The ending to the movie The Prestige

SPOILERS: The ending to the movie The Prestige

SPOILERS

The ending to the movie The Prestige

There’s more than one twist/revelation here, but the main one is in how the two magicians perform the teleportation trick — the one both claim is theirs — in which they enter a doorway on one side of the stage and instantly reappear through another door on the other side (or at the end of the auditorium).

Basically, Hugh Jackman uses technology stolen from David Bowie that not teleports but duplicates, so a new version of himself is created every night — while the old version falls into a large glass container and drowns. 

Meanwhile, Christian Bale is twins, a solution with fewer deaths but would require therapy. His older assistant isn’t really an old bloke with long hair and glasses, but his identical twin. They’ve never let anyone know there are really two of them and they take turns at sharing one life publicly (which makes things awkward when you consider his wife, although the film handles pretty nicely).

While one was Alfred the magician, the other was in the wig, and then they swapped, highlighting a lifelong commitment to magic (and arguably obsession). But just see it.

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