Now You See Me 2 (Now You Don’t?)

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. The reason why this movie sucks in my eyes, before I even stepped foot in the movie theatre. The title!

If the first movie was called Now You See Me, there are only 2 reasons why they didn’t call the second one Now You Don’t.

1. They are setting up for 3 or more movies
2. The writers weren’t clever enough.

I really hope they aren’t planning for more movies, even though they definitely are.

But also, it’s easy to believe that the writers weren’t clever enough. I thought that the first movie in the series was incredibly confusing. I had trouble understanding what they wanted me to even think. Compare the twist of Now You See Me, to the twist of a movie like Wreck it Ralph, or any other movie with a twist ending.

A good twist ending makes you say “OMG – How did I not see this coming the whole time!!!!”, whereas the twist of the first movie in this series would at best make you say “I knew that Mark Ruffalo was suspicious”, but will more likely make you say “Well that made no sense at all!”

As for Now You See Me 2, it blew the first movie out of the water in terms of confusion. It seemed like the whole movie was people finding out that other people were somehow behind different layers of plot the whole time.

Instead of the first movie where Mark Ruffalo was the only suspicious person who turned out to be important, in this film every single new person that we meet had a twinkle in their eye about being important.

AND somehow they were

If you haven’t seen it yet, I’m about to crudely ruin it:

The guy who looked like Zoolanders Mugatu (Woody Harelsons Magic Twin) was somehow behind everything

But also

The guy who owned the computer chip with the accent was also somehow behind everything

But also

The guy who looked like Harry Potter and Alfred from Batman were also secretly behind everything

But also

The old lady and young guy at the random magic store that added very little value, they also were secretly behind everything

But a TWIST

Morgan Freeman was behind it all too!

And in the end the Horsemen Win!!

Here’s my advice to viewers:

If you haven’t seen this movie yet instead of this movie watch all 9 episodes of Sherlock if you want to understand what the cinematization of magic and cleverness, and one-ahead-ness should look like.

If you’ve already seen this movie. I’m sorry, let me know if you actually understood it.

Here’s my advice to magicians:

Yes, this movie wasn’t too hot. But I still celebrate it as a win any time that magic is in pop culture. The big boom of magic in Americas Got Talent, the popularity of Pen and Teller Fool Us, and things like Now You See Me 2 (Now You Don’t?) only do benefit to making less people think of us as corny uncles who pull rabbits from hats a birthday parties for children.