the prestige

Dear Mr. Nolan,

Yesterday me and Greta watched The Prestige, and quite frankly, it wasn’t all that. We found this to be a real pity because the general idea (i.e. having Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in the same movie) was very good. So we just thought we’d drop you some tips on how it might have been better, just so next time you won’t make those annoying little mistakes that keep your art from being truly great.

First, it would have been a great improvement if the protagonists had been wearing something a tad bit more revealing like say, leather codpieces. Now you might object that leather codpieces weren’t worn in Victorian England. To that we reply; why does it have to be Victorian England? What’s wrong with, say, ancient Greece?

It is viable that you now say: “but magic performances were no big business in ancient Greece.” The obvious answer to that would be that, really, Chris, those magic performances? They were boring as hell. A guy gets transported across the stage, big deal. We’ve seen Jurassic Park. They had dinosaurs that were extinguished as a species millions of years ago. A guy plucking a dove from his sleeve is, well, not so effin’ impressing compared to that. Besides, magicians as performers are like only one step removed from mimers and clowns anyway, and we all know how creepy they are.

Now, wrestlers on the other hand… They are impressive. Especially ancient Greek wrestlers, ‘cos you know what they wore? That’s right.

Oil.

Oil and nothing more.

OK, Chris, I think you too are getting the feeling that we’re moving in the right direction here, but there’s another thing that you’d need to rectify: Scarlett Johansson. Yes, Miss Pouty Goldfishmouth is annoying as hell. If you insist on having some sort of love interest in your story, we have a much better suggestion for the casting.

Guy Pearce.

Yes, the guy in Memento, that’s right. He’s a brilliant actor and real sexy too, so he’d be perfect for the job. And you could make him an Egyptian import, thereby giving him a reason to wear eyeliner. Guy would be tits in eyeliner.

And seriously, Chris? If you’re going to have Bowie in your film, couldn’t you have a decent soundtrack too? Like say, some songs by David Bowie? No, no, you have to go stick us with Thom Yorke. Lemme tell you about Thom Yorke, dude. He whines. We don’t like whine, unless it’s red, bottled in Burgundy and spelled without the H. And why saddle Bowie with that horrible moustache? Think we can’t handle all that hotness? You know, if he was Ziggy, yeah, we might have a problem, but David was hitting sixty when you made The Prestige. We think we can handle sixty-year-old Bowie despite his pale, blonde gorgeousness, but thanks for the concern all the same.

So let’s go over where we stand.

We have Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in oil (and possibly leather codpieces), wrestling for the favours of Guy Pearce wearing eyeliner in a Greek gymnasium, under the supervision of moustache-less David Bowie. If we could just squeeze in some sword-fighting and a couple of really cool monsters, we think you’d have yourself one heck of a movie, Chris.

Get your ass on it pronto, and don’t be afraid to e-mail us; vintageswedishmodels at gmail dot com, if you need more help.

In the meantime, I suppose we’ll just have to finally get our asses into gear and watch 300.

Love,
Agneta