 Hey guys it's Liana and I'm here today to talk about The Prestige. So if you've not seen the movie The Prestige and you've not read the book The Prestige I would not recommend watching this video if you don't want to be spoiled for either because I will be spoiling both. So what we're doing today is talking about the book The Prestige as well as the movie The Prestige and the differences and comparing and contrasting them. So yeah let's get into it. So I saw The Prestige when it came out which is quite a while ago now. It came out in the early 2000s. I saw it in theaters and then I've seen it a few more times since then. It's a favorite movie of mine. Not like an absolute favorite but I have always liked it and I liked it a lot when it came out. And I think it's a good movie. Like I think it's one that is fun to rewatch. Like a lot of movies once is enough especially if they have a twist at the end. Like in that Shyamalan movies like the first time you see it it's a cool twist and after that it's not interesting. The Prestige is the kind of movie where it's fun to rewatch it and pick it apart after you already know the twist. So I have seen it probably at least four times or I had seen it probably at least four times before reading the book. And the most recent time that I had watched it before reading the book had been at least a year or two since I had seen the movie last before I picked up the book. And then just now I rewatched the movie after having read the book. So I didn't read the book prior to seeing the movie. I had already seen the movie. So I was spoiled in so far as if the book was like the movie then I was spoiled for it. Which they are different and they are same, different parts of them. The core story is the same and the twist is more or less the same. So that was the part that did kind of hit me on the edge of my seat even though I'd seen the movie. Reading the book I kept wondering well is it going to turn out the way that I did in the movie. And so at times I was like it can't possibly be what it was in the movie and at other times I was like well it's gotta be what it was in the movie. So if you've seen the movie you know that it stars Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as two rival magicians and this is like the 1800s. And the way that the movie tells it is it has these it keeps playing with the timeline, keeps jumping back and forth between the present where Borden, played by Christian Bale is imprisoned for the murder of Anne Gears who's played by Hugh Jackman. And so then we cut back to how they ended up, one ended up dead and the other ended up in prison for his murder. And within jumping back then we jump even more around to the movie constantly plays around with the timeline and constantly plays around with what you do and do not know with the audience is shown and isn't shown. And despite how confusing that could be, Christopher Nolan does an exceptional job taking the audience through it in a way where you don't feel lost even though it keeps jumping around like that. And then in addition to jumping around with the timeline, the way that it kind of the vehicle through which it jumps the timeline is that these two men are reading each other's journals at various points in their life. So you kind of have flashbacks within flashbacks because you flash back to them reading the journal and then the journal itself is a flashback to the person having written the journal. So it's quite a nesting doll of story. The book is similar insofar as it has this narrative choice of having a journal be the vehicle through which you experience the past. However, while in the movie, the magicians are reading each other's journals in the book. We are in the present day to start out with and it is a descendant of one of the magicians who was adopted. So he doesn't really know any of his family history. He's contacted about the descendant of the other magician and he begins to learn more about his family history and his own birth and origin and et cetera, et cetera. So I think that works a lot better in a book because then you you're kind of like the reader and this person from the present day are kind of in the same boat experiencing the story. But for film, I absolutely approve of the choice of taking that out entirely and just having the magicians themselves reading each other's journals. I think it works better on film, so it is different and I think each one works better. I don't think the book should be the way the movie was and I don't think the movie should be the way the book was. I think there was an excellent choice to make the movie that way. It works better for a film. And so that said, the where the movie ends also has to be different than the book because the book again circles back to the present day and brings it all back to how this is relevant to the characters in the present day. That character does not even exist in the movie so that isn't the ending point and it can't be the ending point because it's just that thread does not exist. Another thing that it changed, the movie changed and I think this is an excellent choice that actually the book would have benefited from and I think the book would be better if it hadn't been more like the movie. The reason these rival magicians are rivals, like the origin of their rivalry, the origin of their feud. In the book it's a really thin and silly reason which on some level I appreciate because quite often like notorious long-standing family feuds in history and in literature it will often be set off by something really quite small that then just kind of snowballs and escalates. So like on the one hand I appreciate the idea of something so small than escalating into this like huge rivalry that affects these men generations even thereafter. But I do think that the reason for the rivalry is so much more personal and so much more dramatic and so much more so much darker and more engrossing in the movie. In the book these two men don't really know each other at all except by reputation and not even really that Borden kind of encounters somebody who's kind of pretending to be a psychic, someone who's kind of pretending to be a medium and he encounters this person because his own, I believe his aunt or his grandma or somebody in his own family is seeking solace for the death of a loved one and so hires this medium and that is Angears and Angears has been making his money early on in his career doing this rather than actually magic shows and Borden thinks that this is like a really I mean magic isn't really dishonest but he thinks this is like this is true like he's a true charlatan he's like profiting off of the grief of individuals and Borden hates that so then he sets about sabotaging Angears show or Angears presentation and then what Borden couldn't possibly have known is that Angears wife who's been helping him with his with this show or this this act of theirs she's pregnant and so she nearly miscarries because of like the stress the disruption to the show and Angears holds Borden responsible for this and then he tries to get back at him at his shows and thereafter then it's kind of like the movie where they keep sabotaging each other's shows but in the movie they actually knew each other and worked together before and they weren't like friends or anything but they worked pretty closely together because they both worked for another magician as assistants and Angears wife is also an assistant to this magician and it's Borden's job to tie a knot for her during like an escape from water act and like it's supposed to be a trick knot so that she can easily get out of it and then climb out of the of the water tank and appear to have escaped however Borden and the wife agreed to do a different knot than the one they've been using and she ends up not being able to get out of the knot and she dies so in the book the wife doesn't even die she just kind of she miscarries and like she it's a life-threatening situation where she survives and then and they have another baby and like it's more or less fine like it's harrowing but it's fine and it's not really Borden's fault I mean like it's indirectly Borden's fault that she ended up miscarrying but he didn't really set out to like hurt her in any way whereas in the movie it is like literally Borden's fault that he tied a different knot even though she agreed to it and then she dies so and the reason for Angears to feel like he needs to get back at Borden for that is just so much more so much darker and so much it's just so much more personal and you can really like even though revenge is never healthy vengeance is never a healthy quest to be on and the obsession that it turns into is not healthy for anyone the healthiest thing as hard as that is is to walk away but as the audience like you can really appreciate why Angears would not be able to walk away from that and why he would like hold on to this hatred for Borden because his wife is dead so it doesn't matter that like Borden didn't intend for her to die like it's Loki his fault so I think that choice in the movie is a good choice and I think the book would have been stronger if that had been kind of the origin of their rivalry rather than just kind of like petty professional differences another fairly big divergence from book to film is the way that Tesla's machine works so in the book and the movie Angears is trying to figure out how Borden is able to do the transported man act where he appears to have transported himself from one place to another you know somehow magically and Angears is convinced that Borden is not using a double and he cannot figure out how he's done this so Borden allows him to believe that the secret to his trick has something to do with Nikola Tesla and so Angears both in the book and in the movie steaks out Nikola Tesla and it gets Tesla pays Tesla to create a machine for him and this is where it becomes like pseudo science paranormal and that's true in both the book and the movie so Tesla does build him a machine but the way the machine works is different in the book versus in the movie and the way that the machine works is different in the book in a way that ties in the present day plot ties in this descendant that is now discovering his family history that in no way the way that the machine works I don't know if that's why they changed how the machine works because they decided to exclude this present day plot line so in the movie and this is the biggest spoiler of them all in case you were like kind of watching this but kind of hoping not to get spoiled like this is the end of the movie plot twist spoiler so the way the machine works is it doesn't transport you it duplicates you um and that in the movie that's how it works so you know electric lightning whatever like razzle dazzle and once that happens you don't disappear you just reappear a duplicate a doppelganger reappears elsewhere so now there's two of you so in order for this to work for a transported man act where it appears that the same person has been moved instead of a duplicate just being created and cloned instantaneously so in order to get this act going and in order to not have many many many duplicates and doppelgangers of himself if he performs this act many times um the way that angiers solves that problem is by killing himself every single night so when he performs the act he ensures that of the two that exist once the machine is is used that one of them dies and the other survives and then the next night one of them dies and the other survives so there's always just one of him at the end of the act but he is committing suicide every single night in order to ensure that only one of him exists so that's kind of what happens in the book because of the machine does it for you the machine is not able to create life it just it creates like a second you but the first you it kind of like steals the soul out of you so it leaves an empty shell like a dead body and it creates matter but not life so there is it's kind of the same but different because you don't and he doesn't have to intentionally set about killing himself the machine just basically creates a second shell of a human body and then transports the soul out of the one and into the other so you wouldn't have this like constant doppelganger situation every time he uses the machine like the initial body is emptied of its soul and then the soul is transported into the new body so you do have bodies to get rid of but he's not having to like intentionally kill himself because the machine kind of kills him kind of by taking the soul out i think in the movie it's again a stronger choice the fact that angers is choosing to kill himself when the machine isn't the thing doing it so in the movie or i'm sorry in the book the only way to use this machine is to have this happen there's not i mean it's a choice to use the machine but it's not a choice to kill yourself because that's just how the machine works so the fact that angers is choosing to kill himself in the movie every single night just for this act i think is a dark it makes it darker and it makes it more sadistic that he's willing to do this to himself it's still sadistic in the book that he's willing to do this to himself subject himself to to ordeal using his machine but because more agency is placed on the character in in the movie to actively choose to kill yourself as opposed to allowing doppelgangers of yourself to exist is just a darker choice and i think for that reason it sort of resonates more and sticks with you more however in the in the book angers just had a bunch of bodies to get rid of so the descendant does find the bodies but so what happened him as a kid was that he thought he had a brother and so for a while i thought it was because the machine was doing that word a double of him had been created but that's not how the machine works in the book so the machine was used on him as a little boy so we kind of got resleaved but his initial body kind of there's this like weird sentience that that is remains in the old bodies like some awareness of the body existing and that's what kind of calls to him and makes him think he's got a twin but it's not a twin it's just like his old shell so i think i like the way the machine works better in the in the movie i think it works better here this like idea of like the soul being resleaved it just it's needlessly messy and complex and it makes it both less dark and more complicated and i just i think the movie handled that better as well and then another thing that the movie definitely absolutely handled better is the fact that this here's the other twist that absolutely is the big twist is that borden was using a double this whole time his double was a twin brother and throughout the entire movie you don't know that he's got a double and you don't know that he's got a twin no one knows he's got a twin because he's living he and his brother are living one life and they're both pretending to be the same person like in their personal life so that no one knows like they're that devoted to their craft and that's true in the book as well however in the book the way that it nods to there being twins is so much more obvious that when i was reading it i was like it can't possibly be twins like it is in the movie because it's like literally telling us that there's twins like that can't be a twist because it's it's basically giving itself away constantly um and as my friend who'd never seen the movie who was also reading the book i was like let like i personally feel like everything is really obvious right now but i won't tell you what the thing is but you tell me if you feel like everything like the the twist is really obvious and she's like it was so obvious that she also was even though she hadn't seen the movie it was so obvious to her that this seems to be twins that she was like it must be a misdirect you can't possibly be twins because it's basically telling me that it's twins so i think the movie does a much much better job of of having these kind of really really subtle clues that you really do not pick up on unless you've already seen the movie and that's why it's fun to rewatch it because there are all these moments where borden says something that like he's kind of a bizarre magician individual so you kind of write it off as that as being this kind of like bipolar guy but if you know that there's twins because you've seen the movie before on a rewatch there's so many double meanings in what he says and so many double meanings in what he does that it's just so much more fun to pick apart on a rewatch whereas the book it's so it's like it's trying to be subtle and utterly failing and nodding at there being twins but like so obviously that you're like it's fucking twins like there's nothing fun to pick apart here it's obviously twins the twist is that there is no twist and then another thing that the movie handled better absolutely 100 handled better was the female characters in the book you also have you have borden has a wife and angiers obviously already mentioned the wife that in the movie she dies and that's the beginning of the rivalry in the book he's got a wife that like he mentions being upset obviously that she almost miscarried that's why he hates borden but he ends up kind of like getting over his love of her and cheating on her and she's just kind of like not in it much and like she's not really fleshed out as a character that would have her own motivations really she's just kind of like exists as a plot device and there's a third female character that i haven't mentioned at all who works as an assistant first for angiers and then for borden and she becomes she was angiers mistress and then she becomes borden's mistress and that character is also used as a plot device more than a character in the book whereas in the film again she's more fleshed out it's it's more explored with her motivations and feelings about these two magicians would be what would drive her to first attach herself to one and then be willing to betray him and attach herself to the other and it's just a much more fleshed out we really because we do it's true both in the book in the movie that borden it's two men who have a wife and a mistress but they both have the wife and they both have the mistress so they have to these women are meeting both of these men and so in the book is just kind of like well that like at some point i think angiers wonders like well she must have noticed right like if there's twins like she has to like a wife would have noticed right but it that's it that's like the only way it's addressed and that i wouldn't really call that addressing it in the movie it does a really good job showing borden's wife kind of at first feeling kind of strange about things and like slowly kind of like really really kind of losing it because it's like she's being gaslit in reverse like they're borden the borden's are trying to convince her that everything is normal and she because she knows it's not normal then that in that way she's like being gaslit because like this isn't normal and she knows it's not normal and it's making her feel really uncomfortable and like and he will not tell her that there's two of him like the secret is he spent his whole life keeping the secret so like the fact that she's kind of like losing it over this like is much more well developed and explored in the film now i will say that um the end of the movie versus the end of the book the end of the book is a lot more like climactic uh if if that makes it's almost more cinematic the end of the movie it just kind of reveals to you both secrets it reveals to you that angiers has been killing himself and reveals to you that borden really did have a twin brother this whole time and it kind of leaves you to go wow all of those dudes were like really uber committed to this whole magic thing like one of them was living a half of a life and the other one was killing himself and you're like jesus christ these two men are crazy and just kind of leave you to ponder that which is a great ending like i still think it's a great ending but in the book because we have this present day situation where now this like present day guy who's the descendant of borden is like feeling that he's got a twin brother but realizing now with this whole machine that he's learned about from like reading the diaries of angiers and borden he is like okay because he remembers the machine being used on him or somebody remembers the machine we used on him so the fact that he goes down and he finds where all the bodies of angiers are and then he finds his own unsleeved body and then like like there's a figure that is seemingly the specter that's like a remnant of angiers that's kind of like chasing him and it's just this really eerie like dark mysterious like basement full of corpses thing that's like quite chilling and dark and kind of like oh shit oh shit oh shit whereas again the movie is just kind of like leaving you on this like somber note of like wolf luck these news are crazy wow so the the book definitely like reaches more of like a like a heart-thumping climax whereas the movie is more of a somber philosophical ending i recommend both honestly and like even though i'd seen the movie anew the twist already reading the book was still an enjoyable experience and re-watching the movie knowing the twist is still enjoyable because picking apart all the ways that that there are all these double meanings and all the ways that the there are misdirects and all the ways things are shown to you and hidden from you at the same time because Christopher Nolan's filming of it he's not actually like what i really hate is when mystery movies intentionally withhold information from the audience so you could not possibly have figured it out because you literally weren't told or shown the thing he is actually showing you everything all the time he's just like a magician misdirecting you so when you rewatch it you're like yeah it was technically there for me to see all along technically you gave me the answers and the the narrator who's michael kane and he's michael kane is the character who who is not in the book at all and he's like he knows both of the magicians in the movie so he's kind of a thread that binds them he says a couple of times as a voiceover he asks the audience are you paying attention because you know when you're watching a magician like are you got are you paying attention and so it's Christopher Nolan is almost he's kind of teasing you with the fact that he's asked you to pay attention he's told you that he's tricking you he's shown you the thing and misdirected you and told you he's misdirecting you and it still works because if you haven't and you haven't seen it before if you haven't read the book you uh like i would be very surprised if you watched it the first time not knowing anything and would guess the twists and yet he has given you the pieces given you the information to solve it before he tells you the answer and even at the end uh michael kane says something about how like you you do see it but you don't want to work it out some part of you doesn't want to know what the trick is and i just i i enjoy how he's messing with the audience that way in a way that's totally it's totally honest that he's not messing with you where he's withholding things he has given you the pieces and been like well you couldn't figure it out do you even want to figure it out so i think it's an excellent excellent film and the book it is based on i mean which made it possible because i mean it's a wild story that like credit where credits do like to invent this story was kind of wild and i think christopher no one improved on it so i would recommend both i enjoyed both but i would say i do see myself rewatching the movie several more times in my lifetime i don't know that i would reread the book like i i i'm glad i read it i enjoyed it and i think it was interesting comparing the two but i think the book is not going to be fun to pick apart on a reread the movie is still fun to pick apart every time i watch it every time i watch it i catch something new some other little piece of it that i'm like oh and right there yeah and like oh i that's what that means so both are great but i think the movie's better let me know in the comments down below hopefully you've read or seen the movie hopefully at least one of the two ideally both and if that's true i would imagine the people watching this video are a few and far between because i don't know that the book is very well very widely read at all i think more people have seen the movie but in any case let me know your thoughts down below about the movie about the book about my assessment of both if you enjoyed them if you didn't if you love them if you hate them whenever you want to let me know i post videos on saturdays other random times as well but definitely saturdays so like and subscribe and i'll see you when i see you bye