Movies and magic shows have a lot in common. They are meant to entertain audiences and require their momentary suspension of disbelief. The analogy between movies and magic can be found in Christopher Nolan’s 2005 film The Prestige, in which Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale play rival magicians whose series of performances increasingly become dangerous as they let their vengeance consume them. As Michael Caine narrates, “Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts,” just like a movie. So while The Prestige is very much about magic performances, it is also about movie magic. And as a film inherently about filmmaking, The Prestige also captures Christopher Nolan’s approach to movies. Ahead of the release of Oppenheimer, which has zero CGI and relies solely on practical special and visual effects in showing the creation of the atom bomb, let’s revisit The Prestige and why it perfectly illustrates Nolan’s commitment to practical effects.
The Transported Man in ‘The Prestige’ Is a Practical Spectacle
The primary conflict between magicians Alfred Borden (Bale) and Robert Angier (Jackman) lies in the secret of the Transported Man trick. Although Borden originated the act, Angier makes up his mind to steal it after witnessing it for himself. During the act, Borden introduces an ordinary rubber ball, but the ball really has nothing to do with the Transported Man. The real trick, as Borden continues to demonstrate, is how he moves from one set of doors to another, seemingly teleporting himself from one side of the stage to the opposite end. While Borden’s earlier tricks received a lukewarm reception, the Transported Man surprises everyone. “It was the greatest magic trick I’ve ever seen,” Angier admits.
John Cutter (Caine), a stagehand and engineer behind the scenes, proclaims, “The trick was too good, it was too simple.” But Angier refuses to call it simple. While Cutter comes to the conclusion that the Transported Man is only made possible by using a body double — that is, one man goes into one door while a different man steps out of the other — Angier thinks the trick has more to it. “This is a complex illusion,” he argues. Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), his assistant, is also convinced it’s the same man, as she spots that Borden has the same injured fingers coming into one door as coming out the other. But without any other method, Angier decides to use a body double when he performs his own Transported Man act.
Angier, consumed by his vengeance and hubris, refuses to accept the truth that’s right in front of his eyes. At the end of the film, Borden reveals to Angier that he has been using a body double all along. His assistant Fallon has been wearing prosthetics and makeup to cover up his true face, one he shares with his twin brother Borden. Fallon is so committed to the trick that he severs the same fingers on his own hand that Borden has also lost. Of course, Angier finds this out too late. After he stole the Transported Man act, Angier enlisted the help of Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) to create a machine that would duplicate himself during every performance. The twist, however, is that the Angier that goes through the first door would be drowned in a tank underneath the stage while a new, duplicate Angier received the applause out the other door. It’s a dark twist that would weigh heavy on anyone, but for someone like Angier who is desperate to beat his rival, it is a small price to pay.
In the end, Angier’s actions ultimately catch up to him. Although Borden is sentenced to death for crimes he didn’t commit, Fallon (his twin brother) enacts his own revenge, shooting Angier after the last performance of the Transported Man. While the last Angier bleeds out to death, the dead bodies of the other Angiers — the duplicates made by Tesla’s machine — are set aflame. Cutter had been right all along, the Transported Man is a simple trick. But Angier was so full of vengeance that he refused to see the trick for its simplicity. Instead, his search for a more spectacular method puts him on a dark path that ultimately led to his downfall.
Why Do Christopher Nolan’s Practical Effects Matter?
The lesson of The Prestige’s Transported Man act is that even the simplest, most practical spectacle can impress an audience. If someone is convinced that bigger is better or that the flashiest new technology is all that will please an audience, they are bound to run into problems. As Borden tells Angier, “You went halfway around the world, you spent a fortune, you did terrible things — really terrible things, Robert, and all for nothing.” Perhaps studios and filmmakers can learn from The Prestige.
This summer especially has shown how movies with the biggest budgets don’t necessarily garner the most attention from audiences. The long-in-development DC film set to restart the franchise universe The Flash was touted by many, such as DC Studious Co-Chair James Gunn, as one of the best comic book movies of all time. But even with Tom Cruise’s endorsement, The Flash will go down as a financial failure for Warner Bros. The return of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was also a disappointment for Disney and Lucasfilm. Both these films rely quite heavily on CGI and special effects, fueled by enormous budgets. But even the flashiness of nostalgia couldn’t attract enough moviegoers to watch these films in the theaters.
On the other hand, Christopher Nolan has had a successful career championing practical effects in his blockbusters. Take a look at his trilogy of Batman films. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises were productions that prioritized on-location filming, functional props and technologies, and action filmed in real-time rather than generated in postproduction or on a green screen. In The Dark Knight, Nolan really flipped over a truck in the middle of downtown Chicago. And in The Dark Knight Rises, real planes thousands of feet in the air were filmed for the opening scene involving Bane’s introduction. Nolan has continued to use practical effects in his films as much as possible, including crashing yet another plane in Tenet. It’s worth noting that while Tenet doesn’t compare to the box office of Nolan’s other films, it was released during the pandemic when theaters were not open or very limited.
With his most recent film hitting theaters very soon, Christopher Nolan continues to stick by his commitment to practical effects. Oppenheimer has zero CGI shots, opting for real-life and coordinated explosions. The explosions could have easily been created using CGI, but with audiences who have recently demonstrated that computer-generated effects just aren’t enough of a draw nowadays, practical effects might be more of an attraction. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One certainly outperformed the earlier blockbusters, The Flash and Indiana Jones 5, in terms of opening week numbers, which has a lot to do with Tom Cruise’s real death-defying stunts. Nolan and Cruise are magicians in their own right, achieving impressive spectacles without the overabundance of CGI. Just like The Prestige’s Alfred Borden, they know that sometimes simple and practical works just as well, or even better than, the flashiest special effects.
Source link
