After All, They Do Say That Bad Books Make Good Movies

There's a new trailer online for Christopher Nolan's upcoming adaptation of Christopher Priest's The Prestige. Either the studio's promo department has done a very good job of misrepresenting the film, or Nolan and his writers have taken great liberties with the plot. Considering that Priest's novel managed to make a boring, underperforming trudge out of a very promising premise--a rivalry that develops between 19th century magicians when one of them becomes convinced that the other's trademark illusion is actually magical--I'm hoping for the latter. The cast list on the film's IMDb page strongly suggests that the novel's pointless modern-day plot strand has been dropped, which is quite encouraging.

So yeah, I think I'm going to see this one.

Comments

Andrew said…
You're the first person I "know" who read this novel but didn't like it. I haven't read it myself, but I'm curious about Christopher Priest (more The Affirmation and The Glamour though). Have you read any of his other works?
July 15, 2006 2:17 PM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
I know, I'm pretty firmly in the minority in disliking The Prestige. I've also read Priest's later novel, The Separation, mainly because it beat out Light for the Arthur C. Clarke award and I wanted to find out why. You wouldn't have thought it possible, but it's actually worse than The Prestige.
July 15, 2006 2:57 PM

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