I have a question for people who've seen the film 'The Illusionist' (with Edward Norton). Spoilers abound.

November 20, 2007 1:13 PM

I have a question for people who've seen the film 'The Illusionist' (with Edward Norton). Spoilers abound.

I've just finished watching 'The Illusionist' and found it to be a very engrossing piece of work right up until the final five minutes when it's revealed that Sophie is alive and the method by which that was accomplished.

All I could say was 'That's it? That's all the twist is?'

Some background. I've studied film as a post graduate so I have a decent idea of how narrative works so I noted as I was watching when narrative information was being withheld from the audience and the slight of hand in relation to the characterisation in which the real protagonist is the Inspector not Eisenheim The Illusionist.

We've mostly following the story from his point of view and it certainly tips towards the whoodunnit genre with elements of howdunnit too. So we're supposed to be in the position, like him, of putting the evidence together and trying to work out what the Illusionist's game is and how he does the things he does. It's to the film's credit that in most cases it doesn't explain the tricks, which probably makes it more of a favourite with the Magic Circle than 'The Prestige' which explains *everything*.

The problem was that, without hopefully sounding smug, I'd worked out the twist as soon as the countess was apparently murdered. Some of it was the choice of shots -- the high angle as the Crown Prince crossed the courtyard indicated that there was something fishy about it and I decided it was probably Norton in dress. But I also decided that Sophie couldn't be dead and that the writing and directing was indicating that to us to set us up for some even greater twist further along the line. Like he really had supernatural powers and the film didn't exist in a rational universe.

It wasn't of course. That she wasn't murdered by Crown Prince Leopold was the twist.

To the questions then. Is it just me who worked out the twist half way through? And either way did you think this twist was enough in this day and age and have just become too cynical about my expectations? Or did you think that that the twist was beside the point (which the montage sequence revealing how the inspector expects it happens would refute)?

I don't always spot these things. I was surprised by The Prestige and Unbreakable and The I Inside of all things. I did work out The Sixth Sense from watching the trailer before going to film school and I was a fan of Jonathan Creek. Perhaps I've just seen too many films and I expect too much. Another nagging thought was that the bottom half of the film had been reimagined in an attempt to beat 'The Prestige' and there hadn't been a twist and she simply died in the first version.

posted by feelinglistless to media & arts (52 comments total)

Yes, it was a pretty crappy film. It's especially lame when you compare it to the Prestige, which was great.
posted by chunking express at 1:18 PM on November 20, 2007

I assumed, immediately after her death, that it had been faked, but I abandoned and then forgot that idea as the film continued to progress without her ever reappearing. And I assumed that was the point. The main character creates illusions, things which you go in assuming will be faked, but which seem so real that you can't help but believe in them, you get sucked into the fiction he creates.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:21 PM on November 20, 2007

Honestly, I thought the twist was predictable. The greater mystery to me was how he achieved the 'ghost' illusions. Even the orange tree was more complicated than the diagrams indicated.

Having the Chinese assistants lead to the idea that he had, indeed, discovered some type of lost mysticism and was exploiting that in his shows. Leaving that completely unexplained was so junior high, IMO.
posted by trinity8-director at 1:22 PM on November 20, 2007

i second chunking express. and more. it was a tremendously crappy film.

that montage (and paul giamatti cackling into the air as the camera spins around him) is one of my least favorite moments from a film in recent memory.
posted by jimw at 1:28 PM on November 20, 2007

I'm with trinity8-director.

Following on from what he said, I assume the form the illusions took were cinematic embellishments, maybe just the exaggerations in the retelling of the story through the perspective of one of the characters.

This is because most of the illusions are real ones, just not so amazing in real life. The orange tree was one of Robert Houdin's I believe?
posted by edd at 1:29 PM on November 20, 2007

Everyone I've spoken to about it knew she wasn't dead. I wasn't even sure it was supposed to be a secret. I enjoyed it, though, just because it was fun to watch it being done.
posted by smoakes at 1:29 PM on November 20, 2007

Movie was easy to figure out...

The Chinese assistants were used supposedly because they kept secrets.
posted by boyinmiami at 1:30 PM on November 20, 2007

I have seen both and like both for different reasons. However, in the ineveitable comparison of both films, I found The Prestige much more enjoyable. The twist in The Prestige was reasobnably strong and in The Illusionist, it was very weak. I tend to have a knack for figuring out twists in films at a very early point. The twist in The Prestige took me longer than usual and I still found it a very impressive film. I figured out the twist in The Illusionist ealier than usual (including the fact that Leopold did not kill her) and found it rather disappointing that was the answer. I kept hoping against hope that I was wrong. No such luck.
posted by horseblind at 1:31 PM on November 20, 2007

I loved the film, even though I agree that the twist was predictable. To me, it's just a flaw. IF you see the film primarily as a howdoneit, then I can see how it might be a fatal flaw for you. And I don't think you're a fool if you see the film that way, because on an intellectual level, that's sort of what the film is.

But on an emotional level -- for me at least -- it's a love story. The howdoneit angle is secondary. Think about it as a love story for a minute: it's a pretty clear-cut example of boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-wins-girl-back again. To me, that's inevitably going to be an engrossing formula, if the storytellers set the romantic tone well and if I'm attracted to the protagonists.

For me, all the magic stuff was a backdrop. It gave the movie a gothic feel, like "Wuthering Heights" which, for me, is a love story about Catherine and Heathcliff. The windswept setting just makes adds spice to the romance.

Although I understand why everyone is doing it, I find it really odd to compare this film with "The Prestige."
posted by grumblebee at 1:35 PM on November 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

This is because most of the illusions are real ones


Ricky Jay was a consultant for the film. And I once saw him do that orange-tree trick on stage.
posted by grumblebee at 1:38 PM on November 20, 2007

I am quite unobservant and did not catch the twist until it was revealed. I still thought the movie stunk, though.
posted by emd3737 at 1:42 PM on November 20, 2007

Yeah that was a totally crap film. I knew what was happening right away and just wanted it to be over with so I could go home. Bad acting, bad script, bad premise.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 1:55 PM on November 20, 2007

As I recall, I didn't catch the twist in The Illusionist. And in general, I thought The Prestige (which I also didn't figure out) was a better film. More engrossing, cared more about the characters, and overall seemed a "deeper" picture.

grumblebee - I'm jealous! The more I find out about Ricky Jay, the more I wish I had seen him on stage, doing... anything!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 1:58 PM on November 20, 2007

I'm with grumblebee in that The Illusionist is much more of a romance film, while The Prestige is much more of a Nolan mind-games movie. Comparing them is like comparing Glory to Gone with the Wind. Sure, they're both movies set during the US Civil War, but otherwise, they are very different films. I saw the Illusionist and the Prestige in the way.

Also, I saw the Illusionist first, which might have made the admittedly more interesting Prestige comparison less omnipresent.


The Chinese assistants were used supposedly because they kept secrets.

That and no natives thought they spoke German (and maybe most of them didn't) and wouldn't bother trying to interrogate them.
posted by Nelsormensch at 2:02 PM on November 20, 2007

grumblebee - I'm jealous! The more I find out about Ricky Jay, the more I wish I had seen him on stage, doing... anything!

You should be jealous. "On the Stem" was one of the best shows I've ever seen. If you ever get a chance to see Jay perform, on stage or on video, jump at it.

posted by grumblebee at 2:06 PM on November 20, 2007

Yeah that was a totally crap film. I knew what was happening right away and just wanted it to be over with so I could go home. Bad acting, bad script, bad premise.

I would NEVER argue with that, because I don't buy that there's such a thing as an objectively good or bad film.

But I wonder if all the people here who hated it are the type of people who hate "chick flicks." My guess is that MeFi has a large population of geeks who prefer movies with "cool shit" in them (e.g. "Aliens", "Lord of the Rings") to movies about relationships.

I think "The Illusionist" is a "chick flick," and I think it's a damn good one. But because its subject-matter is, on the surface, magic, I wonder if it lures in the "cool shit" audience who then hates it because its shit isn't cool enough.

In other words, all you people who hated it: would you normally go see movies like "Howard's End" and "Remains of the Day"? Because I think "The Illusionist" belongs in that camp (and should have been marketed as such). This is the camp where most of my favorite movies live.
posted by grumblebee at 2:15 PM on November 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

Quite agree with grumblebee. I also had the benefit of greatly enjoying all the references that, I now discover, Ricky Jay had a hand in, since I'd coincidentally just finished reading Hiding the Elephant before seeing the film.

In a related way, I got felt that although I saw the twist it was quite believable that the characters in the film didn't. It's set in a time when, for example, the aforementioned orange tree would have been substantially more impressive to an audience than it would to a present day one, for which it is more interesting from a historical and artistic perspective than inexplicability.

It's possible to enjoy the twist from the perspective of seeing the characters hoodwinked, even if you aren't yourself hoodwinked.
posted by edd at 2:24 PM on November 20, 2007

The film's based on a Stephen Millhauser novella; perhaps it answers some of your questions. I haven't read it myself but I love Millhauser's EDWIN MULLHOUSE and a few others, and I feel pretty strongly that even if the story doesn't add much to your appreciation of the film, reading it would hardly be a waste of time.

I get asked about The Prestige and The Illusionist A LOT after gigs, and my stock answer is that The Prestige is the better movie, but The Illusionist is the better magician movie. The Prestige isn't REALLY about magicians so much as it uses magic as a way to explore other topics. (Sort of how PI isn't really a movie about math.)

Personally, my favorite magic movie of the last decade or so is Ocean's Eleven. It has all the elements of a perfectly structured effect, from the elegent misdirection to the careful economy of the revelations. And, like the best illusions, it lets you in on just enough of the secret before revealing an even bigger surprise. I suppose all heist films are constructed like magic tricks in a way, but Ocean's Eleven really nailed the feeling of, er, being magical in the way that, say, The Italian Job remake didn't.

And, frankly, that's what's wrong with The Illusionist's ending. It doesn't feel magical. The point of a magic act isn't--or at least should never be yet all too frequently is--about saying "Ha ha! I fooled you!" I know it's a dreadful cliche for a magician to disparage the word "trick," but there's a point to that: at it's best, magic should inspire wonder and a sense of possibility, not a feeling of having been snookered.

After an effect, if I hear "How did you do that?", I feel like I've failed in my art...I want to render that question moot. Like BoyInMiami said, the "movie was easy to figure out." But that's not the biggest failing of the movie's end...the real failure is that the audience felt they had to figure it out at all.
posted by Ian A.T. at 2:30 PM on November 20, 2007 [4 favorites]

Anyone interested in how things like films are put together is inevitably going to predict the twists in mainstream movies, in the same way anyone interested in magic is going to spot how a popular magician's tricks work.

(Infuriatingly, The Prestige threw away one twist thanks to a few bits of clumsy dialogue and iffy make-up, and the other by needlessly showing not only that Tesla's device worked at all, but what it actually did. With a little extra care and courage the ending could've been so much more surprising and horrifying)
posted by malevolent at 2:34 PM on November 20, 2007

That's so weird. I had different feelings than most towards The Illusionist and The Prestige.

I didn't didn't really consider the twist in The Illusionist to be much of a twist. The film took place in a rational universe and we were able to see the murdered woman. Occam's razor tells us that she is still alive. What I found interesting was that the Inspector is so taken in by Eisenheim's illusion that he is completely blindsided by the obvious truth. It's a con, like Matchstick Men.

The twist in The Prestige, however, left me very cold. By the time both major truths were revealed to us, the film has lead us to those conclusions already. By the time we see them, they're not "surprises". They're not deep or anything either.

Maybe it's just me.
posted by ODiV at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2007

Snooty highbrow appreciation of The Illusionist, including a quote from the director suggesting that the twist can be read as part of the Inspector's deductive fantasia.
posted by dyoneo at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2007

I did see the ending coming, yes. Or rather, I knew she wasn't dead. It's hard to say how much I might or might not have guessed about the manner of execution, because I found it so unengaging that I picked up a book while my girlfriend finished watching it. My characterization of it was that it was strangely "small" ... something about it felt like a made-for-TV movie. Not the cinematography, but the atmosphere, the sweep of emotions, I dunno. It's been a while, and I didn't watch it closely enough because it didn't make me care enough. Yes, it was a romance, but it was a stinky one.
posted by mumkin at 2:46 PM on November 20, 2007

I'll agree that The Prestige is a better movie than The Illusionist, but they are very different genres.

The Illusionist is trying to be historically realistic, with Ricky Jay making sure the tricks are historically accurate.

The Prestige is *science fiction*. Spoiler: No one can clone themselves and teleport in real life. In that sense, the reveal in the Prestige, which interesting, is something you can't guess ahead of time *because it can't happen in real life*.

But, I like science fiction, so I like The Prestige better. Additionally, the time and place of The Prestige is a little fuzzier. I mean, they use a fictionalized Pantages Theater in L.A. as one of their locations, a building not built until 1930.

However, Tesla was in Colorado Springs in 1899-1900.

So, the film is consciously playing fast and loose with history, which is a *very* different approach than the Illusionist.
posted by MythMaker at 2:47 PM on November 20, 2007

I didn't see it as a surprise ending movie, but as a romantic "how dunnit". I twigged about the fake murder as soon as I saw it (and remembered how Sophie originally begged Eisenheim to "make us disappear") and spend the rest of the movie putting the bits together.

The Prestige, however, I didn't not guess. Mostly because the final premise is so bloody silly.
posted by ninazer0 at 2:58 PM on November 20, 2007

Did anyone really want to see Ed Norton in Hugh Jackman's role in The Prestige besides me? I like Jackman, but I think Norton is a stronger actor. (At least, on film. I've never seen either on stage.)
posted by Mikey-San at 3:02 PM on November 20, 2007

Ack, that was off-topic, wasn't it? Crap.
posted by Mikey-San at 3:02 PM on November 20, 2007

I saw the twist coming and in fact I kind of assumed that it wasn't intended to be a twist at all -- certainly not an OMG! twist.

I never see twists coming -- ever ever ever, as long as I don't know enough about the movie to think about it beforehand -- so I figure if I do see something coming it wasn't really intended to surprise me anyway.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 3:09 PM on November 20, 2007

It's not just you. I worked it out about three minutes in too. The 'twist' was formulaic and lame.
posted by Lucie at 3:22 PM on November 20, 2007

The Illusionist is trying to be historically realistic, with Ricky Jay making sure the tricks are historically accurate.

it is interesting to hear this. one of the things that left me cold about the illusionist is that the ghostly-apparition thing looked like an obvious digital effect.

some of the comments here also support the thesis that the ending is all in the inspector's head. maybe it's just me, but i don't find that any more satisfying.
posted by jimw at 3:35 PM on November 20, 2007

I'm a chick. I usually don't guess twists in advance. I saw both movies, and I MUCH preferred The Prestige. I guessed what was happening pretty early in the Illusionist, and then I was just bored.

(The book version of the Prestige is an interested read. Similar but also very different, especially in the ending and the framing device. That ending of the book FREAKED ME OUT like no other.)
posted by web-goddess at 3:37 PM on November 20, 2007

Well thank goodness for that. Even as a howdunnit it doesn't really work, especially if you do have a modicum of an idea of how films are written and edited. If that makes it a bad film, fine.

But I did like the performances and the way it was shot. I do think all the director needed to do was have a shot of Beals inside that train carriage in the middle of the film, underscoring her lack of mortality.

It would have ranked up the tension because it would have made it more of a cat and mouse as to whether Norton and her could get away with it. On top of that, we could have seen a bit more of Norton trying to pull the trick off, again because to fail would have led to them being discovered.

And for what it's worth I do think that The Prestige is a much warmer film, especially the second time you watch and you understand the sacrifices that various characters are making for their art.
posted by feelinglistless at 3:40 PM on November 20, 2007

jimw -- I agree with you about the digital effects which seemed very obvious on the dvd. Another way to have impressed would have been if these had been recreating using the original methods employed by the magicians -- the Orange Tree in particular.
posted by feelinglistless at 3:42 PM on November 20, 2007

I was waiting for the big surprise in The Illusionist, and was left going "wait, that was it?" -- but other people in the theater where I saw it gasped out loud.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:44 PM on November 20, 2007

You mean there are people who don't see twists coming in mainstream Hollywood movies? I'm always shocked by that. My mother can practically transcribe the screenplay of a movie after watching a 30 second trailer. Even though I'm not the movie plot formula machine that my mom is, it drives my wife crazy when I know how a movie will end ten or twenty minutes in. Thankfully I can be surprised on occasion, but if a movie can be ruined by a spoiler, it is a bad movie by definition.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:53 PM on November 20, 2007

For those curious about Ricky Jay, lots of fun videos here.
posted by SlyBevel at 4:00 PM on November 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

I didn't care much for The Illusionist either. But I'm female and despise "chick flicks" (did I just blow your mind grumblebee? :)

And for the record, I really do feel that The Prestige has a reality-based, non-sci-fi interpretation...if you really, really pay attention (and watch the move 6 times, like I did). But most of us just go for the magic and don't really want to pick it apart. I personally feel that that is yet another layer that Nolan has crafted into his work, and what makes it even more of a magical masterpiece.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:24 PM on November 20, 2007

But I wonder if all the people here who hated it are the type of people who hate "chick flicks." My guess is that MeFi has a large population of geeks who prefer movies with "cool shit" in them (e.g. "Aliens", "Lord of the Rings") to movies about relationships.

Egad, NO! I love a good chick flick but The Illusionist ain't it. I'm all over Howard's End, A Room with a View, etc. I'm really not into movies about "cool shit" at all. Hated the one Lord of the Rings film I saw and could never understand the appeal of The Matrix. Give me Pride and Prejudice.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 4:54 PM on November 20, 2007

(did I just blow your mind grumblebee? :)

No, cause I'm a guy and my favorite movies are "chick flicks."

I really do feel that The Prestige has a reality-based, non-sci-fi interpretation...if you really, really pay attention (and watch the move 6 times, like I did).


I only watched it once, but it seems like in the movie, teleportation/cloning exists. So you're either saying that there's another reasonable explanation (it only SEEMED to be teleportation), or you're saying that teleportation exists in real life -- which would be a pretty odd claim. Can you elaborate?
posted by grumblebee at 6:41 PM on November 20, 2007

Suspected the twist, enjoyed the atmosphere. It's just a movie.
posted by Miko at 7:47 PM on November 20, 2007

I was more disappointed in knowing that I had to wait for a montage of how they faked her death or disappearance after the first 15 minutes. Like you said, they withheld narration. I can’t think of a great movie that withholds narration well, because its late, but they exist. There was more and more supporting evidence for what you knew was true without really a twist but more of a turn.

Leads me to think that this movie under the improper expectations could ruin it. The Family Stone, which I liked, never lead me to believe it would get serious in the promos. So I blame the promo’s. Should have expressed more love story than thriller.

I’m somewhere on Netflix. I still gave this three stars. ( = worth at least seeing. )
posted by thetenthstory at 9:14 PM on November 20, 2007

late to the game, but totally agree with everything above. I spent the year prior to watching the Illusionist reading scripts for two production companies, so now I totally have a feel for how a given movie will play out. I'm pretty good about not spoiling for my movie-companions, but this was a particularly painful movie to sit through without spilling the beans.

I was excited to see The Prestige, but was dragged along to see The Illusionist a week earlier. I was so disappointed by the "That's It?" factor that I gave up on the Prestige. After reading the comments above, I'll give TPrestige another chance.
posted by prophetsearcher at 3:37 AM on November 21, 2007

It really is an insult to the Prestige to compare it with the Illusionist. The Prestige is all Batman vs. Wolverine. For Real!
posted by chunking express at 5:00 AM on November 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Unlike most people in this thread, I much preferred the Illusionist to the Prestige, but I would say that neither movie is particularly great. In the Illusionist, once the "murder" happened, I was suspicious. The scene that gave the ending away to me was at the train station, where the doctor walks by Giamatti's character - it's obviously Norton in makeup. Once you figure out what that means, the ending is clear.

However, to me, it didn't ruin the movie because, like others have said, it's more of a romance than a mystery. I happened to like the Usual Suspects montage at the end, when everything was revealed - but I wasn't expecting much from the movie anyway.

I feel like the Prestige tried too hard to take itself too seriously for too long, and then realized that it didn't know how to end itself. The introduction of teleportation and cloning via Tesla's machine was such an over-the-top deus ex machina cop-out, it hurt. It hurt because it would have been such an good movie otherwise. It had just a good a romance story at The Illusionist - but it had so much more. Hate, ego, sibling rivalry, professional rivalry, murder, etc... All the good things, really. But the movie was way to realistic and hard-edged to allow the Tesla device a place in the plot. It was pathetically out of place - and it managed to strip away so much of the plot and character depth, that at the end of the movie, all you get is Hugh Jackman = bad, Christian Bale = good.

David Bowie as Tesla was still pretty f'n cool, though.
posted by thewittyname at 12:14 PM on November 21, 2007

Yes, grumblebee, I'm claiming that teleportation really exists—I saw it in a movie.

psych!

I was trying to say that there's two takes to the movie, The Prestige. One for the people who believe the world is solid = the Tesla box doesn't work. And one for those who "want to be fooled"; the world is not solid, and the Tesla box actually works! That latter take requires a leap of faith, or suspension of disbelief, if you will. The former take is a lot of work, as the movie suggests, which is why the film opens and closes with "Are you watching closely?"

All of the magic tricks shown throughout the film have relevance to the final trick, the prestige. Basically the movie is one big magic show for us, the audience. And like the movie itself we get to see all of the mysteries, except for the most important one. That one we have to figure out for ourselves.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:16 PM on November 21, 2007

iamkimiam, I'm still trying to get the alternate explanation (the one without teleportation). What is it?
posted by grumblebee at 12:29 PM on November 21, 2007

It's almost impossible to explain it briefly here, but a good link for the general gist of the idea can be found in this forum thread. Feel free to MeMail me if there's any questions you got once you've looked that over. It's almost easier if you pick a certain scene and start from there, like asking "well, if there is no magic, then why did Angier's shoot himself the first time he used the box?"*

*He didn't shoot himself. That entire scene was from Borden's imagination of events, made up while he sits in his jail cell reading Angier's fake diary.

Here's a good question...if Angiers doesn't think/know Borden has a twin, but believes Borden had a magical Tesla box that works, and he went to Tesla and had the same box made, and found it worked to clone people, why then would Angiers spend the rest of his life screwing up Borden's life just to get the "real" secret of the box...if he already had it?
posted by iamkimiam at 8:01 AM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

And here's a link to a review I wrote back in June:
The Prestige post. It contains some further explanation and more clues and insights on the non-magic interpretation of the film.

Happy sleuthing!

(runs and hides from the self-linking-policers)
posted by iamkimiam at 8:20 AM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Just discovered, via this fun site, that Ricky Jay was a consultant on both The Prestige (which he also appeared in) and The Illusionist.
posted by grumblebee at 5:32 PM on November 23, 2007

Alright, it's an interesting theory, but it seems like one of the things that it hinges on is "if the teleporter worked, why would Wolverine keep wanting to know Batman's secret?"

Because he wanted to stop dying every night.

Plus, Wolverine's monologue at the end seems pretty sincere. It's an interesting theory, but I don't think it's right.

Plus, the ending of the movie doesn't have the same emotional weight. If it works, this is the story of a man so obsessed that he was willing to *kill himself* every night. He died the first time he used it. Since then, he's been a series of other people who happen to think they're the same person. That's far more interesting.

But it *is* true that much of the story is told in flashbacks from potentially questionable journals, but I don't see the evidence that he's still using the same body double.
posted by MythMaker at 12:15 AM on November 24, 2007

I personally find it far more interesting, and plausible, that a man would reach such lows of obsession to travel across the world chasing a pipe dream, concoct an elaborate scheme and magic act for a party of one, thereby framing his rival (the man responsible for the death of his wife) for murder. Then after he has robbed his adversary of all the tricks, secrets, and loves he's ever had, he cons him into a metal cage, where he will spend the rest of his days discovering the extent to which he has been duped. But not before he learns that the last bit of hope he had, his daughter, is in the very hands of the man who has sent him to hang. And there is absolutely nothing he can do about it.

Pretty heavy.

That's a sad fate, and helps me to see why so many of us prefer to hold steadfast to the idea of a magical box. If I wasn't such a damn stubborn skeptic, I'd eat it whole and walk away smiling.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:37 AM on November 24, 2007

Well, you keep calling it a magical box. I would call it a science fictional teleportation/cloning box. Tesla wasn't magic. He was a genius.
posted by MythMaker at 9:23 AM on November 24, 2007

True that.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:29 AM on November 24, 2007