Okay I will be realistic, magic is fake. Done, but that isn't a satisfactory answer so I will continue. Antonio and Dan both did wonderful performances of classic illusions brought to modern times. Now if we step back and look at both performance, we can see that both incredibly fake. However, Dan failed to get one person to suspend disbelief. The effect was asking too much from the audience. When he was first introduced to the audience he did a semi-realistic and plausible trick. Sure someone can go saw string into their throat, not many will though, so to an audience Dan's freakish nature made the effect plausible. However, tonight he asked the audience to believe he could cut someone's fore arm off then tattoo the chunk of meat and restore it back on. Does anyone else see the giant gap?
It went from a plausible trick into something unbelievable, a stage illusion. Personally, I would of thought Coin operated boy would of worked better here.
Antonio on the other hand can get away with the super flashy and even sometimes silly illusions because that is what he initially pitched to America and the judges. He set his standards with fire, magic and knockers, which he consistently delivers. A vanish isn't a far step away from the other illusions that he has done on the show thus far.
In conclusion I feel Dan's act was to big of a leap from performance to performance and was a little out of the set character he had from the first appearance on the show.
As I said elsewhere DAN SCREWED UP! There is no getting around it, he blew a very simple to do effect on national TV and EXPOSED the method and thus, every guy out there that thru $5k at owning one can't use it for a season or two, until current memory fades. What Dan did is what most do; he got stars in his eyes and didn't pay attention to the quality of his equipment let alone his presentation... the Android as misdirection (and understand, I do love that prop, just not here) was just ignorant! The thing that sells the Arm Amputator is its cleanliness and sense of impossibility. As it was done, the host screwed up by looking like he was in discomfort and not holding his arm properly (lack of rehearsal, being the likely culprit) and then we have a piss-poor gimmick that any blind person could have seen through.
Antonio, in my view, is a joke from the starting point. He's a weak personality and his material poorly executed. He seems to not to have listened to anyone that knows how to block and direct magic and more importantly, someone qualified to make him look a bit more graceful on stage... he moves around almost as if lost most of the time.
Like Dan, Antonio went on the cheap when it came to his props and likewise, in chosing which routines would work best under the conditions of that stage. His last bit took far too much time to pull off because it was not proper for the conditions he was dealing with.
I can applaud you guys for wanting to be loyal to guys you think are "good" or "cool" but at the same time, you need to get out of the club house antics of patting every bad performer on the back and telling them they did good. PROFESSIONALS can take the heat and should seek out critical perspectives so they learn how to improve on what they are doing (or not doing).
