The Prestige's final scene shows how both men pulled off their own prestige as all is revealed when the surviving Borden twin shoots Angier. He believes that Tesla built a transportation machine for Borden - a belief that quickly turns out to be false - but Tesla still manages to build a transportation machine for Angier.

In essence, there is nothing flashy about Borden's approach here - the trick is grounded and straight to the point, backed up by the Borden twins' painstaking approach to detail.On the other hand, Angier's mission to master The Transported Man takes him stateside to meet the famed inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla. They take the deception so seriously that, when one brother loses a couple of fingers from a gunshot wound, the other cuts off his fingers to match. On stage, one brother is located in each wardrobe. The ending of the film reveals that the identity of Borden is actually assumed by twin brothers. The film's final act reveals each man's outlandish take on the trick, with Borden mastering The Transported Man first with a sleight-of-hand strategy. The film ends with Cutter describing the fateful Transported Man magic trick to a little girl, who audiences now know to be Borden's daughter Jess.īorden and Angier both master a trick called The Transported Man, in which the magician appears to travel between two wardrobes on opposite ends of the stage, almost instantly. Once The Prestige timeline catches up to Borden in jail, the film moves in chronological order as the secret to both men's tricks are eventually revealed. He sneaks backstage and appears to witness Angier die performing the trick, mirroring the sequence shown at the beginning of the film, before it's assumed that Borden is responsible and he is arrested for Angier's apparent murder. Years pass, and Angier eventually perfects The Transported Man, with Borden arriving at one of his shows to witness it. Offstage, Angier is consumed by his obsession with learning the secret to Borden's trick, laying the foundation for The Prestige's macabre finale to unfold.

He also develops a wildly successful trick called The Transported Man in contrast with Angier, who now lives in the shadow of Borden's success.

From there, the film chronicles each magician beginning his career and moving on with the next phase of his life.īorden meets and falls in love with a woman named Sarah (Rebecca Hall), and they have a little girl named Jess (Samantha Mahurin). Once Julia (Piper Perabo) dies, the men are torn apart and go their own separate ways. When Borden makes a mistake that costs his wife her life, however, the events of The Prestige are truly set in motion. In the earliest segment in the flashback, audiences meet Borden and Angier before they are accomplished magicians, with the two men working together as plants in another magician's show.

The prestige novel