New thoughts on the Borden/Fallon argument....

Rating: 10/10 (28 October 2006)

First of all, I didn't want to write twin/clone argument in the title because of the spoiler aspect......without having seen the movie, my title above doesn't mean anything to anyone glancing at the comments' titles which inevitably happens.
I have read quite a bit about the argument between the twin and the clone of Borden/Fallon argument and I am leaning towards the clone angle. I have a lot of speculation that helps my theory and I look forward to responses.
My absolute main reason for writing this is because I have a hard time swallowing the coincidence of Borden sending Angier on a wild goose chase halfway across the world to get some goofy flashing lights stage prop.......and then that same person being the ONE SINGLE PERSON IN THE WORLD who could have also coincidentally provided the entire cloning device solution and given Angier what he wanted in the first place... Now most of the evidence in the movie points to this theory and I can accept that.....but for me, it makes the movie far worse than I expect it to be. I mean, come on....we see coincidences in movies all the time, but they are more along the lines of two people passing each other on a street or groups of individuals all converging on a single spot at the same time..........but here we are led to believe that the protagonist {sort of} (Borden) sends the antagonist {again, sort of} (Angier) to the one single individual capable of solving his request when it was really meant to be a diversionary tactic to get Angier out of the country??? Come on.......that's too much for me to swallow. So here's some of my arguments against the other arguments out there in favor of the "twin" angle.
First of all, I feel that Borden has had prior dealings with Tesla in some form or another. When Tesla is in England giving his demonstration, Borden seems to be the only calm one there, meaning he knows the lightning and experiments are harmless....at least the ones being shown at that time. Normally, he should have been as cautious as everyone else and left...if he was a normally sane person...which can be argued.
Secondly...his clone could have come from a couple of years ago...OBVIOUSLY before his hand was maimed. And in doing so, he has to do the same to the clone's hand.
Twins, at best, are still brothers. And we are supposedly led to believe that the twin brother (Fallon) has given up his whole life...his ENTIRE IDENTITY...for the sake of the other brother's magic show? The idea also that there's absolutely no difference in them other than the hand issue (during that point in their lives) which they end up fixing by chopping the others' fingers off, says that they are SOOOO identical that even the wife and girlfriend and others around them can't figure it out? Twins who live and grow up and experience different lives, or even similar existences, still exhibit physical differences, if nothing else but cuts or scratches leading to scars the other one might not have due to sheer different physical experiences through life. Also, the idea that the personalities are different can be explained by this same theory.....that the clone finding out he is a clone could exhibit a darker personality (maybe even a side effect of the cloning?) that would lend itself to the different personalities that come from living slightly different realities, even though the lives are nearly identical. Surely the darker personality would start holding resentment for ever being cloned....or maybe it's the opposite.....maybe the darker personality is the original Borden and the clone is a more "innocent" version (like an infant or a clone that is newly born) that lacks the dark tendencies....who knows. But if the clone is a couple of years old regardless of which personality it is.....it could exhibit a slightly different personality than the original strictly due again to different daily experiences through environment and luck among other reasons.
CONTINUED IN PART TWO