"Are you watching closely..." is one of the best taglines of all time.

David Bowie being cast as Tesla was a stroke of genius.

The Prestige is an underrated film. One of Christopher Nolan’s best. It’s one of those films that I immediately rewatched after the ending.

“I didn’t know if I’d be the man in the box….. or the prestige”. That’s why he was SO shook every time he did the act. He is both the man in the box AND the prestige. Love that line.

It will never not be funny to me that when Danton's wife dies in the beginning, on stage we have Batman and Wolverine but they let Alfred the Butler swing the ax

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke So yes, technically at that time, Tesla was a wizard. The uninvented thing was uninvented. Story purposes. :)

Sooooo many little hints and allusions to the ending reveal. From when the little boy was crying about the birds "brother" dying and him calling him clever, to the both of them watching the old Chinese magician doing the goldfish bowl trick and Christian Bales character saying that him OFF the stage was the real trick. Because he knew that "living the lie" was the hard part that made the trick easy.

The film is structured like the process of a magic trick. Act 1 ends with the wife drowning or the pledge, Act 2 ends with Angier stepping into the machine for the first time ("and here at the turn, I must leave you"). The ending of Act 3 is the reveal of Borden to Angier, or the prestige. The Borden twins actually have distinct personalities. The first of them (who loved Scarlett Johansson) is obsessed with performing magic tricks and is loud, confrontational, and quick to anger. He's the one who tied the double knot and killed Angier's wife in the process. He's also the one who got his fingers shot off by Angier and was ultimately jailed and hanged at the end. The second twin (who loved Sarah) is much more quiet, measured, and approachable. His talent is he's really good at deciphering how other magicians perform their tricks. Chronologically, we first see him when he and Angier go to figure out how the fish bowl trick is done. He is also the one who shows up at the funeral to pay his respects and says he doesn't know which knot was tied (he really didn't know and was telling the truth!). Tesla did build a machine for Borden when he and Angier's rivalry over the transported man trick started heating up, but it was just glorified set dressing, a machine that gave off electricity overhead. The trick was still performed by the twins as usual, there were no clones involved. Angier still believed Borden was just one man and that Tesla really had built Borden a teleporting machine. Angier asked Tesla to build one that could do the same thing, but better. Since Tesla was staring his last financial resource in the face he agreed to do it. Tesla did in fact succeed in building such a device for Angier, with the unintentional side effect of creating copies of beings or objects ("These things never quite turn out the way you expect them to"). Through science, Tesla inadvertently created a machine that could do REAL magic and you could calibrate how close or far away to send the duplicate. Tesla wanted Angier to destroy it because, well think about it: creating endless armies, endless resources to invade the world with if it fell into the wrong hands and such. Lord Caldlow is actually Angier's real name. Angier is his stage name. He came from a wealthy family who didn't approve of his interest in magic. He was a great showman but to fellow magicians his methods were amateur at best ("I can spot Angier's methods from the back of the theater"). Borden was good at magic tricks, but terrible at selling the crowd on them ("He's a wonderful magician, he's a terrible showman"). The first time you see Angier and Borden as magician's assistants walking up on stage you'll notice that Borden just walks up the stairs directly over to Angier's wife, whereas Angier faces the crowd, smiles and bows, putting on a show.

I have to say the late David Bowie was a decent actor in the few movies he did.

This is one of my favourite films ever. And i think it is one of those practically perfect movies. It has everything to keep one guessing, and even when the prestige is revealed, you can't help but want to go back and watch it all again to pick up every nuanced hint along the way.

Tesla was a genius with electricity, he invented alternating current (AC) which powers the world today. The scene with the light bulbs in the ground was a real experiment he used to prove that electricity could be safely transmitted through the ground without wires. In another famous experiment, he held light bulbs in his hands and let electricity course through his body to light them. He believed that electricity could be transmitted through the atmosphere, without cables and without utility companies, for the world to use for free, but died before proving it. Unfortunately he was also an eccentric madman, so when he died, nobody else could duplicate his work.

Was Tesla a wizard? No..... but also yes.

We do actually get a full close up of Fallon: right at the end when he visits Borden in prison and Borden tells him 'I'm sorry about Sarah.'

12:22 - No Shanelle, you can do that "wireless incandescent lamp" trick at home by building a Tesla coil. The Colorado Springs site was just a large scale test of wireless electricity transmission over a distance.

The Prestige and The illusionist are a natural double-feature imo

"Was Tesla a wizard?" Yes.

Technically, there are no clones. As Tesla told Angier, all the hats are his. The machine creates a paradox where the same person exists as two separate people each w/ their own consciousness. It's not even a guarantee that the original consciousness still exists after the 1st time that he used the machine. But in that 1st instance, the Angier inside the machine shoots the one outside of it. Hence, for the 2nd instance in which he uses the machine (the demonstration to the promoter), his POV is that he'll be the one who's about to drown and "go home" like Julia. "It takes everything" to steal the trick, after all. But then, of course, the prestige experiences being the transported man. Due to the memories of surviving inside the machine the 1st time and then outside of the machine for all the other times, he says to Borden that he doesn't actually know whether the person who enters the machine ends up living or dying. Alternatively, it's also possible that the Angier who shot the revolver eventually acknowledged that he may not even be the one who prepared the gun and walked into the machine to begin with, especially if he FELT some kind of effect. As for Borden's side of the story, you'll find that the surviving brother at the end, Alfred, was mostly caught in the crossfire between Freddy & Robert. Hence, while far from innocent, he's the one who gets the somewhat happy ending.

From the world of Thor quote: “Magic is science that we don’t understand yet.”

One of the greatest films of the 21st century, no argument. Borden wasn't attempting to do something bad to Angier at the end; he was trying to figure out how the trick worked - who knew Tesla would invent teleportation? - and the irony is that he was doing everything he could to smash the tank and save Angier, not realising that what was in front of him was one of two Angiers one of which *had* to die. In the warehouse where the second Angier did die, there's 99 tanks each with a dead Angier in it. Every night he started the trick knowing that one copy would live and the other copy would die. Angier is the bad guy in this film; Borden's a bit of a prick - otherwise Angier's wife would never have died - but he would never have set out to have Angier hanged, or even killed. He had a fantastic trick, and he waited years until he could bamboozle the whole of London with it, and Angier was furious that he couldn't figure it out, couldn't replicate it. Michael Caine had the answer all along: "he has a double". Angier was also incandescent that Borden had fooled him with the diary trick into thinking Tesla had the answer to how Borden's trick worked, but then Tesla managed to provide him with a teleportation trick anyway. Angier could just have become the most famous magician in the world, 'disappeared', and then live in comfort in the family mansion. Why did he have to put together a scheme to have Borden executed? That was nasty. In one sense, the biggest victim is Sarah; it's inexcusable that both Bordens should take turns in being her husband and driving her mad with confusion.

What's interesting about the whole "which character are we supposed to like" is that clearly we are, as you said, supposed to be muddy on them both..... but there's a decent amount of evidence that the one twin was a far better man than the other, and it was only his brother who matched Angiers competitive obsession. This good twin made the effort to attend Angiers wife's funeral. He lets go of the feud and tells his brother to just leave Angiers alone, but his brother cannot. Luckily, we know he's the one who survives with his actual daughter at the end.

The end of the first watch of this movie is always fun. That time when you are sure that everything was withheld from you to make it work. Then you watch it for the second time, and you see just how wrong you are. Just how much is out in the open, hidden in plan sight. It's all misdirection and sleight of hand. The entire movie is constructed like a magic trick, and it isn't complete until you've had the experience of a second watch. Now you know how the trick is done, but rather than the magic being gone, you have an entirely new respect for the simplicity and execution of the illusion behind the trick.

As what seems to happen several times, there was another 'period' movie about magic in 2006 called the "Illusionist". This movie has its own twists along the way.

The Prestige is my favourite Nolan film. And Bowie as Nikola Tesla is the chef’s kiss.

Brilliant movie from Chris Nolan, one of my favorite. The sequence with glowing light bulbs on the field in Colorado Springs, pure cinematic magic.

This is the Nolan movie that really needs a second viewing to fully appreciate; a twin viewing, if you will. Tenet needs like four (which isn’t necessarily bad).

I love the slow reveal of all of the boxes lined up at the end, with a dead Hugh Jackman in each one.

The book had an additional layer of their great grandchildren going through the respective ancestor's journals, each having their own story that is related to what they discover in the reading.

Nolan did a good job adapting the novel. Was quite interesting.

‘He came in to demand an answer and I told him the truth. That I have fought with myself over that night, one half of me swearing blind that I tied a simple slipknot, the other half convinced that I tied the Langford double. I can never know for sure.’ Love this line, when you know the twist, it has even more meaning, that the twins actually argued about what knot he tied, and ‘Freddy’ lied to his brother about tying the Langford Double.

The mystery and twists are the obvious high point of this film, but I think part of the reason this is one of my favorite movies is because it has an intensity underlying everything that gives the entire plot more punch. Lines like "I was lying. He was it was agony." aren't related to any of the plot twists, but it hits just as hard as the final reveal.

The bird trick exposes both Borden AND Angier's prestige. Such a brilliant "hiding in plain sight" aspect of the movie.

This is truly one of my favorite films of all time. And with every subsequent watch, I find myself exponentially enjoying it more and more and more. It's brilliant storytelling and misdirection.

"Was Tesla a wizard, guys?" Well, in a short answer, yes.

I saw this movie in on the big screen, and I could tell that "Fallon" was wearing prosthetic makeup. Going by the eyes and the man's build, I figured it might be Christian Bale playing the role, I just didn't know why. I had forgotten about Michael Caine theorizing that Borden must have used a double in his trick, which was exactly right.

Sending you some love from across the pond in surprisingly sunny Scotland. 😊 Always great fun hanging with you on the channel!

“Was Tesla a Wizard guys?” All inventors are wizards. They make things appear that ordinary never existed before

15:38 Nobody really gives David Bowie the credit he deserves for his acting abilities.

I imagine Christopher Nolan playing Diablo in the 90s, discovering the duplication glitch, and exclaiming, “What a twist!”

Wonderful reaction as always! On my first watch, I think I was still trying to keep pace with the twists and turns by the time it was all revealed. You're the only reactor I've seen guess Borden's secret in advance, and it's crazy you got it from such subtle hints. Saying all that... please don't give yourself a hard time about understanding things perfectly. Sure you guess wrong or misunderstand scenes every once in a while, but it never makes your video any worse. It's interesting to see how a movie can be interpreted differently, and those reactions are just as enjoyable as this one. You're a great creator and the fun is in seeing your unique take.

This script is tight as hell. Three separate storylines are hurtling together and only collide at the final moment. There is not a single wasted frame in this film and it is Nolan's best.

If you want another great movie about magic then watch the "The Illusionist" featuring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel and Rufus Sewell.

When asked what person living or dead you'd choose to have a conversation with i'd choose Nikola Tesla. I'd ask him to keep it simple haha

Borden vs Angier angle. It's kind of tricky. Between the two of them alone, Border is certain the better person. What he did to Angier at the start was an accident that Angier's wife was fine with. If you ever rewatch the scene, you'll see her give a nod to Borden to go ahead with the other knot. The rest was basically payback for what Angier was doing to him. But the other angle is, Borden isn't great in his own right because of what he puts Olivia and Sarah through. In the end, I'm still on Borden's side. He didn't stoop to the level of Angier of intentionally putting someone's life at risk when he buried Fallon. Not until the end when Borden killed Angier for getting his brother killed.

This movie does a great job depicting how rivalry can escalate into enmity. Each man feels like the scales aren’t balanced, and they are so fixated on having the last word that they burn down their lives.

13:18 - Who, Tesla? Nope. He died of an overdose of years.

The look on their faces....it's literally why I feed off the pain and tears of others. I didn't get to feed this time but I shall

My favorite Nolan film after The Dark Knight. Also, My wife and I have been together for almost 18 years ... we saw this film on our first date.

The Prestige is a film that shows you something new each time you watch it. Really clever.

I was in high-school when this movie came out and I really liked it. One of my friends had seen it but misunderstood the ending. He thought that Bale's character was a magician and a clone, not twin brothers. He thought that he had originally gone to see Tesla, got cloned, and gave Jackman the real key to the trick. I told him that didn't make sense within the movie as we literally hear Jackman say "twins" when dying, so he went back to the theater to check and agreed with me.

Glad you mentioned that Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale looked somewhat alike in this movie… I actually found that confused me quite a bit, especially in the early part of the movie because I was having trouble keeping track of which of them was which in terms of remembering who had done what to whom. I thought it was just me, but perhaps it was a deliberate extra layer of confusion. This is a great film for sure. Great reaction as always! 👍

Continue the great work Shanelle !!!!!!

The bullet-catching trick was very popular in the nineteenth century, but more or less abandoned by the end of the century because too many things could go lethally wrong. In one case, a credulous spectator, actually believing that the magician could catch bullets, fired his own gun at him in order to see him do so again. I understand that new versions of the trick have started being performed again in recent years.

This is a movie that you will like more and more the more times you watch it. Seriously, if you watched it 10 times in 10 weeks you'd notice new hints and clues on the 10th watch. I think its Nolans best movie by a country mile

Great reaction Shan!

Time really is the running theme across most of Nolan's films

This story is based on a book I read in the 90's! The movie is very close to what happens there, a great adaptation. Like most great magic tricks, the answer is in front of you for one thing all the time! The author is Christopher Priest.

The locations, sets and costumes are gorgeous.

The Prestige is my favorite Christopher Nolan film. I've always loved magic, so this movie checked all of the boxes for me. I'm so glad you finally watched it!

I first watched this movie on a plane, was going through the options and the trailer had me hooked. I think i watched it again on the return flight, enjoyed matching each scene to which version of Borden it was

My favorite scenes: Tesla: Mr. Angier, have you considered the cost of such a machine? Angier: Price is not an object. Tesla: Perhaps not, but have you considered the COST?! Cutter: This wasn't made by an engineer. This was made by a WIZARD!

Something I heard about Christopher Nolan movies that I can't forget is how a bunch of his movies are secretly ABOUT MOVIES. The Prestige goes on and on about how to structure a good magic trick, but it works almost line for line to describe how the movie itself is structured. In Inception a lot of the lines describing the way dreams work also describe how movies work (scenes beginning in the middle, our brains accepting distorted reality as long as it doesn't go too far). Memento matches memory up with how scenes deliver information to the audience. Great movie all around, very gripping, fun twists and turns. Enjoyed seeing you pick up on as much as you did. You definitely noticed a lot more than I did on my first watch, I never thought about how we never got a good look at Fallon during the movie. Good stuff.

I think you are initially meant to root for Angier, to sympathize with him over the loss of his wife, etc., and dislike Borden for the callous ambiguity in his responsibility in her death. But it's Angier's obsession for revenge that ultimately drives the film and their antagonistic relationship, and he would always push it the farthest, ultimately willing to literally sacrifice his own life to win. Angier did it for the prestige (pun intended lol), but the Borden's did it for the love of the craft. Regardless of the motivations though, they both made sacrifices to achieve their goals. This was probably the first Nolan movie I saw and it blew my mind at the time. I can't remember now when I figured it out, but Nolan was of course very intentional in telling the story to keep the films prestige hidden until the very end... like most of his and Jonathan's work lol

You had so much of it really early, which was impressive! SHOCKED though, Shan, SHOCKED that you didn't catch David Bowie as Tesla though!

My mania has been horrible lately and I’ve been struggling bc of it. Glad to see you enjoyed this movie! ❤❤❤

In any magic show, the assistant is the magician, the 'Magician' is the misdirect.

I saw it in theaters. I've seen it many times since. I love this movie so much!

My favourite movie of all time. It’s a great rewatch, I strongly suggest you watch it again as soon as possible, while your memory is still fresh. The number of nuances you’ll spot are astounding. I’ve seen it at least a hundred times (and it’s a conservative number lol) and I still pick up new things once in a while

love love love this film. still not sure if i'm happy or sad that i read the book before the movie was made, because the twists and turns would have been awesome to experience for the first time in this medium.

David Bowie as Nikola Tesla is such great casting, as well as Andy Serkis as Mr. Alley (Tesla's assistant).

The scene during the funeral where he asked what knot he tied, he really didn’t know because it was his twin that was the one tying it instead

The fact that the machine cloned things instead of teleporting them was the glitch that Tesla couldn't quite fix. The idea that teleportation doesn't quite work the way you think is an idea that occasionally pops up in science fiction. I know there's a short story from the point of view of someone being teleported, and there's an issue where the receiving end doesn't acknowledge a successful transport. The story teller gradually realizes the technology doesn't teleport people, it duplicates them, and once the duplication is confirmed as successful, the 'original' is immediately killed.

This movie is unique in that it really rewards audience intelligence and attention span. Nolan doesn't insult his audience by assuming they are dumb.

I fucking LOVE this movie. It came out around the same time as “The Illusionist”, which is also PHENOMENAL

The double named "Root" - in systems admin, if you are root, or have root privileges, then you can control everything, in the film, Angier has control of the act for as long as he controls Root, which is lost when Borden interrupts.

many of the tricks seen in the movie were early versions of actual magic tricks. the bullet catch was a real illusion that was actually dangerous as there were reports of the selected spectator dropping a metal ball bearing or other shrapnel into the barrel just before shooting the magician, severally injuring or killing the magician. The vanishing bird cage used a series of pulleys and wires hidden under the magician's coat and actually did kill the bird in the cage. Also if a spectator had their fingers inside of the cage, their fingers were crushed or even cut off. The cages were also known to get caught in the sleeves of the coat, causing injury to the magician's arms. Later versions of the cage used a rubber bird inside the cage and designed newer safety features to prevent injury to the magician and assistant.

Bowie as Tesla .... Chef's kiss

I loved this movie, it's very engaging, a true mystery / psychological thriller. I didn't realise there were quite so many time jumps - what a great piece of movie trivia! I wasn't sure I understood the full story even at the end, needs a second watch for sure.

My Favorite Nolan Film!! Shoot good!!! To this day, it still gives me the chills!!!

22:17 - I can't help but be reminded of the previous scene with Tesla...and the movie Multiplicity. 😉

Didn't include my favourite line from Hugh Jackman in the film. "It took courage to climb into that machine. Every night, not knowing if I'd be the man in the box or the Prestige"

Underrated Chris Nolan film

Compare and contrast with Nolan's earlier film, _Memento,_ which is also a story about how do we know what is true, and what happens when people conceal the truth from us. It also features time as an important element of the plot.

The Borden/Fallon twin brothers played by Christian Bale has different personalities, one is more cunning, evil and obsessed, the other is more kind, nice and less obsessed! One loved Sarah and one loved Olivia! And than the Fallon guy Bale also played was more subtle!

The prestige is like the 6th sense…. Its made to make you want to rewatch it to see all the clues you missed in the first viewing

How can you go wrong when you got Batman, two different Alfred's, Wolverine, Black Widow,and David freaking Bowie all in the same movie 🤣🤣

My twin probably already beat me to mentioning this, but this movie 100% deserves to be watched more than once -- on a 2nd viewing you see that basically every other line is a double-entendre, which adds a whole other dimension of richness to an already outstanding film.

The actor who plays the magician at the beginning is played by Ricky Jay, a real life magician.

The tragedy of the trick being so simple it was said from jump. It was a movie about the depths of obsession

This is a great movie. The small element of fantasy that is the cloning machine represents the length to which Jackman's character is willing to go to upstage his rival. He didn't understand how Borden performed his trick, and while it turns out to be the simplest answer possible (a twin brother), Angier takes his own trick to such ridiculous levels that he actually clones himself over and over just to be the better magician. The dedication from both these men, to essentially commit suicide every evening and to keep a twin brother a secret to your friends and family, became their mutual downfall. It's fantastic movie writing and one of Nolan's best imho.

6:18 - Funny, I would've thought after that stand up of yours at least your mom would've made you *_SWEAR_* you wouldn't. 😂

You're right about Nolan keeping "Fallon" out of focus. I think it might have been *too* clever, though. For some people, that just made it obvious that Fallon's identity was the key to the whole thing; for others, it made it hard to remember that he was even part of the story. It's a hard balance to weigh.

I never really figured this one out until the reveal (or should i say, prestige) at the end. I was too enthralled in the story to really put any thought into it. If you haven't seen it yet. I HIGHLY suggest what in my opinion is one of if not the best performance from Hugh Jackman, Prisoners. It is a great film. You should give it a look.

3:32 - High stakes right off the bat. Good storytelling.

37:58 - Yeah, that's something I noticed as well.

Thanks, Shanelle! 🪄 I love this one. I'm so fortunate to have seen it on the big screen.

12:05 Wireless electric transfer is a real thing. It's not very practical because it only works short distances, but it was something Tesla was working on. He was trying to get the government to fund his research into it by promising them he could develop a death beam for them.

Still my fav Nolan film! I read the book, the invention lives! It's discovered by their descendants and that's how the story is framed. Movie did a good job dropping that aspect imo.

34:15 yeah, that was my one complaint with this movie is that the whole movie was presented as if it was in a real world setting and then we suddenly are meant to believe we’ve shifted into an alternate universe where different laws of physics apply. (I think in reality the scriptwriters just intend for us to believe that creating matter from nothing is in fact possible with enough scientific knowledge, but I personally find that a bit too far to accept.) I haven’t actually read it, but my understanding is that the novel has a lot more fantasy style references all throughout so it’s not so much of a jarring shift in perspective to it accept the fantasy elements as fitting in with the world building.

Awesome movie. TENET is Nolans most ambitious film yet u should watch that next.

The real prestige was the friends we made along the way.