twin)

    Borden didn't use the Tesla machine. He made it clear in the diary that got planted on Angier that Tesla was a red herring. His identical twin was really his identical twin. No David-Bowie-In-Make-Up Magic??? needed.

    They never explain what happened with Angier's original "clone" (the actor).

    And the first time Angier tests the Tesla machine, he gets cloned and then he kills his clone. However, from that point onwards, at some point, the "original" Angier must have ended up committing suicide and from there on, it was just clones making more clones.

    And to respond to the first repliers' post: as you noted, I had noted that the Tesla Machine, indeed, worked as a cloning machine even though NOlan felt like he had to hammer this point home (just in case people didn't manage to remember it) at the very end. And I couldn't agree more - up until that point, the film basically stayed within the idea of magic being illusion (albeit well-crafted) but the introduction of a WORKING cloning machine?

    I had to pause a sec and think: what the fuck? It was like there were two different movies going on - a sci-fi morality tale and a period magician melodrama. I'm open to supernatural twists ("The Sixth Sense") but this just seemed like some nutty deus ex machina type shit.
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