(Now You See) Me Really Like this franchise

will once again try to avoid spoilers but also these films are not brand new so low key why haven't you seen them..

Most people think of the Harry Potter franchise when they think about movies containing magic, but not this guy. This guy thinks about the Now You See Me franchise which is (currently) two films that follow the Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher/Lizzy Caplan) as they get up to movie magic shenanigans.

Ok that's not entirely true but it seemed like a more dramatic way of starting this piece. I actually really like the Harry Potter films and probably rewatch them most years. For a franchise that was released over 10 years from 2001 to 2011, they actually hold up remarkably well in the modern era. Although I do think it's a shame how difficult it has become to navigate talking about the franchise for reasons that are not specifically about the media itself, especially with the HBO TV show remake on the horizon meaning it's not really a conversation that's going to end anytime soon. In a previous piece, I talked about how the shift to reboots/remakes has become maybe a little bit too prominent and this remake is another potential example of that shift. As I said, the original films do genuinely really stand the test of time so a lot of people are fairly asking whether the show is really necessary but that's probably a focus for a different piece.

If you haven't seen Now You See Me, the films follow four magicians (aka the Horsemen) - J. Daniel Atlas, an illusionist; Merritt McKinney, a mentalist; Henley Reeves, an escape artist; and Jack Wilder, a card shark and pickpocket (with Lizzy Caplan joining the Horsemen as a recruit for the second film replacing Henley Reeves due to Isla Fisher being pregnant at the time of filming). The franchise also contains an incredibly strong wider cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Daniel Radcliffe, who are all seemingly having an absolute blast with their characters' stories. I would say genre wise the films float between comedy and thriller tonally but overall are definitely both heist films because in it's simplest form, both plots involve The Horsemen being tasked with doing big fun magic stunts to stop bad people being bad.

When I think about the traditional magic show experience, there's a lot of elements that make it so entertaining to attend. There's the element of trying to predict what the magician is doing or going to do. There's the element of surprise because you don't know how it's done and there's the overall excited feeling created for audiences of what lies ahead over the course of the show. This is an experience that has been perfected over the years by hundreds of unbelievable magicians and has really evolved into a unique experience for audiences. When you go to see a magician, you are going with the expectation that you are going to be blown away by the twists and reveals that allow you to escape from your reality over the course of the show.

This type of experience is something that a variety of film Directors have since become known for trying to replicate through their own version of plot twists/reveals within their movies, such as M Night Shyamalan and David Fincher. With movies however, it's often tricky to get right because the twists/reveals often have big potential to annoy audiences and can completely disrupt immersion into the film. With a live stage show, there are limitations in regards to what the artist can get away with but with a movie, it's easier for a Director to pull the rug from the audiences without explicitly giving more of a wider picture and context to the scene in question. Normally, these random plot twists in movies don't land for me as I find that it can sometimes feel a little lazy to claim a 'plot twist' when in reality, the movie just hasn't shown or told the audience anything needed to understand what's going on yet the approach Now You See Me and Now You See Me 2 takes really works for me because it creates this really nice unique hybrid blend of the 'traditional' magic show experience and what you would expect from watching a movie.

When going into these films, I found myself looking for parallels in the experience I would get from watching a magic live show rather than what I would normally expect from a traditional cinema experience. The reason for this is because the plot of these films allows them to lean heavily into those live magic elements and in turn create a unique movie style for audiences in both films as a result. At no point does either film shy away from its loyalty to the traditional magic show experience but by combining it with the movie experience, it allows itself just enough wiggle room to turn the experience up to ten and make a lot of its signature set pieces feel mind-blowing and fast moving to audiences. There are a lot of scenes in both films where the Horsemen perform live to audiences and by showing how these play out in a way that allows the film audience to watch as if part of the live show audience in universe, the film and the magic involved often feels incredibly more realistic and therefore more possible than you would expect from seeing magic in other franchises on screen.

I don't think there are many franchises that stand as definitively alone as the Now You See Me films do in regards to basically owning their specific genre. There hasn't been a Now You See Me film since 2016 and virtually no studios have tried to replicate or copy the stylings of these films since. For me, that's just a major testament to how good and well beloved these films are and if you haven't had a chance to see them yet, I would definitely recommend watching them before Now You See Me: Now You Don't comes out in November this year (2025). They're well written and acted, they have a lot of really fun moments and have plenty of moments that you won't see coming because the closer you think you are, the less you'll actually see...

Now You See Me - 5 STARS

Now You See Me 2 - 4 STARS