is the light and heavy chest.

It was a chest that a kid could lift quite easily,

but a strong man, when he tried to lift it,

couldn't lift it.

In "The Illusionist", they took that idea, that same idea.

I'm gonna reveal the method of the light and heavy chest.

Hey GQ, it's David Copperfield. This is "The Breakdown".

[static]

[upbeat music]

- [David] First up, "Now You See Me".

- [Announcer] It's 11:50 PM here in Vegas,

that's 8:50 AM in Paris.

Your bank opens in less than 10 minutes.

1...2...

- 3.

- A number of years ago,

a screenwriter named Ed Reichardt came to my show,

and we did the show in-the-round,

which was very unusual, hasn't been done before.

And we did an illusion, also quite unique,

where we would vanish, me and a spector,

to vanish from the theater,

and reappear in location in Hawaii.

It was pretty amazing and groundbreaking.

And it's what inspired the whole, "Now You See Me" series.

- I liked that little French guy. Where'd he go?

[horns honking]

[apprehensive music]

- Wait, there he is. [applause]

- Teleporting around the world wasn't ever done

in the magic show.

And they saw this opportunity to use it in a movie.

The magic wasn't just card tricks or whatever.

It was something that could be done

as a whole basis of real drama.

- Inside of your helmet, you should feel a button.

Don't press it just yet.

Now that's button activates an air duct

that connects Paris to Las Vegas.

Okay, good, now you can press it.

- All right, now Ettian, hold on tight.

You might feel a bit of a vacuum.

[apprehensive music]

[loud fan]

[slow music]

- In our version, I brought the rain back with me,

into the theater-in-the-round.

In this version, probably a little bit more cool

for the audience, the money comes back to the theater.

You know, it's about credibility.

When I did this illusion,

and people thought it was ridiculous,

nobody's gonna believe it, people said it couldn't be done,

not credible at all.

And we spent three years interviewing audience members,

changing bits, little by little,

to make it a credible thing.

And finally, we got it so the people

in the audiences were crying.

So when Ed Reichardt saw that in the show,

he saw a pretty good version of our things,

so it could be credible, it was something that you could do.

The cast were incredible in this film,

because they really are committed to it.

And they did all the steps that we did,

that we found we had to do to make it a credible thing.

Having proof, having a kind of relationship

between the monitor in the theater,

and yeah, I think it worked.

Our version happened over the heads of the audience.

It was surrounded in a circular theater.

I wanted, you know, people beneath the illusion itself.

They had, in-the-round, and I guess because

they didn't have people below,

they had the piece collapse up.

So it was kind of avoiding the trapdoor idea.

To me, magic isn't about making something disappear.

It's about really having the audience

feel emotionally attached to it.

This is an example of that,

because this was about characters

that you care about, these people-

I mean, these actors are amazing.

Also the people in the audience who were involved with this,

were people that you get to know and care about,

or have some kind of stakes in the matter.

So it's not about the illusion,

it's about the illusion plus caring

about why it's happening.

"The Prestige".

- Because making something disappear isn't enough.

You have to bring it back.

That's why every magic trick has a third act,

the hardest part, the part we call "the prestige".

[bangs on glass]

- I love the poetry that Chris and his brother

put into this movie.

We don't use words in magic,

like, "The prestige", or all the things he did,

but I think it's kind of nice gravitas that he added.

Many people say there's seven pieces of magic,

seven effects, and it's 100% not true.

I'm with my amazing staff,

inventing new technology all the time.

And I think in this case, with Christopher Nolan,

and his brother did, with all the electric currents,

the Tesla coil effects, he created a new language,

in that way, that doesn't exist

in any magic show in history.

So I think he had the same kind of instinct

as I do in my show now.

You know, I'm doing magic with dinosaurs,

and spaceships, and aliens, and time travel,

nothing that you could find in a magic book.

Most magicians, you know, unfortunately kind of do things

that have been done before.

But a lot of the really great people

who are trying to progress the art form, in the past,

and also today, are trying to change the language

and move things in a new way.

You know, they say in there that if you vanish something,

you have to bring it back.

In that case, the bird was vanished,

and they had to make for the child,

the fear of something bad happening to the bird, go away.

I don't believe it's important

to bring things back, necessarily.

I vanished an airplane once, and I didn't bring it back.

And it was viral before viral existed.

And it's because I didn't bring it back,

it was kind of unsatisfied.

The audience is going, "What happened to it?"

If I brought it back, it would have closed the circle.

I don't agree with that idea that you have to bring it back.

"Now You See Me 2".

[foreign language]

[intense music]

[foreign language]

[foreign language]

[upbeat music]

- My Executive Producer, Chris Kenner,

started a whole trend of juggling cards

in a beautiful way, and it was called "cardistry".

This sequence is based on that entire idea.

Andrei Jikh, who took that idea

and took it to another level,

helped design the sequence, which is pretty interesting.

All these moves are based on real moves,

real things you can do.

Everything you're seeing here really could be done.

It would be kind of hard to do it all in that sequence,

but they're all possible to do.

They helped a little bit, with a little bit

of the camera technique to get it to work

perfectly each time, but all very risky moves

that could actually be really happening.

This whole throwing of cards started a whole trend,

YouTube videos of people trying to do hard throwing,

where they land in specific spots.

We did 200 takes to get this one shot.

In movies, you know, we all do many, many takes

of scenes as actors.

In this case, this is a lot of things put together.

John Chu, who is a wonderful director of this film,

his background is in dance,

and choreographing beautiful sequences.

So the combination of cardistry and John Chu's direction,

comes together quite nicely here.

This is very advanced sleight of hand.

To make that all work in a real world situation,

it would be very risky to do.

I was once held up at gunpoint,

and I stupidly did, what in magic, called,

the pocket dodge.