# Let's revisit The Prestige because I just watched it for the first time \*Open Spoilers\*

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-revisit-the-prestige-because-i-just-watched-it-for-the-first-time-open-spoilers/673496>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [November 9, 2013, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-revisit-the-prestige-because-i-just-watched-it-for-the-first-time-open-spoilers/673496 "2013-11-09T10:48:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2013, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-revisit-the-prestige-because-i-just-watched-it-for-the-first-time-open-spoilers/673496/41 "2013-11-25T21:57:20Z")

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> [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](#):
>
> 1. A deep message of the movie is that a clone can never really be a clone. Sarah learned that a clone can’t love her like the original - in her case the real clone (twin brother) of Borden. Angier’s clones are willing to kill their own “brothers” for the fame. The “original” would take painstaking steps just to avoid killing a bird.

It’s not the cloning process that makes Angiers willing to kill. He’s set his mind on murdering his duplicate before the first time he uses the machine. The difference between his attitude at the beginning of the film, with the bird, and the end, when he’s got a hidden barn full of his own corpses, is meant to illustrate how depraved he has become in his obsession to beat Borden.

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**Author:** ![Tanbarkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@Tanbarkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tanbarkie)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-revisit-the-prestige-because-i-just-watched-it-for-the-first-time-open-spoilers/673496/42 "2013-11-26T04:16:06Z")

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> [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](#):
>
> I just saw it for the first time and think the movie was very good - but only once I got over the idea that there was an actual cloning machine. Until the end, I was hoping it was still some sort of trick. The presence of an actual cloning machine turns the movie from something that could have happened to something that couldn’t possibly have happened - from fiction to fantasy.

Yeah, I too was somewhat disappointed on my first viewing for just this reason. But once you get that playing with “real world magic” isn’t actually what the movie is about - it’s, as others have noted, a meditation on obsession - it works. Because Tesla is just as obsessed, in his own way, as Angier and Borden. And he’s involved in his own mad game of one-upsmanship with Edison.

> [@](#):
>
> 1. A deep message of the movie is that a clone can never really be a clone. Sarah learned that a clone can’t love her like the original - in her case the real clone (twin brother) of Borden. Angier’s clones are willing to kill their own “brothers” for the fame. The “original” would take painstaking steps just to avoid killing a bird.

That’s not really the message, though. It’s not that Borden’s twin “couldn’t” love Sarah - it’s that he simply did not. He may be a twin, and he may share his brother’s obsessions, but he’s ultimately a separate person who falls in love with another woman. Neither Borden is capable of faking love with the woman he ISN’T in love with.

Angier doesn’t really have “clones” per se. As the hat scene indicates, ALL of the Angiers are the “original” Angier. This isn’t Star Trek style transporter wackiness, where the signal buffer degrades or whatever. This is Magic.

> [@](#):
>
> 1. David Bowie was great!

Indeed he was!

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