To say that the world of magic or magicians is having a renaissance might be overselling things a bit, but it cannot be denied that films related to the world of magic have appeared with more frequency than one might expect, which is to say at all. The Prestige and The Illusionist kicked it all off and, ironically, served as the artistic peak of the trend. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone made a mockery of its own name and then pulled off its own disappearing act from the popular consciousness. That same year, however, another magician-focused escapade hit theaters, an impish caper film starring four photogenic performers using their skills to become modern day Robin Hoods.
This was Now You See Me, a glossy, special effects-heavy romp that adhered to no sense of reality, but had enough fun and enough cast charisma to paper over a lot of its flaws. It was a boldly self-congratulatory feature, giving the heroes legions of cheering, screaming fans to let the audience know they should be on their side. It was unabashed in its showmanship, something that was at once off-putting and yet made sense given the material. Its creativity and earnest sense of fun was a balm against its utter lack of sense.
It’s a shame then that its sequel, which reveals its woefully unimaginative soul in its title, Now You See Me 2, should jettison everything that made the first one tolerable and even intermittently enjoyable. This is shocking, considering that this outing seems obsessed with nothing more than its own progenitor, doing everything in its power to tie every single character and plot point back to the first film.
This obsession with Möbius strip world-building begins with the film’s decision to double down on the concept of The Eye, an ancient and all-powerful cabal of magicians who use their power to solve economic inequality. The primary – and perhaps only? – agents of The Eye are The Horsemen, a group of four magicians plucked from obscurity and asked to be the public face and secret warriors of The Eye. This team includes illusionist Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), hypnotist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), card trickster Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), and Lula (Lizzy Caplan), who replaces Isla Fisher as The Girl One. We meet up with our heroes as they are given a new mission by their adversary/secret leader FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo).
In line with their basic mission statement, their goal is to use magic to expose a data-mining scheme perpetrated by a tech mogul. Unfortunately for them, their plans are foiled by a mystery interloper who exposes them, traps them, and then “magically” transports them to Macau, where the bulk of the story will take place.
Whereas the first movie positioned the Horsemen’s heists as taking place during magic performances to large crowds, this movie shifts the scale of the action downward, turning them into cat burglars who happen to use magic. In the first film there was a kind of brute-force attempt to make the magic shows thrilling, using shots of a fanatically adoring crowd to make the movie-going audience feel bullied into feeling the thrill themselves. Like a visible laugh track on a pointedly dull sitcom, the juxtaposition of underwhelming and completely fake magic with wide-mouthed extras screaming in Beatlemania-esque happiness gives the whole proceedings a cravenly obvious sense of desperation. Without even this hysterical oddity to leaven the proceedings, nearly every scene of magic (until the preposterous and confoundingly long finale) come off as flat and joyless. They did keep the violently insistent tone of the score, however, so there is that.
That every trick is executed with obvious CGI only makes every action or performance beat all the more intolerable. While magic will always suffer in the context of non-live performance, the liberal application of visual effects to these moments make even the faintest memory of wonder and awe hard to conjure. At some point, these tricksters might as well be super heroes with worse outfits.
All that leaves us then is the plot and character interactions, and the less said about these the better. The plot is so blandly basic that it can’t even inspire antipathy, let alone thrills or curiosity. Daniel Radcliffe plays another tech mogul, one who has faked his death and wants the Horsemen to steal a computer-y thing so he can both avoid being its target and use it for his own ends. Rich and smart as he is, he believes that magicians are a better choice than thieves. Double-crosses and old truths are tossed around with no thought for logic. Twists, in the world of this movie, are used like beautiful assistants: convenient tools for the purpose of distracting the audience from the obvious fakery taking place.
The most frustrating and damning part is its insistence on filling in backstories, expanding the mythology, and attempting to build a larger universe. It’s an ugly, pointless, wasteful tactic to create demand for a sequel, or at least to lay the groundwork for one. The first Now You See Me could have stood on its own as a hilariously pointless throwback to 1990s action capers. With this sequel, however, even that slight laudatory remark can safely be sawed in half, never to be put back together again. Now You See Me 2 is a vapid, heartless film that wastes the time of its cast and audience alike.
Now You See Me 2 hits theaters nationwide on Friday, June 10.