Anybody seen this movie? Does anyone fancy having a spoilerific discussion of it? Without spoiling things too much, did anybody who saw it feel, as I did, that disguising magic as "science fiction" did not really redeem the great denouement?
Seriously, two thousand five hundred posts in two days about the new James Bond, but on a science forum that deals with skeptical issues, nobody wants to talk about the new film about magic, magicians, illusions and some science fiction? I typed Prestige Bale Jackman into the search engine and it came up with nada, that's why I created the thread, but I'm quite disappointed with the sciforums community that nobody even seems to be interested.
Sure I've seen the Movie. I thought David Bowie was brilliant as Nikollia Tesla. Tying him into the plot made the movie extremely believable for us scientific minded skiptics. However, I was very confused with the whole Twin thing. Was Christian Bales assistant his twin a result of the machine that Bales Character recieved from Tesla, or was he just a Twin?
***SPOILERS**** Precisely the opposite effect on me - it just seemed to besmirch Tesla's name as a great scientist and turned him into a semi-mystic. Borden was a pair of twins all the way through. Borden never had a machine from Tesla (I think Tesla told him that, but the crazy chronology obscured that). That was the point of talking about making sacrifices, and of being the trick throughout your life (remember the Chinaman who acted old and decrepit to conceal the special way he had to walk when he was carrying the goldfish bowl?). And this extended to his marriage to Sarah, which unfortunately conflicted with the other one's falling in love with Olivia. What I hated was when we saw Borden's original version of The Transported Man. There are two doors widely spaced on the stage. He bounces the ball towards the other door, goes through his door ..... and before he emerges, we cut away! That part of the trick was the very Prestige that the whole movie is about... and we didn't see it! The final revelation about how Borden does his trick (before we learn the shocking truth about Angier) is another Prestige.... which was botched. I simply do not understand why Nolan cut it the way he did. Borden is asked for his last words, he says "Abracadabra" and we see him begin to fall through the gallows trap door. Cut to Angier - there's a shot. But instead of cutting straight to Borden, Angier says "You had a brother... a twin!" Again - Borden being in two places at once is THE PRESTIGE! And Nolan buggered it up! I simply do not understand why Nolan made certain decisions. Was the original Transformed Man shown that way because Nolan didn't "really" have a double for Bale, and he'd have had to use movie trickery? But he had to use movie trickery anyway! And why on EARTH was Angier's non-twin-brother double played by Hugh Jackman?! (That really really annoyed me, because it kills the whole thing about how a double can work in a magic trick without actually being a twin brother. Bale has to play both Bordens because he doesn't have a twin, but Angier's double isn't his twin, so he doesn't have to be played by Jackman. Roger Rees would have been better used playing the double, Root - he's even acted that exact characterisation on The West Wing!)
Well, teleportation and duplication are both very common themes in science fiction. If you want to dismiss all scifi that has teleporters as "magic", you are throwing out quite a lot of science fiction, including a lot of classics like Dune and Ringworld.
