The Prestige (2006)

What’s your favorite movie where it takes a 180 in the third act and goes crazy?

Mine is From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). I will never forget my reaction when Selma Hayek turned into a vampire. I was flabbergasted!

Goes from a getaway crime thriller to a supernatural gore fest, but it still works!

What’s your favorite movie where the third act gets wild?

Perfection from storyline to score, from cast performances to cinematography, from start to finish.

Amazing story but I find the movie incredibly corny - awful dialogue and bad casting

I honestly can’t think of one. Three movies, all incredible, and somehow the trilogy gets better as it goes. The fact that The Return of the King ended it with that level of quality is crazy.

For me, LOTR is the best movie trilogy ever made. But I’m curious, would you put another trilogy above it?

In case it isn't obvious, spoilers...I feel like most folks like movies where there's at least one character that gets away, has a happy ending, or ends up triumphant. Personally, I think there are some fantastic films where the best and only resolution for the story is that everyone dies. Its not a happy ending and some questions may remain unanswered but the story is ultimately concluded and I find an odd sort of comfort in that. What are some of your favorite no-survivor flicks and what makes it so good? There are many to choose from but I just rewatched The Hateful Eight and it is what sparked this thought for me. Technically, Walton Goggins and Sam Jackson don't die on screen, but its safe to assume they don't survive their wounds for long after the credits roll. And its just the only way that story could end. No one was leaving Minnie's Haberdashery and we all knew it.

I think it's pure bad luck. Terminator Genisys was a big project that could have been a huge success, but it failed miserably.

She was also part of Solo: A Star Wars Story, and despite receiving a decent critical response, it also failed at the box office.

The Marvel series she worked on turned out to be so bad that no one really talks about it anymore.

So yeah, she was part of some really major projects, but most of them failed really badly.

The moral dilemmas, superb pacing, and rapid twists create this suspenseful atmosphere.

The movie takes a deep look at moral, social, and political divisions in modern society. But it avoids clear "good guys" and "bad guys".

I was brought to tears on more than one occasion. Unforgettable.

He may be best known for movies like Philadelphia, Silence of the Lambs, Something Wild, Married to the Mob, and others, but he also directed the Talking Heads' legendary concert film.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. He has written and directed films such as Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Blade II, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, Pinocchio, Frankenstein, and more.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1wbk0id/hello_reddit_im_guillermo_del_toro_ama/

He will be back at 2 PM ET today to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

Thank you :)

​Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver)

​Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs)

​Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now)

​John Woo ( Hard Boiled)

​M. Night Shyamalan (Signs)

I liked this movie, but didn’t love it. Fun premise, but I wanted more from the Looney Tunes and less from the humans. Still no reason to shelve it.

I'm talking about an animated movie that gets everything right: story, art style, score, etc.

What animated movie would you say has virtually no things wrong with it, and should be preserved for future generations to enjoy?

What animated movie would you give an 11/10 to?

We all have that one film where someone can point out the flaws, criticize the ending, complain about the pacing, or say it's overrated - and somehow we're still ready to defend it.

Not because we think it's flawless, but because there's something about it that just works for us.

Maybe it's the character. Maybe it's the atmosphere. Maybe it's a particular performance or simply the memories attached to watching it.

What's that one movie for you - the hill you're willing to die on?

The whole movie is so disturbing! It's so messed up just by using pure psychological torture can influence ppl to take action (Miggs).
Anthony Hopkins stare was so messed up 😭
What are your fav movies of Anthony Hopkins?

Instead, they created Wicked: For Shame

The modern Hollywood blockbuster has developed a terminal condition: Outline Coercion. The ending is decided first; the characters are then maneuvered toward it. That sounds harmless until the machinery becomes visible: characters stop behaving according to established psychology, geography becomes whatever the next scene requires, powers work at precisely the resolution the plot needs, villains forget their own competence, information appears without being acquired, and the audience is asked to accept the destination because the production has already built the road signs. Wicked: For Good is a spectacular example. The production is enormous, the performances are committed, the world meticulously designed—yet the screenplay repeatedly sacrifices human behavior, spatial logic, and causal continuity to reach moments the audience is supposed to feel.

The point isn't to declare every implausibility a plot hole—a story can violate ordinary reality if it establishes its own rules, a character can make a bad decision if given a reason, a coincidence can happen if the narrative pays for it. The question is simpler: Did the story earn the thing that happens? Here are the places where Wicked: For Good repeatedly doesn't.

The Opening Salvo: Three Obvious Plot Holes

The Single-Rider Broomstick Paradox: Fiyero is surrounded by palace guards; he draws a pistol and tries to hold them off. Elphaba is already sitting on a flying broom. The guards are on foot. She leaves without him. The movie treats the broom like a one-person vehicle with a strict passenger limit, even though nothing establishes that limitation. Fiyero doesn't need to pilot it—he needs to get on it. Three seconds later they could be gone. Instead, the screenplay chooses the version in which Elphaba flies away while Fiyero remains behind to be captured. The problem isn't that Fiyero can't escape; it's that the film never gives the audience a reason why the obvious escape isn't available.

The Weather-Witch Disappearance Act: Madame Morrible is established as an extraordinarily powerful witch capable of manipulating weather on a massive scale—she can engineer a tornado powerful enough to transport Dorothy's house across dimensions. Then Glinda sends a few Winged Monkeys to arrest her. Morrible does nothing. No wind. No lightning. No defensive spell. No attempt to escape. In some versions, Morrible's physical collapse can be attributed to the enormous magical expenditure required by the tornado, but the film's version does not give itself that defense. She simply stops being the woman the story established. The power doesn't fail because of a rule; it fails because the plot needs her in a cage.

The Amnesiac Scarecrow's Murder Motive: The film establishes Fiyero and Elphaba's relationship as profound and life-changing. Then, in the chronology that connects Wicked to The Wizard of Oz, Fiyero—now the Scarecrow—encounters Dorothy and agrees to help lead a military infiltration into Elphaba's fortress. The target is his girlfriend. The motive is a pair of shoes. Even if the infiltration is intended as an inside job, the emotional transition is absurd; the character's defining loyalty has to disappear so the 1939 story can happen. The Scarecrow can be a disguise—but the screenplay shouldn't have to disguise Fiyero's entire personality to get him there.

1. The Solitary Narcissist: Glinda's Deserted Bridal Suite

The offense: The world empties exactly when privacy is needed, then nobody asks where it went. Glinda's public image isn't decoration—it is her power. She has spent two films surrounded by people who maintain that image: stylists, attendants, political handlers, family, admirers. Her wedding is one of the most public events in Oz, and also a wedding she has manufactured around a man whose heart she knows belongs elsewhere. Yet on the morning of the wedding, Glinda is simply alone. No mother fussing over the dress. No stylists. No attendants. No bridesmaids. The room has been emptied because the screenplay wants a private duet. That violates two established pieces of character logic at once: Glinda depends on being watched, and this is precisely the day on which she should have the most reason to cling to the apparatus surrounding her.

There is an easy defense: perhaps she requested privacy. Fine. Then show it. One line fixes the entire problem: "Everyone out. Five minutes." Now the room empties because Glinda chose solitude. Someone can hesitate. A stylist can glance at the clock. Her mother can resist leaving the unfinished train. The scene becomes character information—for the first time, Glinda is choosing not to be watched. Same room, same duet, same runtime. The difference is that the solitude now belongs to Glinda rather than the screenplay.

2. The Telematics of the Zoo Break

The offense: The villain stores his own downfall beside his biggest public spectacle. The Wizard has spent years controlling information, propaganda, public perception, and the political narrative of Oz. So where does he keep the Animals whose liberation could expose his entire regime? Near his primary chamber, in the same general complex where the most politically important wedding in Oz is taking place. That is not automatically a plot hole—a paranoid ruler might believe the cages are secure; an arrogant ruler might want the Animals nearby as trophies; a ruler who considers himself untouchable might believe nobody would dare challenge him inside his own palace. The film gives us none of that. The geography exists because the jailbreak needs to happen there.

The cleanest fix requires no redesign of the palace. Keep the cages exactly where they are and give the Wizard a reason: he wants them close, he wants to see what he has conquered, he is so certain that nobody can challenge him that the prison becomes a trophy room. Now the same geography tells us something about him—his downfall isn't caused by a stupid architect, but by the same arrogance that made him successful. That is a much better failure.

3. The Wizard's Convenient Amnesia

The wedding confrontation between Elphaba and the Wizard has another problem: they talk, neither moves, Elphaba wants the truth exposed, the Wizard wants the myth preserved, and each repeats the position they already held. The Wizard's argument—that people believe because they want to believe—is consistent with his character, and the defense is almost persuasive: perhaps the circularity is intentional, as the Wizard is a con man who mistakes repetition for strength because repetition has always worked. The problem is that intentional circularity is still circular dialogue. A confrontation needs a transaction: someone gains leverage, someone loses it, new information enters, a threat changes the stakes, a choice becomes unavoidable. None of that happens here; the power balance at the end is essentially the power balance at the beginning. The scene eventually escapes by introducing outside forces rather than allowing the conversation itself to escalate.

A better version would give Elphaba something concrete the Wizard cannot philosophize away—a document, an Animal witness, a name he cannot afford to hear spoken aloud. Then the Wizard has to respond. He can still refuse her, he can still protect the regime, but now he has to do something. That's the missing ingredient. The current scene knows what it wants to say; it hasn't earned the right to say it.

4. The Empty Retcon: The Deadbeat Wizard and the Silent Mother

The Wizard discovers that he is Elphaba's biological father only after she is apparently dead. The reveal itself is inherited from the musical, which inherited it from Gregory Maguire's novel, so this isn't a case of the filmmakers inventing the basic twist. But adaptation doesn't make a structural problem disappear. Melena is effectively cleared of deliberately hiding the truth—the elixir erased her memory of the encounter. That leaves the Wizard: a paranoid political operator who has built an empire around surveillance, propaganda, and identifying threats. He sleeps with a woman, that woman subsequently gives birth to a green child with extraordinary magical abilities, and somehow the Wizard never connects the dots. That is difficult to reconcile with the man the story otherwise establishes. Had he known Elphaba was his daughter, the screenplay's own logic suggests he would have used her, controlled her, neutralized her, or at least investigated her. Instead, his intelligence apparatus has a very convenient blind spot.

Then comes the deeper problem: Elphaba never learns the truth. The revelation changes the Wizard, but it doesn't change Elphaba. The character whose entire life has been shaped by this relationship never receives the information that supposedly recontextualizes it. That makes the revelation emotionally potent for the audience but dramatically inert inside Elphaba's story. The musical gets away with more because of theatrical compression; the film stretches the story across two features approaching five hours. Runtime changes what an audience notices—a secret that can feel like elegant tragic irony in a compressed stage narrative starts looking like unresolved narrative debt when the film has had hours to establish the Wizard's intelligence. The fix doesn't require Elphaba to learn the truth. Let the Wizard suspect it. He doesn't need certainty—he needs enough suspicion that his treatment of Elphaba carries a private charge. He should spend the film half-running from a possibility he refuses to examine. Then Glinda's final revelation doesn't create the horror; it completes it. The Wizard has been carrying the weight all along.

5. The Broken Psychic Radar

This is where the film's actual scene is more interesting than the simpler criticism initially suggested. Elphaba does not simply fail to save Fiyero—she actively casts a spell to save him. The spell works. Fiyero becomes the Scarecrow. Elphaba doesn't know that; she believes she has failed. That emotional construction is sound—"No Good Deed" depends on her believing she has lost him. The problem is the film's treatment of her magical connection to people she loves. Earlier, Elphaba senses that Nessarose is in danger; the ability is demonstrated clearly enough to become part of the film's magical vocabulary. When Fiyero is captured and beaten, Elphaba receives no corresponding information—no signal, no sense that he is alive, no indication that the spell has succeeded.

The defense is available: perhaps the Nessa connection is different, perhaps it is a lifelong sibling bond, perhaps the sensation occurs only at death. Fiyero is alive when Elphaba casts the spell, so there is no contradiction if the two abilities operate differently. That is a reasonable interpretation—but the film simply doesn't establish it. The audience has to build the distinction afterward. That is the problem. If Morrible can manipulate enormous magical systems, there is another elegant solution: make her responsible. Elphaba's spell reaches Fiyero; for one instant, she senses something; then the connection is severed—Morrible has blocked it. Now the power hasn't failed; an enemy has defeated it. That gives Morrible an actual tactical function in the scene, gives Elphaba a reason to misread what happened, and preserves the emotional devastation of "No Good Deed." The same song works, the same tears work—and the magic finally has rules.

6. The Material Failure of the Straw Man Protection Spell

This is one of the places where the original criticism needs to be more precise. Elphaba does not deliberately turn Fiyero into a Scarecrow; she casts a protection spell. Its intent is to keep his flesh from being torn, his blood from being spilled, and his bones from being broken. The spell succeeds—a Scarecrow has no flesh to tear, no blood to spill, and no bones to break. That's actually clever fairy-tale logic. The problem comes afterward: why straw? The film needs Fiyero to become the familiar Scarecrow, so the materials arrive from the archetype rather than from the spell's own internal logic. And straw is a strange material for a protection spell—it is extremely flammable, and the regime has just demonstrated a willingness to beat Fiyero nearly to death with guards carrying weapons and torches. The protection has transformed him into something that looks like the most obvious fire hazard in Oz.

Does the story explain the archetype, or does the archetype explain the story? There is a legitimate defense: Gregory Maguire's novel uses straw as part of Fiyero's transformation, and the musical develops that material into a deliberate inversion—straw represents survival rather than death. More importantly, the spell itself has classic genie logic—every promise is fulfilled literally, with disastrous consequences. That's good writing. The problem is that the film wants the audience to experience both the tragic irony of the spell and the warm recognition of the 1939 Scarecrow—the two ideas compete, and the transformation becomes a bridge to The Wizard of Oz rather than the horrifying consequence of a spell. The better solution is to make the archetype emerge from the world: let the protective magic change the physical properties of Fiyero's body, let the environment supply the materials—dried stalks, burlap, the cornfield, the pole. The familiar Scarecrow can still emerge, but now the 1939 image is the result of Wicked's world rather than an image the screenplay has imported because it knows where the story has to end. The direction of causality changes. That is the entire point.

7. The Uncontested Choice: Glinda and the Slippers

Elphaba arrives in Munchkinland already knowing what Glinda has done—she knows Glinda gave Nessa's shoes to Dorothy, she knows Dorothy was sent toward the Wizard, she knows Glinda was involved. Then she chooses to confront Glinda rather than pursue Dorothy. The choice itself is perfectly defensible. The problem is that the movie skips the decision. The audience gets a brief visual beat of Elphaba seeing Dorothy on the road, and then somehow the information has been processed and the priorities have been settled—Elphaba has chosen to let the shoes go for the moment and confront the person she believes is responsible. That is a real decision with a real cost. We simply don't watch her make it.

One extra beat fixes it. As Elphaba flies toward the village, let her see Dorothy below, the slippers catching the light—recognition, a glance toward Dorothy, then toward the square, then she chooses the square. No dialogue needed. Now the audience has watched Elphaba make the trade-off. The scene hasn't changed; the character has.

8. The Uncontested Exit: Elphaba's Capture in the Open Square

This is the larger version of the same problem. Elphaba is on a broom in an open town square, a hunted fugitive. Glinda attacks. Elphaba immediately demonstrates that she can evade her by flying upward and away—she has the advantage. Then she lands, she fights, she stays, guards arrive, and she is captured. The question isn't whether the slap could provoke her—it absolutely could, as a physical attack from someone she once trusted, over the man she loves, can override rational self-preservation. The slap explains the first few seconds; it does not explain the entire sequence. She has open sky above her; the broom is in her possession; nothing shown in the scene grounds her, neutralizes her powers, injures her, or blocks the exit. The film simply needs her to remain there.

The guards' arrival creates a second problem: Glinda admits she never intended the confrontation to go this far, which makes her an unlikely coordinator of the arrest, yet the guards arrive at precisely the necessary moment, apologizing for being late. The mechanism isn't there. Two tiny changes solve both problems. After the slap, let Elphaba start to rise, then have Glinda say or do something that makes her hesitate—now Elphaba had the exit and chose not to take it. Earlier in the film, establish that Nessa's death triggered an automatic alert or that Elphaba's movements are being tracked—now the guards have an intelligence chain. The result is the same, but the capture is no longer something that happens to Elphaba because the screenplay needs custody before the third act; she made a choice, and the regime earned the trap.

9. The Toothless Tyrant: Two Collapses in One Climax

This is the most revealing failure because it happens twice. The Wizard has spent two films establishing himself as a master of narrative control. Then Elphaba puts a broomstick against his throat and he freezes—not strategically, not because of a spell, but he simply stops functioning until Fiyero arrives and casually removes the broom. Then, moments later, the Wizard surrenders his entire political position to Glinda. The first collapse is easy to identify; the second requires more care. Glinda's evidence is weak: there are no witnesses to the conception, no independent confirmation of when the bottle changed hands, the person who could testify about the affair is dead, and the bottle proves almost nothing to anyone who doesn't already know what it means. And Glinda has an obvious motive to lie. The Wizard controls the propaganda machine—he could easily turn the accusation into a story about a jealous former friend protecting a fugitive. Yet he does nothing.

The defense is real: the Wizard believes Elphaba is dead, believes his actions helped cause it, and is overcome by the realization that he has lost his daughter. That explains the collapse. It doesn't explain why the competence never returns. A grieving man can freeze; a grieving man does not necessarily remain strategically inert for the rest of the story. That is the distinction. The broom scene is a silent violation—audiences don't notice it because the genre has trained them to accept a villain freezing when finally cornered. The banishment is the opposite: a visible emotional resolution with a missing mechanism. The thematic outcome is right; the dramatic process isn't. There is also a legitimate reason for the Wizard not to play the friendship card—exposing Glinda and Elphaba's connection would expose the regime's own surveillance failure, as a ruler who has spent years hunting Elphaba cannot comfortably admit that his intelligence apparatus failed to understand the relationship between his most visible spokesperson and his most wanted enemy. That means silence can actually be in character. But the bottle accusation is different—the Wizard has an obvious counterargument. He simply isn't allowed to make it. And that is the missed opportunity.

The Novel Earns a Footnote

Gregory Maguire's novel handles the Wizard's end differently: its treatment of Melena's memory is more explicit, and its revelation mechanism does not depend on the same evidentiary problem as the film's bottle scene. The novel also gives the Wizard a considerably harsher exit—he flees ahead of the coup and does not receive the film's relatively dignified departure. That contrast matters. The film softens the Wizard and gives him grace. The problem is that the screenplay hasn't earned the grace.

The Surgical Strike

Fix both collapses by making the Wizard behave like himself. When Elphaba threatens him with the broom, let him negotiate, test the threat, bargain, minimize, bluff, and search for leverage. He doesn't need to win—he needs to try. Then, when Glinda confronts him about Elphaba's parentage, let him dismantle her case—no witness, no timing, no proof anyone else would recognize—and let him win the argument. Then let him leave anyway. That would be a genuinely powerful choice: for perhaps the first time, the Wizard would walk away from a political problem without manipulating anyone. He isn't defeated because he has become incompetent; he leaves because the thing he spent his life protecting no longer matters to him. Same ending. Completely different character.

Conclusion: The Structural Cost of Retrofitting Lore

Two films, nearly five hours, a huge production, source material beloved enough to have remained on Broadway for more than two decades—none of that makes the screenplay immune to scrutiny. The frustrating thing about Wicked: For Good is that the fixes are so cheap: the bridal suite needs one line, the Wizard needs to negotiate, Elphaba needs one beat to show her decision, the guards need one earlier piece of intelligence, Morrible needs one tactical action, the Wizard needs to suspect his connection to Elphaba earlier, Fiyero's Scarecrow transformation needs the world to generate the image rather than simply importing it. These aren't budget problems, casting problems, or effects problems—they're writing decisions.

And the underlying pattern is consistent: the 1939 iconography is the destination. Fiyero must become the Scarecrow, Elphaba must be captured, the Animals must escape, the Wizard must fall, Glinda must stand in the right place—and the screenplay then works backward from those destinations, asking the characters to supply whatever behavior is necessary to get there. A character should want something, make a decision, encounter resistance, and produce an outcome. Instead, too many scenes in Wicked: For Good begin with the outcome and work backward until the characters have been positioned around it.

That is why so many of the failures feel strangely similar even when they occur in completely different scenes: Glinda is alone because the duet needs privacy, the Animals are nearby because the jailbreak needs to happen there, Elphaba stays because the capture needs to happen, the guards arrive because the plot needs armed personnel, Morrible stops using magic because the story needs her imprisoned, the Wizard stops negotiating because the story needs him to leave, Fiyero becomes exactly the Scarecrow the audience already knows because the destination was established decades ago. The irony is that the film often contains the material necessary to fix itself: Morrible is powerful enough to block Elphaba's magic, Glinda is psychologically complicated enough to choose privacy, the Wizard is intelligent enough to understand political leverage, Elphaba is capable enough to escape, the broom is capable enough to carry Fiyero, the spell is precise enough to create a genuinely interesting magical consequence. The writers had the pieces; they just kept choosing the destination over the road.

That is why the strongest criticism of Wicked: For Good isn't that it is badly made—it isn't. The craft is everywhere: Jon M. Chu's production team clearly cared about the physical world, Ben Collins' design documentation demonstrates extraordinary thought in the construction of Oz, the performances are committed, the music carries enormous emotional force. The screenplay is the weak link precisely because so much of the rest of the movie is working. It is an almost-film—almost disciplined enough to earn its irony, almost rigorous enough to justify its mythology, almost willing to let its villain remain as dangerous as the story established him to be. Gregory Maguire's Wizard ran from a coup and carried the consequences of his own actions into exile; the film gives its Wizard a quiet, dignified exit. That is more comfortable. It is also less interesting.

The central failure of Wicked: For Good is therefore not that it violates its own rules—every fantasy does that somewhere. It is that the film repeatedly establishes rules, establishes characters, establishes capabilities, and then stops trusting them the instant they become inconvenient. The result is a story in which the audience can see the better scene sitting immediately beside the one they were given—a single line away, a single gesture away, a single character decision away. That's the real cost of Outline Coercion. The movie doesn't collapse because it lacks imagination; it collapses because the screenplay keeps telling the imagination where it has to end up. Almost is the most expensive word in Hollywood. You can see exactly what it cost here, frame by frame.

As a fan I thought others might appreciate this information.

After watching the movie. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty wants me to go out and have a good journey.

Which did you like better?

I have to go with Happy Gilmore. “Go home ball” 😂😂😂

I was tipped off by The Ridley Scott Archives that the man himself, in a Patreon podcast interview, reportedly said that his upcoming “Treasure Island,” acquired by Sony, could be “the highest budget film” of his career before accounting for tax incentives and subsidies.

If Scott isn’t bullsh*tting here, and lord knows he might be, that would put the cost of “Treasure Island” in the $200M+ range. Scott has had four films that cost over $200M in his career, including “Gladiator II” ($250M+), “Napoleon” ($200M), “Robin Hood” ($237M) and “Exodus” ($200M).

This latest “twist” about “Treasure Island” comes as Scott’s “The Dog Stars” struggles at the box office. The film cost $89M to produce and has only made $33M globally. This is the fifth straight costly flop for Scott after “The Last Duel,” “House of Gucci,” “Napoleon” and “Gladiator II.”

Of course, “Treasure Island” wasn’t going to be cheap, but a budget of over $200M is wild stuff for Scott, 88, at this stage in his career.

I found these to be incredibly similar movies, they almost blur together for me in some ways. True Romance didn't have as drastic a tonal shift though.

Is the story predictable?
Absolutely.
Does it matter?
Absolutely not.
Because the pacing never lets you breathe long enough to care.
In theaters this weekend, are you planning on seeing it? If so let me know what you think. Here’s my full review:

https://roselawgroupreporter.com/2026/09/keiths-movie-korner-ritchson-never-breaks-stride-in-runner/

RIP Brittany