Babel and The Prestige ***SPOILERS***

[Enrique]

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ya, and those were like the desolate mountainous ranges of Moracco or wherever they were.. Maybe I missed something along the way, but what drew him to do such a thing? Just to get away from the whole wife murder/suicide investigation? Everything seemed like a stretch.. which gets back to some of the behavior being irrational and a little dramatic.. And hot japanese girl would certainly have guys all over her regardless of the communication barrier!

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What is so strange of somebody going hunting to Morocco?
If you have a lot of money and like hunting, you would probably look for something exotic. There are weird connections all over the place, the world is full of coincidences. I don't think it was that much of a stretch, besides even if there is no connection, there is no reason not to show the story of the japanese girl.

Even if a woman is very attractive, it doesn't mean they get guys all over them. Specially since she is not in the age to go to bars and stuff where she can meet guys that would go after her. I think in the teenage years many guys don't go for the attractive girl because they think she is out of their league, it is when guys get older that they realize that they have close to the same shot as anyone else. Also, she has the extra negative that she is deaf, hence people in her friends circle (which is from where the possible guys would come) know she is deaf and that might be a detractor. They would probably feel weird approaching a deaf girl.

[CharlieDontSurf]

The brother didn't instantly fall in love with the girl..it was gradual...and you figure they both dated girls while growing up...so they couldn't do the I'll be with her all the time cuz then one person is going to end up being fallon the majority of the time and being fallon wasn't fun for either of them.

[Bigfoot]

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I think part of the disappointment of other people is that Amores Perros was so great that in comparison Babel is weak. But Babel and 21 Grams are comparable, I don't understand how some people loved 21 Grams and hated Babel, both seem of the same quality to me.

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I disagree entirely. If I were to compare only 21 Grams and Babel with eachother one is a vastly superior movie. Everything about Babel seemed forced. Forced into a disjointed storyline, forced connections between plot fragments, forced morals and messages, etc.

I thought 21 Grams had powerful acting and storyline driving it. It was believable and very real. Babel seemed so contrived. Like every scene was there to justify a later scene to ultimately get to some final conclusion.

[Osprey]

The whole science fiction turn of the Prestige lost me. I was hoping against hope that the Tesla machine was going to be a fake- I just thought that drove the film underwater.

Babel was very meh... the whole housekeeper plot- how exactly did she plan to get the kids back into the USA? If she didn't have a plan, why did she try to go back in the dead of night with her drunk relative.

[rakes.a.beach]

Wait... they were brothers? I thought Borden cloned himself once. That's why he wrote the code to Angier when trying to save Fallon.

[Osprey]

Unless you don't believe Tesla, there wasn't a machine for Borden to have cloned himself with.

[Enrique]

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Wait... they were brothers? I thought Borden cloned himself once. That's why he wrote the code to Angier when trying to save Fallon.

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The most logical conclusion is that they were brothers. Writing a code to save a brother seems more plausible than writing a code to save a clone. Besides, what he did was give the key to a code he had already written before (and Angier already had with him).

[Enrique]

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The whole science fiction turn of the Prestige lost me. I was hoping against hope that the Tesla machine was going to be a fake- I just thought that drove the film underwater.

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It is unfortunate that a little fantasy or fiction can drive people to dislike a movie. The movie is about obsession. I think the ideas the story wanted to convey came across with full power, the machine was there more as a symbol then a machine. Sometimes science fiction and fantasy can be used to convey an idea, I think this movie did it very well.

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Babel was very meh... the whole housekeeper plot- how exactly did she plan to get the kids back into the USA? If she didn't have a plan, why did she try to go back in the dead of night with her drunk relative.

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I guess you always plan before doing anything.
Also, I think she had all her papers straight, the only problem was that the kids look white and she isn't so the police officer was being skeptical. If you have all your papers it is easy crossing the border. I grew up in the border and during college I crossed daily (lived Mexican side, studied american side). In this case the bad luck was the attitude of the drunk nephew. She had to get back.
The idea is that people make mistakes, you should know that people make mistakes. We commit stupid mistakes all the time, it is part of life, it is part of communication. Besides her mistake is not unnatural, specially if you grow up in the border.

[fyodor]

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The whole science fiction turn of the Prestige lost me. I was hoping against hope that the Tesla machine was going to be a fake- I just thought that drove the film underwater.

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It is unfortunate that a little fantasy or fiction can drive people to dislike a movie. The movie is about obsession. I think the ideas the story wanted to convey came across with full power, the machine was there more as a symbol then a machine. Sometimes science fiction and fantasy can be used to convey an idea, I think this movie did it very well.



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I don't mind science fiction in a science fiction movie. When science fiction is sprung on me late in a film in what seems like a way out of some screenwriter having written himself into a corner, it's an altogether different matter. This was presented as a movie about magic and the smoke and mirrors behind it. There was a big deal made about the whole magic process - the prestige. It was the name of the goddamn movie for christ's sake.

Other than that the rest of the movie was just so predictable. It's been awhile since I saw this but I remember very early on knowing that the murdered guy wasn't dead and he was in fact the mysterious rich guy. Maybe it was supposed to be predictable.

I just found it to be extremely poorly written. For me that is possibly the most important part of a movie. The performances can be brilliant but at the end of the day you don't have a great movie, you have a great acting performance - and I would say a wasted one.

[eviljeff]

the biggest problem I had with The Prestige is when Angier rips up Borden's secrets without looking at them. seems inconsistent with his obsession.

I think most everyone would have liked the movie better if The Real Transported Man had involved some simple trick rather than being resolved with science fiction. I see a few possible reasons for why the film didn't do this:
1) inconsistent with Borden being the better magician to have Angier create a trick he can't figure out
2) author wouldn't let the movie deviate from the book here
3) they simply couldn't think of a way to resolve it w/o "real" magic

fwiw, there are some people out there on imdb/rotten tomatoes message boards that think the movie doesn't use science fiction (i.e. the machine doesn't actually work). they find evidence for this in Angier's closing speech - "the audience knows that there is no magic, that life is simple. but if you can trick them just for a second..." However, I think this theory creates too many inconsistencies.