Review: The Prestige

It's funny how Hollywood works sometimes. A script starts getting passed around, multiple studios look at it, and then inevitably two different production companies decide to do it, each with a slightly different but fundamentally the same version of the initial script. Probably the biggest example in recent years occurred in1998, when both Deep Impact and Armageddon came out with end-of-the-world asteroid collision movies, but just in the past two years two movies about how Truman Capote wrote 'In Cold Blood' have come out. This type of overlap between movies happens quite frequently in Hollywood, several times a year in fact, but usually one or both of the movies are lower-profile, or one movie has enough elements that are different and/or is marketed differently so it's not as obvious.

We have the case here with The Prestige and The Illusionist. Both are about magicians and prominently feature a love story. Both feature very similar types of twists to the plot. But there are several significant differences, the first being the tones of the movies. The Illusionist is more of a mystery with a passionate love story in its center, whereas The Prestige is much more concerned with vengeance and retribution, and is thus quite a bit darker.

The Prestige has numerous plot twists, unlike The Illusionist which has just one major one. While the first few plot twists are interesting, after a while it becomes easier and easier to predict the plot twists because there are so many and they follow pattern of back and forth between the two dueling magicians. Overall it becomes a little bit tiresome. The very last plot twist is also a little bit of a let-down, as it relies on a certain genetic coincidence, and is not internally consistent with the characters involved.

There is also a bit of jumping back and forth between three different time periods in the movie for the first 2/3rds of the movie that is not as well-edited as it could be, so there is a little bit of confusion sometimes trying to figure out which time period the movie is talking about. But about 1/3 of the way through the movie the plot begins to take shape, so after that time it becomes clearer what is going on.

In general, The Prestige is more concerned about plot twists and vengeance than about meaningful character development, whereas The Illusionist focuses more on the nature of the characters and what they are going through. So, the choice of which magician movie to watch mostly boils down to what mood you are in and which actor(s) you like better.