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{{work|wppage=The Prestige (film)}}
[[File:prestige.jpg|frame|[[Arc Words|Are you watching closely?]]]]
{{quote|"''Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call the prestige.''"|'''Cutter'''}}
''The Prestige'' is a 2006 film, directed by [[Christopher Nolan]]. It was based on [[The Film of the Book|a 1995 book of the same name]] written by [[Christopher Priest]].
The story follows an escalating rivalry between two magicians, [[Fun with Acronyms|Alfred Borden]] and [[Theme Initials|Robert Angier]]. They started their careers as partners until Angier's wife died during a performance, possibly because Borden may have tied a stronger rope knot than necessary (with the wife's permission). The rivalry extends into the magician scene as the two compete to see who is the best at their craft.
Told through the framing devices of the two men reading one
Interestingly, the film cannot really be said to have a protagonist. Both sides are portrayed neutrally [[Grey and Gray Morality|without either getting a sympathetic point of view]]. This gives a different slant on a story instead of just the normal protagonist vs. antagonist story. Instead we get a story about two overly obsessed flawed men.
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* [[Anachronic Order]]: A Nolan trademark.
* [[Aristocrats Are Evil]]: {{spoiler|"Lord Caldlow"}}. It's hard to decide if the character was always this way or slowly grew into it as the years passed.
* [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]]: Nikolai Tesla invented a
* [[Beta Couple]]: In a very unusual version of this trope, Tesla/Edison for Borden/Angier. Both couples are in the same lines of work, both are fiercely competitive and at the very tops of their fields.
** And if you think about it, {{spoiler|Alfred #2/Olivia for Alfred #1/Sarah}} as a straighter but still slightly off-kilter version of the trope.
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* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: "I mean, someone could {{spoiler|stick a button in there! Or, god forbid, a bullet!"}}
* [[Clarke's Third Law]] / [[Magic From Technology]]: {{spoiler|Tesla's machine. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from ''stage'' magic.}}
* [[Classically-Trained Extra]]: Angier's double.
* {{spoiler|[[Cloning Blues]]: Angier.}}
* [[Creepy Monotone]]: Tesla played by David Bowie.
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* [[Driven to Suicide]]: Borden's {{spoiler|wife, Sarah.}}
* [[Dueling Stars Movie]]: Unlike some films which use this trope, the chemistry between them is excellent.
* [[Evil Will Fail]]: The more absorbed the dueling magicians become in their vengeance-fueled-rivalry, the more their lives fall apart, until finally
* [[Face Heel Double Turn]]: Angier starts out with the audience's sympathy after his wife dies and Borden just seems to be a Jerkass. But as the film goes on we start to see Borden become more sympathetic as Angier slips even further into revenge.
* [[Fingore]]: The malfunctioning magic trick that crushes a poor volunteer's hand, then Borden losing two fingers,
* [[Foe Yay]]: Borden and Angier pretty much personify this trope. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in the book when {{spoiler|Olivia tells Angier that he and Borden "are like two lovers who can't get along together."}}
** In the movie, the words are {{spoiler|"You should go to him. You two deserve each other."}}
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* [[Lightning Can Do Anything]]: In this case, it can even {{spoiler|duplicate things.}}
* [[Lovely Assistant]]: Olivia is this to both of the stage magicians involved (and has affairs with both of them). Angier's wife was also this.
* [[Mad Artist]]: Angier shows more traits than his rival. In the end he explains that the magic shows'
* [[Magical Realism]]
* [[Magicians Are Wizards]]: Subverted: the movie explains every trick, and at one point Michael Cane snaps "You're a magician, not a bloody wizard! If you want to do magic, you've got to get your hands dirty." {{spoiler|Perhaps more specifically, Tesla is the wizard, having created Angier's cloning device.}}
* [[Misapplied Phlebotinum]]: Apparently neither Tesla nor Angier stopped to consider that {{spoiler|a perfect matter replicator [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|could be put to more benevolent and/or lucrative uses]] than a stage performance}}.
** Perhaps, though {{spoiler|Tesla didn't get a chance to replicate gold because it was technically Angier's machine after financing its completion, and Angier only cared about the show}}.
** {{spoiler|Plus, Edison's hired thugs destroyed everything at Tesla's lab, and would've destroyed the prototype if it hadn't already been shipped. Even if Tesla hadn't decided the device was evil, he might not have been able to re-create it; the film even demonstrates how hard it was to create, with Angier's
* [[Mr. Fanservice]]: Oustanding performances aside, it doesn't hurt that the two leads are played by the not entirely unattractive Jackman and Bale, with Bowie on hand too.
* [[Nested Story]]: Borden reading Angier's journal, about Angier deciphering Borden's journal.
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: In the book, {{spoiler|Borden shuts off the power to Angier's machine while the latter is in the midst of the In A Flash act. This effectively creates a ghostly version of Angier who is seemingly immortal and more vengeful than before.}}
* [[Obfuscating Disability]]: Chung Ling Soo, the ancient Chinese performer with stiff legs.
* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: Arguably, Borden's disguises: they start out seeming very transparent and obvious until we find out that
* [[Once More, with Clarity]]: The biggest [[The Reveal|reveal]] of all is accompanied by one of these.
* [[One-Scene Wonder]]: [[David Bowie]] only appears in a handful of scenes, but he absolutely ''nails'' them.
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* [[Shout-Out]]: In the Bullet Catch scene, one of the performers on the list is "[[The Dresden Files|Harry Dresden]]".
* [[Single-Minded Twins]]: {{spoiler|"Borden" is actually a pair of twins who have made it their life's work to be so identical to each other that no one can tell the difference. The one flaw in their arrangement is that they fall in love with different women.}}
** Its not perfect though
* [[Steampunk]]: Tesla is the poster wizard for this kind of genre.
* [[Stealth Pun]]: Tesla's assistant is named Alley. He has a cat.
* [[Super OCD]]: Tesla's obsessions.
* [[Technician Versus Performer]]: A key thematic element of the rivalry between Borden (the technician) and Angier (the performer). There's also a bit of this between Angier and his double (whose drunken antics have quite the theatric touch
* [[Teleporters and Transporters]]: The rivalry is focused around who can pull off this magic trick most convincingly.
* [[This Cannot Be!]]: One of the characters in the end, and arguably the viewer on first watching.
* [[Tomato Surprise]]: {{spoiler|Borden and Fallon.}}
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[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]
[[Category:Films of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Arthur C. Clarke Award]]
[[Category:The Prestige]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prestige, The}}
[[Category:Film]]
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