The Prestige (2006) - 13 questions

Question: When Borden and Fallon are in the same scene, is someone else playing Fallon? Or does Christian Bale play both, the same way Arnie Hammer did on Social Network?

Answer: It's Bale, at least whenever you can see Fallon's face. The same way they do twins played by the same person in any other film.

Question: Could someone tell me what Borden says to himself about two seconds before he dies? I've seen this movie several times now but I can't make out what he says.

Answer: He whispers "Abracadabra".

Question: When Angier tries out the machine in Tesla's burning lab, he creates a double of himself. One of them shoots the other, but who is the one who dies? I've seen this movie several times but still can't figure who is left standing - the copy or the original?

Answer: The original, the one who steps into the machine, shoots the one created a short distance away, using the gun that he placed on the machine's power box (as seen in the earlier scene).

Question: When Borden's wife says she knows what is going on with him, does she really know? It seemed like she thought she knew, but was wrong. Was that clarified and I just missed something?

Answer: Exactly what Sarah knew, or thought she knew, is never specifically stated in the film.

Question: Would it be possible that the coin that Borden gave to the kid is the same prop used in "The Dark Knight" (Two Face/Harvey Dent Coin)? I mean, Cristopher Nolan is the director of both movies, so it could be possible.

Answer: Are you answering your own question? It's just as likely to be either Yes or No. Unless it is made known by the filmmakers, there is no way we can confirm this. I myself have not heard any references to the coin in any interviews or movie commentary. We can only speculate.

Question: In Angier's final preformance Borden watches Angier's duplicate drown in the tank. Does the other Angier still reapear for the audience, and take a bow? They never explain this in the film. If he does take the bow, Borden would never have been accused of murder. If he doesn't take the bow, how does the duplicate know not to do so? The duplicate would have no idea that Bordin was below stage.

Answer: No, he does not appear to take a bow. The set-up is as follows: Angier invites the audience on stage to observe the machine, but in reality it is so he can watch for Borden trying to work out the trick. When he sees Borden in the audience, he also knows Borden will not learn anything from the stage, and will go backstage. He then clones himself, and the clone is created with the exact knowledge he had at the time of the cloning, including Borden's presence and the trap the original Angier had set. So the "new" Angier hides away the best he can, letting Borden be framed for the murder of the "original" Angier. Had he appeared, not only would it ruin his plan of framing Borden, but it would also reveal how he had done his trick, and he would not allow any of those to happen, no matter what.

Question: Couldn't Angier have kept the one clone alive and simply dropped him below stage each time he did the trick. Did he really have to keep killing them?

Answer: Yep. He's tried working with a double before, and it backfired on him badly. Plus there's the obvious danger of the secret of the trick being revealed if there are two of him running around - he doesn't have Borden's experience in keeping such a thing secret, and there's nothing to say that the clone, who he'd have to keep locked up, would continue to cooperate. Besides, Angier himself would have to be the one dropping below the stage, leaving the clone, up on the balcony, to receive the adulation of the crowd - he hated that before and would be unlikely to want to repeat the experience. Plus the trick would be too easy - he believes firmly that Borden doesn't use a double and wants to have a trick that beats him; to simply work with a double wouldn't give him that satisfaction.

Question: At the very end of the movie, Michael Caine states that the audience wants to be fooled as a dead Angier is shown in a water tank. What does this mean?

Answer: It means exactly what he says - the reason that illusion shows are successful is that the audience, whether they admit it or not, want to be fooled by the illusions that they see. They don't want to see what lies behind it.

Question: Was Christopher Bale's character a twin or a "clone" made by Telsa's machine? (Because Bale's keyword for his diary is "TESLA" and when Hugh Jackman's character actually goes to see Tesla, he states that he knows he made a similar machine for his competitor. Bale??)

Answer: They were twins. Tesla didn't make a matching machine for Borden - all he made for the twins was a machine that made some light and noise to enhance their trick. The Borden brothers sent Angier off to see Tesla on what they thought would be a wild goose chase, just to get him out of the way for a while - they would never actually give away the real secret to their trick. They never anticipated that Tesla could actually have built the machine in question.

Question: In the very last shot before the credits, the camera has pulled back to reveal a row of tanks containing dead Jackmans. Does this imply that not only did the Tesla machine replicate Angier, but also the tank? One assumes then that Angier has had the forethought to place a floor between where he materializes and the newly replicated tanks appear.

Answer: As we see when Borden goes down under the stage to try to learn how the trick is performed, the tank is already in place before the machine is activated. Angier is using a large number of identical tanks, which is probably one of the deciding factors in only performing the trick a limited number of times.

Question: When Tesla first tests the 'machine', the original hat stays in place, while the copies appear in the woods. Does this mean that whenever Hugh Jackman's character uses the machine during his show, he is actually sending a copy of himself up into the balcony, and sending himself to drown below the stage? If this is so, the implication would be that the 'copies' contain every memory, etc. of the original Hugh, up to and including the point at which the copies are made.

Answer: It's not so much "a copy" as "a pair of duplicates." Neither is the original and neither is a copy. They are both the same individual, there are just two of then now. One got teleported and the other did not. Admittedly, it requires a pretty abstract point of view to understand it.

Question: SPOILER WARNING: Why was it necessary for the two Borden's to alternate women? For mere amusement? Or was there something I missed?

Answer: Fallon explains that Alfred loved Olivia and he, Fallon, loved Sarah and the baby. They spent their time with the woman they each loved.

Question: What significance do the melted hats have on the field outside scientist's lab?

Answer: They weren't melted. They were duplicated hats and they were there because the transportation machine Tesla was working on worked more like a fax machine instead of a mere transporter, creating a copy in another location.