That would be Bowie as Tesla… :smack:
If it’s something not posted here, spill it… please! 
Spill it? That’s a bigger spoiler box than I want to open up right now. What we need is a new “The Prestige:Unboxed Spoilers!!!” thread. But I see there’s already a second thread about the movie going now. Maybe we can wait until more people have seen it and start up the discussion again then?
As creator of this thread, I think we’ve used spoiler boxes about long enough… 
Borden was really twins. He never had a duplicating machine, which Tesla invented expressly for Angiers. I don’t think Borden ever even met Tesla. Sending Angiers to Colorado was a wild goose chase to get Angiers out of London so Borden’s career could flourish unhindered.
Borden is revealed to be a twin immediately after one of them is hung for the murder of Angiers. He shows up at Angiers theater in his disguise as Fallon and shoots Angiers.
Meeko: The “real magic” was Tesla’s machine. There’s a wonderful little scene when they show the machine to the agent for the first time, and he says, “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen real magic…” that I just loved. Makes you wonder what else he’s seen.
Okay, fine–be that way.
Riddle me this: Which Angier was getting killed? After the switch was thrown on the machine, where did the “original” end up?
Unboxed Spoilers follow (Spoilers was also in the thread title) You’ve been warned.
As I mentioned in a boxed spoiler above, I think this is one of the things that proves how messed up Angier really is. I believe he mentions in his death monologue that each time he performed the trick he had to convince himself that he was the one being teleported, not drowned. I don’t think there is actually any proof either way (if so, I missed it), as the duplicate appears entirely identical. For all we really know, the original Angier was shot by the first duplicate. Both would have known where the gun was located and both would have had the intention to use it.
In the book, as I recall, the original ends up lacking life and the resulting husks are stored (somewhere). It’s been a while since I read it. The movie handles this stuff better.
Oh, and another thing: Please tell me modern magicians don’t do the vanishing canary trick that way any more 
The whole movie is about their obsession to beat the other man. Does Angier’s obsession, then, lead him to the point where being killed/committing suicide 100 times is worth it? That’s what Tesla was warning him about, I guess.
I really want to see this and I have a couple hours today free. Maybe if I can scrap together $, I’ll nip off to the show.
Memento, while a fantastic movie, and one of my favorites, is not even in the same realm of movie as the Prestige. I don’t even know how you can compare the two. The thematic elements are all different, and the driving force behind both stories are totally unrelated.
On top of that, I want a refund:
SPOILERS FOLLOW
As I’m sure it’s been said already, Tesla’s machine is the “Real” magic in the film. I love the fantasy element, and I love that it came from a scientiest. I can see how it can be off-putting, but those people probably don’t like fantasy movies in the first place. The writing was still tight, even with such a wild card plot device, and I love how it was readily controlled and didn’t get out of hand. Blame the trailer for misrepresenting the movie. I thought the same thing, too, and I was pleasantly suprised by the result.
Also, I love how the big twists (Borden, Tesla’s machine, Angier’s double) were developed throughout the movie and ultimately presented. This alludes to what Baldwin has posted earlier, the actual trick is mundane (e.g. the bird is actually killed). The way the rivalry develops and how they each claim that they didn’t sacrifice (well, Borden claims that Angiers didn’t sacrifice) enough for their craft is excellent, as well as the realization of what each character went through to be the best at their craft: Borden leading two lives as one, the entire time, even when he was apprenticing under Ricky Jay, and even up to the point of the hanging versus the suicides/murder each time Angiers enters the machine.
This is easily the best movie this year. I saw The Departed last week, and it’s now a close second.
Although sending Angiers to Colorado was indeed a wild goose chase, he had met Tesla, who admitted building a machine for him. The machine he built was the one Borden was using on stage during his act, but it wasn’t a duplicator or transporter, it was just a fancy spark-making machine.
And in response to the question of which was the original Angiers, there are two answers. The first answer, according to Tesla, is that they all are (“which hat is mine?”…“they all are”) because they are identical in every way except location. The second answer is that in some sense the ‘original’ Angiers is the one that’s in the machine, because that one stays in the same place. During the first duplication, the ‘original’ Angiers shoots and kills his ‘duplicate’. But during the magic act, it is the ‘original’ Angiers that falls through the trap door and drowns and the duplicate that appears on the balcony and survives. By the end, the surviving Algiers is a duplicate of a dpulicate of a duplicate, etc. (Unless he made a copy do the first magic act).
I didn’t get the whole being a British Lord thing tho. When I saw the movie I assumed he had just become wealthy through his show and had changed his identity after the death of his duplicate. But people here seem to be implying that it was his Angiers identity that was the fake one all along and the British Lord identitiy was his original one. Anyone care to weigh in?
I forget the context, but early in the movie there’s a mention that Angiers working as a stage magician would be an embarassment to his family, so he works under an assumed name. I don’t think he ever made much money from his act. There’s really only two periods where he’s truly successful, and neither lasted very long: the first, when he hired the double, but got sabotaged by Borden. The second, of course, being the act with the Tesla machine that sets up the whole movie. Despite this, he can go to Colorado, stay in a swanky hotel for a long time, and pay huge sums of money to Tesla without blinking an eye. I think that was all family money he was spending, not the proceeds from his show.
By the way, anyone else think Tesla’s entrance was one of the best in movie history?
Just got back from the movie, and I really liked it. I think I’ll have to see it again to fully absorb it, but it was a great movie that I would recommend to anyone.
Wasn’t that a great entrance? Definitely the best that I’ve seen since Jack Sparrow’s entrance.
So when we first meet Angier’s, he’s working for Ricky Jay’s magician character as an audience shill and is married to Jay’s assistant. Did SHE know he was a wealthy Lord pretending to be a someone else?
I believe she said something about him not really being who he said he was, but I don’t know if that meant she knew his real name and everything about him, or she just knew he had secrets about who he was that he wouldn’t share.
I keep watching the trailers on television. I haven’t seen the movie but the trailers make me think the movie is a cinematic version of the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Weird.
Not in any way. What it is, is a cinematic version of Christopher priest’s the Prestige.
So after almost a week of discussion on this movie, I’m coming to the conclusion that we got all of the major points and at most maybe a few things in the scenery slipped by. I did read a few other threads at different places, and there were no other big revelations. I’m going to chalk the repeat of Michael Caine’s speech at the end to the director pointing out that he showed you some of the major plot points at the very beginning. That is… unless someone else has an epiphany and cares to share it.