Kat and I saw The Prestige last night. Some spoiler-free thoughts: This is a movie about bad people doing terrible things to themselves, each other, and everybody nearby. My family and I came out with very clear, distinct, and different ideas about who were justified and righteous. This may have something to do with the differences in when we picked up on what was going on: those who saw some of the Keyser Söze moments coming tended to think better of the characters involved, whereas those who were shocked tended to react harshly.

The editors did excellent work. Some bits, especially during and right after the title sequence, came out rough.

But here’s the big issues for me: did Michael Caine know that Christian Bale was going to shoot Hugh Jackman? If so, why didn’t he stop the shooting? For that matter, why didn’t he stop Christian Bale from being hanged for a murder he didn’t commit? Kat’s suspicion is that this was to avenge the murder of Julia McCullough, which Caine knows Bale did commit. But it still leaves Caine as a heartless bastard, in with the other heartless bastards.

Why kill your instances? If you’re rich, why not divide up your fortune amongst yourselves and go out to do things on your own? I understand that Priest/Nolan wanted to establish the differences between the natural twins of Bale and the unnatural instances of Jackman, but that broke psychological reality for me, and with it some suspension of disbelief.

On the subject of unreality: What about generation decay? OK, OK, it makes no sense to ask this while leaving the conservation problems untouched.

Beyond that, did Hugh Jackman leave another instance? Since he was so methodical about killing most of them, probably not.