It went from being mystical and fantastical to being all Master Race bullshit. Terrible.

We'll still have Slapsgiving and Spoiler Alert.

if they had just given an extra 30 minutes of Ted's relationship with the mother

Did they telegraph her death? I don't remember that.

What, Born Again? Or something else?

So first – @m0nit0rman:disqus I remember them coming out on a pretty regular monthly schedule, except I think the final issue took some extra time, was a little delayed. But there was no three months between issues. Felt that way, maybe.

DKR (and Batman: Year One, which he scripted but didn't draw) was Miller's last hurrah before the brain-eater finally got him and he went full-out gonzo right-wing-nutjob-misogynist.

Which twin got Piper Perabo killed?

I just don't get how you think the machine was a twist? Its operation was clearly shown to us 2 or 3 times before the third act. The impact of the all the bodies in the tanks is of the enormity of what Angier did. But it's not a twist: it's just the last piling on.

Do you get the idea that the surviving Borden might be relieved to be out of the trick? He can just live and be dad? (in a way he couldn't be hubby while the other Borden was alive?)

No, that's exactly backwards. The audience is meant to know that the science fiction machine works, and we can see coming from a mile away the reasons that Angier's backstage crew is all blind men, and he only wants Cutter for front of the house. The Borden twins are the real trick, two men subsuming themselves into…

See, i don't see it that way at all. Fallon doesn't unmask until the very final scene in the movie, that last conversation while Angier lays dying on the floor. Whereas David Bowie told us straight up, halfway thru the movie, that the Tesla machine was going to work. So we knew that as gospel truth.

As cheating? No of course not. We are told well ahead of time what the machine does and how Angier plans to use it. Angier demonstrates it to that theater owner! Cutter tells the judge it uses "the most disappointing trick of all: it's real." David Bowie as Nokolai Tesla is a big honking red flag to the audience…

Eventually. But it didn't exist when Angier swallowed the idea and went looking for one.

Except it isn't. It has ONE sf element.

The thing is, Illusionist cheats much more horribly than Prestige does. Prestige warns you upfront that the David Bowie techno-wizardry box is going to be different from everything else in the movie. It plays fair: everything has an explanation, and the movie signals to the viewer that ONE of the explanations is…

The nature of Borden's evil is that he doesn't care about anyone or anything as much as he cares about being a great musician. The total dickness of the great athlete/artist/whatever. I mean, sure, Alfred loves Sarah. But not as much as he loves doing The Transported Man. Freddie loves Scarlet, we are told; but…

Bunnies?

I know! I just re-watched a couple weeks ago, probably because of this column & comments, and that voiceover really struck me. "We were two men at the start of a great career." HMMMMMM. Who is "we"? Two men, ONE great career??

It's totally a Grant Morrison ending! Good call!