The prestige who is the good guy

Both people's motivations are clear and they act in a manner consistent with those motivations. None of the men could really be considered good, as they are all heartless killers at best. Really good and entertaining movie even if you figure it all out early on.

The defining contrast of character what I think it all boiled down to :. Joined: Jul 30, Messages: Likes Received: 3. It only seemed like that because they showed when one brother was with the one his twin loved. That's why his wife sometimes said he meant it when it was the brother who loved her , and other times he didn't when it was his twin.

However, if you mean they treated them like crap because they deceived them, then you are correct. If they could trust Caine enough, then there was something missing when it came to their lovers. Then there's the issue where they couldn't just drop everything and switch identities like Clark Kent. And what about the dead Bale's daughter? She'd have questions as she gets older. Hmm, are you uncle or father?

Did the Bales even try to figure that out Nice Rollin Contributing Member. Joined: Mar 30, Messages: 11, Likes Received: Joined: Aug 31, Messages: 12, Likes Received: Duh it was Hugh Jackman. Man, I recommended this movie to my government class and my professor keeps making fun of me because he thought it was horrible. I swear I don't know how you CAN'T like this movie Rocket River Member. Joined: Oct 5, Messages: 56, Likes Received: 23, Joined: Jul 14, Messages: Likes Received: I really thought there was no reason for the Bale twins to constantly switch between being with different lovers.

They could have just been happy instead of making IMO a needless sacrifice. Rasselas Contributing Member. Joined: Nov 23, Messages: 1, Likes Received: Finally caught this movie last weekend.

The trick's a massive hit. Again, it's got the showmanship and drama that Borden's version is lacking. In slow-walking the build-up, Angier gives audiences a sense of anticipation, and a moment to really appreciate what they're seeing. Unfortunately, because of how his trick is designed, Angier's got to take his bows beneath the stage, and not in front of his crowds—something Borden relishes because he, of course, can instantly recognize that Angier is using a double.

Eventually, Borden has to once again ruin Angier's success—it's simply what he does. During one night's performance, Angier goes down through the trapdoor, except the cushion that he usually lands on is missing, so he breaks his leg.

And instead of Root going up to the stage, it's Borden, who greets Angier's audience and takes the opportunity to advertise for his rendition of "The Transported Man. Although Angier knows how to keep an audience captivated, Borden's version is clean and simple.

It also doesn't rely on the cooperation of a pickled, failed actor. It later turns out that Borden's trick has nothing to do with Tesla, but no matter.

After a lengthy sojourn to America to find the secretive scientist, Angier gets exactly what he was hoping for: an expensive and flashy machine to one-up Borden. One thing, though—the machine actually works. It clones whatever is within its electromagnetic field and drops the subject a short distance away. Which means that Angier is actually able to become a transported man. But he can't have multiples of himself walking around; he needs to preserve the illusion.

That's why he decides to use another trapdoor, one that opens above a water tank. Every time Angier performs "The Real Transported Man," one version of him is teleported to another section of the theater, while the other is dropped into a locked water tank and drowns.

As far as we can tell, Borden doesn't really get a chance to upgrade his "Transported Man" in response to Angier's, so this round goes to Angier. Besides, his machine actually works, which is pretty darn magical, even if it's technically science. Again, Borden can't resist trying to tamper with Angier's success. So he starts snooping around backstage during a performance, after spotting the trapdoor. When Borden gets below the stage, he sees Angier fall through the trapdoor and into the tank. Not knowing what Angier has been up to, Borden naturally assumes that something's gone wrong and he actually tries to save his rival by breaking the tank with an axe.

Borden can't break the glass in time, so the Angier double winds up drowning and Borden gets accused of killing him. Borden is found guilty and eventually hanged for killing Angier. Before he heads to the gallows though, Borden realizes that something's off. Throughout the film, in between cutting back and forth to the peak of Borden and Angier's rivalry, we keep returning to Borden in prison; while he's there, he keeps hearing about some mysterious guy named Lord Caldlow, who would love to buy the secrets to all of Borden's secrets, including "The Transported Man.

Borden might not understand how his enemy pulled off the switch, but he knows that he's been fooled and will hang for a crime he didn't commit. Well, "the trick" in this instance is really framing a guy for murder, which Angier succeeds in doing.

Here, in the movie's final moments and the final moments of Angier's life , we finally hear the secret behind Borden's version of "The Transported Man. The other Borden brother wears a fake beard and makeup, and never really speaks when he's Fallon, even though he's seen often in the film.

The Borden brothers would trade places regularly, so one of them would sometimes appear to be the real Borden, and the other would appear to be Fallon.

Borden and Angier both master a trick called The Transported Man, in which the magician appears to travel between two wardrobes on opposite ends of the stage, almost instantly. The film's final act reveals each man's outlandish take on the trick, with Borden mastering The Transported Man first with a sleight-of-hand strategy. The ending of the film reveals that the identity of Borden is actually assumed by twin brothers.

On stage, one brother is located in each wardrobe. They take the deception so seriously that, when one brother loses a couple of fingers from a gunshot wound, the other cuts off his fingers to match.

In essence, there is nothing flashy about Borden's approach here — the trick is grounded and straight to the point, backed up by the Borden twins' painstaking approach to detail. On the other hand, Angier's mission to master The Transported Man takes him stateside to meet the famed inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla.

He believes that Tesla built a transportation machine for Borden - a belief that quickly turns out to be false - but Tesla still manages to build a transportation machine for Angier. This machine duplicates any object or living being placed inside and drops the copy a short distance away, meaning each time the trick is performed, Angier is cloned. This means the original Angier falls through a trap door into a water tank and drowns each time the trick is performed, with the new duplicate appearing somewhere in the theater to delight Angier's audiences.

The trick, or more accurately Faustian-style bargain, is what finally earns Angier's the audience's adoration, which is what his character has long been searching for. In short, Alfred and Fallon Borden don't technically exist, instead acting as two separate identities taken on by a set of twin brothers. As one brother says in the film, they live two halves of a full life. They're so dedicated to this craft that they each sacrifice a potentially well-rounded life in order to succeed in their chosen career.

To keep up with the ruse successfully pulling off The Transported Man, each twin takes turns alternately playing Borden and his stage engineer and right-hand man Fallon. Each brother lives different lives when portraying Alfred.

One is madly in love with Sarah, the woman with whom they marry and have a child with. The other is in love with their assistant Olivia Scarlett Johansson and treats Sarah cruelly. Borden's wildly contradictory behavior actually clues in Sarah to the fact that he is two people. When one twin is wrongfully tried and hanged for the assumed death of Angier, his rival believes he's finally beaten Borden once and for all.

This is not the case when the surviving twin finds and fatally shoots Angier, as both he and the audience realize that Borden successfully pulled off The Transported Man for years by being one half of a set of twin brothers. In essence, Angier was so caught up with the big picture that he failed to look for one of the most obvious answers, mirroring the audience's journey through Christopher Nolan's film.

The Prestige 's opening monologue describes the three acts of a magic trick, while also cleverly foreshadowing the structure of the film.

The first act of a trick, the pledge, shows you something ordinary. The second act, the turn, makes it do something extraordinary, such as disappearing. The third act is called the prestige: it brings back the object - or in this case, person - that disappears.