By Megan Oberholzer, Fourth Year, Liberal Arts
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (2025) directed by Ruben Fleischer has all of your favourite characters return alongside a new round of horsemen, including Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa and Ariana Greenblatt in an international chase for world-record breaking diamonds, punctuated by epic magic shows and more than one tightly written plot twist. Although not all the magic is real, the film delivers on the same plain dumb fun and feel-good vibes of the previous films.
With that said, my first couple minutes of the film were spent in total confusion. Namely, what have they done to the horsemen’s faces? With many filmmakers and studios openly promoting AI use in the industry and complaints about poorly composited CGI becoming regular, the glossy, uncanny look of J. Daniel Atlas, Jack Wilder, Henley Reeves, and Merritt McKinney as they performed their opening magic show left me wondering if Now You See Me’s third instalment would join our fallen heroes.
But that’s what I get for a blind viewing!
In a fun subversion, the film quickly reveals its hand. New characters in the form of three young illusionists, Charlie, Bosco LeRoy, and June Rouclere have just wrapped up a spoof magic show impersonating the Four (technically Five) Horsemen with deepfakes and holograms to take down a lowly crypto bro. But to their surprise, their wave-making antics has attracted no one other than J. Daniel Atlas himself.
Sent by the mysterious Eye, via a tarot calling card, Daniel must wrangle these three upstarts into taking down the formidable Veronika Vanderberg, the head of a South African diamond company with connections to criminal laundering and a decades old habit of harbouring Nazi financial interests after the end of the Second World War.
As a South African myself, I found Rosamund Pike performance as Veronika Vanderberg absolutely delightful, with a special appreciation for her impressively realistic accent. Some might think her oddly convenient, maybe tonally unfounded family trauma dump midway through the film to be an inconsistent plot contrivance; I however, really can confirm its authenticity. It left me feeling strangely seen. Our culture is at times one of dramatic storytelling. And for a British actress with no South African heritage, the complexity and depth Pike gave to this character, from cultural representation to unapologetic female villainy, was not only surprising but genuinely one of the highlights of this film.
Similarly, seeing Atlas, Wilder, Reeves, McKinney and Lula May (the fifth horseman) all returning to screen and riffing off one another, just like in pervious films, was just a joy. However, their constant fallouts and dysfunctionality does grow old after a while.
Fortunately, the new, younger horsemen offer a breath of fresh air. Despite the original five’s best attempts to sew the seeds of doubt, Charlie, LeRoy, and Rouclere’s dynamic always remained strong, like a genuinely well-balanced found family. They were allowed to be their own characters. And they held their own against the established cast.
I was originally concerned that the new trio would become the subjects of an Atlas-led training arc and left to fight for their places under the much more experienced illusionists. Instead, I actually felt Charlie, LeRoy, and Rouclere often outshined the others, and occasionally made them appear completely incompetent.
Orla Ruane
If the final illusion exacts justice by making the villain a victim of an elaborate illusion, when Atlas, Wilder, Reeves, McKinney and May also become dupes of a trick, this careful balance is broken. The dubious morality of the world of Now You See Me, where steeling, misleading and causing social disruption is permitted, relies too much on the criminality and villainy of the target to be messed with in this way.
With Now You See Me’s fourth movie already in active development, which should be no surprise to those who have seen the end of Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, I sincerely hope the writers and directors do not tilt the balance any further in the wrong direction and continue to make fun, wild movies set in this world.
Featured Image: IMDb / Megan Oberholzer
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