The Prestige was the best magician film ever made. Crafty, and original.
Here's an article I wrote almost a year ago that would fit nicely in this thread. I'm sure the QT fanboys who buy all his hype, just as many of them did for Chuck Liddel right before he fought Quinton Rampage Jackon, will flame me.
People Praise Junk
Someone told me that one of the best opening scenes in any film was the table scene in 'Inglorious Bastards'. Do you consider that a great opening scene? From the top of my mind the opening scene of 'The Dark Knight' shows the unoriginality of the Inglorious Bastards opening blatantly as a glass of Merlot spilled on a white tuxedo.
In the film The Dark Knight, dialogue is shown through a course of events which pushes the story forward right off the bat. In Tarintinos scene our characters sit at a table with people underneath them. What many non-writers fail to see is that the latter scene is constructed from a Hitchcock writing tactic which is best described as 'Putting the bomb under the table'. Its direct approach being timid will have many claim the dialogue is what allows the scene to classify itself as an exception to the rule when it comes to opening scene expectations. No, we already saw men sitting at a table not doing much in his earlier film Reservoir Dogs. That's right, could this be recycled at all? Tarintino wasn't even brave enough to be creative about it, he took the concept of this Hitchcock tactic for his film Inglorious Bastards word for word like a presidential election bumper sticker and managed to stretch it into the excitement of a Saturday's Noon-to-Six algebra lecture. Now let's compare the motionless opening from Inglorious Bastards to that of The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight has the ball rolling instantly after some shots of skyscrapers establishing the city environment. Our plot begins to unfold through a series of events, an element of creativity is thrown in as the villains execute one after another to receive a larger portion of the money pool until we remain with the last man standing. Abracadabra, like a prestige trick from David Copperfield, Ta-Da! The mask comes off and the Joker is revealed. The audience is buckled in for the ride; captivated and instantly hooked.
What your general audience seldom knows about the opening scene in The Dark Knight is that this too is another Hitchcock tactic. Remember the plane scene in 'North by Northwest'? The difference is the technique used wasn't so blatantly obvious. The Dark Knight opening scene was creatively written with an abundance of conflict that tied together organically to construct the films opening scene. Near the end of the scene we realize the man we had been watching in the mask was the Joker, he resembled the plane in North by Northwest all along!
Now back to the boring table scene. Do you remember it? It was nothing but men sitting at a table with many people beneath them that were hiding and hoping for freedom. I sometimes wonder if that opening scene would best be credited as a metaphor regarding the current state of affairs on the entertainment industry. Shoving all of the creativity into small confined spaces only to reign down with hellfire once the evil man at the table extorts what it wants from the artists willing to sacrifice their integrity. What ensues is unoriginality manufactured as ready-to-be-shipped final products.
As for the rest of the opening scene from Inglorious Bastards by Tarantino, its outcome is highly predictable which shows once more that the long drawn out dialogue serves as nothing but a 'new-era' style painting to his audience. The mouth breathers stare upon such scenes and think it's mesmerizing but similar to those with the trained eye of an artist they can see what it truly is, a desperate cover-up to pass the work off as artistic talent, or in this case more specifically, writing talent.
