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Topic:
Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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dan-yoda
Registered:
Sep '03
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Date Posted:
7/21 3:38pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
- Date Edited:
7/21 3:39pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
dan-yoda
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WeridHat posted:
My favorite Batman movie is The Prestige.
I think I must be the only person in the world who didn't like The Prestige. I saw the trailer for it and was all like "OMG! Wolverine and Batman in a dark Chris Nolan movie about REAL magicians!" I then saw the original book at my library, got it, and had a great time with it. It was a completely fun and original story with some great elements and style. Then I saw the movie and to my distaste I found whoever wrote the movie just stole the book's idea and made something completely different that was a lot less logical, less realistic, and ultimately less enjoyable than the source material.
Oh well, at least I thought The Dark Knight was awesome and I think Captain America's costume cannot be changed for the movie. That balances everything out.
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DorkmanScott
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Mar '01
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Date Posted:
7/21 4:07pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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dan-yoda posted:
I think I must be the only person in the world who didn't like The Prestige.
Nope, me too. But I think the two of us are alone.
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Teague
Registered:
Apr '06
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Date Posted:
7/21 4:35pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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Mike, what was your problem with it?
Did you like The Illusionist?
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Teague "Fig" Chrystie Co-Host / "Geekza!" / http://www.geekza.com - What happens when you take a handful of insane, pro FX artists and give them a microphone? http://www.myspace.com/figchrystie
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DorkmanScott
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Mar '01
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Date Posted:
7/21 5:17pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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It violated the rules of its own world. I don't care if they "set it up" at the beginning with the hats, the bit about clones came sailing clean out of left field. The rest of the story is very grounded, a bitter rivalry, a love triangle, the behind-the-scenes workings of stage magic. To introduce soft science fiction -- not "real magic," and not hard "you believe this could actually work unless you're a physicist" science fiction, but soft "we're not even going to pretend there's any scientific basis for this" science fiction -- is to totally violate the rules of the world that have been created throughout the entire rest of the film.
I heart me some Nolan, but The Prestige just didn't work for me. Too deus ex machina. I think the "twins" twist could easily have been enough to tell a satisfying story.
And I did like the Illusionist, at least moreso than The Prestige.
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Master_Comyn
Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
7/21 5:47pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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I still haven't seen The Prestige, but I will soon. There are twins in the movie?
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 Oh No You Didn't Better an imperfect Republican Than a perfect Socialist  "What we cannot reach flying, we must reach limping. The Book tells us it is no sin to limp." AVID user of Final Cut. Sigh....
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WeirdHat
Registered:
Jul '03
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Date Posted:
7/21 5:50pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
- Date Edited:
7/21 6:23pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
WeirdHat
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Spoiler tags please?
Anyway - the point of the cloning is that it was unnecessary. You're supposed to think from the beginning, like Angier did, that Borden is doing something supernatural, because you don't know how the trick is done. Then Angier goes to ridiculously implausible and disturbing lengths to duplicate the trick, and then the twist is that oops, it's actually possible without turning your life into science fiction and killing yourself a hundred times, it was just a double.
And by comparison, in The Illusionist the twist is that the magic which was actually blatantly impossible to fake for anybody was faked somehow. How? Dunno. Is that supposed to be a satisfying ending?
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PixelMagic
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
7/21 7:44pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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DorkmanScott posted:
dan-yoda posted:
I think I must be the only person in the world who didn't like The Prestige.
Nope, me too. But I think the two of us are alone.
You may be shocked to find out, I also didn't like it. But, I didn't like The Dark Knight either, so...
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CaptSparrow
Registered:
Sep '06
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Date Posted:
7/21 7:56pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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Is anyone thinking that there is no way Robin can be introduced in Batman now?
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VaporTrail
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
7/21 8:01pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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Prestige... eh. I wasn't big on it either.
I called out the ending pretty early on, and their little final twist w/ Jackman was totally worthless. They're just trying too hard to trick you that they couldn't think of a feasible way to do it.
It was a nice film to look at, style-wise and the inclusion of Miss Scarlett J., but the story needed some work.
Same goes for The Illusionist, really. I think I have similar problems with that one, not to mention the fact that none of his tricks could work even now.
At least, none that I remember. I only saw it once, and that will do just fine.
-Vaportrail
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DetFilms
Registered:
May '05
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Date Posted:
7/21 8:24pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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RE: The Prestige -- I know they tried really hard to justify it, but...
Goddammit! You have an ACTUAL FUNCTIONING DUPLICATING MACHINE and ALL you can think to do with it is fake a magic trick? Where's my dozen Scarlett Johanssons? And bags of replicated gold? Not to mention that Tesla himself could have used it to make all the money he needed for funding...
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DorkmanScott
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Mar '01
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Date Posted:
7/21 8:46pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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WeirdHat posted:
Spoiler tags please?
Bah. Statute of limitations on spoiler tags is six weeks after DVD for me (I believe official TFN policy is three weeks from theatrical release). If you haven't seen it by then, I assume that 1) you don't really care that much, and 2) you've probably heard them anyway.
If you see someone talking about a movie you haven't seen, but plan to, and it's been more than a year since it came out, avoid the posts or face the consequences, IMO.
WeirdHat posted:
Anyway - the point of the cloning is that it was unnecessary. You're supposed to think from the beginning, like Angier did, that Borden is doing something supernatural, because you don't know how the trick is done. Then Angier goes to ridiculously implausible and disturbing lengths to duplicate the trick, and then the twist is that oops, it's actually possible without turning your life into science fiction and killing yourself a hundred times, it was just a double.
Yeah, I GOT that, but I thought it was dumb, and far less satisfying than just a straight-up mystery. Especially when Angier had already admitted that Borden was the better magician.
WeirdHat posted:
And by comparison, in The Illusionist the twist is that the magic which was actually blatantly impossible to fake for anybody was faked somehow. How? Dunno. Is that supposed to be a satisfying ending?
Given the style of the piece, it was easy enough for me to dismiss the "impossible" magic as being the way the audience thinks they saw it, not how they actually saw it. That's what the art of illusion is all about. What the audience remembers is much different from what they actually saw. That fit with the theme and context of The Illusionist in a way that the "twist" in The Prestige did not.
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bgii_2000
Registered:
Jan '05
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Date Posted:
7/21 8:57pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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The point of the cloning has nothing to do with the character's motivation and everything to do with the audience. You've got to make Jackman's character evil enough that we can switch from sympathizing with him to sympathizing with the guy we've thought was a douche from the start. Apparently, the best way the script writers could come up with to accomplish that end, was clones.
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WeirdHat
Registered:
Jul '03
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Date Posted:
7/21 9:16pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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DorkmanScott posted:
Bah. Statute of limitations on spoiler tags is six weeks after DVD for me (I believe official TFN policy is three weeks from theatrical release). If you haven't seen it by then, I assume that 1) you don't really care that much, and 2) you've probably heard them anyway.
If you see someone talking about a movie you haven't seen, but plan to, and it's been more than a year since it came out, avoid the posts or face the consequences, IMO.
Seriously? Any movie older than a year isn't worth preserving the entertainment value of for people who havent seen it yet? That doesn't make any sense.
And even if it did make sense, spoiler tags are the way to let people avoid the posts they're likely to want to avoid when they can't avoid the thread altogether because the thread in general is about other things, that's what they're for. It's really easy, and letting people avoid hearing things they don't want to hear is common courtesy.
DorkmanScott posted:
Yeah, I GOT that, but I thought it was dumb, and far less satisfying than just a straight-up mystery. Especially when Angier had already admitted that Borden was the better magician.
Well, that's a valid opinion - I mean, you don't have to like the movie - but it doesn't violate the rules of its own world just because you don't like what those rules are. It was set up from the beginning, in several ways, and it's no more of a cheat than The Illusionist was (and IMO quite a bit less of one).
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DorkmanScott
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Mar '01
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Date Posted:
7/21 9:57pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
- Date Edited:
7/21 9:58pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
DorkmanScott
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WeirdHat posted:
Well, that's a valid opinion - I mean, you don't have to like the movie - but it doesn't violate the rules of its own world just because you don't like what those rules are.
The rules DID NOT INCLUDE SCIENCE FICTION, and therefore the science fiction elements WERE violations of the rules set up from the beginning.
Yes, the CONFLICT and the obsessive nature of the protagonist were set up from the beginning. The wild and indistinct Tesla sci-fi was not, and just popped up all of a sudden. The best I can say is that it was "contrived", in that they decided to throw that random element into the script and then went back and added a few lines to "set it up" rather than actually creating something that was integrated and inevitable within the world of the story.
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WeirdHat
Registered:
Jul '03
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Date Posted:
7/21 10:25pm
Subject:
RE: Iron Thread of the Obsidian Socializers: Social Thread v7.0
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I can't get the exact quote right now, but at the very beginning, Cutter tells the judge that the disappointing secret behind the machine is "most disappointing of all. It has no trick, it's real." And that it was "built by a wizard, a man who can actually do what magicians pretend to do."
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