A heap of bad history, the movie rewrites the one - sided feud between the early electric power moguls Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) into a clumsy public - domain mockbuster of The Prestige; you can almost hear director Alfonso Gomez - Rejon (Me And Earl And The Dying Girl) trying to slap himself awake as he inserts
overhead shots,
canted angles, zooms, and wide - angle Tom Hooper - isms into every scene.