The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoilers)

[Lonemagpie]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

The duplicate Angier remembers walking into the machine and then suddenly being 100 feet away (or whatever the exact distance is) so to him it's a transporter that leaves a copy behind to get drowned...

Until the next performance when he suddenly discovers that that's not what it does!

It's a simple perspective change. We always see it from Angier's perspective, so the guys appearing 100 feet away are the duplicates for us and him. But THEN we see it from Cutter's perspective. And he sees a man who is surprised to be the duplicate that drowns.

Simple, but amazingly effective because it keeps the audience always seeing it from that one perspective which isn't the whole view...

 

[Starbreaker]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

This is the part where I mention that movie is based on a novel by Christopher Priest, which has more about the characters and their families.

But the movie's better!

 

[Captaindemotion]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

^ Agreed.

 

[Satyrquaze]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

But based on the trick itself, wasn't the Angier who began the trick always the one who ended up in the box? Therefore, it was always the duplicate who appeared in the balcony... so, Angier just fooled himself into thinking he always beat the odds as he didn't know any better.

 

[Disruptor]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

But based on the trick itself, wasn't the Angier who began the trick always the one who ended up in the box?

Yes, based on the cats and hats...the duplicates were "transported", the original remained in place.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

^ Agreed.

I believe that even Christopher Priest has been quoted as thinking that the film improves on his book. From the Wikipedia entry:

Author Christopher Priest saw the film three times as of January 5, 2007, and his reaction was "'Well, holy shit.' I was thinking, 'God, I like that,' and 'Oh, I wish I'd thought of that.'"

In the film, is Angier's perspective a result of his first attempt at using the transporter on himself? I can't recall the details now - but on this first attempt, is it the transported Angier who shoots and kills the original?

 

[nvek86]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

^I think the one in the machine is the one with gun.

The bigger plot hole in the film is what exactly Cutter told the judge about how the trick is done. Obviously he couldn' t tell him the real truth.

Don't we see the scene, where Cutter shows the judge the machine? Doesn't he say something along the lines of "it's real magic and should be destroyed"?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

Right - I really need to rent the film - the details have gotten fuzzy after 5 years.

 

[TeknoNurd]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

When Angier's wife drowns, Cain's character tells him of a sailor that said drowning was serene, like falling asleep in your mother's arms.

So, Angier's believes going into the trick, that he'll die a serene, peaceful death... like his wife. This is how he rationalized performing the trick, and killing himself.

Near the end, Cain's character tells Angier "Remember when I told you dieing was like falling asleep in your mother's arms? Well, I lied... he said it was the worst torture imaginiable."

At that moment, Angiers realizes that rather than sending himself to some large number of serene deaths, he sent himself to that many torturous deaths. Had he not been killed shortly thereafter, he surely would have gone raving bonkers.

Side Note: This is the argument I made for why people would not enter a transporter. This exact body dies. Would you REALLY do that? So what if a copy, even a copy with the exact atoms, continues?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

Well I certainly wouldn't for one - that's probably why I wondered if it was the original Angier that got shot by his newly created duplicate. Similarly, if we ever develop memory backup and the ability to transfer those memories to a cloned body, I'd never be convinced that continuation from a known state constituted continuity of existence. I'd always have a probably metaphysical, if not downright superstitious, feeling that the real me died. But then many of our cells are dying and being replaced all the time. We tell ourselves that we have continuity of existence but is that merely an illusion?

 

[Aragorn]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

Side Note: This is the argument I made for why people would not enter a transporter. This exact body dies. Would you REALLY do that? So what if a copy, even a copy with the exact atoms, continues?

That was the biggest problem I had with The Sixth Day, with all the casual deaths and how nothing's a big deal because you can just clone yourself. Well your clone lives on, BUT YOU STILL DIE!

 

[Professor Zoom]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

But based on the trick itself, wasn't the Angier who began the trick always the one who ended up in the box? Therefore, it was always the duplicate who appeared in the balcony... so, Angier just fooled himself into thinking he always beat the odds as he didn't know any better.

How can you say that though? If something is an exact copy, down to memories, who is to say which is the original? How do we know for certain the copy wasn't left behind and the original is what transported?

Of for that matter, if it's an exact copy, does it matter?

Ah... if only Philip K. Dick wrote this....

 

[JarodRussell]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

Side Note: This is the argument I made for why people would not enter a transporter. This exact body dies. Would you REALLY do that? So what if a copy, even a copy with the exact atoms, continues?

That was the biggest problem I had with The Sixth Day, with all the casual deaths and how nothing's a big deal because you can just clone yourself. Well your clone lives on, BUT YOU STILL DIE!

Wasn't that sort of the point of the film?

 

[Lonemagpie]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

But based on the trick itself, wasn't the Angier who began the trick always the one who ended up in the box? Therefore, it was always the duplicate who appeared in the balcony... so, Angier just fooled himself into thinking he always beat the odds as he didn't know any better.

He didn't have to fool himself - from his POV he remembers always walking into the box and being teleported out of it...

Though there is a plot hole in that if it's the original Angier who shoots the very first duplicate and not the other way round - because the first one would then know that the machine creates a duplicate some distance away, which would mean he was choosing to kill himself, and so are all the successive duplicates (cos they'd remember what happened and would always know they were going to drown when spawning a new duplicate)... Which might still work on a really this-guy-is-psychologically-fucked-in-the-head level, and would totally change the film...

I'll have to go watch it again to be sure.

There's also a fascinating and detailed discussion on (albeit some by thickos) here: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=531777

 

[JarodRussell]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

Though there is a plot hole in that if it's the original Angier who shoots the very first duplicate and not the other way round - because the first one would then know that the machine creates a duplicate some distance away, which would mean he was choosing to kill himself, and so are all the successive duplicates (cos they'd remember what happened and would always know they were going to drown when spawning a new duplicate)... Which might still work on a really this-guy-is-psychologically-fucked-in-the-head level, and would totally change the film...

I don't get it. It doesn't matter who shoots whom. Both the original and the duplicate have the same knowledge. So yes, he knew he needed to kill one of them every time.

 

[Starkers]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

If a duplicate of me had just been produced and was about to kill me, it wouldn't make me feel a whole lot better about the situation knowing he'd go on living my life with my memories!

 

[Deckerd]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

I suspect it matters to the drowing duplicate

I meant is doesn't matter who is the real one and who is the duplicate. For the purposes of the identity of the survivor, it makes no difference.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

I like the theory in post #1 on the Rotten Tomatoes site linked by Lonemagpie - just because Angier claims that Tesla's machine works as a teleporter doesn't make it true. The main problems I can see is Cutter obtaining and characterising so many corpses that are near-doubles of Angier, not to mention putting them in the tanks - and I don't accept that Root can be one of them.

 

[Starkers]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

I suspect it matters to the drowing duplicate

I meant is doesn't matter who is the real one and who is the duplicate. For the purposes of the identity of the survivor, it makes no difference.

Well it still might, we don't know if there's any pattern degredation after all (sorry I've started rewatching Voyager and now have a lot more technobabble in my head than before) given that it's the duplicate that always survives who knows what state his body was in? It's the old photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy scenario.

 

[Pingfah]

Re: The Prestige - finally saw it but have a small question(Huge Spoil

We also don't know that they don't spontaneously combust after 10 years. But since it is not mentioned, and the device is pure fantasy, for the purposes of enjoying the film we can assume it doesn't happen.