The Prestige Ending did you understand it?

[BB in Crazy!!!!]

But you still will need to split money to sustain him, if both of you get diffrent jobs then like 90% of your plan goes to hell as you will have diffrent dutys to begin with.

Clone me would just have a job somewhere else livin the bachelor life. It would be something I can do as well, that I have experience in, so we can swap smoothly, like bartending. Hardest part would be is “forgetting” conversations with people that we weren’t there for. Taxes might be an issues so alternate me would need a fake identity.

 

[mixmastermo]

I have a theory that the cloning thing wasn't real.

Everything in the film up till that point was grounded in reality. Magicians were con men. That was a theme of the movie. Even Michael Caine's character said "of course you can't trust him, he's a magician."

And most of the movie was told through unreliable narration. Because it came from both Borden and Angier's diarries. But both of them knew the other would be reading their diarries (they even addressed each other at the end of both their diarries). So you can't trust anything that came from the narration.

I think Angier did go to Tesla. But Tesla's machine didn't really work. Caine's character said something about Tesla being a wizard (magician). And when Tesla left the machine for Angier, he left a note pleading with Angier never to use it. He conned Angier and took off.


Also at the end with all the water tanks, we can only clearly see who is in 1 of them. I think it was Root (Angier's double). We can't clearly see who or what is in any of the other tanks.



Also it's been said that the entire movie is Christopher Nolan's magic trick on his audience. The opening line of the film is narration asking you, the viewer, if you're watching closely? I think Nolan makes the audience thinks the film takes a fantastic sci-fi twist towards the end. But really that's all just another trick, and there were no clones.



But admittedly, that doesn't fit with what Angier told Borden at the end, about it taking courage to step into the machine not knowing if he would be the man in the box or the prestige. But the theory does fit pretty well with everything else in the movie. So idk.

But Root was not a good impersonator so you couldn't have 2 showmen- one on stage and the other up in the crowd.. the whole point of Angier looking for another way was because he knew he couldn't use Root anymore. Borden upstaged him and exposed the clone after all. Plus, the film clearly shows Angier shooting another man when the machine was used the first time.

To accept your theory we have to forget many things that were actually shown and do quite a bit of reaching...

 

[mixmastermo]

I'm not saying my theory is right. It probably isn't. But it does fit fairly well with a lot of things in the film.


Why are there many tanks at the end? Not sure, really. But it does mirror one of the very opening scenes with the many birds in many cages. Those birds aren't identical clones, but they do look alike. Same as the borden twins. Same as Angier and Root. So the many tanks makes sense thematically.

The many hats - what's the best known magic trick ever? Pulling a rabbit out of a hat. At Tesla's place, as shown in the very opening shot of the film, is many hats and many cats. I think Nolan might've thought having a bunch of rabbits would've been too on the nose, but I'm speculating, idk. But rewatch that scene where Angier walks out of Tesla's, convinced Tesla was conning him. Angier walks out and sees the hats and cats out in the yard. How easy would it have been for Tesla and his aid to get duplicate hats and a few black cats and put them there, for Angier to find? Again, this is all speculation.....but you gotta admit, that would be very easily done. A lot easier than making a teleportation / cloning machine in the 1800's. And it convinced Angier to stay and keep funding Tesla.

Also, here is the opening scene. Rewatch it real quick with the "Tesla being a con man / Nolan tricked the audience" theory in mind. The very first line of dialogue is "Are you watching closely?" And what is being shown right as he says this? The many hats.

@A.A. Riggs







And check this out:


With the theory in mind, now rewatch the very end. Just like with the opening scene, pay attention to what is being said and what is being shown while saying it.


Timestamped to the part I'm talking about:



- Water tanks with all but one being obscured. "Now you're looking for the secret."
- Then it shows the hats again. "But you won't find it because you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out."
- Changes back to the tanks. "You want to be fooled."
- Shows only 1 person in a tank clearly.



lol the more I think about it, the more I think I might actually be right.

No.. the point is we don't actually want to think a magician would go so far as to keep killing himself for the sake of an illusion. That's where we want to be fooled.

Think of the scene that foreshadows this trick.. where the magician kills the birds to make it seem like he was transporting them- the little boy worked it out immediately but the woman with him (the woman Borden marries) is fooled.. she didn't want to work it out at all. She didn't want to accept that the magician was killing a bird right in front of her.

In your hopes of getting a deeper understanding of the film you're actually missing the point.

 

[Ice That Jaw]

This discussion should be moved to the IMDB forums. Wait a sec.

 

[I'm Shawn Spencer]

Think of the scene that foreshadows this trick.. where the magician kills the birds to make it seem like he was transporting them- the little boy worked it out immediately but the woman with him (the woman Borden marries) is fooled.. she didn't want to work it out at all. She didn't want to accept that the magician was killing a bird right in front of her.

In your hopes of getting a deeper understanding of the film you're actually missing the point.

No, I'm not missing that point. That's one of the very base points of the film. FFS multiple characters repeatedly refer to "getting your hands dirty" about that very point.

I was just offering an alternative theory with a different take on things. And even I said in my original post it does fit pretty well with a lot in the film, but admittedly not everything.

And your tone sounds awfully condescending. "in your hopes of getting a deeper meaning from the film you're actually missing the point." Don't bring that tone to me, son.

 

[TheOneAboveAll3]

If it's a clone it will have the same mindset and outlook on life.

I think thats his point. They both would have wanted the limelight and only one would have been able to take it. One of them would have always had to go.