The Prestige Forum

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Nice

Got a lot of suggestions to do this one, so I gave it a whirl. Personally, in retrospect, I think Sidegrades are better when the movies are funnier/badder, but it'll be curious to see what you guys think.

Love both films

Scarlett Johansson > Jessica Biel

I would say that this didn`t work as well as previous entries of sidegrades. Categories should be more serious, just because movies are better than earlier sidegrades movies. So I would concoure Rories opinion that movies should be funnier or badder.

That said, I never liked The Illusionist. It has something that doesn`t work with me, maybe it is the accent.

The book The Prestige written by Christopher Priest is fantastic. It's a much larger scope story involving the grandchildren of the two magicians. If you liked the movie then it's definitely worth reading the source material.

I like this edition because it came out with the pretty much indubitably correct result.

The Prestige is by far the better film. It is much better put together, with hints at its twist ending you can only see by watching it a second time, plus the characters have an understandable back and forth rivalry with both doing horrible things to the other yet remaining sympathetic.

The Illusionist on the other hand, feels to me like the writers wrote themselves into a corner and didn't know how to end it, resulting in an ass pull of a contrived ending that we see. Still, the performances are fantastic(aside from accent stuff as Rorie pointed out). I have not watched it recently to determine whether the special effects have held up though, and I can imagine that might break the movie as it relies on CGI for the magic tricks.

I liked both films, but as a Nolan fan I definitely liked The Prestige better. The only problem with The Prestige, and Nolan's films in general, is that his characters are less characters and more ideas. The characters in The Illusionist feel a bit more real even if the plot of the film itself kind of pales in comparison.

I don't even need to watch this to know which the winner is . . .

But I'm going to anyway.

The Prestige is probably my favourite Nolan film. I don't hate The Illusionist but would find it hard to say I like it.

Well deserved win for The Prestige, it's still my favourite movie of all time. (OF ALL TIME!) I think I saw it after Memento, which at the time I was quite disappointed with (it has since grown on me), and before the Batmen (which are great as well).

I had forgotten how convoluted/silly the protagonist's "plan" was in The Illusionist. I hadn't forgotten the bullshit CG magic tricks that made it seem like Norton was a god damn sorcerer.

More Sidegrades Please!!!!!!

Great video, hope to see a bestie on The Prestige soon. I remember being a little dissapointed in the its reliance on science-fiction after a first viewing but even that's not enough to sour how masterful The Prestige is when rewatching it.

I always thought that Christian Bale's character(s) in The Prestige were a result of visiting Tesla once himself and getting a double, then figuring he could do everything he needed to do with just him and his double, not by murder.

Also, I love all the content on Screened in regards to The Prestige so far. The script analysis by Andrew Godoski was super fun to read and helped me decide to buy it on blu ray.

Very fun side-grade to watch, Rorie for the win

I also think of David Bowie being Pierce Brosnan in The Prestige. I can only see Pierce.

I really enjoyed The Prestige, but I somehow came to a different conclusion about the twist than anyone else who saw it. I did not think that the two Christian Bale were a twin brothers. I assumed that he had inadvertently cloned himself when he visited Tesla. Tesla was not even aware he was cloning hats every time he tried to transport one, so I pictured Bale testing the machine, assuming that it failed and later finding his clone out in the woods among the hats. Rather than react violently or tell anyone of his discovery, he decided to incorporate this into his act. This made more sense to me since Fallon only seems to exist after Bale's and Jackman's characters split up.

Everyone I've talked to about this movie assumed that the two Bales were twin brothers. Did anyone else reach the same explanation I did, or am I crazy?