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Theory: Tesla's machine never worked. Nolan tricked us

posted 9 years ago by CinemaNaut
52 replies | jump to latest

This theory is based on the idea that Nolan's writing is far too clever to simply end the movie by actually throwing in real magic (a cloning device) and spelling it all out for the audience at the end.
In fact, it's mostly a lie.
The cloning machine never worked. We're simply fooled by the way the story is told.
The entire themeof the movie is multiple layers of tricks, and as such Nolan is ending the movie by pulling a Prestige of his own on the audience.

I think the theory is best explained by going through the events.
Timeline of what I think actually happened:
1. Movie starts with Angier hating Borden and being obsessed with the Transporting Man trick, extorting Borden for the secret.
2. Borden decideds to pull a major hoax on Angier by luring him to Tesla. They trick Angier is tricked into thinking the Cloning machine actually works, by planting a bunch of "cloned" hats and cats for him to find.
3. Angier tries to clone himself but never gets it to work. Figures out he's been duped.
He now gets completely obsessed with revenge and decides to start investing his entire life as part of the trick (same way Borden does)
Decides pull the Ultimate trick on Borden: To actually make him believe magic is real, by tricking Borden into thinking the cloning machine actually worked! [evil]
4. Angier hires a lookalike and starts performing his own version of the Transporting Man.
5. He knows Borden will try to unveil his solution, so he sets Borden up - by killing his lookalike in a water tank in order to frame Borden for the murder.
6. Angier becomes Lord C and starts writing a journal, intended for Borden's eyes only. He writes down the lie that he actually did manage to clone himself.
THE KEY HERE: This movie uses some subjective perspectives. What you see isn't always what you get.
The largest part of Angier's story in the movie is actually told through Borden reading Angiers journals.
So scenes where Angier clones himself never happened - they just play out as Angier wrote them in his journal and the audience sees the same thing Borden envisions when reading the journals.
7. Borden is now jailed but Angier figures he has an accomplice that'll get revenge some day. To screw with Borden's mind, he places a bunch of well crafted wax dolls in water tanks, to appear as his "dead clones". [evil]
8. Borden's twin finally Angier. In his dying moments he talks about how he dedicated his entire life to this final trick.

And the final trick was this elaborate plan with the clones, which convince Borden that it wasn't a trick and that real magic in fact exists!
At the same time, Nolan also pulls this final trick on the audience.
THAT is the Prestige.

[–] yurenchu 9 years ago

::sigh:: Of course they were wax dolls; did you really think they really duplicated actor Hugh Jackman and then drowned him? And of course the scene where Angier duplicated himself never really happened; a Tesla Duplicator Machine doesn't really exist, so Nolan couldn't really use one. Also, Christian Bale never really chiseled off his two fingers, and Rebecca Hall and Piper Perabo are still alive.

It's called "movie magic" and "suspension of disbelief".

You know what: along the lines of your logic, the events in Batman Begins never really happened either, they were all hallucinations incepted (ha!) into our brains by Scarecrow's hallucinogenic gas. We were all fooled! That Nolan guy is so clever!

So scenes where Angier clones himself never happened - they just play out as Angier wrote them in his journal

Angier never wrote in his journal that the machine duplicated him; he merely wrote that he had set up the machine for the first test, and then Borden reads: "But here at the turn, I must leave you, Borden. Yes, you, Borden, sitting there in your cell, reading my diary, awaiting your death for my murder."; and then Angier's journal ends.

The scenes where Angier performs The Real Transported Man occur in the movie after Borden is done reading Angier's journal in his jail cell. Angier never described in his journal how he auditioned for Ackermann with this trick, or how Borden witnessed Angier fall through the trapdoor into the watertank and drown under the stage.

So this whole theory that these scenes are depictions of how Borden would imagine it happen while reading Angier's journal is completely flawed.

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
https://y2u.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] jmrex 9 years ago

You ended up making some decent counters, but one thing bothers me. Suspension of disbelief has no place in your counter. OP wasn't talking about wax dolls in real life, but as an illusion used by the character in the story. How could you possibly miss that?

[–] mad_weather 9 years ago

When the storyteller asks for suspension of disbelief from his audience, it must pay its worth. The story should be integral and non-controversial in its own set of rules, and not insult viewers' common sense. It is okay if Eisenheim in The Illusionist uses smoke and a cinema projector to create a believable 3D image of a boy, nevermind that there only were black and white kind of movies at that time. But wax dolls hypothesis requires us to believe Angier did something that doesn't really make any *sense*, and that's a no-no.

__________________________________
Oh my god! They killed Angier!
YOU BASTARDS!!!

[–] jmrex 9 years ago

In the story, the cloning machine actually works. OP wasn't saying that such a thing is preposterous and ruins the movie, only that a writer like Nolan wouldn't use such a device. There must be another angle that we're missing. At least that was his theory. He hypothesized that the clones really weren't clones. They were wax dolls, meant to fool others.

It doesn't really matter if this theory holds water. The point is that the wax-doll theory was about wax dolls in the actual story. The people being fooled were the characters in the story.

Then another posters says...

::sigh:: Of course they were wax dolls; did you really think they really duplicated actor Hugh Jackman and then drowned him? And of course the scene where Angier duplicated himself never really happened; a Tesla Duplicator Machine doesn't really exist, so Nolan couldn't really use one. Also, Christian Bale never really chiseled off his two fingers, and Rebecca Hall and Piper Perabo are still alive.

It's called "movie magic" and "suspension of disbelief".

It's a personality defect of mine to let such nonsense go unchecked, that's all.

[–] yurenchu 9 years ago

It's a personality defect of mine to let such nonsense go unchecked, that's all.

And since you didn't let it go unchecked, you apparently subconsciously don't consider it nonsense, really.

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
http://youtu.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] jmrex 9 years ago

It's good nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. Nothing you've explained is wrong, in absolute terms. It just doesn't apply to OP's premise.

I hate to bring in politics, but something is happening which is a great analogy. Black Lives Matter. Many conservatives, including me, have a few issues with this movement. Some even counter with All Lives Matter. It's true, but also utterly banal, and simply repeating the original premise. Black Lives Matter = All Lives Matter = All Lives Matter, Even Blacks = Why Does Nobody Care About The Slaughter Happening To Blacks?

Now, one might counter with all kinds of facts about how there is no slaughter happening, but to counter with All Lives Matter is utter nonsense. It fails to recognize the premise of the argument, and thus counters with something completely irrelevant. The movements is saying "Why Does Nobody Care About The Slaughter Happening To Blacks?" and the counter is "Blacks aren't special." Either there's a slaughter or there isn't. Either it's recognized or it isn't. It's astonishing how dense politics can make people.

Yes, some people probably don't enjoy The Prestige as much as they could, if they could just bring themselves to accepting the supernatural's presence in this story. It's just that the OP is not one of these people. He has no trouble accepting it. He just doubts that Nolan would ask him to. Perhaps an erroneous position, but one which can't be refuted by discussing the actual effects used in filming. No amount of sarcasm can save those points. You goofed. You missed it. You're allowed. But only if you admit it.

[–] yurenchu 9 years ago

Yes, some people probably don't enjoy The Prestige as much as they could, if they could just bring themselves to accepting the supernatural's presence in this story. It's just that the OP is not one of these people. He has no trouble accepting it.

Ehm... where did you get that idea that the OP isn't one of them?

The OP proposed an explanation that would supposedly make the movie cleverer; while it actually just makes the story dumber; because it brings the movie down to the level of the Julia Roberts twist in Ocean's Twelve. I think that warranted some type of wake-up call (if not to the OP, then at least to other IMDb users who read his post and who initially tend to agree with him because they do have a problem with the "supernatural" element); and sarcasm would be a good (or at least effective) instrument for that.

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
http://youtu.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] jmrex 9 years ago

Doesn't matter why he proposed the explanation, or that it ultimately didn't work. If Nolan wouldn't stoop to the supernatural, then how could the story still work? That was what he tried to answer.

And he got the wake up call...he even admitted the fallacy of his theory.

But your sarcasm didn't help. Not because it was sarcasm. Sarcasm is welcome. But because it just didn't address anything. You missed his point. By a mile. Hence my wake up call to you.

[–] yurenchu 9 years ago

But your sarcasm didn't help. Not because it was sarcasm. Sarcasm is welcome. But because it just didn't address anything. You missed his point. By a mile. Hence my wake up call to you.

Yeah, sure bud. Whatever you say. You must know the OP personally. 

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
http://youtu.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] jmrex 9 years ago

Nah. I'm just a lawyer at heart. A public defender, apparently.

"He's arguing. He's making an argument."

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] hatsAreForLosers 8 years ago

Super late, but this right here. It went right over their head

[–] yurenchu 8 years ago

Re: Theory: Tesla's machine never worked. Nolan tricked us
by hatsAreForLosers » 14 hours ago (Sun Dec 4 2016 01:15:18) Flag ▼ | Reply |
IMDb member since March 2010

Super late, but this right here. It went right over their head

Yeah, just like how your hat goes over your head.

Indeed, you're super late. The wax dolls theory has been tossed around on this board since 2008. OP isn't the first that we had to debunk.

______
Keiko Matsui & Carl Anderson - "A Drop of Water"
http://youtu.be/kPUENUUuqSk

[–] yurenchu 9 years ago

I didn't miss that. The reason some people have trouble accepting the working Tesla Machine in this movie (and therefore invent explanations like the "wax dolls" theory), is because a Duplicator Machine doesn't exist in real life [*]. In other words: this story element requires suspension of disbelief. My answer was meant to point out (in a somewhat sarcastic way) the absurdity of the situation when a viewer doesn't grant that suspension of disbelief and rather invents a "down-to-earth" explanation that lies close to how the effect was achieved in the movie, instead of appreciating/recognizing the story that the filmmaker so obviously wants to tell. It's along the lines of saying "OMG, did Sarah commit suicide? No, relax, she just played a morbid prank and rigged herself to the ceiling with a rope that suspends her from a harness underneath her clothes, in order to bring a message of contempt across to her husband. Afterwards, she just divorced him."

This strategy of unwilling viewers to circumvent suspension of disbelief and accommodate a story to their comfort zone is akin to dismissing a movie with a somewhat complex plot by just concluding "it was all just a dream" -- umm, yeah, of course it was all just a dream; it was dreamed up by the director/writer, and then they made a movie out of it!

Such explanations as the "wax dolls theory" and "it was all just a dream" are just a cop-out, a cheap and easy way to get out of a sticky situation and avoid having to think about the complex, dark, unfamiliar plot intricacies and uncomfortable messages that the storyteller wants to bring across.

[*] I suspect another reason why some viewers wouldn't accept the working Tesla Machine is because they can't accept the fact that their hero Angier actually turned out not to be a hero at all, but an obsessed guy who repeatedly killed himself; which is a character that they would despise. A third possible reason why people keep inventing "clever" alternative theories is that certain viewers can't bear the thought that their hero Christopher Nolan made a movie that they didn't "get" ("get" as in either "like", or "understand", or a combination of both).

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
http://youtu.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] terryperring104 9 years ago

Yeah-I'm pretty sure he realised he wasn't talking about real life. He's just pretending to misconstrue, playing silly beggars....

[–] realityofimagination 9 years ago

I'm sorry, but are you stupid?

OP was saying that Angier put wax dolls in the water tanks in the world of the movie, not that the production crew did...

[–] yurenchu 9 years ago

I'm sorry, but are you stupid?

OP was saying that Angier put wax dolls in the water tanks in the world of the movie, not that the production crew did...

Did you just create a brand new IMDb account, just to tell me that?

Did you even read the whole tread? I already clarified why I wrote that reply:
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/board/thread/247203686?d=247883638#247883638

I know what the OP was saying. Do you know what suspension of disbelief means and why it was brought up in this thread? Do you know what "cop-out" means?

Are you having trouble understanding the line where I said "The reason some people have trouble accepting the working Tesla Machine in this movie (and therefore invent explanations like the "wax dolls" theory), is because a Duplicator Machine doesn't exist in real life"?

If (a version of) a working Tesla Duplicator Machine existed in real life, and the production crew had used one to create the multiple watertanks filled with (inanimate or dead) duplicates of actor Hugh Jackman, then the OP would never have felt a need to come up with an "alternative" theory and to start a thread about it; because then he would have felt no reason to doubt that a Tesla Duplicator Machine could also exist in the movie's universe and be part of Angier's plot.

My reply to the OP was meant to challenge the OP and make him reflect on the question: Does the fact that the OP's theory is closer to what really happened on the film set, make it a better (or "cleverer") explanation of what happened in the story that the director intended to tell?

I understood perfectly what the OP wrote and why he wrote that. You're the one who apparently doesn't understand my reply and why I wrote it.

______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
http://youtu.be/VI57QHL6ge0

[–] mad_weather 9 years ago

Oh. One of *those*. Well, the last weeding was long ago enough, I suppose.

2. Borden decideds to pull a major hoax on Angier by luring him to Tesla. They trick Angier is tricked into thinking the Cloning machine actually works, by planting a bunch of "cloned" hats and cats for him to find.

Bordens traveled to America for three years instead of building their success in London? When? (oh, I forgot - there's actually two of them, so one could follow Angier and another stayed at home and performed the Transported Man alone [/sarcasm])

Decides pull the Ultimate trick on Borden: To actually make him believe magic is real, by tricking Borden into thinking the cloning machine actually worked!

Angier's obsession was proving that he was a *better magician*. Using "real magic" in a craft that requires labor and dedication in creating illusions is not better magicianship, it's cheating. If Borden *believed* Tesla's machine was real, it would equal Angier's straight confession that he's a *worse* magician.

5. He knows Borden will try to unveil his solution, so he sets Borden up - by killing his lookalike in a water tank in order to frame Borden for the murder.

Cutter identifies Angier's body in the morgue. Considering that it was him who trained Root to be a look-alike for Angier (and that he spent several years in close contact with the man), he's competent enough to notice the difference. Unlike Bordens (who are natural born twins), there's no such thing as a perfect duplicate, and the make-up that could possibly *make* a passable one would be smeared by water and become glaringly obvious.

The largest part of Angier's story in the movie is actually told through Borden reading Angiers journals.

That's already covered above.

7. Borden is now jailed but Angier figures he has an accomplice that'll get revenge some day.

Angier doesn't know that Borden has a twin brother. And he doesn't know that the "accomnplice" will hunt him in this very cellar.

You wanted to be fooled too vehemently, and your wish was granted. Congratulations.

__________________________________
Oh my god! They killed Angier!
YOU BASTARDS!!!

[–] anonymous1235 9 years ago

Okay, so let me see if I can follow what you think happened.
The Bordons trick Angier into going to America to visit Tesla. They planted a pile of identical hats to fool Angier into thinking Tesla mistakenly built a duplicator instead of teleportation device. Where did they get an idea like that? Was Tesla in on this? Well, I guess he had to be. How else could the Bordons be sure he would try the machine on the hat? The more popular theory is that Tesla was doing the scam himself because he was strapped for cash. Since that makes at least a little more sense, let's go with that. How was he so sure Angier wasn't going to ask to watch as the hat appeared out of thin air in the middle of the field? This whole thing seems wildly implausible, but let's move on.
Next, Angier realizes he's been duped. He goes back to London and... finds a man who looks exactly like him? Gets plastic surgery for Root's earlobes, nose and teeth? For simplicity's sake, let's just call his double Root.
So Angier and Root develop a version of the transported man that's superior to the Bordons' (I got the impression that the reason his was superior was because the new Angier was being created ex nihilo and didn't have to hide somewhere, but I digress). Instead of upstaging Bordon and doing this trick indefinitely, he comes up with an elaborate plot to frame Bordon for his murder by... hiring a bunch of blind stagehands to haul out an empty water tank every night to catch Bordon's attention so he can kill Root on the night Bordon sneaks in. Killing an innocent man to frame another man for his murder seems a little extreme - even for Angier - and this seems like the most overly elaborate way to go about it. Did Root agree to this plan? I doubt it. How did Angier know which night to set Root up? Did he have Root fall into a locking water tank every night anyway, just in case? How would Root survive something like that? How did Angier know not to appear behind the audience that night if his consciousness isn't a continuation of the consciousness on the stage (you can see that Angier can clearly hear Bordon from the stage that night)?
Moving on... So he frames Bordon for murder and stores all of the water tanks in his basement with wax dummies in them. Or are you of the mindset that only the one we see had a wax dummy in it? Or was that another Angier look-alike that Angier decided to kill for some reason? I ask because some people seem to think the fact that we're only shown one is justification for thinking the machine didn't work and the other tanks are empty, but a bunch of empty tanks aren't evidence of much. Anyway, he keeps them in his basement so he can convince anyone who stumbles down there that he has a bonafide duplication device. But doesn't he want to convince Bordon, whom he thinks is rotting away in prison? Was he counting on Bordon getting acquitted? Wouldn't that mean he killed Root, not to get revenge and ruin Bordon's life, but just to convince Bordon he had a duplication device? What if Bordon (or whoever) demanded a demonstration?
I could go on like this, but it should be clear that the idea the machine didn't work creates way more problems than it solves. Of course, I'm not exactly sure what problems it's supposed to solve to begin with.

[–] siidheart 9 years ago

I believe the device was real because a scene was shown in the movie where to get his shows on the market, Angier presents the disappearing act to Ackerman.

"Don't put your mouth into what your ass cannot handle"

[–] There_Is_No_Sayid 9 years ago

This idea has been thoroughly debunked on every single level possible.

Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything.

[–] CinemaNaut 9 years ago

Alright - good debunking!
I thought of this theory during a drunk discussion with a friend and wanted to test if it actually held up in any way :)
Hell, guess it didn't.

[–] njiuma 9 years ago

They didn't debunk the theory, they just don't like it. Despite storytelling "rules", there are no rules at the same time. The Nolans are free to do what they want with how they tell their stories, you may indeed be onto something, despite the wannabe "experts".

"If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it copy this and make it your signature!"

[–] wmeyerson-119-935702 9 years ago

I like the theory you propose. It is definitely looking between the lines thinking.

Outside of the box (pardon the pun) thoughts are usually a fresh start to things.

Well done!

[–] mad_weather 9 years ago

When praising out of the box thinking, do not forget that the box is what holds things together and doesn't let them scatter :p. That a thought is unconventional is no virtue in itself until it proves it's actually *worthy*.

__________________________________
Oh my god! They killed Angier!
YOU BASTARDS!!!

[–] PreachCaleb 9 years ago

When praising out of the box thinking, do not forget that the box is what holds things together and doesn't let them scatter :p. That a thought is unconventional is no virtue in itself until it proves it's actually *worthy*.

Well said.

Let's be bad guys.

[–] the-author 9 years ago

Ha ha ha....you really got lost.
Read the book.....the machine works
but somewhere along the line, angier lost his soul.

Best unknown feature at IMDB.com
http://www.imdb.com/features/video/browse/

[–] njiuma 9 years ago

Following the logic of the wannabe experts on this board, the book story is irrelevant to the film story - movie/film 101 storytelling "rules" dictate that "the film story stands on its own, regardless of its source material".

"If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it copy this and make it your signature!"

[–] bigBang8 9 years ago

Question is who was the second first buyer of teslas machines.

The increase in human knowledge is the cause of the decline of religions.