The one Where Wolverine And Batman Where Obsessed With Each other

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

Originally adapted from the book-'The Prestige' by Christopher Priest, the movie by the same name is directed by the Nolan brothers- Jonathan and Christopher Nolan and stars Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as the male leads-Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, two magicians whose rivarly is the main plot of the movie.

It is one of the few rare movie where you can say-'oh! Its even better than the book!!' And yes, the movie stars Batman, Wolverine and Alfred(Michael Caine) but still is relatively unpopular. As the plot involves dealing with modern day London theatrical streets and magic tricks, a lot of efforts have to be put in to conceal the secrets of the tricks which is easier to do in books then the movies. You may argue that visual effects give an upper hand to direction but that would have been merely regarded as cheating. Christopher Nolan, who is often regarded as the master of Cinematic Misdirection played his role very well in visualizing the entire story with a lot of effective changes in the plot including the ending.

Michael Caine plays John Cutter who is an ingenieur, a mechanic to magicians and says the epic dialogue of-'The Prestige'.

Initially both Angier and Borden start out as assisters to a well-regarded magician and are good friends.. And as always, conventionally the good friends turn into enemies, after a tragic incident of Angier's wife's death during a magic trick because of a casualty on Borden's side. After that, they both go different ways to start their career with new and original magic tricks.

When Borden's trick-'The Transported Man' becomes the new sensation, Angier gets intensely jealous. The trick as illustrated by Borden is due to a magic rubber ball which he throws from a door at one end of the stage and catches when the ball bounces to the other end after appearing from the door on the other side of the stage. When Angier and Cutter having a discussion of the trick , it makes us think about the secret of the trick and yes, we certainly think of a double and that idea is immediately suppressed when Angier decides to do the trick using a double not knowing how Borden originally did it. That is a masterpiece of Nolan's work :Confess and Supress.

Borden then comes and reveals the secret of Angier's version of the trick which leaves him in a desperate need to find out the the secret and it drives him to Colorado Springs where he pays Tesla to help him.

Tesla is another major subplot of the movie. The movie shows how Tesla, the originator of the AC electronics was disregarded by the society and his rivarly with Edison. Edison and Tesla rivarly can also be seen as the science version of the rivarly between the two magicians. It is a known fact that Edison electroculated elephants with AC just to show how harmful it was but nonetheless now his DC is just limited to car batteries and every other we use runs by AC. Tesla was seen as a cult figure those days. He patented many discoveries but never published them. It is also shown that he electrified the entire village of Colorado Springs without wires. He truly was a man of magic.

In the movie, Tesla builds Angier a machine which supposedly clones and transports an object many yards away. Angier uses it to collect immense fame and decides to resign after a 100 shows. Now here is the twist, on the last show, Angier is seen drowning in the same water-box his wife died in and Borden being present there coincidentally is framed for his murder.

Borden is later on hanged and it is shown that Angier is alive too. It was how the machine works. The real Angier was thrown down into the box every night and died simultaneously, his clone appeared on 'The Prestige' and he used this chance to frame Angier. This is a much accepted version of the secret. Lateron we see Angier burning down his machine when suddenly Borden appears to shoot him and it is revealed that he had a twin who played as his assistant who was played by Bale in heavy make-up. They took turns living lives of two different personalities and thus Borden's character was seen as conflicted throughtout the movie. In the end, Angier died and Borden's twin was hanged and the real Borden walked out of the burning theatre without taking a glance at Angier's machine.

This makes us think Tesla really built the machine and it died. This is exactly the purpose of the movie-"You want to be fooled". When you take a more closer look, you realize the trick can be done with a double too as we never see the actual clones. And it might possible that to conceal the secret, Angier decided to kill the clone after the last show and frame Borden.



'The prestige' is a masterpiece of cinematic direction and you always find new clues when you rewatch it.