I always thought Angier's magic trick was some sort of cloning . Nah. Nolan is a huge Tesla fan and was digging deep into the stories about his experiments. Cloning wasn't something Nikola would have discovered but.......he could have created a time travel device. He's not duplicating himself but actually pulling in other versions of himself from alternate timelines/parallel universes. Yeah that's the ticket.

Some clues are in his other movies as they share the same theme: time

What do you guys think?

With this headline, I suppose spoiler warnings are out the window for this 11-year-old movie.

Anyway, if you were correct, why would those alternate timeline versions voluntarily commit suicide to help this one out with his magic act? They'd have full lives of their own they could go back to.

I haven't watched the movie in years, but I never thought of it as cloning in the sense of growing a body in a vat or anything like that. My take was that Tesla had invented a teleportation device, the result of which was to make an exact duplicate of the original, including all of its memories and personality. Like that episode of Star Trek where Riker got split in two by the transporter, and one copy got stranded on a planet while the other returned to the Enterprise, each unaware of the other's existence until much later. In this case, each one understands that they are the exact same person. And because he devised the plan before the split, they go into it fully prepared for one to die.

 

Duplication by teleporter so fits with Tesla.

 

The "reveal" that Angier repeatedly and voluntarily committed suicide for the glory of his magic trick was a powerful one. IMO no alternate explanation is required.

 

Now I want to watch The Prestige again

 

Kind of what I was thinking. Apparently I missed some stuff.

 

I have the DVD. Guess it is time to watch it again. I do not remember all the fine details.

 

It is coming on 4K BD
Hopefully with Atmos, my Danish copy only has DD 5.1

 

are you watching closely?

 

you mean to tell me prisoners and the batman are both connnected trough this movie. the torture of not knowing the truth.

i'm so cold, inside

 

Holy revived thread Batman!

 

Heh nice bump. From what I remember the clones didn't voluntarily kill themselves. The first one begged for his life and the main guy had to shoot him. Then he devised a mechanism to have them all drown after the performance.

 

They're not clones. They are duplicate copies of the same person. The first time the split happened, one copy quickly realized that he couldn't allow two of himself to exist, so he killed the other.

After that, Angier devised the trick that would kill one copy instantly, before second thoughts and the self-preservation instinct could take over.

 

Karma. Angier and the birds. Egyptian and ancient Chinese knowledge of real magic.

 

It makes me want to watch the movie again.

 

And I don't know if it makes me want to see it for the first time.

 

see: Tenet
see: Inception
see: Memento