A weird connection w/Lost and The Prestige
If you haven’t seen The Prestige then you need to rush to see this movie. It has one of the best endings in film. As for the connection, The Prestige was published in 1995, won many awards, and was turned into a movie in 2006. In the movie, a magician tries a magic trick that transports a man from one spot to another. The only way to successfully pull this trick off is with a “double” or a twin who can pretend to be transported: one double sets the trick up and falls down a trap door while the other shoots up a trap door on the other side of the stage and reappears fifteen feet away from the start creating the illusion of a “transported man”. The onstage double receives all the applause without any of the work while the real magician sets the trick up and hears the applause under the stage. Hugh Jackman finds a double off the street named Gerald Groot. In Lost lore, Gerald DeGroot is the founder of the Dharma Initiative. We know lost is influenced by other books as well, specifically The Bad Twin which also raises a red flag in the “double” department. In The Prestige, it is frequently said that no one cares about the man in the box (meaning no one cares about the twin that sets up the trick who then disappears below the stage) which makes the ending of The Prestige so eerie (I won’t ruin it for you). If no one cares about the man under the stage, then the trick has achieved success. All eyes are focused on the decoy, the double, who walks out fifteen feet away. My theory is this: we lost fans are focused on the decoy. The man under the stage who no one cares about is the man running the show or as a lost fan would call him, the man behind the curtain. The man behind the curtain is Jacob. Jacob seems to run the show without receiving the applause. Could Gerald DeGroot be Jacob? Could Gerald DeGroot arrive on the sub that Faraday just arrived on considering they said it just pulled in from Ann Arbor, MI the headquarters of the Dharma Initiative where DeGroot works? Who is receiving the applause in Lost? Who is the bad twin? Could it be Richard Alpert because of this small clue that no one can figure out: Alpert is seen with long hair at one point and short hair all the others? This one fifteen second clip of him could be the biggest clue that he has a twin. I’m definitely having trouble connecting the pieces on this one. I believe Jacob is Gerald DeGroot. One last connection with The Prestige and Lost, The Prestige has a character named Nikola Tesla played by David Bowie who creates a machine for the ‘transported man’ for Hugh Jackman. Tesla is written on the Blast door map. Nikola Tesla, deemed by some as the father of Physics and the patron saint of modern electricity, revolutionized electromagnetism and has some curious work in theoretical physics that raise this lost fan’s eyebrow (he is worth reading into). The machine Tesla creates is very similar to the machine in the Orchid. If you’ve seen the movie and disagree with some of the things said then please help me put together this connection. If you haven’t seen the Prestige, you’re missing out.
Hi! Loved the prestige. and i love the gerald groot connection. i dont think richard is really his double, but i agree with a lot of the man behind the curtain things you were talking about. and also about tesla. everyone gives credity to thomas edison, but tesla was by far more inventive and productive. i will read more into him, because ive never looked for lost connections with him.
great stuff
One of the most satisfying movies in a long time.
Every scene had a meaning right in front of your face, and you didnt know it until the last five minutes of the movie, in which the payoff was worth every moment.
Weird, just watched again two days ago on television, and couldnt help but sit and wait for the ending, all the while realizing all the things I had missed the first time around…sound familiar?
It crossed my mind actually, almost exactly what your saying. I made almost a joking theory “Twisted timeloop”, that touched a kind of more subtle approach, and wasnt real sure how it would go over…lol, not very well…
Realizing later that it is merely timetravel, a loop of the timeperiod at most, not an actual timeloop to a person.
A simple example was Sawyer is talking to Kate, and being well…Sawyer.Saying the wrong thing, pushing her away, being an idiot as he acted sometimes in the first few seasons.
That Sawyer would leave, and future timetraveling Sawyer would enter and say something to make up for what he had said in the past.
The kicker would be that we wouldnt actually know if there was any points in the show, where this had occured and we had let it go as someone acting weird or simply not even noticing.
He timetravels back to his normal time and Kate knows no different…lol…
not exactly the same, but I get your premise…
Either way, I think the book by Gary “Purgatory” Troup, “Bad Twin”, even though put down by the writers, (could they be Benipulating us again, as they did with the no timetravel remark?)possibly an aid to understanding from the title at least, that your thought has some truth to it…
ok did some preliminary research. tesla researched tons of stuff, including…telluric currents. These are mentioned in Foucalts pendulum by umberto eco, which is the topic in other current theories. which is also connected to ley lines. interesting…
Fantasic book, if you havent read it, have it be your next.
Please, read my post in fun marked ‘spoiler’, I did it and it is not, it was just me and Dabs (She has a good one on the Pendulum itself) connecting the book and the show, and was playing it safe at the time…
the time machine, the dharma hippies, the others ,the survivors,widmore and all the rest aint gonna matter…..rose and bernard will be there till the end and all the other deserve to die.none of em are good people from what we’ve seen.bernie and rose are all thats left.any other conclusion would’nt be right at all…we’ve seen heart warming scenes through out this story ,and i think thats what it’s gonna be all about in the end.rose is the only one thats left that needs the island.she’s innocent and so is her husband.think about it ,everyone else is far to quick to kill someone.i suppose jack could survive but he aint too bright is he.he’ll die some how i can feel it…….its true bernie did kill a couple of people but we aint gonna hold it against him are we,even if he is a dentist……….let it be a love story with a happy ending eh!
AES – sorry if I missed your theory, I usually am hesitant to even look at theory cites at all for fear of spoilers, but I had to write out to someone when I heard his name “Gerald Groot”. I thought it to be too coincidental or maybe I’m too obsessed and selectively paranoid, but the Tesla connection wrapped my mind around the Prestige and the possible fate of Lost. Will the end force us to rewatch the entire saga? I can only hope so.
lol, I assume you like many of us have already began that long task…lol
Haven’t seen the movie in awhile.. I’m going to have to watch it now….and I have already been reading episode plots on wiki and rewatching episodes
hi, liked your associaton with the magicians tricks and jacob.
the time travel thing i think you have something with that
may i suggest a fil called Primer
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=0A9KHBWF
you can watch it there. its the best film ive ever seen on time travel and which i think is exactly whats going on in lost.
x
AES, along the lines of your time loop idea … it reminds me of Horace in Locke’s dream where he keeps repeating the same action over and over of chopping the tree down. We know that Horace lives a normal life, and so far we don’t see him time traveling or jumping in consciousness. But maybe his time loop and bloody nose are a significant clue that a Lost time loop would be different that our notions of what it would be. I would be interested to hear your idea!
RIPYOGI, the Prestige was a good movie. I don’t know where the writers find the time, to access all of the references in the show. It’s rather mind-boggling.
I wonder if we will gain any insight into who Jacob is, this season, or, if that will be left for Season 6.
I thought it was really interesting when Sarah figured it out near the end and told Alfred that ‘she knew what he was’. At first, I was thinking, why is she using those words? Is he the devil, is he a monster? Then when you find out what he was, it makes sense. This parallels when Widmore told Ben he knew what he was.
the name was gerald root
I haven’t seen the movie but from what you describe it sounds like the lamest magic trick ever.
RIPYOGI I just stumbled on this theory and loved it. I think your analogy is dead on. I’ve also have always been a big fan of Tesla and feel that science would do well to go back and research his ideas. Nice theory.