Thetownend.com

EDIT: This thread is going to spoil the film for you and possibly the book, so if you haven't seen/read either but may do in the future (the film is excellent) then I suggest you leave this thread.

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Saw The Prestige yesterday for the about the 10th time, I still can't make out the ending, surely it would be too obvious if that machine actually cloned things...

I could answer but it would spoil the film for everyone who hasn't see it.

PM is your friend... what's your view?

Hahahaha, a cloning machine?! You've over thought that a little.

Isn't it meant to be a transportation device that ends up cloning?  ???

No, that's the illusion.

Think about it; two people, they look identical. How?

Bale plays identical twins who both live as one persona in order to enable Borden to do 'his' teleportation trick. Hence one gets hanged but the other survives to kill Angier/Lord Caldlow (Angier is the persona which Lord Caldlow has created for the purposes of magic). There is only ever one living Angier/Caldlow in the film.

Angier refuses to believe Borden's is a double act but decides in order to recreate the illusion he must use a double, however, he hates not being in control and getting the glory (his double gets this at the end of the trick). So he sets out to uncover the trick and make a better version.

Angier gets Tesla to build a teleportation machine, but it turns out it will clone him at the same time. In order for him not to create loads of clones and also keep the control, glory and secret for himself (?) he kills the previous version of himself after every trick. Each drowns and is wheeled off by blind stage hands.

So yes, the machine does clone things and it's pretty explicitly revealed at the end. I believe that whilst the book is similar (but not the same) it still uses a cloning device.

Sorry I think I should've explained what I don't fully understand.

I fully understand about Fallon and Borden being twins and living each others lives and Angier and Lord Caldlow being one and the same. The ending makes sense but I struggle with what Chris Nolan wants us to believe. I just find it difficult to comprehend that Angier used that teleportation device to make clones of himself as the film is all about reality and illusion. It just suddenly goes all sci-fi. Maybe I need to read the book.

I think that is the point of it. You're left going what the fuck was that about.

I was like that first time i watched it!

Until i read about it, i was under the impression Borden used the machine Tesla built to clone himself and that was how he could do the Transported Man trick not that they were identical twins.

I remember Tesla saying he built a machine for someone else i just assumed this was Borden.

It is up there in my top ten films. Christopher Nolan is fucking great!!!