I actually think I preferred The Illusionist.

Can I ask what you preferred about it? I found the central story so lame (not to mention obvious before it even happened, let alone when you were supposed to realize what had happened) that everything else paled in comparison.

And I see that I was apparently wrong (or my unscientific sample was way skewed). At rottentomatoes, they both have similar overall ratings (75%) but The Prestige has an abysmal cream of the crop number (54%) while The Illusionist has 88%.

So that would mean among cream of the crop critics, The Illusionist was far preferred while among the rest, The Prestige was the big winner.

I liked both, but I found the competition at the core of "The Prestige" to be more compelling than the lost/found love thing at the core of "The Illusionist." "The Presige" reminded me of "Sleuth." "The Illusionist" reminded me of "The Princess Bride," except without the humor and the ROUSes.

I also thought that Christian Bale's character was fairly interesting in that, at least initially, he was unlikeable in a fairly lowkey, "What's wrong with this asshole" sort of way. The movie's low ratings might be attributable to the fact that Edward Norton provides more of a solid core for a movie than Hugh Jackman who is basically a handsome dish towel. Actually, to my mind, "The Prestige" was Jackman's most compelling showing since, like Tom Cruise, he seems to be at his best playing a handsome fellow who is totally in over his head.

I enjoyed them both, as I said. I found them both to be predictable. My main beef about The Illusionist was a plot point in the wrapup/flashback, was not seen during the course of the film, and that made me mad (like a Christie novel, adding a last minute character). It was stylish and entertaining.

The Prestige had more heft plotwise, but was equally predictable to me (I understand the book is much better). I felt nothing for either character, in fact I was more interested in David Bowie.

Both worth a Netflix rental, neither worth buying and keeping.

The CGI Magic in the Illusionist bothered me, so to the extent the magic in the Prestige was more "authentic" in it's trickery, I liked that - but our DVD rental was munched at the end, so I'm not sure if we were meant to believe Tesla's trick or not at the conclusion.

I probably enjoyed The Illusionist more because it was the one I saw first. It was also a "prettier" film but less of a solid story. However, they are already starting to meld in my mind as one story.

did you not see the end or just not clearly? if memory serves....and it rarely does, the end was sort of a vital part.

From what i could make out through the sticking scene and backing up as much as we could from the end, it looked like there were flashbacks, of the one magician killing his doppleganger, leading me to believe that in the realm of the movie the Tesla thing actually worked, but I know there was some pan by the magician suspended (apparently dead) in the tank, so it might have been some decent into death delusion - or maybe he had a brother too?

Wait a minute. We missed maybe a sentence or two due to glitchy DVD.

It worked. Hence the hats on the hillside. There was a garbled speech about how Hugh Jackman never knew on any given night if he'd wind up as the prestige in the balcony or the man in the tank. That whole room was full of tanks with dead Jackmans. That's why he had blind stage hands.