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   2  "In 1947, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a banker in Maine, is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, a golf pro. Since the state of Maine has no death penalty, he is given two consecutive life sentences and sent to the notoriously harsh Shawshank Prison. Andy keeps claiming his innocence, but his cold and calculating demeanor leads everyone to believe he did it.Meanwhile, Ellis Boyd Redding (Morgan Freeman), known as Red is being interviewed for parole after having spent 20 years at Shawshank for murder. Despite his best efforts and behavior, Red's parole is rejected which doesn't phase him all that much. Red is then introduced as the local smuggler who can get inmates anything they want within reason. An alarm goes off alerting all prisoners of new arrivals. Red and his friends bet on whichever new fish will have a nervous break down during his first night in prison. Red places a huge bet on Andy.During the first night, an overweight newly arrived inmate, nicknamed ''fat ass', breaks down and cries hysterically allowing Heywood (William Sadler) to win the bet. However, the celebration is short lived when the chief guard, Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), savagely beats up the fat man for not keeping quiet when he is asked to. Meanwhile, Andy remains steadfast and composed. The next morning, the inmates learn that ''fat ass'' died in the infirmary because the prison doctor had been out for the night. Andy inquires about the man's name only to get put down by Heywood.About a month later, Andy approaches Red having heard of his talents for finding things. He asks Red to find him a rock hammer, an instrument he claims is necessary for his hobby of rock collecting and sculpting. Red asks a few questions about his intentions which Andy laughs off. Red agrees to place the order and also warns Andy about ''the sisters'', a group of prisoners who sexually assaults other prisoners, most importantly their leader, Boggs (Mark Rolston) who has a crush on Andy. Though other prisoners consider Andy ""a really cold fish,"" Red sees something in Andy, and likes him from the start. Red thinks Andy intends to use the hammer to engineer an escape in the future but when he finally sees the tool's actual size, he understands why Andy laughed and laughs too, putting aside the thought that Andy could ever use it to dig his way out of prison.During the first two years of his incarceration, Andy spends most of his time working in the prison laundry or fighting off Boggs and the Sisters. Though he persistently resists and fights them every time, Andy is beaten and raped on a regular basis but keeps quiet about it.When a work detail for tarring the roof of one of the prison's buildings is announced, Red pulls some strings to get Andy and a few of their mutual friends assigned to the job, giving everyone a break from the usual. During the job Andy overhears Hadley complaining about having to pay taxes for an upcoming inheritance. Drawing from his expertise as a banker, Andy lets Hadley know how he can shelter his money from the IRS by turning it into a one-time gift for his wife. He then offers to assist Hadley in filling out the paperwork in exchange for some cold beers for his fellow inmates while on the tarring job. Hadley first threatens to throw Andy off the roof, but eventually agrees and do provide the working inmates with cold beers before the job is finished. Red remarks that Andy may have engineered the privilege to build favor with the prison guards as much as with his fellow inmates, but he also thinks Andy did it simply to ""feel normal again.""While watching a movie, Andy approaches Red with another unusual demand and asks for the actress Rita Hayworth. Red is surprised by the demand but agrees to place the order. As he exits the theater, Andy once more encounters the Sisters. Although he is able to talk his way out of being raped, he is brutally beaten within an inch of his life, putting him in the infirmary for a month. Boggs spends a week in solitary for the beating. When he comes out, he finds Hadley and his men waiting in his cell. They beat him so badly that he's left unable to walk or eat solid food for the rest of his life and is transferred to a prison hospital upstate. The Sisters move on and never bother Andy again. When Andy gets out of the infirmary, he finds a bunch of rocks for him to sculpt and a giant poster of Rita Hayworth in his cell; presents from Red and his friends.Warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton) hears about how Andy helped Hadley and uses a surprise cell inspection to size Andy up. He finds Andy reading his copy of the Holy Bible and they talk about their favorite verses while the guards are turning the cell upside down looking for illegal possessions. Satisfied with their encounter, the warden leaves and almost forget to give Andy his Bible back. He then encourages Andy to keep reading the Bible saying that ''Salvation lays within''.Andy is later advised that he will now work in the prison library with aging inmate Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore). The reason for his transfer is made obvious when a prison guard shows up asking Andy for financial advising. Andy sets-up a makeshift desk and starts working, providing financial advising to most prison guards and helping them with their income tax returns. Andy also sees an opportunity to expand the prison library; he starts by asking the Maine state senate for funds. He writes letters every week. His financial support practice is so appreciated that even guards from other prisons, when they visit for inter-prison baseball matches, seek Andy's financial expertise. Even the warden himself has Andy preparing his tax returns.Not long afterwards, Brooks snaps and threatens to kill Heywood in order to avoid being paroled. Andy is able to talk him down. When his friends discuss Brooks 'behavior, Red sympathizes with Brooks having obviously become ""institutionalized,"" after spending 50 years at Shawshank. He has become essentially conditioned to be a prisoner for the rest of his life and is unable to adapt to the outside world. Red remarks: ""These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them."" Brooks is paroled and goes to live in a halfway house. He is also given a job at a supermarket which he hates. Finding it impossible to adjust to life outside the prison, he eventually commits suicide, leaving the message ""Brooks was here"" carved on a wooden beam .After six years of writing letters, Andy receives $200 from the state for the library, along with a collection of old books and phonograph records. Though the state Senate thinks this will be enough to get Andy to halt his letter-writing campaign, he is undaunted and redoubles his efforts.When the donations of old books and records arrive at the warden's office, Andy finds a copy of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro among the records. He locks the guard assigned to the warden's office in the bathroom and plays the record over the prison's PA system. The entire prison is soon captivated by the music. Red remarks that the voices of these women made everyone feel free, if only for a brief moment. Outside the office, Norton appears furious at the act of defiance, and orders Andy to turn off the record player. Andy responds by turning up the volume. The warden orders Hadley to break into the office and Andy is sent immediately to solitary confinement for two weeks. When he gets out, he tells his friends that the stretch was the ""easiest time"" he ever did in the hole because he spent it with Mozart's Figaro stuck in his head for comfort. When the other prisoners tell him how unlikely that is, he talks about the power that hope can have in prison and that hope can sustain them. Red strongly disagrees with Andy, claiming that hope is a dangerous thing in a place like Shawshank and tells Andy he should get used to living without it. Andy implies that this is exactly what Brooks did and Red leaves the table angry.Not long after, Red has a new parole hearing and realizes he's been in prison for 30 years now. He uses the exact same words he used ten years earlier only with no enthusiasm at all. His parole is rejected again. Andy gives him an harmonica to commemorate his 30 years which Red replies by offering Andy a giant poster of Marilyn Monroe to commemorate his 10 years.About four years after the Mozart incident, the state senate finally comes to the conclusion that they won't get rid of Andy with just another check. So they allow him a budget of $500 a year to build his library. Andy uses it wisely and makes deals with book clubs and charities to create the best prison library in the state and names it after Brooks. With the enlarged library and more materials, Andy begins to mentor inmates who want to receive their high school diplomas so they can get a decent job once they're out.Meanwhile, Warden Norton profits from Andy's knowledge and devises a scheme whereby he puts prison inmates to work on public projects which he wins by outbidding other contractors (prisoners are cheap labor). Occasionally, he allows other contractors to score projects as long as the bribe is good enough. Andy launders the money by setting up several accounts in several banks, along with several investments, using the fake identity of Randall Stephens, a man who only exist on papers, created by Andy himself through his knowledge of the system and mail ordered forms. Randall Stephens officially has a birth certificate, social security number and driving license. Should anyone ever investigate about the scheme; they will chase a man who only exists on paper. Andy shares the details with Red, noting that he had to ""go to prison to learn how to be a crook.""In 1965, a young prisoner named Tommy (Gil Bellows) comes to Shawshank to serve time for breaking and entering. Tommy is easy going, charismatic, and popular among the other inmates and is befriended by both Andy and Red. When Tommy explains that he's been going in and out of prison ever since he was 13 years old, Andy suggests that Tommy should consider another line of work besides theft because he seems to be not so good at it. The suggestion really gets to Tommy and he asks Andy to help him work on earning his high school equivalency diploma. Though Tommy is a good student, he is still frustrated when he takes the exam itself, crumpling it up and tossing it in the trash. Andy retrieves it and sends it in anyway. Tommy asks Red about Andy's case which Red explains. Upon hearing the story, Tommy is visibly upset. He then tells Andy and Red the story of a former cellmate of his from another prison who boasted about killing a man who was a pro golfer at the country club he worked at, along with his lover. The woman's husband, a banker, had gone to prison for those murders.With this new information, Andy, full of hope, meets with the warden, expecting Norton to help him get a new trial with Tommy as a witness. The reaction from Norton is completely contrary to what Andy hoped for. When Andy says emphatically that he would never reveal the money laundering schemes he set up for Norton over the years, the warden becomes furious and orders him to solitary for a month. The inmates discuss the sentence mentioning it is the longest time in solitary that they've ever heard of. They also realize that Andy may truly be innocent after all and has spent almost 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.Tommy receives a letter from the board of education announcing that he has passed the exam and now owns a high school diploma. A guard pass the news to Andy in his solitary cell which makes him smile a little.Later on, Tommy is escorted outside at night to have a private meeting with the warden. Warden Norton asks him if the story he told Andy is true and if he would be willing to testify on Andy's behalf. Tommy enthusiastically agrees. The warden smiles at him before nodding to Hadley to shoot him dead.When the warden visits Andy in solitary, he tells him that Tommy tried to escape and that Hadley had no choice but to shoot him. Andy doesn't buy that story and tells Norton that ''everything'' stops and that he's not going to work for him anymore. The warden threatens Andy to shut down the library, burn all the books, and move Andy to a much different cell in a much different part of the prison with the most hardened criminals should he stop working for him. He then leaves and orders Andy to another month in solitary to think about things.When Andy finally comes out of solitary, he and Red have a conversation where Andy talks about his wife and how much he loved her and feels responsible for her death even though he didn't pulled the trigger. He then talks about his projects should he ever get out of prison. He talks about Zihuatanejo, a beach town on the Pacific coast of Mexico where he'd like to live for the rest of his life and manage a hotel there. He then asks Red if he'd join him to which Red says no and that he believes he is too far gone like Brooks. He then criticizes Andy for allowing hope to mess with his mind like that and that it will only destroy him. Andy agrees and is about to leave when he asks Red if he knows the Buxton, Maine area. He then tells Red about a very specific hay field where there is a large oak tree at the end of a stone wall. He then asks Red to promise him that, should he ever get paroled, he will seek that oak tree and retrieve something that was hidden among the stones but refuses to say what it is. Red promises but is worried about his friend's state of mind. His worries are heightened further when he learns that Andy has asked Haywood for a six-foot rope. Red believes Andy may have finally reached his breaking point and is about to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Norton asks Andy to shine his shoes for him and put his suit in for dry-cleaning before retiring for the night. Andy returns to his cell and the guards turn the lights off for the night. Red remarks that it was the longest night of his life.The following morning, Andy has not answered the morning call and is not standing in front of his cell like every morning. The guard yells at Andy for putting him late and walks to his cell expecting to find a seriously sick or dead Andy. At the same time, Norton becomes alarmed when he finds Andy's shoes in his shoe box instead of his own. The alarm then goes off announcing a missing inmate. Norton rushes to Andy's empty cell and demands an explanation. Hadley brings in Red, but Red insists he knows nothing of Andy's plans. Becoming increasingly hostile and paranoid, Norton starts throwing Andy's sculpted rocks around the cell. When he throws one at Andy's poster of Raquel Welch (in the spot previously occupied by Marilyn Monroe, and before that by Rita Hayworth), the rock punches through and into the wall. Norton tears the poster from the wall revealing a tunnel just wide enough for a man to crawl into.It is revealed in a series of flashback sequences narrated by Red that many years ago, not long after receiving his rock hammer, Andy innocently tried to carve his name on his cell wall when a chunk of it came off. Andy, being a fan of geology, realized that the material the wall was made off of could make it possible for him to dig a hole in case he ever needed to escape. Andy first ordered the giant poster of Rita Hayworth to hide the hole. He then spent years digging at night with his rock hammer and hiding the dirt from his job into his pockets which he would then empty in the courtyard during his morning walks. When Tommy was killed, Andy decided it was time to go.During the previous night's thunderstorm, Andy wore Norton's clothes underneath his own to his cell, catching a lucky break when no one notices Norton's shiny black shoes on his feet, including Red. He packed many of his belongings, some papers and Norton's clothes into a plastic bag which he tied to himself with the rope he'd asked for, and escaped through his hole. The tunnel he'd excavated led him to a space between two walls of the prison where he found a sewer main line. Using a rock, he hit the sewer line in time several times with the lightning strikes and eventually broke it open. After crawling through 500 yards of the raw sewage contained in the pipe, Andy emerged in a brook outside the walls. A search team later found his prison clothes, a bar of soap and a very worn out rock hammer.While the warden and Red are discovering Andy's genius escape, Andy walks into the Maine National Bank in Portland, where he had put Norton's money. Using his assumed identity as Randall Stephens, and with all the necessary documentation, he closes the account and walks out with a cashier's check. Before he leaves, he asks them to drop a package in the mail. He continues his visitations to nearly a dozen other local banks, ending up with some $370,000. The package contains Warden Norton's accounting books, which are delivered straight to the Portland Daily Bugle newspaper along with Andy's written confessions and testimony.Not long after, the Maine state police storm Shawshank Prison along with several reporters to cover the developing story. Hadley is arrested for the murder of Tommy and is taken away by the state police. According to Red, he heard unfounded rumors through the grapevine that Hadley allegedly started ""crying like a little girl"" in the back seat of the police squad car while he was being taken away. Seeing Hadley being taken away in a police squad car and the local district attorney entering the prison with several policemen holding a warrant for Norton's arrest, Warden Norton finally opens his safe in his office, which he hadn't touched since Andy escaped, and instead of his books, he finds the Bible he had given Andy with a note to the warden saying that he was right, ""salvation did lay within"". Norton then opens it to the book of Exodus and finds that the pages had all been cut out in the shape of Andy's rock hammer. Norton walks back to his desk as the police pound on his door, takes out a small revolver and commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. Red remarks that he wondered if the warden thought, right before pulling the trigger, how ""Andy could ever have gotten the best of him.""Shortly after, Red receives a postcard from Fort Hancock, Texas, with nothing written on it. Red takes it as a sign that Andy made it into Mexico to freedom. Red and his buddies kill time talking about Andy's exploits (with a few embellishments), but Red falls into a sort of depression from missing his friend.At Red's next parole hearing in 1967, he talks to the parole board about how ""rehabilitated"" is just a made-up word invented to justify their job. He then explains how much he regrets his actions of the past, not because he's in jail but because he knows how wrong it was. He then closes by saying that he has to live with that for the rest of his life and ask the board to stop wasting his time and leave him alone. His parole is finally granted. He goes to live and work at the same places that Brooks did, even seeing Brooks 'message carved into the wooden beam. He frequently walks by a pawn shop which has several guns in the window. At times he contemplates trying to get back into prison feeling that he has no life outside of prison where he has spent most of his adult life, but he remembers the promise he made to Andy. He then reveals that he was not looking at the guns but at the compasses behind the guns and he bought one.Red follows Andy's instructions, hitchhiking to Buxton and finding the stone wall Andy described. Just as Andy said, there is a large black stone. Underneath is a small box containing a large sum of cash and instructions to come find him in Zihuatanejo although he doesn't name the city just in case. He also says he needs somebody ""who can get things"" for a ""project"" of his. Red suddenly understands all the power of hope and feels exhilarated by the feelings inside of him.After carving a new message in the wooden beam which reads: ""Brooks was here, so was Red"", Red violates parole and leaves the halfway house, unconcerned since no one is likely to do an extensive manhunt for ""an old crook like [him]."" Red takes a bus to Fort Hancock, where he crosses into Mexico. The two friends are finally reunited on a beach of the Pacific coast, just like Andy had been hoping for."
   3  "The movie begins with a gang of men with clown masks breaking into the bank where the mob has a large portion of their money stashed. It begins with five clowns, each getting a cut of the spoils. They suggest that a sixth member of the gang - nicknamed 'The Joker' - who did the planning, but sat out the robbery, doesn't deserve a cut. As the robbery goes on, the clowns begin to kill each other in order to get a larger cut, until a school bus crashes through the wall of the bank, killing another clown. A mob bank manager, who was himself shot with an automatic weapon after he tried to take out the clowns with a shotgun, tells the remaining clown that he doesn't know who he is dealing with. The clown kneels down and tells the banker, ""I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you...stranger..."" then removes his mask to reveal that he himself is The Joker. Joker puts a grenade into the banker's mouth and boards the bus, leaving a cord attached to the pin. The bus pulls out with all of the bank's cash and the pin pops out. It is just a gas grenade. The Joker joins a long line of school buses leaving the scene as the police arrive.Gotham is then seen at night with criminals afraid to commit crimes under the watchful sign of the batsignal projected onto the clouds. We see Lt. James Gordon manning the batsignal, waiting for Batman with Det. Anna Ramirez, who asks if he's coming. Gordon explains that it is okay if he is not, hoping that he is busy elsewhere. He asks about Ramirez' mother, who's in the hospital.Meanwhile, in a parking garage, the Scarecrow, still at-large after escaping Arkham Asylum, is negotiating with the Russian mob members, led by The Chechen, over the sale of some of his fear-inducing drugs. The sale is interrupted when some of Gotham's citizens dressed as Batmen wanna-be's begin shooting at the men. As he gases one of the fake Batmen with his mind-altering drugs from his cuff, the Scarecrow notes that they are not the real Batman, because Batman would never use a gun. Suddenly the Batmobile/Tumbler crashes through a barricade and Scarecrow notes, ""That's more like it!"" The Batmobile, pre-programmed to ""LOITER"" and then ""INTIMIDATE"", fires rockets into a nearby office, sending the remaining mobsters running. The real Batman arrives on the scene and bends the rifle barrel of one of the wanna-be Batmen before knocking him out.The Chechen sends his rottweilers to attack the Batmen, and as Batman saves them he takes the dogs out after being badly bitten in the arm. The Scarecrow attempts to flee in a white van but Batman jumps onto the van and begins cutting into the side with his device called the mangler. Scarecrow swerves into a support which sends Batman to the ground. As Scarecrow gets away down a spiraling passageway, Batman leaps onto the roof of his van, smashing it to a halt. He leaves the fake Batmen and the Scarecrow along with some of the mobsters tied up together for the police to eventually round up. When one of the impostors says he's trying to help, Batman harshly tells him he doesn't need any help.Gordon arrives at the bank the Joker held up earlier with Ramirez who shows him the Joker's picture from a security camera. Batman arrives to inspect the scene, noting that they have irradiated the drug money to make it easier to trace. When Gordon asks him if the Joker is a threat, Batman informs him that he cannot worry about one man when there is an entire mob to bring down.The next day, as Bruce Wayne stitches himself up from the dog bite, Alfred offers his concerns, warning Bruce to 'know his limits'. He notices Bruce keeping a close watch on newly appointed district attorney Harvey Dent via some computer screens, as Bruce is trying to decide whether or not Dent can be trusted. Alfred wonders if he is really spying on the relationship that Rachel Dawes has developed with Harvey Dent.Harvey Dent arrives in court to join Rachel Dawes in prosecuting mobster Salvatore Maroni, the alleged new leader of the Falcone crime family. One of Maroni's men takes the fall in court, and attempts to shoot Dent from the witness stand. The gun doesn't go off and Dent punches the man before he is hauled off to jail. Maroni is eventually set free, to the dismay of Dent.Dent meets Lt. Gordon, and after a short exchange of words, they both express their distrust for those that are working in each other's offices. Harvey interrogates Gordon over his involvement with the Batman and Harvey tells him he wants to meet him. Gordon requests search warrants for five banks that are believed to be holding the remainder of the mobs money. Dent agrees to back Gordon's search warrants, forming a tenuous trust with the honest Gordon, who in turn hails Dent as Gotham's ""White Knight"" while Dent questions Gordon about another nickname they had for him when he was at I.A.D., a nickname Gordon claims to have no knowledge of.Lucius Fox holds a board meeting at Wayne Enterprises, negotiating an joint venture with Lau, the head of Lau Security Investments, based in Hong Kong. After the meeting with Lau, Wayne expresses his reservations with Lucius Fox about Lau's business operation, apparently illegal based on their profits. After agreeing to cancel the deal, Wayne asks Fox for a new suit. He explains that he needs to be lighter, and faster, in case he runs into any more guard dogs and that he wants to be able to turn his head.That night, Harvey dines out with Rachel. Harvey tells Rachel he had to make a reservation weeks earlier, and even then needed to exercised his influence to get a table at the very fashionable restaurant. Bruce and his date, the prima ballerina for the Russian ballet, encounter Rachel and Harvey. Bruce has them pull a table together so they can dine together, informing Harvey that he owns the restaurant. At first, Bruce seems jealous and threatened by Harvey, based on the fact that he is dating his own love interest, but Harvey explains how he supports the work of Batman and appreciates his help. Bruce changes his tune and informs Harvey that he intends to throw a massive fund-raiser for him.Meanwhile, all of the top mob members are having a private meeting in a restaurant kitchen. Because of their inside sources in the police, they were aware that the banks that their money was stashed in were going to be searched. Lau appears to them on a television monitor from his plane on his way back to Hong Kong. He informs the mob that all of their money has already been moved to a single secure location, just as Lt. Gordon and company are searching the banks, finding nothing but the irradiated trace money. When the Chechen expresses concern over the man with the clown makeup stealing $68 million from one of their banks, Maroni dismisses him as nothing but a nobody.The Joker suddenly enters in the room, and after killing a hostile mob member's crony by way of a 'magic trick', sits down and talks with the mob about how pathetic they've become since Batman came around. He tells them their one solution is to 'Kill the Batman', and offers to do so for half the mob's money. He warns them about Lau, saying he knows a ""squealer when he sees one"", prompting Lau to turn off his monitor. The mob laughs, and as one of the mobsters, Gambol, rises from his seat and threatens the Joker, the Joker opens his coat, exposing grenades. Gambol tells the Joker that he's putting a price out on his head. The Joker tells the mob that when they plan to take things a little more seriously, give him a call, and presents them with 'his card', a joker playing card. And with that, he exits. But not before warning that Batman will come for Lau.Harvey Dent, with Gordon, lights the batsignal to meet with Batman, who appears. As Dent and Gordon blame one another for the money's disappearance due to leaks from corrupt officers in the other's departments, they explain to Batman that they need Lau back, realizing that Batman is under no one's jurisdiction. They want to make him talk, and give up all the mob members' names. Batman agrees and disappears.Fox shows Wayne his new suit, and Wayne begins planning an impromptu trip to Hong Kong. Fox will accompany him, making it look like the only reason for his visit was to cancel the negotiations with Lau's company.Gambol is playing pool with some of his associates until one of them informs him that a group of hoodlums have killed the Joker, and has the body. The body is brought in covered in a bag, and as Gambol is about to pay, the Joker rises up and holds a knife to his face while his men hold guns to his associates' heads. The Joker tells a story about how he got his scars from his father, and then kills Gambol. He offers the three surviving associates an opportunity to join his team, but he has only one opening. He leave the three with the halves of a broken, sharp pool stick and no choice but to fight each other for their lives.Meanwhile, Fox arrives in Hong Kong to meet with Lau. He checks in his mobile phone at the front desk at Lau's building, as there are no cell phones allowed on the premises. Fox meets with Lau, and informs him of Wayne Enterprises' plans to cancel negotiations with his company. However, he secretly keeps one cell phone in his pocket, which has been adapted to produce a sonar map of the surrounding area. Upon leaving the building, he does not pick up the phone he dropped off, and he produces the map of the building to Bruce Wayne. That night, the phone that Fox left at the front desk emits a high frequency that shuts down all power in the building. Batman crashes in through a window in Lau's office, and after a vicious fight with some of his guards, grabs Lau and escapes by sending a balloon attached to a cable to a plane he has chartered flying over Lau's building.Back in Gotham, Lau is interrogated by Rachel with Dent and Gordon looking on. Rachel presses him to give them the money Lau has taken, but Lau will not give in. After she threatens to have him moved to the County lock-up, Lau tells her that he can give them the names of the mobsters and their pooled investments. Dent then realizes that they will have the leverage they need in a RICO case of conspiracy to link all of the mob members together. Gordon decides to keep Lau in his holding cell at the Major Case Unit building and Lau agrees to cooperate with the police, and give the names of the mob members.Gordon appears at Maroni's restaurant as the police rush in to arrest all of the mob members in attendance. As all of the mob members that Lau informed the police are rounded up for arraignment, Judge Janet Surrillo finds a Joker card in the middle of the stack of conviction papers. Dent gives a televised impromptu interview denying Batman's involvement while expressing gratitude for the police work in bringing the mob members to justice.Dent, Gordon, and Commissioner Loeb meet with the mayor to tell him that Dent's rash indictment of the mob members will give the mayor clean streets for 18 months. The mayor informs Dent that his brash actions will bring down the full might of Gotham's underworld and corrupt citizens solely upon him. When the mayor asks if Dent is ready to be the city's target the dead body of a Batman wanna-be hanging by a noose slams against the mayor's window dressed up in a Batman suit, with makeup on his face like the Joker's - complete with the sides of the mouth sliced into a grin - and with a Joker card pinned to him reading 'Will the real Batman please stand up?'. Bruce and Alfred watch on as a video tape is played on the news of the Joker tormenting the wanna-be before killing him. He then promises that until Batman takes off his mask and shows everyone who he really is, people will die every day.As Harvey Dent's fund-raiser at Wayne's penthouse gets underway, Rachel and a nervous Dent arrive and mingle. Wayne arrives with three models via helicopter and seeks out Harvey, whom he applauds and throws his full support behind claiming, ""I believe in Harvey Dent."" Minutes later, Rachel meets with Bruce on the balcony upset that Bruce is making fun at Dent but Bruce tells her that he truly believes in Harvey and that he could be the White Knight that will allow him to hang up his mantle as Batman so they can be together. Dent joins them to thank Bruce and retrieve Rachel.Meanwhile Gordon discovers that there are 3 traces of DNA on the Joker card, from Commissioner Loeb, Harvey Dent, and Judge Surrillo, the Judge that is trying all of the mob members and found the card among the paperwork. Gordon takes this as a threat on their lives, and begins preparations to protect them. In the case of the Judge and Commissioner Loeb, however, this fails. The Judge's car blows up when the police arrive to take her into protective custody and Commissioner Loeb dies of severe poisoning from his liquor bottle before Gordon can stop him from drinking.Dent takes Rachel aside to ask her to marry him, but she is torn and cannot give him an answer. Bruce subdues Dent and locks him in a closet while Rachel watches in shock. Bruce tells Rachel that they (the Joker and his goons) have come for Harvey and to stay hidden from sight.The Joker and his goons burst in telling the guests that they are tonight's 'entertainment."" The Joker scans the room seeking out Harvey Dent when Rachel steps forward. He grabs her and pulls a knife on her telling her a different version of the story about how he got his scars, claiming that his wife was scarred by loan sharks and that he took a razor to himself to ""make her smile,"" but that she left him over it. Rachel kicks him away and he comes after her saying that he likes that ""little fight"" in her, when Batman shows up and sends him reeling. A fight breaks out between Batman, the Joker, and his goons with the Joker and the goons beating on Batman pretty well. When Batman gains the upper hand he sees the Joker holding a gun at Rachel's head as he dangles her out of a shot out window. Batman demands he let her go, to which the Joker replies ""Very poor choice of words"" and lets her fall. Batman dives out the window and saves her using his cape to slow their fall as they crash into the roof of a car on the street. The Joker apparently vanishes from the scene.The next day, Wayne tries to figure out what the Joker is after. Alfred relates a story of when he was in Burma with friends attempting to nullify the local criminals by bribing them with jewels. One thief however, tossed these bribes away and continued to raid the local convoys. When Bruce seems confused over this behavior Alfred informs him that some men can't be reasoned with, they don't want anything in particular, that they kill for sport. Alfred observes that they just want to watch the world burn, as Bruce fixates on the Joker's face on a monitor.Batman is seen on the edge of a rooftop listening in to cell phone frequencies when he overhears a plot against Harvey Dent. Gordon rushes to the apartment with Ramirez and Batman to find two policemen murdered, with the last names ""Harvey"" and ""Dent."" Ramirez begins to blame Batman, but Gordon cuts her off. As Batman removes a piece of concrete wall that contains a bullet used in the murders in hopes of finding evidence, Gordon notes that the Joker has left an advance copy of tomorrow's newspaper indicating the death of the mayor.At Wayne Enterprises, Fox meets with Wayne's accountant Coleman Reese, who claims to know about certain problems with Wayne's funding in research and development, claiming that Wayne has some sort of government project with cell phones for the army underway. He also uncovers Fox's designs for the Batmobile/Tumbler. He tells Fox that he wants $10 million per year for the rest of his life to keep this a secret. Fox smiles and says, ""Let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world is a secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck.""Fox helps Wayne reconstruct the bullet taken from the murder scene and produces a fingerprint. Fox asks him if he has reassigned the R&D department. Bruce acknowledges that he has, claiming he is playing this one ""close to the chest.""Wayne traces the bullet fingerprint's owner to an apartment overlooking the funeral speeches for Commissioner Loeb and takes off on motorcycle.As the ceremony continues on the street below, Wayne inspects a room where he believes the Joker might be, and he finds several men tied up. They tell Wayne that their guns and uniforms were stolen. Wayne inspects binoculars pointed out of a blinded window. The window blind is connected to a timer. As the timer reaches zero, the blinds quickly raise, and the police snipers positioned around the area all shoot in that direction. At the same time, the Joker, who had removed his makeup and played himself off as a member of the honor guard for the ceremony, turns and takes a shot at the mayor, but Lt. Gordon dives in the way, getting shot in the back and falling. Everyone panics and runs, but the police shoot one member of the honor guard in the leg and haul him into a truck. Dent himself climbs in the truck, and upon inspecting the criminal, sees that the name-tag on his uniform reads 'Officer Rachel Dawes'. He calls Rachel and informs her that she's been targeted, and to get to the safest place she can, which in her case is Bruce's penthouse. He tells her he loves her, but there is no answer from Rachel.Gordon's family is visited at home, to inform them of the death of Gordon at the funeral ceremony. Gordon's wife, Barbara, shouts out at the empty sky to Batman that he has brought this craziness upon Gotham. Gordon's young son catches a brief glimpse of Batman mournfully watching the scene.Meanwhile, Batman enters a club and grabs Maroni after beating on his men. He interrogates Maroni on the Joker's whereabouts, who claims that he should have held him from a higher location. Batman drops him off the ledge, injuring his legs and learns that Maroni has no idea where the Joker is. Maroni explains that the Joker has no friends and no one will give him up because unlike Batman, he plays by no rules.As Dent is interrogating the captured so-called honor guard member about what he knows about the Joker, he is enraged and holds a gun to his head. He flips his father's lucky silver dollar for his life, coming up on heads. As he flips the coin again, Batman shows up and snatches the coin in midair, asking if Dent would really leave a thug's life up to chance, to which Dent answers, ""Not exactly."" He informs Harvey that this criminal - Thomas Schiff - is a paranoid schizophrenic patient from Arkham Asylum and that he won't learn anything from him. He also tells Harvey that if anyone saw this unjust way of interrogating someone, all that good work that Dent's done for Gotham would be lost. He tells Harvey to hold a press conference the following day, because he wants to use that opportunity to turn himself in. As Batman leaves, Harvey yells at him that he can't give in.Bruce arrives back in his penthouse to find Rachel waiting. She tells him that turning himself in will not stop the Joker's murderous rampage, but Bruce says he has enough blood on his hands already. He reminds her that she promised him that they would be together if and when he hung up the mantle of Batman. She tells Bruce not to make her his only hope for a normal life and they share a kiss. She tells Bruce that if he turns himself in as Batman that the city will never let them be together.Back at Wayne's secret base of operations for Batman, he and Alfred begin destroying everything that might tie Lucius Fox or Rachel to Batman. Alfred tries to talk Bruce out of it, asking him to endure these trying times and allow Batman to make the right choice that nobody else can for the good of the city. Bruce explains that Batman cannot endure the responsibility for innocents dying, especially where Rachel is concerned.At the press conference, Harvey attempts to reason with the assembled press and police to not give in to the fear that the Joker has unleashed upon the city. He agrees that Batman is a vigilante but that the people of Gotham should hold him accountable, and not give in to the whims of this terrorist known as the Joker. However, the people are overcome with fear, crying out ""No more dead cops,"" to applause indicating that Harvey will not be able to sway them. Upon his failure, Harvey announces that HE is the Batman, and gets handcuffed and taken away. Bruce Wayne is shown with a look of confusion on his face.Rachel, watching the news conference at Bruce Wayne's penthouse, confronts Alfred over Bruce's seeming cowardice in allowing Harvey to take the fall when he claims to be Batman. Alfred explains to Rachel that Batman is instead allowing himself to be something else besides a hero, mainly a figure outside of the system that the people can both turn to or blame in times of need, that Batman can 'take it"". Rachel gives Alfred a letter for Bruce and tells him to give it to Bruce when the time is right. When Alfred asks what it is, she tells him it is open and hugs him before departing to see Harvey as he is being transported to the County lock-up.While being taken to a convoy that will transport him to a county, Harvey explains to Rachel that this is Batman's chance. He then pulls out the coin and says ""Heads: I go through with this,"" and flips it, landing on heads. When Rachel tells him that he can't leave something like that to chance, he tosses her the coin, revealing that it is a two-headed coin. During this transport, he's planning on getting attacked by the Joker, and he's planning on Batman to come and save him, and to capture the Joker. The convoy takes off.While transporting Harvey, the Joker and some goons start taking out the police cars in a large semi truck. He pulls out an RPG and begins firing at the armored truck carrying Dent. The Tumbler arrives and attempts to stop the Joker, and is hit by one of the Joker's RPGs. His car takes 'catastrophic' damage, and he's forced to eject. However, the ejection in this car is a bike, the Batpod, that deploys out the front of the car. Batman chases down the Joker on his Batpod, and after firing some cables at the truck and weaving them through some light poles and buildings, flips the truck completely over. The Joker emerges with a Smith & Wesson M76 Submachine gun and shoots at Batman, who speeds towards him on his Batpod, all the while screaming at Batman to hit him. Batman honors his own non-lethal code and swerves around the Joker then crashes into the flipped truck, falling to the ground. As the Joker jumps on him with a knife, one of the SWAT officers holds a shotgun to the back of his head, and upon removing his helmet and mask, shows that it was Lt. Gordon, who faked his death to protect his family. The Joker is hauled away to the MCU. Harvey gets out of the truck and into a cruiser, stating he is off to see a worried girlfriend.At Gordon's Major Crimes Unit building, Gordon is promoted to Commissioner by the Mayor. The Joker shares a cell with a large man who complains about his insides hurting. Commissioner Gordon, after reuniting with his family, gets a call explaining that Harvey never made it home. He returns to the prison to interrogate the Joker. During the interrogation, Batman appears and starts beating on the Joker, trying to find out where Harvey is. The Joker gets under Batman's skin telling him that they are both freaks and that when the people of Gotham no longer view Batman as a necessity, they will turn on him. Batman becomes enraged and puts a chair under the door and beats the Joker savagely, but The Joker just laughs and defiantly tells Batman that there is nothing he can do to him to hurt him and that he actually enjoys the beatings. The Joker sadistically reveals that not just Harvey, but Rachel are in separate locations, both tied up and strapped to explosives that will explode in a short amount of time. He gives the locations of the two, saying that he only has time to save one of them and that he must make a choice that will violate Batman's ""code"" of non-lethal means...that one of them will die since Batman cannot save them both. Batman heads off, telling Gordon that he's going after Rachel. Gordon gets some men ready and heads off after Harvey.As Batman and the police are rushing towards the two prisoners, Harvey awakens to hear Rachel's voice. Whoever captured them set up an intercom system so that the two can communicate. Harvey tells Rachel that everything will be OK, and Rachel tells Harvey that she wants to marry him. While Dent tries to move in his chair to find something sharp to cut his ropes with, he falls over and knocks an oil drum down, and gasoline spills all over half of his face. Meanwhile, back at the jail, the Joker tricks a cop and holds him hostage, and he tells the other cops he just wants his phone call. Upon getting a cell phone and dialing a number, the large man that was in the cell with him blows up. The Joker had cut him open and implanted a cell phone-triggered device inside of him. The Joker grabs Lau and flees the jail.Batman arrives at the address that the Joker had told him Rachel was at, but when he opens the door, he finds Harvey Dent instead, who screams in despair at having been found instead of Rachel. Gordon arrives at the supposed location for Dent but the warehouse explodes and Rachel is killed. As Batman saves Dent by carrying him out of the warehouse, the explosion ignites the gas that saturated Dent's face, horribly burning it. Dent is taken to Gotham General Hospital. Batman visits Dent in the hospital, and leaves him the two-headed coin that they found at the site where Rachel died. One side of the coin is still shiny, while the other side is scraped and burnt.Alfred reads Rachel's letter. She explains that she is going to marry Harvey Dent and that when she told him that she would be with him when he no longer need to be Batman that she meant it. However, she realizes that he will always be Batman so she will always be there as his friend.Bruce expresses to Alfred his devastation behind losing Rachel and that he feels responsible for inspiring madness and death. he tells Alfred that she was going to wait for him. Alfred chooses not to give him her letter, saying the time is not right and that with Harvey Dent hospitalized, it will be up to him alone to fight the crime in Gotham City. Meanwhile, Harvey wakes up in the hospital with a large bandage over half of his face, finds his now scarred two-headed coin, and screams out in anguish over losing the one person he loved.Commissioner Gordon visits Dent and tries to tell him how sorry he is for what has transpired, questioning why Dent refused skin grafts and painkillers and how he can stand to be in unrelenting agony over his disfigurement. Harvey is filled with rage for Gordon not listening to him when he warned Gordon not to trust the corrupt officers that Dent investigated during his time in Internal Affairs which has resulted in Dent's disfigurement and ultimately Rachel's death. Dent demands Gordon tell him the nickname they had for him when he was in I.A., which Gordon ashamedly replies ""Harvey Two-Face,"" while being forced to stare at the extensive burns and scarred tissue that cover half of Harvey's face. As Gordon leaves an emotionally devastated Harvey, he runs into Maroni in the hallway who tells him that the Joker has gone too far and that if Gordon wants the clown, he knows where he will be.Wayne's accountant Reese appears on a news show claiming to be able to tell the world who Batman is. He tells Gotham that he is going to reveal Batman's identity, but before he can, the Joker calls in to the show saying that he doesn't want this lawyer to ruin his fun. He says that if the lawyer is not killed within 60 minutes, he is going to blow up a hospital. This triggers the police to rush in and protect the lawyer, and try to carry him to safety. At the same time, other police are evacuating all of the hospitals in Gotham City. When they get to Gotham General, a police officer attempts to evacuate a nurse in Harvey Dent's room, which then turns out to be the Joker, and he kills the cop. He then explains to Two-Face how he needs to introduce a little anarchy and chaos, how easy it is to bring down all the good people in the world and how it's all fair. Joker unties Two-Face and hands him a pistol. Two-Face, bent on revenge and now believing everything in the world should be decided by chance, flips the double-headed coin to decide whether or not to shoot Joker which Joker agrees is only fair. Though we don't see it, the coin obviously lands on the clean side since the next scene shows Joker leaving Gotham General Hospital as it blows up in the background.Afterwards, the Joker appears on TV again, forcing kidnapped GCN reporter Mike Engle to read out his plans. He reads that Gotham City now belongs to the Joker, starting that very evening. Anyone that doesn't want to be a part of his game should leave now, but they are going to have a hard time leaving the city by the bridges. He alludes to the fact that something big was going to happen that very night. During which, Two-Face enters a local bar where Detective Wuertz - the 'dirty' cop that had picked him up after the Joker was captured - hangs out. After questioning him, he flips the coin which lands on the dirty side and he kills Wuertz. At the same time, Batman uses Fox's 'cell phone sonar' technology to turn every single cell phone in Gotham into a sonar device, giving him the opportunity to spy on everyone in Gotham. He calls Fox in, and tells him to monitor the screens, and give him updates on the Joker's location when he sees him. Fox is appalled that Batman would use his technology to spy on the citizens of Gotham and reluctantly agrees to help, stating that the machine must be destroyed after the Joker is captured or he will have to retire. Batman tells Fox to enter his name into the console when the mission is over.Two-Face continues to question mob members, trying to uncover the identity of the dirty cop that kidnapped Rachel. When confronting Maroni in Maroni's car, he learns that the other cop is Ramirez. He then flips the coin for Maroni, which lands on the clean side. ""Lucky man,"" he remarks before he flips it again. It lands on the dirty side and he buckles up and states, ""But he's not"" as he shoots Maroni's driver, causing the car to veer off the road and crash into the dockyards. Meanwhile, two large ferries leave Gotham due to the Joker's threats. One is inhabited by criminals that Harvey and Gordon helped put away, the other is packed with innocent citizens - the city's bridges apparently being wired with explosives. While sailing off, the two boats completely lose all power and their engines die. Both ships eventually realize that there are explosives strewn all about the boat, and they both find detonators. It is at this time that the Joker's voice is heard over the loudspeaker of both ferries, and he informs them that they are part of a social experiment. The detonator on each boat is for the other boat. One ferry must press the button and destroy the other boat by midnight, or else the Joker will destroy both boats. This brings about much chaos in both boats, and a lot of soul searching about morality and about if anyone could actually do such a thing.Fox finds the Joker, who is holed up in a building still being constructed with many clown guards. Batman notifies Gordon of the location, and speeds off towards the building. Meanwhile, Two-Face forces a frightened Ramirez to call Gordon's family and tell his wife and children to meet her at the exact spot where Rachel was killed. They believe her because they trust her. Afterwards, Two-Face, angered with Ramirez's pleas to spare her life for the sake of her sick mother, flips for Ramirez's life. The coin lands on heads, so he just knocks her out, telling her that she ""lives to fight another day."" As Gordon arrives at the building where the Joker is, he gets a call from his family telling him they are being held captive by Two-Face in the place where Rachel was killed. Gordon rushes off to save his family as Batman breaks in to the building. After realizing that the clown guards are the actual hostages and the doctors/hostages are the Joker's goons, he beats down some SWAT members in order to prevent them from killing the clown guards, and he disables the goons as he makes his way up to the Joker's location. When he finally confronts the Joker, the Joker sends the Chechen's rottweilers after him, and while Batman fights them off, the Joker beats him brutally with a blunt metal object, and eventually throws him close to the edge of the building, trapping him under a metal beam.At the same time, the two boats are still debating what to do with the detonators. On the 'criminal ferry', one of the largest and meanest-looking convicts makes a speech about the warden holding the trigger not knowing how to take life, then goes up to the warden and asks to take the trigger so he himself can do what the warden should have done ten minutes ago. The warden hands the convict the trigger and the convict promptly throws it out of the ferry, making it impossible for anyone on the convict ferry to blow up the 'innocent' ferry. On the innocent ferry, after having voted to use their detonator, the officials can't bring themselves to act out the decision. A man stands up, takes the detonator but is unable to press the button.The Joker, on top of Batman while holding him down, shows signs of disappointment when neither of the ferries' passengers will stoop to his level. As he's about to destroy the two boats, Batman fires his gauntlet darts at him, knocking the detonator out of his hands, and throws him over the edge of the building. Before he can hit the ground, however, Batman fires one of his grappling gun tools at him and saves him. While hanging in front of Batman, the Joker tells him that the two of them are destined to fight forever, and how Batman really IS incorruptible. The Joker reveals to him, however, that his real plan was to engineer the fall of Gotham's White Knight, Harvey Dent, since that would introduce much more chaos when a good man like Dent is shown descending into chaos and evil. Batman heads off to find Harvey, while the SWAT team captures the Joker.At 250 52nd St, Gordon arrives to see Two-Face holding his family hostage. Two-Face knocks him to the ground and tells him that he's going to make him suffer just as he did, as he grabs his young son Jimmy and prepares to flip the coin for his fate. Batman arrives and tells him to stop, and to blame the people responsible for Rachel's death. So then Two-Face flips the coin for Batman, which lands on the dirty, scarred side, and Two-Face shoots him. He then flips the coin for himself and it lands on the clean side. As he's flipping the coin for Gordon's son, he tells Gordon to lie to the boy and tell him that everything will be alright, just as Dent himself had to tell Rachel earlier, seconds before she was killed. Batman gets up and tackles him and they fall off of the building together. Unseen by them, the coin lands on the clean side. Batman hands Jimmy up to Gordon as Batman himself falls to the ground next to Two-Face, who lies motionless.As Gordon climbs down to check on Batman, Batman laments that, in the end, the Joker won. By corrupting Harvey Dent and turning him evil, he tore down the best of them. If Gotham were to find out about Dent's murders, then the symbol of hope and faith he had given Gotham would diminish and all the prisoners he helped put back in jail would be let out, thus creating chaos. Batman explains that Gotham can never find out about the murders, and takes the blame of them on himself, so that the Joker wouldn't win and the city's peace would remain.We see a montage of Commissioner Gordon and other members of the Gotham City Police Department gathered at a memorial to Harvey Dent. It is unclear whether he was killed or not. Gordon then smashes the Bat Signal above the MCU Building, while Alfred burns Rachel's note and Lucius shuts down the sonar machine with a pleased look. Batman, in the background, continues to explain that by taking the blame of the killings, the faith that the people of Gotham had in Harvey Dent can be rewarded, and they can feel justified.Batman then runs from Gordon as the cops begin to chase him, and Gordon tells his son that while Harvey Dent was the hero Gotham needed, Batman is the hero that Gotham deserved. The bat-signal is destroyed and a manhunt is issued for Batman. Batman gets on his Batpod and speeds away, while Gordon declares:""He's a silent Guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight."""
   4  "A young man, exhausted and delirious, washes up on a beach, looking up momentarily to see two young children (Claire Geare and Magnus Nolan) playing in the sand before he passes out. An armed guard (Tohoru Masamune) discovers him and has him brought to a large, seaside palace where the proprietor, an elderly Japanese man, is told of the stranger's arrival. The only objects found on him were a handgun and a brass top. The old man allows the stranger entry. He is dragged in and given some food which he struggles to eat as the old man picks up the brass top and says, ""You remind me of someone...a man I met in a half remembered dream. He was possessed of some radical notions."" The stranger looks up in realization as the scene shifts...Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), speak to a prospective client, Saito (Ken Watanabe), in an eerily similar dining room about the services they provide; specifically protection against thieves specialized in extracting valuable information from a subject while they're dreaming. Cobb explains that, when one is asleep, one's mind is vulnerable to attack and what he can do is train Saito's mind to subconsciously defend against extractors to protect whatever secrets he may be hiding. He backs up his claim by revealing that he is the most skilled extractor there is and knows all the tricks involved. Appearing skeptical, Saito stands to leave, telling Cobb he will consider his proposition, and exits the room to join a small party in the main hall.Arthur casts Cobb a glance, saying, He knows as the room begins to shake. They walk to an outside balcony where other party-goers mingle and Arthur points to a woman nearby, asking Cobb what she's doing here. Cobb assures him that he'll take care of it and to proceed with the job. He knows where Saito's secrets are; he glanced over at a safe the minute Cobb mentioned the word.Cobb approaches the woman who asks if he misses her. He responds that he does but can't trust her anymore. They retreat to a private room where Cobb ties a rope to the leg of a chair and tosses the end out of the window. He tells the woman, Mal (Marion Cotillard), to take a seat as she asks him if the children miss her. Cobb pauses a moment before saying, ""I can't imagine."" He then repels out the window to a ledge below, nearly falling when Mal leaves her seat. He breaks into the room below and accesses the safe, swapping out the manila folder inside for another, as the lights in the room turn on. He turns with his gun out to see Mal aiming a gun at him and standing beside Saito and a guard holding Arthur. Cobb asks Saito if 'she told him' as he slides his gun across the table. Saito responds, ""That you are here to steal from me, or that we are actually asleep?""This proves true: the three of them are hooked up to a PASIV (Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous) device which feeds them the sleep drug Somnacin, keeping them all asleep and allowing dream-sharing. They are watched over by Nash (Lukas Haas), another of Cobb's partners. He checks Saito, sleeping on a bed, before going into another room to check on Arthur and Cobb, both asleep in chairs. Cobb's chair sits above a tub full of water. Explosions and shouts outside get closer as a mob of rioters moves down the street.Inside the dream, Mal holds her gun to Arthur's head but Cobb tells her the threat is empty, as he hands the manila folder over to Saito, since shooting him will only wake him up. Mal smiles in agreement but says that pain is only in the mind and perceived as real as she shoots Arthur in the knee, causing him to cry out. Cobb dives across the table and retrieves his gun before shooting Arthur in the head. He then dashes out of the room under gunfire from Saito's guards.Arthur wakes up and instructs Nash that things are falling apart but Cobb still has time to finish the job before he checks on the still sleeping Saito.Saito frantically opens the manila folder as the dream begins to collapse and shouts in anger as he finds blank pages inside. Cobb manages to hide away for a moment to look at the contents of the real folder which he'd hidden in his jacket, gazing over the confidential files as the building crumbles around him. Saito is crushed by debris and wakes up in the apartment, unseen to Arthur as he reaches under his pillow. Arthur tells Nash to wake Cobb by giving him the kick. Nash pushes Cobb backwards into the tub and, as he hits the water, Cobb's dream is flooded with massive waves cascading through the windows before he wakes up. Saito, having reached under his pillow for his gun, grabs Arthur but is subdued by Cobb who tells him that not all the information he needed was in the file he stole. Saito laughs and claims that all the information he had was in the file because he knew of Cobb's ruse all along. He allowed Cobb and Arthur into his mind as part of an audition which they failed, saying that 'your deception was obvious.'Asserting that his employer, Cobol Engineering, won't accept failure, Cobb throws Saito on the floor and demands that he tell them what they need to know about his expansion project. With his face pressed into the carpet, Saito begins to laugh again and reveals that he is familiar with the material of the carpet; it is supposed to be made of wool instead of polyester. Thus, he comes to the conclusion that he is still sleeping.Sure enough, Saito, Arthur, Nash, and Cobb are all asleep in the car of a train, watched over by a young man named Tadashi (Tai-Li Lee) who monitors the time remaining on the PASIV device. He places headphones over Nash's ears and plays music as a cue that their time is running out. The music plays faintly within the dream but enough that Nash can hear it. As the rioting mob outside draws nearer, Saito commends Cobb on creating a dream within a dream but becomes confused at his inability to control this dream. Nash reveals that they're not in Saito's dream...they're in his. The mob breaks through the door, attacking everyone in the room, and Arthur, Nash, and Cobb wake up on the train. Cobb berates Nash, the architect of the dream, for designing the carpet wrong and throws Tadashi a wad of money before leaving, telling them 'every man for himself'. Saito wakes up moments later to find himself alone in the car, save for Tadashi who's resumed a casual pose, but smiles wryly to himself.
   5  In his apartment, Cobb spins his brass top and takes his gun, pointing it at his temple as the top spins. When it falls, he breathes a sigh of relief and puts the gun down. His phone rings and he picks it up to hear his two children, James and Phillipa (Johnathan Geare and Taylor Geare), on the other line with their grandmother. They ask when he's coming home and he responds that he can't because of work. When James asks if their mother is with him - an image of Mal crosses his mind - Cobb pauses and tells him that 'mommy's not here anymore'. He tells them to behave and that he'll send presents with grandpa before their grandmother hangs up.Arthur knocks on the door and tells Cobb their ride is on the roof. Cobb decides to fly to Buenos Aires to lie low in lieu of their failed job for Cobol while Arthur says he's returning 'stateside'. Cobb asks him to send his regards as they open the door to the helicopter and see Nash, beaten and bruised, and Saito waiting for them. Apparently, Nash had tried to sell out Cobb and Arthur for his own safety but Saito has other interests. He offers Cobb a job performing 'inception' for him, something Arthur claims is impossible. Cobb, however, says that it's not impossible but extremely difficult since it involves planting an idea in someone's mind rather than extracting one. He turns away, insisting that he'll find a way to resolve relations with Cobol himself but Saito then asks him if he wants to go home to his children in America. He promises Cobb that, if he succeeds, all he will need to do is make a phone call and the charges keeping Cobb out of the country will be dropped. Desperate, and to Arthur's exasperation, Cobb accepts.They board the helicopter with Saito while two thugs carry Nash away to an uncertain fate. En route, Arthur explains to Saito the nature of inception, telling him that simply planting an idea in someone's head does not guarantee that the idea will take. The subject may very well discover that the idea is not theirs and reject it. True inspiration, Arthur claims, is impossible, despite Cobb's thoughts otherwise. Saito shares with them his reasoning for the job; he needs the CEO of a competing energy conglomerate to split up his father's company, ensuring Saito's own Proclus Global complete domination over the energy production industry. Despite the daunting task, Cobb agrees to perform the job. Saito drops them off at the airport and advises Cobb to choose his team wisely.Cobb travels to Paris where he meets up with his father-in-law, Miles (Michael Caine), a professor at a university and the one who taught Cobb and Mal about dream-sharing and designing dreams. Cobb asks for an architect, one as good as he, and Miles points him to someone better. He introduces Cobb to a graduate student of his, Ariadne (Elliot Page) who is immediately put to the test by Cobb to design a maze that takes one minute to create and two to solve. After impressing Cobb with her skills, he tells her more about his line of work and what is required of her. Her job as architect will be to design dreams and create virtual mazes for the dreamers subconscious to inhabit while allowing Cobb and his team to work. As they talk outside a cafe, Cobb attempts to make Ariadne aware that they are actually in a dream. The realization causes Ariadne to panic and the dream violently collapses. When they awake, Ariadne finds they are in Cobb's warehouse workshop where Arthur is monitoring them. Ariadne shows surprise when Arthur says they'd been under only five minutes when it felt like hours. Cobb explains that the mind functions faster in a dream, so time moves slower. They go under again and Ariadne is given the opportunity to creatively alter the physics of the dream. Her architectural wonders cause the people in the dream - projections of Cobb's subconscious - to search for the intruder - Ariadne - like white blood cells drawn to a virus. When Ariadne makes the mistake of creating a bridge from her memories, Cobb recognizes it and his subconscious reacts as a mob, separating Ariadne from Cobb until Mal appears and stabs her.She wakes up and Cobb rushes to the restroom while Arthur explains that Cobb's subconscious became aware of her as an invasive being and she was unable to wake up right away because there was still time on the clock. The only way for her to wake up was if she died. Cobb takes out his top and spins it, sighing as it topples over. Ariadne leaves the warehouse, angry and refusing to open her mind to Cobb if his subconscious is as tormented as it seems. Cobb returns to the room and assures Arthur that she'll be back but he needs to make a trip to Mombasa to recruit an old friend to the team. He finds Eames (Tom Hardy) gambling at a bar and offers him a place on his team as a forger/imitator. Eames agrees before telling Cobb he's being tailed, pointing to two men at the bar. Cobb recognizes them as Cobol thugs who must be aiming to collect the bounty on his head for the botched Saito job. Eames creates a distraction while Cobb escapes, leading the thugs on a chaotic chase through the city streets. At the last moment, Saito pulls up in a limousine and picks up first Cobb, then Eames. He explains that he's been tracing Cobb to protect his investment.Eames takes them to a local chemist he knows who experiments with Somnacin and who might be an asset to their team. Yusuf (Dileep Rao) listens as Cobb explains that his job may require the use of a three-layered dream. Yusuf says that this would be otherwise impossible, due to the instability of dreams the further down you go, if not for a special solution he's concocted with a powerful sedative. To show its effectiveness, Yusuf takes them downstairs where they see dozens of men sleeping under the watch of an old man (Earl Cameron). He tells Cobb that these men come here to 'wake up'; dreaming has become their reality. With the aid of the sedative, their sleep is deep and stable and they are able to dream for what feels to them like years. Cobb tries the sedative himself and is impressed with its affects, though shaken after waking from a vivid dream with Mal. He convinces Yusuf to join his team.Meanwhile, Ariadne returns to the workshop where she tells Arthur that she meant to stay away but couldn't resist the pure creation involved in architectural dreaming. Arthur takes her into a dream and introduces the notion of creating paradoxes, such as the Penrose steps. He also reveals that Mal was Cobb's wife and has since passed away. Despite Mal's malevolent nature within the dreams - her existence now only as a projection of Cobb's - Arthur tells Ariadne she was lovely in real life.The team bands together and decides that they will create a three-level dream with the third level containing the planted idea. The target in mind is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the CEO and heir of Fischer Morrow, whose father, Maurice (Pete Postlethwaite), is slowly decaying with illness. Eames targets Robert's godfather and business partner, Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), to get a better grasp on the father-son dynamic and to use his imitation skills at their best. The team decides that, in order to get Robert to split up his father's company and because of their complicated relationship, a positive idea will trump a negative one; 'my father wants me to be my own man.' Saito oversees most of the plans and, because he wants full verification of any success or failure, decides that he will accompany the team into the dreams as a 'tourist'.As the team prepares over the next few weeks, Arthur shows Ariadne the significance of 'totems'; small, personal objects that enable a person to differentiate between dreams and reality. Cobb's totem is his top, which topples over in the real world and keeps spinning in a dream. Arthur's is a loaded die and he instructs Ariadne to create one for herself that only she can touch to ensure its validity. She creates a semi-hollowed bishop chess piece as her totem. Wanting as much time as possible to complete the job, the team decides, with Saito's help, that they will perform the job on a Boeing 747 during an international flight from Europe to Los Angeles, a 10 hour flight. This will give them a week in the first stage of the dreams. Saito reveals that he's bought the entire airline, making the job neater and without having to buy out certain sections of the plane for access.One evening, after a day of formulating plans, Ariadne finds Cobb dreaming alone in the workshop. Curious, she hooks herself up to his machine and finds herself descending in an elevator. She sees Cobb sitting in a living room with Mal who quickly detects Ariadne's presence. Cobb gets up and joins Ariadne in the elevator, leading her through some of the levels that Ariadne discovers are each specific memories; something he originally told her never to do. Horrified after seeing Cobb's torment over leaving home without saying farewell to his children, Ariadne takes the elevator alone to the last level where she sees a hotel room, the contents of which are strewn on the floor. She steps on some broken glass and Mal looks up from the couch, asking what she's doing here. Ariadne tries to explain that she just wants to understand but Mal becomes defensive and picks up a shard of glass. Cobb arrives and takes Ariadne back to the elevator as Mal rushes forward, shouting at Cobb that he didn't keep his promise.Ariadne and Cobb exit the dream and Cobb explains that the reason he can't go home is because of Mal's death, because it was thought that he killed her. He thanks Ariadne when she doesn't ask him if he did or not but she does warn him that he's mistaken if he thinks he can cage Mal like that. He needs to release his guilt over her death. Ariadne convinces Cobb to allow her to go with the team into the dreams because he needs someone who understands what he's going through. At that moment, Saito and Arthur arrive and announce that Maurice Fischer has died and Robert will be accompanying the body to the States in a few days.The team boards the flight and sits with Robert in a sectioned-off first class cabin. Cobb returns Robert's passport, pick-pocketed by Arthur, as a conversation starter and then drugs his water before proposing a toast in his father's honor. Within moments, Robert is asleep and the paid-off flight attendant (Miranda Nolan) assists setting up and activating the PASIV device. All together, the team descends into, first, Yusuf's dream. It is raining heavily in New York City as members of the team are picked up. Arthur and Saito commandeer a taxi, pick up Robert and Eames and then Yusuf as Saito holds a gun to Robert as part of the kidnap ruse. Cobb and Ariadne follow in a separate car until a train suddenly barges down the middle of the street, hitting their car and temporarily stalling them. Gunfire then opens on the taxi and the team is forced to take immediate evasive maneuvers, hiding out in a warehouse where its discovered that Saito has been shot in the chest.Robert is taken into another room while Saito is laid on a table. Before Eames can shoot him to end his misery and wake him up, Cobb stops him and explains that, due to the sedatives they've taken, they won't wake up if they die. Instead, they'll be sent to limbo; a shared dream-state of raw subconscious where time is practically non-existent. The team is angered by this, wondering why they've taken such a risk, as they contemplate what to do about the armed forces closing in on their location. They find out that Robert's subconscious has been trained to fight against extraction and the projections attacking them are part of that defense. With Saito's condition deteriorating and unable to wait much longer due to the approaching defense projections, the team decides they need to complete the job as quickly as possible.Ariadne confronts Cobb about the control he has over his own subconscious and he confesses that he can't keep Mal out of his head. He tells her that they had been experimenting with dream states and wanted to see how far down they could go into their subconscious. They wound up in limbo together, unable to leave because of the time remaining on their PASIV clock. They recreated their lives, spending years worth of building. After so long, they began to perceive limbo as their reality. After something like 50 years, Cobb and Mal killed themselves on train tracks to bring them back to reality. Despite returning to the real world, Mal continued to believe that she was still dreaming and believed that dying was the only way to 'wake up', but she refused to leave without Cobb; she loved him too much. On their wedding anniversary, Cobb went to the hotel room they always stayed in to find it trashed and the window open. Outside, on an opposite ledge, sat Mal who revealed to Cobb that she filed a letter to their attorney expressing a fear for her life, effectively framing him in the event of her death and forcing him no other way than to join her. Cobb refuses to jump and attempts to bring Mal to her senses, but she ignores him and jumps to her death. Since she declared herself legally sane by three psychiatrists, Cobb's case for his innocence is overruled by the outstanding evidence against him. With no other choice, Cobb leaves his children behind with their grandmother and flees the country.Ariadne tries to convince Cobb that Mal's death was not his fault and that he needs to focus on the mission. Eames prepares himself as an impersonation of Browning while Cobb and Arthur interrogate Robert, demanding to know the combination to his father's safe. They pressure Robert by using 'Browning' as leverage. Eames shouts from another room as if being beaten before he is brought into the room with Robert to try and get him to remember. He tells Robert that the safe contains an alternate version of his father's will, one that will dissolve the company if Robert chooses so. 'Browning' tells Robert that his father loved him and wanted him to build something of his own. As Robert's defenses close in on the warehouse, Robert reveals that one word he could decipher out of his father's last words was 'disappointed', convincing him that his father didn't love him.With the warehouse in danger of being infiltrated, the team pressure Robert once again for a combination. He tells them a series of random numbers that come to mind before they load him into a van and drug him to sleep. They all get in and prepare to enter the second level of the dream while Yusuf drives the van away from the pursuing projections.In Arthur's dream, Cobb resolves to use 'Mr. Charles', a method in which he introduces the subject to the fact that he's dreaming in order to garner trust. He meets Robert at a bar and tells him that he is there to protect him and someone is trying to access his mind. He convinces Robert that he's dreaming by introducing the strangeness of their surroundings and calms Robert to control them. He helps Robert remember that he's been kidnapped and leads him to a hotel room (the first few numbers of which match the first digits Robert thought of for the combination) where the rest of the team regroups. Saito is in better health in this level of the dream, but soon begins coughing. When Robert's projection on Browning arrives, Cobb convinces Robert that it was Browning who kidnapped him by asking if he saw Browning being tortured by the kidnappers in his previous sleep level. Browning confesses that he was responsible for the kidnapping, as the second testament left to Robert allowed him to destroy his father's empire, which Browning could not let him do it. Cobb suggests to Robert that they enter Browning's dreams to figure out what was really in the safe so that Robert can decide for himself. Robert agrees, now unknowingly assisting in his own inception and the team is hooked up again, this time with Arthur remaining behind to watch over them and administer a synchronized kick when its time.As the team goes into the third dream, in actuality Robert's, Arthur is forced to fight off more of Robert's defensive projections while in the first dream Yusuf continues to drive the van. The third dream is set in snow covered mountains where Robert's safe is heavily guarded in a mountainside fort. The team splits up to draw the guards away. Cobb goes with Ariadne, Eames travels alone to ward off the guards, and Robert and Saito begin ascending a mountainside to access a blind side of the fort.Meanwhile, Yusuf momentarily loses control of the van and it tumbles down an incline, the tumbling effect translates into Arthur's dream as he fights off Robert's projections, the environment around him spinning as gravity reverses and then rights itself. As Yusuf continues driving, he becomes cornered on an elevated bridge with one car full of projections stuck with him. Yusuf plays music through Arthur's headphones to warn him of the incoming kick before driving backwards off the bridge. Upon impact, the force sends Arthur in his dream flying and, as the van plummets in mid air, there is a loss of gravity in Arthur's dream. The impact also translates into the third level of the dream. Saito and Robert look up the mountainside and are forced to cut their lines as an avalanche sweeps down upon them. Cobb realizes they've missed the first kick, but they still have time for the second one when the van hits the water off the bridge.Van drives off the bridge: 10 seconds left to impact.Dream 2: 3 minutes to synchronize the kick. Arthur struggles with a way to do this without gravity.Dream 3: 60 minutes left.With little time left, Cobb demands to know if there is another way into the fort and Ariadne relents into telling him of a secret underground entrance that Robert and Saito can access. Cobb send them there, all while Saito's condition deteriorates. They finally enter the main room where the safe is located while Cobb and Ariadne watch from a snipers angle. Succumbing to his injuries, Saito is left to lay down, coughing blood as Robert continues forward. However, as Robert comes into Cobb's view, so does another person. Mal drops in from the ceiling and shoots Robert down before Cobb comes to his senses and shoots her. Eames is ordered to the room as Cobb and Ariadne rush to the site. Finding Robert dead, Cobb labels the mission a failure, since the only other place where Robert has gone is limbo. Ariadne, however, convinces him that, if they go into limbo, they'll have enough time to find Robert and bring him back. Eames agrees to use a defibrillator to jump start Roberts heart to help while Cobb and Ariadne go under.Meanwhile, in dream level 2, Arthur devises a unique plan. He uses phone wires to tie the team together and brings them into the elevator. He lines the outside of the car with explosives, timing down till the kick with the intention of using explosive force to create gravity and instigating a kick.In limbo, Cobb and Ariadne tour the deteriorating world that he and Mal once built. They see old homes and buildings before they find the one where Cobb knows Mal must be. If they find Mal, they'll find Robert because Mal will want to use something Cobb wants to bring him to her. Sure enough, they enter the apartment and Mal is waiting for them. She tries, again, to convince Cobb that his place is with her in their real home with their children but Cobb reveals a terrible truth, the reason why Mal believed that her dreams were real.While they were in limbo, Mal had stored away a truth that she didn't want to believe anymore; her totem, placed within her safe, lying on its side, immobile; telling her that her dream, her limbo, was reality. In an effort to save her mind, Cobb broke into her safe and spun the top to convince her that this world was not real. However, he did not know that, once they really woke up, she would continue to believe that. This was how he knew inception would work; because he performed it on Mal first and his guilt over her subsequent death has been plaguing him ever since. He tells Mal that he will stay with her in limbo if she tells him where Robert is and she reveals he's on the porch. Ariadne finds him there and pushes him off as an improvised kick.Robert comes back to life in dream level 3 with Eames' aid and opens his own safe, finding within an image of his bed-stricken father muttering his last word. Robert acknowledges that his father was disappointed that he couldn't be him, but Maurice says, ""No...no. I was disappointed that you tried."" Maurice then points to a cabinet where Robert finds the will...and a paper fan his father made for him once as a child. Tearfully, Robert looks up to see his father has passed and breaks down as the van hits the water.Dream 2, Arthur hits the detonator and the explosives force the elevator down, creating artificial gravity on the team.Dream 3, a series of explosions set by Eames rock the fort, collapsing the main floor.In limbo, the synchronization of kicks pulls on Ariadne and she calls for Cobb to join her. Cobb says that he will stay in limbo, but not with Mal. By this time, Saito has died and joined limbo as well. Cobb must find him but promises to return. Ariadne leaps off the side of the building and rides the kicks back to dream 1. In the van, Robert wakes up and escapes the submerged van with 'Browning'. Arthur and Ariadne share an oxygen tank with Yusuf before they escape the van, leaving Cobb.Robert and 'Browning' make it to shore where Robert reveals that his father really did want him to be his own man and that he's going to do just that and liquidate his father's company. Knowing the mission is a success, Eames drops the Browning mask.In limbo, Cobb washes ashore where the armed guard finds him. He is brought to the seaside palace where the elderly Japanese man recognizes his brass top. Cobb recalls what he was there to do and calls to Saito, asking him to come back with him and honor their arrangement. The elderly Saito reaches for Cobb's gun.Cobb wakes up on the airplane and looks around, startled, to see Arthur and Ariadne smiling at him. He looks at the now awake Saito who remembers, picking up his phone and dials. The plane lands in Los Angeles and Cobb nervously moves through customs where security checks his passport, but allows him passage through, welcoming him home. Cobb walks past the rest of the team and Robert, who pauses a moment as if recalling a half-remembered dream. Ahead of him, Cobb sees Miles calling him over. They drive home together where Cobb hesitates before taking out his brass top. He spins it on the table in the kitchen as his children appear at the back door. He runs to them, elated to see their faces again as the top continues to spin, wobbles a bit...and the screen turns to black.The very last moment of the film is a little more complex than indicated by the current synopsis (see above): ""...the top continues to spin, wobbles a bit.."" which indicates that Cobb has returned to reality. The actual script, by Christopher Nolan, differs from this. The script ends withBehind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we-FADE OUT.CREDITS.END.My feeling is that the author wished us to see Cobb as failing, which is in line with the rest of the film-everyone dying or hurting; nothing positive, really, except for Cobb's hopes. However, I also think that the director or producer wanted to leave the ending ambiguous, so that optimists would see a positive ending, and cynics would see something more pessimistic.
   6  -----------
   7  The description of the movie's end above doesn't fully explain the final scene. Then it appears someone edited it by adding their subjective *interpretation* of the ending.
   8  So to clarify, here's what (objectively, without interpretation) happens: Cobb enters his home and spins the top on the kitchen table as his children appear at the back door. He immediately goes to them, elated to see them, they all hug, the kids start telling him stories of what he missed while he was gone, he replies the way good parents do - showing he's enthusiastic, fully focused on them, etc and they all start to walk away (from the top). We continue to hear their chatter in the background as the video and audio focus in on the spinning top. It continues to spin. It wobbles just a little - just enough to leave the viewer wondering whether it's going to keep spinning or not. End movie.
   9  [My subjective interpretation: it's left to the viewer to decide whether it keeps spinning or it falls. But the real point is that Cobb no longer cares.]"
  10  "We back out of the webbing of neurons and brain cells as the title credits appear, finding ourselves emerging from a pore on the sweat-glistened skin of the protagonist: our narrator (Edward Norton), as he looks down the barrel of a gun that's been stuck in his mouth. The gun is held by a man named Tyler (Brad Pitt) who checks his watch, counting down to 'ground zero' before he asks if the narrator has anything to say. The narrator mumbles through the gun before it's removed and says more clearly that he can't think of anything. As Tyler looks out of the high rise window to the dark city below them, the narrator recalls just how he met Tyler before stopping himself and bringing us to the beginning of the story.The narrator tells us he hasn't slept for six months. His job as a traveling product recall specialist for a car company doesn't help his insomnia since he must travel often, experiencing bouts of jet lag in addition to the everyday stress of his position, admiring the 'tiny life' of single-serving soap and shampoo at every location. If he can't sleep, he surfs the channels or browses through ""Furni"" (a parody of IKEA) catalogs purchasing the next piece of decor to add to his apartment; he's a self-proclaimed slave of consumerism. He goes to his doctor seeking help, but all the doctor will do is suggest an herbal supplement instead of drugs and that the narrator visit a support group for testicular cancer to see real pain. There, the narrator meets Robert 'Bob' Paulson (Meat Loaf), the 'big moosie' and an ex-bodybuilder and steroid user who suffers from an extreme case of gynecomastia due to hormone treatment after his testicles were removed. Bob is quite willing to hug the narrator in support. Stuck between Bob's enormous breasts, the narrator finally finds peace and bursts into tears. The emotional release allows him to sleep and he subsequently becomes addicted to support groups, mapping out his week attending different meetings and feigning illness. However, the appearance of a woman named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) throws the narrator's 'system' out of whack. He recognizes her as a 'tourist', having seen her at multiple meetings -- including testicular cancer -- and he is disturbed by her lies to the point where he can't sleep anymore.After one meeting, he confronts her. She argues that she's doing exactly what he does and quips that the groups are 'cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee'. Instead of ratting each other out, they agree to split up the week and exchange numbers. Despite his efforts, the narrator's insomnia continues. On a flight back from one of his business trips, the narrator meets Tyler Durden. Tyler offers a unique perspective on emergency procedure manuals in the plane and they strike up a casual conversation. Tyler is a soap salesman, if he's not working nights as a projectionist and slipping bits of porn between reels. The narrator arrives at the baggage claim to discover that his suitcase has been confiscated, most likely due to a mysterious vibration, before he taxis home. However, home, a fifteenth story condominium, has been blasted into the night by what was theorized to be a faulty gas line ignited by a spark from the refrigerator. Having nowhere to go, the narrator finds Tyler's business card and calls him up. They meet in a parking lot behind a bar where Tyler invites the narrator to ask to come live with him...on one condition: that the narrator hit Tyler as hard as he can. The narrator, though puzzled, complies and they engage in a fist fight before sharing a couple of drinks. The experience is surprisingly euphoric and the narrator and Tyler return to Tyler's dilapidated house where it's clear that Tyler is squatting.Tyler and the narrator engage in more fights over the coming days and they soon attract the attention of other 'tough guys'. Finding their little fighting group growing, Tyler establishes a formal 'fight club' in the basement of the bar where they had their first fight. Membership quickly increases and Tyler and the narrator fashion a series of rules, the first two being 'you do not talk about fight club.' The rules are consistently broken, with members inviting their friends to join them. Time and again, Tyler proves his insightful, if unorthodox and immoral, views on life.The narrator meets up with Marla by chance, telling her that he hasn't attended any other meetings because he's joined a new support group for men only. While he still treats her with mild contempt, it's clear that he considers her with interest. When she overdoses on Xanax, she calls the narrator who, tired of her rambling, sets the phone down. He discovers later that Tyler picked up the phone, followed the call to Marla's home, and brought her back to the house where they engaged in vigorous sex, much to the narrator's disgust. The next morning in the kitchen, Marla finds the narrator, who is astonished to see her in his house. The Narrator's astonishment insults her and she leaves in disgust. After she leaves, Tyler enters the kitchen and joyfully reveals that he and Marla had sex the night before. He also gravely makes the narrator promise that he'll never mention Tyler to Marla.That night the narrator joins Tyler while he steals human fat out of the dumpster of a liposuction clinic. Tyler says that the best fat for making the soap he sells comes from human beings. Back in their kitchen, Tyler shows the narrator how to render tallow from the fat. After explaining a bit about the history of soapmaking, Tyler plants a wet kiss on the back of the narrator's hand and dumps pure lye on the spot, causing a horrific chemical burn. Tyler refuses to let the narrator wash the lye off his hand, saying that water will worsen the burn, and tells the narrator that the burn is a rite of passage -- Tyler has burned his own hand in an identical way. Tyler also forces the narrator to accept allegiance to him and then neutralizes the burn with vinegar. Later, when they meet with a cosmetics salesperson at a department store, the narrator remarks that Tyler's soap sells for a very high price.With the narrator, he holds a college dropout (Joon Kim) at gunpoint and threatens to kill him if he doesn't pursue his dream of becoming a veterinarian. He allows Lou (Peter Iacangelo), the owner of the bar where their fight club is held, to beat him up before coughing blood all over him and demanding to stay in the basement. Horrified, Lou agrees. Tyler gives the club members a ""homework assignment"": they will all pick a fight with a complete stranger and lose. The narrator says it's a much harder task than anyone would think. Bob accosts people in a downtown plaza; another member antagonizes a priest.After a period of days, Marla leaves and Tyler introduces the narrator to his newest hobby. Using his proficient skills in soap-making, Tyler has turned the basement of the house into a laboratory where he uses soap and other ingredients to make explosives. Tyler and the narrator continue managing fight club, but this time, at a much different frequency. Receiving flack at work, the narrator finally confronts his boss (Zach Grenier) with knowledge about substandard practice and negotiates to work from home with increased pay to keep his mouth shut. When his boss objects and calls security, the narrator beats himself up severely so that, by the time security arrives, they are led to believe that the narrator's boss assaulted his employee.Tyler eventually assigns homework to his recruits and preaches to them about the detriments of consumerism and relying on society and authority figures. He proposes to revert back to the time where a man's worth depended on the sweat on his back and where he only used what he needed. This philosophy evolves into what Tyler calls 'Project Mayhem,' and the fighting in basements turns into mischievous acts of vandalism and destruction. Their actions do not go unnoticed, but Tyler manages to show the lead investigator that the very people he's hunting are those that they depend on; waiters, bus drivers, sewer engineers, and more. They threaten the police chief with castration and the investigation is called off. The dilapidated house where Tyler and the narrator live turns into Mayhem central, where each new recruit is put through a rigorous period of initiation and training and where the latest plans are hatched. While Project Mayhem grows, the narrator begins to feel more and more distant from Tyler and jealousy sets in, making him go so far as to beat up and disfigure one recruit (Jared Leto) because he 'wanted to destroy something beautiful'. As they walk away from this fight club meeting, Tyler drives the narrator and two members in a large Lincoln Town Car. In the rain, Tyler taunts the narrator, suggestion that he hasn't even begun to live his life to his fullest potential. When he allows the car to drift into oncoming traffic, Tyler scolds the narrator for being weak and pathetic. Tyler then admits that he destroyed the narrator's apartment. The narrator finally gives in, Tyler lets the car drift and they slam head-on into another vehicle. They emerge from the wreck with Tyler exclaiming that the narrator has a new life based on his living through a near-death experience.When Tyler disappears for a while, the narrator is left at home with an ever increasing band of Mayhem members who watch television and laugh at their publicized acts of vandalism. When the narrator demands to know more about their mischief, Bob tells him ""The 1st rule of Project Mayhem is you do not ask questions.""Later Bob is killed during a botched sabotage operation and the narrator seeks to disband the group before things get out of control. He tries to find Tyler and discovers a list of phone numbers he recently used. The narrator trails the list all over the country, discovering that fight clubs have sprouted everywhere.At one particular bar, the bartender addresses the narrator as 'sir' which prompts the narrator to ask if he knows him. The bartender, after being assured that he's not being put through a test, tells the narrator that he is Tyler Durden. In shock, the narrator returns to his hotel room and calls up Marla, asking if they've ever had sex. Though irritated, Marla confirms their relationship and states that she knows him as ""Tyler Durden."" Marla hangs up and Tyler suddenly appears in the room and confronts the narrator, telling him he broke his promise to not speak about Tyler to Marla. A few minutes of conversation confirms that they are, indeed, one person. The narrator has insomnia; he can't sleep so, whenever he thinks he is (or at random parts of a day), Tyler's persona takes over. The epiphany causes the narrator to faint. When he wakes up, he finds another phone list beside him with calls from all over the country.He returns to his home to find it completely empty but one bulletin board yields a display of folders detailing certain buildings within the financial district. He finds that each one has been infiltrated by members of Project Mayhem and that Tyler is planning on destroying them, thereby erasing credit card company records and 'wiping the slate clean'. In a panic, the narrator grabs all the information and reports himself to the local police. However, after telling the inspector everything he knows and being left with two officers, the narrator discovers that the officers are Mayhem members and they tell him that they were instructed by him to 'take the balls' of anyone who interfered with Project Mayhem...even him. The narrator manages to escape by stealing one of the officers pistols and runs to one of the buildings set for demolition. He finds an unmarked van in the parking garage filled with nitroglycerin and attempts to disarm the bomb. Tyler appears and goads him but the narrator successfully disarms the bomb. He and Tyler engage in a fierce fight which appears oddly on the surveillance cameras since the narrator is only fighting himself. The Tyler personality wins and reactivates the bomb and the narrator 'brings himself' to another building where they can safely watch the destruction.Back at the opening scene the narrator, with the gun in his mouth, mumbles again and tells Tyler, ""I still can't think of anything"". Tyler smiles and says, ""Ah, flashback humor"". The narrator begs that Tyler abandon the project but Tyler is adamant. He professes that what he's doing is saving mankind from the oppression of consumerism and unnecessary luxuries and that there won't even have to be any casualties; the people who work in the buildings are all Mayhem members, completely aware of the plan. Near breaking point, the narrator comes to realize that whatever Tyler does, he can do. He sees Tyler with the gun in his hand and realizes that it's actually in his hand. He puts it up to his own chin and tells Tyler to listen to him. He says that his eyes are open and then puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The bullet shoots out of the side of his jaw and Tyler is 'killed' with a gaping wound to the back of his head. As the narrator recovers, members of Project Mayhem arrive with snacks and Marla in tow (Tyler had previously instructed her to be brought to them).Seeing 'Tyler's' wounds, the Mayhem members leave Marla alone with him to fetch some medical supplies. 'Tyler' stands with Marla and tells her that everything's going to be fine as the first detonation ignites the building in front of them. The others on the block soon follow suit and 'Tyler' takes Marla's hand in his and tells her ""You met me at a very strange time in my life."" They watch as the explosives go off and the buildings collapse."
  11  "Late one morning in the Hawthorne Grill, a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, a young couple, Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) and Pumpkin (Tim Roth), discuss the pros and cons of robbing banks versus liquor stores. Then they add restaurants to the equation, realizing they can make more by taking customers' wallets than they get out of the till. The two kiss, declare they love each other and stand up in their booth, announcing that they're robbing the diner.Earlier in the day, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) arrive at a San Fernando Valley apartment building. They are hit men in the employ of Marsellus Wallace and have come to retrieve a valuable belonging of Wallace's from a group of would-be crooks led by a young and naive guy named Brett (Frank Whaley). They take back the valuable item -- kept in a briefcase, it glows warmly and transfixes whoever looks at it. Jules recites what he claims is a Bible verse, Ezekiel 25:17, before he and Vincent execute Brett.Story #1: Vincent Vega And Marsellus Wallace's WifeAt his strip club, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) pays boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) to throw his next fight. Jules and Vincent arrive; though it's only a few hours after their visit to the Valley, the two hit men are sporting gym clothes in place of the suits they wore earlier in the day. While Jules heads to the men's room, Vincent goes to the bar and encounters Butch. The men take an instant disliking to each other. Vincent insults Butch but before Butch can retaliate, Marsellus calls Vincent over and embraces him. Marsellus is leaving town that evening and Vincent is to take Marsellus' wife, Mia (Uma Thurman), out for dinner to keep her entertained. Rumors abound that Marsellus gravely wounded another associate, Antoine, who he believed had been improperly friendly with Mia, so Vincent is nervous. Before picking Mia up, he visits his drug dealer, Lance (Eric Stoltz), and buys some high-quality heroin. Properly sedated, he escorts the cocaine-addicted, chain-smoking Mia to Jack Rabbit Slim's, a West Hollywood 1950s-themed restaurant. After some small talk about European travel, Mia's failed acting career, foot massage, and the rumors about Antoine (which Mia dispels), Mia enters herself and Vincent in a dance contest. They dance The Twist and win a trophy. After dinner, they return to the Wallace's home. Vincent goes to the bathroom to talk himself out of making a pass at Mia. Meanwhile, she discovers the baggie of heroin in his coat pocket and, assuming it's cocaine, snorts some. She immediately passes out and begins to foam at the mouth. Panicked, Vincent takes the dying Mia to Lance's where they argue about what to do with her. Following Lance's advice, Vincent is able to revive her with a shot of adrenaline administered straight to the heart. Vincent takes Mia home. They agree not to tell Marsellus what happened since both of them would get in trouble for it.Story #2: The Gold WatchThe following night, before his fight, Butch dreams of an incident from his childhood: Back at his Tennessee home in 1973, Captain Koons (Christopher Walken) visited Butch to bring him a gold watch. The watch had belonged to Butch's great-grandfather, who took it to World War I with him. Butch's grandfather had taken it to World War II, and Butch's father to Vietnam. Butch's father died as a POW, but gave the watch to Koons to return to Butch. Koons says that he and Butch's father had to hide the watch in their rectums to keep it away from their captors. Butch reaches up with his hand and takes the watch from Koons.Butch wakes from the dream. Instead of throwing the match (offscreen), he fights so viciously that he kills his opponent. He took Marsellus' money and bet it on himself; his winnings will amount to a small fortune. Butch makes small talk with Esmarelda (Angela Jones), the driver of the cab he is in, who reveals that she knows he's the boxer who killed his opponent; she seems fascinated with the topic of death. Esmarelda drives Butch to the seedy motel where he and his French girlfriend, Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), are staying, having abandoned their apartment. In the morning they will travel to Butch's hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, claim their winnings, and leave the country. While packing the next morning, however, Fabienne reveals that she forgot the gold watch, the belonging Butch cherishes above all others. After a savage outburst in which he wrecks the motel room's television, Butch takes Fabienne's car to get the watch, parking a few blocks away and walking through a vacant lot to his apartment building as a precaution. He enters without incident and finds his wristwatch in the bedroom. He realizes he's not alone in the apartment when he notices a sub-machine gun in the kitchen. Catching Vincent off guard as he emerges from the bathroom, Butch kills him with the gun he found. He leaves his apartment after wiping the gun down with a tissue to remove his fingerprints.Leaving the apartment with his watch, Butch encounters Marsellus crossing the street. He tries to run Marsellus over with his car but only wounds him and is hit by another car himself. Both are injured and Marsellus chases Butch into a pawn shop. There, the owner, Maynard (Duane Whitaker), overpowers them. Marsellus and Butch wake up in the basement of the pawn shop, bound and gagged. Maynard has called his cousin Zed (Peter Greene), who works as a security guard. Maynard and Zed are apparently a pair of redneck serial killers who kill passersby who happen into their store. While the Gimp (Stephen Hibbert), a huge man-child dressed head to toe in black leather fetish gear, watches Butch, Maynard and Zed take Marsellus into the next room and begin to rape him. Butch manages to break the ropes and chair holding him and knocks out the Gimp. Ready to leave the pawn shop and Marsellus to his fate, Butch has an attack of conscience and procures a samurai sword and rescues Marsellus; in the process, Maynard is killed and Zed emasculated by a shotgun blast fired by Marsellus. Marsellus stays behind to oversee the torture-execution of Zed (""I'ma get medieval on your ass,"" he tells him), but promises that as long as Butch never mentions what happened and never returns to Los Angeles, Marsellus will forget that Butch betrayed him in the boxing ring. Butch agrees. In the final scene, Butch and Fabienne leave town on Grace, Zed's chopper-style motorcycle.Story #3: The Bonnie SituationThree days earlier, flashing back in time to just after Vincent and Jules finish killing Brett for stealing Marsellus' prized possession, a gang member (Alexis Arquette) they had not known about bursts out of the bathroom where he had apparently been when Jules and Vincent entered and empties a large pistol point blank at them. However, all of the bullets miss Vincent and Jules, hitting the wall behind them, so they return fire and kill the gang member. Jules is certain what occurred was divine intervention, but Vincent dismisses the idea. They leave with Marvin (Phil LaMarr), Marsellus' inside man in the gang. In the car, Jules continues his insistence that what happened in the apartment was a miracle and that he's retiring from Marsellus' gang. Vincent leans over the front seat, asking Marvin if he believes in miracles, but accidentally shoots him in the head and kills him. The inside of the car is now covered in blood and brain matter. Jules, furious at Vincent's klutziness, drives to the house of his only friend in the Valley, a former colleague named Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino). Jimmie lets them hide the car in his garage but angrily tells them that they have to get rid of the body within an hour -- before his wife Bonnie comes home from her night shift at a hospital. Jules calls Marsellus at his home to explain their predicament. Marsellus then calls Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel), a suave and professional ""cleaner"" who solves problems. Wolf arrives at Jimmie's house and tells Vincent and Jules how to clean up the car and themselves -- they have to strip out of their business suits, be sprayed down with a garden hose and wear Jimmie's spare T-shirts and shorts (which explains their attire at the strip club) -- then helps them dispose of the car and body at a junkyard belonging to a discreet friend named Monster Joe, whose daughter is Mr. Wolf's girlfriend.With the whole situation resolved, Jules and Vincent decide to have breakfast at the Hawthorne Grill, where they continue their discussion about miracles. Jules reveals his plan to leave his criminal life and travel the globe as a mendicant, helping those suffering under tyranny. Vincent, upset that his friend and partner is leaving the life, mocks him, then goes to the bathroom. Just then Honey Bunny and Pumpkin (from the prologue) begin their robbery of the diner. They furiously collect the cash from the register and the patrons' wallets. Jules gives Pumpkin his wallet, but when Pumpkin tries to take Marsellus' briefcase, Jules pulls his gun and disarms Pumpkin. While Vincent holds Honey Bunny at bay, Jules explains to Pumpkin how, even earlier that morning, he would have killed Pumpkin and Honey Bunny without a second thought. He recites his ersatz version of Ezekiel 25:17 again: ""The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.""Jules explains that while he previously thought it was cool to make such a cold-blooded passage the last thing his victims heard, he now realizes that the ""tyranny of evil men"" part of the passage refers to him, and he intends to become a better person. He and Vincent allow Honey Bunny and Pumpkin to leave with all the money but not the briefcase. They leave the diner themselves and head to Marsellus' strip club."
  12  "The film begins with a feather falling to the feet of Forrest Gump who is sitting at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia. Forrest picks up the feather and puts it in the book Curious George, then tells the story of his life to a woman seated next to him. The listeners at the bus stop change regularly throughout his narration, each showing a different attitude ranging from disbelief and indifference to rapt veneration.On his first day of school, he meets a girl named Jenny, whose life is followed in parallel to Forrest's at times. Having discarded his leg braces, his ability to run at lightning speed gets him into college on a football scholarship. After his college graduation, he enlists in the army and is sent to Vietnam, where he makes fast friends with a black man named Bubba, who convinces Forrest to go into the shrimping business with him when the war is over. Later while on patrol, Forrest's platoon is attacked. Though Forrest rescues many of the men, Bubba is killed in action. Forrest is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism.While Forrest is in recovery for a bullet shot to his ""butt-tox"", he discovers his uncanny ability for ping-pong, eventually gaining popularity and rising to celebrity status, later playing ping-pong competitively against Chinese teams. At an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. Forrest reunites with Jenny, who has been living a hippie counterculture lifestyle.Returning home, Forrest endorses a company that makes ping-pong paddles, earning himself $25,000, which he uses to buy a shrimping boat, fulfilling his promise to Bubba. His commanding officer from Vietnam, Lieutenant Dan, joins him. Though initially Forrest has little success, after finding his boat the only surviving boat in the area after Hurricane Carmen, he begins to pull in huge amounts of shrimp and uses it to buy an entire fleet of shrimp boats. Lt. Dan invests the money in Apple Computer and Forrest is financially secure for the rest of his life. He returns home to see his mother's last days.One day, Jenny returns to visit Forrest and he proposes marriage to her. She declines, though feels obliged to prove her love to him by sleeping with him. She leaves early the next morning. On a whim, Forrest elects to go for a run. Seemingly capriciously, he decides to keep running across the country several times, over some three and a half years, becoming famous.In present-day, Forrest reveals that he is waiting at the bus stop because he received a letter from Jenny who, having seen him run on television, asks him to visit her. Once he is reunited with Jenny, Forrest discovers she has a young son, of whom Forrest is the father. Jenny tells Forrest she is suffering from a virus (probably HIV, though this is never definitively stated). Together the three move back to Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny and Forrest finally marry. The wedding is attended by Lt. Dan, who now has prosthetic legs and a fiancee. Jenny dies soon afterward.The film ends with father and son waiting for the school bus on little Forrest's first day of school. Opening the book his son is taking to school, the white feather from the beginning of the movie is seen to fall from within the pages. As the bus pulls away, the white feather is caught on a breeze and drifts skyward."
  13  "Three men set out on horseback on a snowy landscape from the Wall. The young one sees smoke from a fire and creeps up on it. He sees bodies hacked to bits and heads on stakes, dismembered limbs all around, including women and children. He turns and runs.
  14  We see their bodies are laid out in a kind of symbol, like a ring. He is chastised by his leader for being a coward, and reminded of their mission and the punishment for desertion.His comrades go to check out the bodies, and find theyve disappeared. One man finds what could be an organ in the snow, hes about to show it to the other man when something dark and sinister pops up out of snow and slashes him down. The remaining men run. Theyre chased by something that doesnt seem human. The creature catches one of the men and slices off his head. The remaining man drops to his knees and awaits his fate.Later, he stumbles across a field. Not dead. A band of men on horses intercept him.In Winterfell, Ned Stark (Sean Bean) watches his son Bran practice archery with the aid of Jon Snow, Neds bastard son. Inside the castle, his young daughter Arya practices needlepoint.
  15  Bran lets fly his arrow and misses wildly.Suddenly another strikes the bullseye. They turn to see who let it go its Arya, showing up her brother. A man comes to report they captured a deserter from the Nights Watch. Neds wife Catelyn asks him if he has to do what must be done. Ned says yes, and 10 year old Bran is coming to watch.They march the deserter to be beheaded. He tells Ned he saw White Walkers.Bran watches as his father beheads the man. Jon commends Bran for not looking away.After, Ned tells Bran that the White Walkers have been gone for thousands of years and the deserter must be crazy. He had to cut the man's head off himself because he passed the sentence, Ned explains.On the ride home they come upon a disemboweled elk and wonder what could have done it. They find a similarly hacked up wolf nearby, with two young pups. They believe theyre rare kind of wolf, a direwolf, of which there are only five south of the wall. Ned commands them killed because they wont survive without their mother. Jon suggests instead that the five pups go to the five Stark children. Jon gets the runt of the litter.Kings Landing, Capital of the Seven Kingdoms
  16  A funeral takes place in the grand cathedral.Ser Jaime Lannister checks on his twin sister, Queen Cersei Baratheon of the House of Lannister. Shes worried the dead guy Jon Arryn might have spilled her secret to her husband, the king.Back in Winterfell
  17  Cat tells her husband the news of Jon Arryns death. He was like a father to Ned.
  18  King Robert of Baratheon and Queen Cersei are on the way to Winterfell with their entourage.Bran climbs to the top of the compound to see the hundreds approaching. His mom chides him not to climb.The king and queen arrive. The Starks line up to greet them. Prince Joffrey Baratheon of the House of Baratheon makes eyes at Sansa Stark, Neds young daughter.
  19  They greet each other warmly. Arya is eager to see the imp.King Robert asks Ned to take him to the crypt.
  20  Down there, Robert says Arryn got sick suddenly and died. Robert asks Ned to come to Kings Landing and serve as Hand of the King, to run his kingdom. He wants Ned to help him keep the iron throne. He suggests they join their houses by marrying his son Joffrey and Neds daughter Sansa. We meet the imp, Tyrion Lannister, a dwarf. He is on the receiving end of a young womans attention.His brother Jaime busts in to tell them the Starks are feasting them at sundown. He brings additional whores to help Tyrion work out his desires before then.Robert pays his respects to Neds dead sister, who he was going to marry before the Targaryens killed her. He still feels strongly for her.Pentos
  21  Across the Narrow SeaPrincess Daenerys Targaryen gets ready for her wedding. Prince Viserys comes to check on his sister, complete with examining her naked. The marriage is meant to solidify Viserys reign and not wake the dragon.Later, she meets her intended king, a savage killer who has never been defeated in battle. He says nothing, and rides off. Viserys advisor assures him Khal Drogo approved of her. Later, Viserys is talking about returning to rule. Daenerys announces she doesnt want to be Khal Drogo's queen. Viserys explains they need Drogo's army to retake their kingdom, and he would let all 40,000 of Drogo's men and horses have their way with her if it meant a return to power.In Winterfell, Sansa begs her mother to convince her dad to let her marry so she can be queen.Neds brother Benjen Stark arrives from the Nights Watch. Jon asks to return to the wall with him, but Benjen says hes not ready.After Benjen leaves, Jon meets Tyrion, who encourages him to wear the fact hes a bastard like honor, and then it cant be used to hurt him. He empathizes, saying all dwarves are bastards in their fathers eyes.Benjen finds his brother Ned, who tells him the boy he beheaded was a true ranger. He seems surprised he deserted.Cersei watches distractedly as her husband gropes wenches at the feast. Sansa introduces herself. Shes only 13.Jaime accosts Ned, taunting him to fight when hes back in town.
  22  Arya gets removed from the party for flicking food.Later at night, Ned tells his wife he doesnt want to go to the city. Cat doesnt want him to go either. Theres a knock at their bedroom door.Its Maester Luwin, Neds counselor.
  23  A rider brought a letter from Cats sister. It was sent from the aerie. Cat reads it and her eyes get wide. She burns the letter.Her sister has fled the city. She said her husband Jon Arryn was murdered by the Lannisters, and theyre plotting against the king. Luwin tells Ned hes the only one who can protect the king.At the wedding feast for Daenrys and Drogo, Viserys is eager to get his throne back. Daenrys watches two men try to have sex with a woman in the middle of a dance and end up cutting each other to bits. We learn that a Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair.Jorah Mormant, an exiled knight, brings song books to Daenrys. She also gets a gift of dragons eggs.
  24  Khal gets up and goes to his horse. Daenrys follows, he gives her a white horse.
  25  As shes riding off, her brother tells her to make Drogo happy.Later, alone on the beach at sunset, she waits nervously as her new husband looks her over. She cries. He says only no as he slowly takes off her clothes and pushes her to the ground.Back in Winterfell, Ned prepares to ride with the King. As they set off, Bran climbs to the top of the compound walls again to watch his father ride away. Halfway up the wall he hears the sounds of people having sex. He sees Jaime with a woman bent over in front of him. Its his sister Cersei. She seems to be a willing participant.She shouts that Bran saw them.Jaime pulls Bran off the ledge. He assess how high up they are, then he gives Bran a shove. The things I do for love, he says."
  26  "The screen fills with green, cascading code which gives way to the title, The Matrix (1999).A phone rings and text appears on the screen: ""Call trans opt: received. 2-19-98 13:24:18 REC: Log>"" As a conversation takes place between Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), two free humans, a table of random green numbers are being scanned and individual numbers selected, creating a series of digits not unlike an ordinary phone number, as if a code is being deciphered or a call is being traced.Trinity discusses some unknown person. Cypher taunts Trinity, suggesting she enjoys watching him but they will have to kill him. Trinity counters that ""Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) says he may be 'the One',"" just as the sound of a number being selected alerts Trinity that someone may be tracing their call. She ends the call.Armed policemen move down a darkened, decrepit hallway in the Heart O' the City Hotel, their flashlight beam bouncing just ahead of them. They come to room 303, kick down the door and find a woman dressed in black, facing away from them. It's Trinity. She brings her hands up from the laptop she's working on at their command.Outside the hotel a car drives up and three agents appear in neatly pressed black suits. They are Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), Agent Brown (Paul Goddard), and Agent Jones (Robert Taylor). Agent Smith and the presiding police lieutenant argue. Agent Smith admonishes the policeman that they were given specific orders to contact the agents first, for their protection. The lieutenant dismisses this and says that they can handle ""one little girl"" and that he has two units that are bringing her down at that very moment. Agent Smith replies: ""No, Lieutenant. Your men are already dead.""Inside, Trinity easily defeats the six policemen sent to apprehend her, using fighting and evasion techniques that seem to defy gravity. She calls Morpheus, letting him know that the line has been traced, though she doesn't know how. Morpheus informs her that she will have to ""make it to another exit,"" and that Agents are heading toward her.A fierce rooftop chase ensues with Trinity and an Agent leaping impossibly from one building to the next, astonishing the policemen left behind. Trinity makes a daring leap across an alley and through a small window. She has momentarily lost her pursuers and makes it to a public phone booth on the street level. The phone begins to ring. As she approaches it a garbage truck, driven by Agent Smith, careens towards the phone booth. Trinity makes a desperate dash to the phone, picking it up just moments before the truck smashes the booth into a brick wall. The three Agents reunite at the front of the truck. There is no body in the wreckage. ""She got out,"" one says. The other says, ""The informant is real."" ""We have the name of their next target,"" says the other, ""His name is Neo.""Thomas Anderson, aka ""Neo"" (Keanu Reeves), a hacker with thick black hair and a sallow appearance, is asleep at his monitor. Notices about a manhunt for a man named Morpheus scroll across his screen as he sleeps. Suddenly Neo's screen goes blank and a series of text messages appear: ""Wake up, Neo."" ""The Matrix has you."" ""Follow the White Rabbit."" Then, the text says ""Knock, knock, Neo..."" just as he reads it, a knock comes at the door of his apartment, 101. It's a group of ravers and Neo gives them a contraband disc he has secreted in a copy of ""Simulacra and Simulation."" The lead raver asks him to join them and Neo demurs until he sees the tattoo of a small white rabbit on the shoulder of a seductive girl in the group.At a rave bar Neo stands alone and aloof as the group he's with continue partying. Trinity approaches him and introduces herself. Neo recognizes her name; she was a famous hacker and had cracked the IRS database. She tells him that he is in great danger, that they are watching him and that she knows that he is searching for answers, particularly to the most important question of all: what is the Matrix? The pulsing music of the bar gives way to the repetitious blare of Neo's alarm clock; it's 9:18 and he's late for work.At his job at Metacortex, a leading software company housed in an ominous high rise, Neo is berated by his boss for having a problem with authority, for thinking he's special. Neo listens to his boss, but his attention is on the persons cleaning the window of the office. Back at his bleak cubicle Neo receives a delivery as ""Thomas Anderson."" Upon opening the package he finds a cellphone which immediately rings. On the other end is Morpheus, who informs Neo that they've both run out of time and that ""they"" are coming for him. Morpheus tells him to slowly look up, toward the elevator. Agents Smith, Jones, and Brown are there, obviously looking for him, as a woman points towards Neo's cube. Morpheus tries to guide Neo out of the building but when he is instructed to get on a scaffolding and take it to the roof Neo rejects Morpheus' advice, allowing himself to be taken by the Agents.In an interrogation room the Agents confront Neo. They've had their eye on him for some time. He lives a dual existence: one life as Thomas A. Anderson, a software engineer for a Metacortex, the other life as Neo, a computer hacker ""guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for."" Agent Smith asks him to help them capture Morpheus, considered a dangerous terrorist, in exchange for amnesty. Neo gives them the finger and asks for his phone call. Mr. Smith asks what good is a phone call if he's unable to speak. Neo finds that his lips have fused together. Panicked, he is thrown on the interrogation table by the Agents and they implant a shrimp-like probe, a bug, in his stomach, entering through his navel.Neo awakens with a start in his own bed, assuming it has all been a bad dream. His phone rings and Morpheus is on the other line. He tells Neo that the line is tapped but they've underestimated his importance. Morpheus tells Neo he is the One and to meet him at the Adams St. bridge. There he is picked up by Trinity and two others in a car; they all wear black latex and leather. A woman in the front seat, Switch (Belinda McClory), suddenly points a gun at him and tells him to take off his shirt. Trinity tells him it's for their mutual protection and that he has to trust her. He takes off his shirt and she uses a device to remove the probe that Neo believed had been part of a nightmare. Trinity drops the bug out into the road where it slowly goes dark in the rain.Trinity takes Neo to Morpheus. Morpheus explains that he's been searching for Neo his entire life and asks if Neo feels like ""Alice in Wonderland, falling down the rabbit hole."" He explains to Neo that they exist in the Matrix, a false reality that has been constructed for humans to hide the truth. The truth is that everyone in the world is a slave, born into bondage. Morpheus holds out two pills. In his left palm is a blue pill. If Neo takes it he will wake up in his bed and ""believe whatever you want to believe."" But if he takes the red pill in Morpheus's right hand, then ""you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."" Neo takes the red pill.As the rest of Morpheus's crew straps him into a chair, Neo is told that pill he took is part of a trace program, to ""disrupt his input/output carrier signal"" so that they can pinpoint him. Neo looks at a shattered mirror placed next to him which miraculously repairs itself. Neo touches the surface and the silver begins to creep over his skin, engulfing him as Morpheus's crew attempt to locate something on the monitors around them. The silver fluid covers him entirely, moves down his throat and he blacks out.He awakens inside a pinkish/purple embryonic pod, extending from the side of a huge column, part of a massive power plant. He is hairless and naked, with thick black tubes snaking down his throat, plugged into the back of his skull, his spine, and invading most of the rest of his body. He finds his pod is open and that he is surrounded by tower after tower of pods just like his, all filled with bodies. Suddenly a menacing, hovering nurse robot grabs him by the throat. The cable inserted into the base of his skull suddenly detaches. The rest of the tubes pop off his limbs and Neo is flushed down a tube into an underground pool of filthy water. Just as he's about to drown in the muck a hovercraft appears above him, snags him and hauls him into its cargo bay. Neo finds himself surrounded by Morpheus's crew again, but they are dressed differently, in simple knit garments. Just before Neo passes out Morpheus says to him, ""Welcome to the real world.""Neo drifts in and out of consciousness. At one point he asks, ""Am I dead?"" ""Far from it,"" replies Morpheus. Again he wakes, his body a pincushion of acupuncture. ""Why do my eyes hurt?"" he asks. ""You've never used them,"" Morpheus replies.Neo finally wakes, fully clothed, with a short shock of hair on his head. He removes a connector that is sunk deep into his arm and reaches to find the large socket at the back of his neck when Morpheus enters the room. ""What is this place?"" Neo asks. ""The more important question is when,"" says Morpheus, ""You believe it is the year 1999, when in fact it is closer to the year 2199."" Morpheus goes on to say that they really don't know when it is. He gives Neo a tour of his ship, the Nebuchadnezzar (they pass a plaque stating it was built in 2069), an old, beaten hovercraft. Neo is introduced to Morpheus's crew including Trinity; Apoc (Julian Arahanga), a man with long, flowing black hair; Switch; Cypher (bald with a goatee); two brawny brothers, Tank (Marcus Chong) and Dozer (Anthony Ray Parker); and a young, thin man named Mouse (Matt Doran).Morpheus gets to the point. ""You wanted to know about the Matrix,"" he says, ushering him to a chair. Neo sits down in it and Trinity straps him in. A long probe is inserted into the socket at the back of Neo's skull.Neo wakes in a world of all white. He is in the Construct, a ""loading platform"" that Morpheus and his team use to prepare newly freed humans to deal with the Matrix world. Gone are the sockets in Neo's arms and neck and his hair is grown in. Morpheus tells him that what he is experiencing of himself is the ""residual self image, the mental projection of your digital self"" and bids him to sit while he explains the truth. ""This,"" he says, showing an image of a modern city, ""is the world that you know."" A thing that really exists ""only as part of a neural, interactive simulation that we call the Matrix.""Morpheus then shows Neo the world as it truly exists today, a scarred, desolate emptiness with charred, abandoned buildings, black earth, and a shrouded sky.Morpheus goes on to say that ""at some point in the early 21st century all of mankind was united in celebration as we gave birth"" to artificial intelligence, a ""singular consciousness that birthed an entire race of machines.""Someone started a war, and no one knows who, but it was known that it was mankind who blotted out the sky, attempting to deprive the machines of the solar power they required to function. Instead the machines turned to humans as a power source, enslaving them like Neo had been before he was freed. Morpheus goes on to explain that a human's body provides ""more electricity than a 120 volt battery and over 25k BTUs in body heat."" Morpheus shows Neo fields where machines grow human beings, connecting them to their outlets, ensconcing them in their pods, and feeding them with the liquefied remains of other human beings. ""The Matrix,"" says Morpheus, ""is a computer-generated dreamworld created to keep us under control, to turn us..."" into a mere power source, into coppertop batteries.Neo rejects this information so feverishly that he demands release from the Construct. He is back in the chair on the hovercraft. The crew pull out the spike at the back of his head and he fights to free himself from this harsh reality, only to end up vomiting on the floor and passing out.When Neo wakes up in his bunk, Morpheus is beside him. ""I can't go back, can I?"" Neo asks. ""No,"" says Morpheus. He apologizes to Neo for breaking a cardinal rule: after a certain age people aren't brought out of their simulacrum, but Morpheus explains he had to bring Neo out. When the Matrix was created there was a man born inside it who could create his own reality inside it. It was this man who set Morpheus and the others free. When he died, the Oracle (Gloria Foster) prophesied that he would return in another form. And that the return of the One would mean the destruction of the Matrix. As long as the Matrix exists, humanity will continue to live in complacency inside it and the world can never be free. ""I did what I did because I believe that search is over,"" says Morpheus.The next day Neo starts his training. Tank is his operator. Tank and his brother Dozer are ""100% pure old-fashioned, homegrown human. Born in the real world; a genuine child of Zion."" Zion, Tank explains, is the last human city, buried deep in the earth, near the core, for warmth. Tank straps Neo back into the jack-in chair, by-passes some preliminary programs and loads him up with combat training, starting with Jiu Jitsu. When Tank hits ""load"" Neo is shocked by the force of the knowledge pouring into him. ""I think he likes it,"" says Tank, ""want some more?"" ""Hell yes,"" replies Neo. Neo is fed a series of martial arts techniques including Kempo, Tae Kwon Do, Drunken Boxing and Kung Fu. Morpheus and Tank are amazed at Neo's ability to ingest information, but Morpheus wants to test Neo.Morpheus and Neo stand in a sparring program. The program has rules, like gravity. But as in many computer programs, some rules can be bent while others can be broken. Morpheus bids Neo to hit him, if he can. They fight with Neo impressively attacking but Morpheus easily parrying and subduing him. The rest of the crew gathers around the monitors to watch the fight. Morpheus ends up kicking Neo into a beam, explaining to him that the reason he has beaten him has nothing to do with muscles or reality. They spar again. ""What are you waiting for?"" Morpheus asks him. ""You're faster than this!"" Neo finally brings a punch near his teacher's face. Neo stops, telling Morpheus ""I know what you're trying to do."" Morpheus tells him he's only trying to ""show him the door"" and that Neo must step through it.A ""jump"" program is loaded. Both men now stand on one of several tall buildings in a normal city skyline. Morpheus tells Neo he must free his mind and leaps easily but impossibly from one building to the next. Neo nervously tries to follow him and doesn't make the jump, falling to the pavement below. Neo wakes back in the Nebudchanezzar with blood in his mouth. ""I thought it wasn't real,"" he says. ""Your mind makes it real,"" replies Morpheus. ""So, if you die in the Matrix, you die here?"" ""The body cannot live without the mind,"" says Morpheus, underlining the very real danger faced in the simulation.Later, while Neo is sleeping deeply, Trinity brings him dinner. Outside his room, Cypher remarks that Trinity never brought him dinner. He asks Trinity why, if Morpheus thinks Neo is the One, he hasn't taken him to see the Oracle yet. Trinity says he'll take him when he's ready.Morpheus and Neo are walking down a standard city street in what appears to be the Matrix. Morpheus explains that the Matrix is a system and that the system is their enemy. All the people that inhabit it, the people they are trying to free, are part of that system. Some are so inert, so dependent upon the Matrix that they can never be free. Neo notices a stunning girl in a red dress. ""Are you listening to me?"" asks Morpheus. He asks Neo to look at the girl again. Neo turns to face Agent Smith, pointing a gun straight at his head. Morpheus stops the simulation, which has just been created to look like the Matrix.Neo asks what the Agents are. ""Sentient programs,"" says Morpheus, that ""can move in and out of any software hard-wired into their system, meaning that they can take over anyone in the Matrix program. ""Inside the Matrix,"" Morpheus says, ""They are everyone and they are no one."" Thus Morpheus and his crew survive the Agents by running from them and hiding from the Agents even though they ""are guarding all the doors. They are holding all the keys and sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them."" But no one who has ever stood up to an Agent has survived; all have died. Still, Morpheus is certain that because the Agents live in a world of rules that they can never be as strong, never be as fast as he can be. ""What are you trying to tell me,"" asks Neo, ""That I can dodge bullets?"" ""When you're ready,"" Morpheus says, ""You won't have to."" Just then Morpheus gets a phone call. ""We've got trouble,"" Cypher says on the other line.The Nebuchadnezzar is on alert. They see the holographic image of a squiddy, a search and destroy sentinel, which is on their trail. They set the ship down in a huge sewer system and turn off the power. Tank stands at the ready switch of an EMP, electro-magnetic pulse, the only weapon man has against the machines in the real world. Two squiddies search for the ship -- the crew can see them -- but they move on.Neo startles Cypher, who is working at a computer console streaming with green code. Cypher offers Neo a drink and says that he knows what Neo is thinking, ""Why, oh why didn't I take the blue pill?"" Neo laughs but is unsettled. Cypher asks Neo if Morpheus has told him why he's here. Neo nods. ""What a mind job,"" says Cypher, ""so you're here to save the world.""Cypher is now in a fancy restaurant with Agent Smith in the Matrix. Agent Smith asks if they have a deal. Cypher cuts up a juicy steak and ruminates that he knows the steak is merely the simulation telling his brain that it is delicious and juicy, but after nine years he has discovered that ""ignorance is bliss."" He strikes a deal for the machines to reinsert his body into a power plant, reinsert him into the Matrix, and he'll help the Agents. He wants to be rich and powerful, ""an actor"" maybe. Smith says he wants access codes to the mainframe in Zion. Cypher says he can't do that, but that he can get him the man who does, meaning Morpheus.Meanwhile, inside the Nebuchadnezzar's small dining room in the real world, the rest of the crew is trying to choke down the oatmeal-gruel that they have as sustenance. Mouse muses on the mistakes the machines may have made trying to get sensations right, like the taste of chicken. Since they didn't know what it tasted like they let everything taste like it. Morpheus interrupts the meal, announcing that he's taking Neo to see the Oracle.Morpheus, Trinity, Neo, Apoc, Switch, Mouse and Cypher are jacked into the Matrix. As they walk out of a warehouse Cypher secretly throws his cell phone into the garbage. On the car ride to the Oracle, Neo asks Trinity if she has seen the Oracle. Trinity says that she has but when she's asked just what she was told by the Oracle, she refuses to answer.The Oracle, Morpheus explains, has been with them since the beginning of the Resistance. She is the one who made the Prophecy of the One and that Morpheus would be the one to find him. She can help Neo find the path, he says. He enters the apartment of the Oracle. Inside are the other potentials: a mother figure and numerous children. One child levitates blocks, one reads Asian literature, another is playing chess. One bald child is bending spoons. He gives one spoon to Neo and says, ""Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...that there is no spoon."" Neo bends the spoon as he's called in to see the Oracle.The Oracle is baking cookies. She sizes Neo up and asks him whether he thinks he is the One. Neo admits that he does not know and the Oracle does not enlighten him. Neo smiles and the Oracle asks him what is funny. Neo admits that Morpheus had almost convinced him that he was the One. She accepts this and prophesies that Morpheus believes in Neo so much that he plans to sacrifice himself. She tells Neo that either he or Morpheus will die, and that Neo will have the power to choose which one it will be. She then offers him a cookie and promises him that he will feel fine as soon as he's done eating it.As the crew returns to their jack point, many floors up in an old hotel, Tank, in the control room, notices something odd. Meanwhile Neo, walking up the stairs, sees what appears to be the same cat cross a room twice. ""Deja vu,"" he says, which gets the attention of Trinity and Morpheus. Deja vu, they explain to him, is a glitch in the Matrix; it happens when they reset the computer parameters. Outside, the phone line is cut. Mouse runs to a window which has now been bricked in. They are trapped. Mouse picks up two machine guns but he's no match for the police coming into the room. He's riddled with bullets.Back on the Nebuchadnezzar, the real Mouse spurts blood from his mouth and dies in the chair.More police and Agents stream into the bottom of the hotel. Morpheus has Tank find a layout of the building they're in, locating the main wet wall. The Agents arrive on the floor they're on, finding a coat that Cypher has left behind. They only find a hole in the bathroom wall. Meanwhile the crew is climbing down the plumbing of the wet wall. As the police approach Cypher sneezes, once more giving them away. The police open fire. The crew, including Neo, begin to fire back.An Agent takes over the body of one of the policemen, reaches into the wall, and grabs Neo by the neck. Morpheus, who is above Neo in the walls, breaks through the wall and lands on the agent, yelling to Trinity to get Neo out of the building.A fierce battle between Agent Smith and Morpheus ends with Morpheus face down on the tile. Agent Smith sends the police unit in to beat him with their batons.Cypher returns to the Nebuchadnezzar before Trinity, Neo, Switch and Apoc. As Tank attempts to bring the others back, Cypher attacks him from behind with an electronic weapon. Dozer attempts to tackle Cypher, but Cypher electrocutes him as well.Trinity attempts to call Tank but Cypher pulls the headset off of the smoking remains of Tank and answers. As Cypher talks to Trinity inside the Matrix he leans over the still form of Trinity in the hovercraft. Cypher recounts the things he hates about the real world, the war, the cold, the goop they have to eat, but most especially Morpheus and his beliefs. ""He lied to us, Trinity.""Cypher pulls the plug out of the back of Apoc's head, and Apoc falls down dead in the Matrix. Cypher then moves to Switch and as she protests ""Not like this..."" in the Matrix, Cypher kills her on the ship. She falls down dead before Trinity and Neo. Cypher moves on to Neo's supine form, saying that if Neo is the One, a miracle will prevent Cypher from killing him:""How can he be the One, if he's dead?"" he asks. He continues badgering Trinity, asking her if she believes that Neo is the One. She says, ""Yes."" Cypher screams back ""No!"" but his reaction is incredulity at seeing Tank still alive, brandishing the weapon that Cypher had used on him. Tank fries Cypher with the electrical device.Tank brings Trinity back and she finds out that Dozer is dead.Meanwhile Agent Smith, a tray of torture instruments near him, marvels at the beauty of the Matrix as he gazes out at the city all around them. He informs Morpheus, who is tied to a chair, that the first Matrix was designed as a utopia, engineered to make everyone happy. ""It was a disaster,"" says Agent Smith, people wouldn't accept the program and ""entire crops were lost."" ""Some believed,"" continues Smith, ""that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned."" Agent Smith compares humans to dinosaurs and that evolution is taking hold. Another Agent enters and relays that there may be a problem (as they now know that Cypher has failed).Back on the hovercraft the shuddering form of Morpheus betrays the torture he's being put through by the Agents in the Matrix. Tank realizes that they're trying to get the codes to the mainframes of Zion's computers; each ship's captain knows them. Because a breach of Zion's defenses would mean that the last remaining vestiges of mankind would be wiped out, Tank says their only choice is to unplug Morpheus, effectively killing him.Back in the Matrix, the Agents process their next move. If Cypher is dead, they deduce that the remaining humans on the ship will terminate Morpheus. They decide to stick to their original plan and to deploy the Sentinels.Tank is performing what amounts to last rites for Morpheus, laying one hand on his head as his other moves to the back of his skull to remove the jack. Just as he's about to pull it out Neo stops him. He realizes that the Oracle was right. He now has to make the choice to save himself or to save Morpheus; his choice is to head back into the Matrix. Trinity rejects the idea. Morpheus gave himself up so that Neo could be saved since he is the One.""I'm not the One, Trinity,"" Neo says, relaying his understanding of the discussion with the Oracle: she did not enlighten him as to whether he was the promised messiah. And, since Morpheus was willing to sacrifice himself, Neo knows that he must do that same. Tank calls it suicide; it's a military building with Agents inside. Neo says he only knows that he can bring Morpheus out. Trinity decides to come with him, reasoning with Neo that he will need her help and she's the ranking officer on the ship. ""Tank,"" she says, ""load us up!""Meanwhile Agent Smith continues to share his musings with a brutalized Morpheus. Because humans spread to an area, consume the natural resources and, to survive, must spread to another area, Smith says we are not mammals but viruses, the only other creature that acts that way.In the Construct, Neo and Trinity get armaments. ""Neo,"" protests Trinity, ""No one has ever done anything like this."" ""That's why it's going to work,"" he replies.Morpheus has yet to break and Smith asks the other Agents why the serum isn't working. ""Maybe we're asking the wrong questions,"" responds one. To that Smith commands the other Agents to leave him alone with Morpheus. Smith removes his earphone and his glasses and confides that he hates the Matrix, ""this zoo, this prison."" Smith admits that he must get out of this ""reality."" He hates the stench. He's sure that some element of the humans will rub off on him and that Morpheus holds the key to his release. If there is no Zion there's no need for Smith to be in the Matrix. ""You are going to tell me, or you are going to die.""Downstairs, in the lobby, Trinity and Neo enter, heavily armed. They shoot their way past the guards and a group of soldiers and make their way into the elevator.Agents Brown and Jones enter the interrogation room to find Smith with his hands still fixed on Morpheus's head. Smith looks embarrassed and befuddled and the others tell him about the attack occurring downstairs. They realize that the humans are trying to save Morpheus.In the elevator, Trinity arms a bomb. They both climb through a hatch to the elevator roof, attaching a clamp to the elevator cable. Neo says ""There is no spoon"" before he severs the cable with a few shots. The counterweight drops, propelling Neo and Trinity upward. The elevator falls to the lobby exploding upon impact and filling the floor with flames.The Agents feel the rumble of the explosion and the sprinkers come on in the building. ""Find them and destroy them!"" Smith commands.On the roof, a helicopter pilot is calling ""Mayday"" as Trinity and Neo take out the soldiers there. Agent Brown takes over the pilot and appears behind Neo. Neo shoots several rounds at the Agent, who dodges them and pulls his own weapon.""Trinity,"" yells Neo, ""Help!"" But it's too late. The Agent begins to shoot. Instead of being shot, Neo dodges most of the bullets, though two of them nick him. As the Agent approaches Neo, who is lying on the ground, he levels a kill shot but Trinity shoots him before he can fire. Trinity marvels at how fast Neo has just moved; she's never seen anyone move that quickly.Tank downloads the ability to fly the helicopter to Trinity, who can now pilot the aircraft. Trinity brings the helicopter down to the floor that Morpheus is on and Neo opens fire on the three Agents. The Agents quickly fall and Morpheus is alone in the room. Just as quickly the Agents take over other soldiers stationed nearby. Morpheus breaks his bonds and begins to run to the helicopter. The Agents fire on him, hitting his leg. Morpheus leaps but Neo realizes that he is not going to make the leap and throws himself out of the helicopter, a safety harness attached.He catches Morpheus, but Agent Smith shoots the helicopter's hydraulic line.Unable to control the helicopter, Trinity miraculously gets it close enough to drop Morpheus and Neo on a rooftop. Neo grabs the safety line as the helicopter falls towards a building. Trinity severs the safety line connecting Neo to the helicopter and jumps on it herself as the vehicle smashes into the side of a building, causing a bizarre ripple in the fabric of the building's reality as it does.On the ship Tank says, ""I knew it; he's the One.""Neo hauls Trinity up to them. ""Do you believe it now, Trinity?"" asks Morpheus as he approaches the two. Neo tries to tell him that the Oracle told him the opposite but Morpheus says, ""She told you exactly what you needed to hear."" They call Tank, who tells them of an exit in a subway near them.The Agents arrive on the rooftop but find only the safety harness and line. Though Agent Smith is angered, the other two are satisfied. A trace has been completed in the real world and the Sentinels have been dispatched to attack the Nebuchadnezzar.In the subway, they quickly find the phone booth and Morpheus exits out of the Matrix. A wino watches this occur. On the rooftop Agent Smith locks in to their whereabouts through the wino and appropriates his body.Meanwhile, as the phone rings, providing Trinity's exit, she confides to Neo that everything that the Oracle has told her has come true, except for one thing. She doesn't say what that thing is and picks up the phone just as she sees the approaching Agent Smith. Smith shatters the ear piece of the phone; it's impossible for Neo to exit there now.Instead of running, which Trinity implores him to do as she looks on from the ship, Neo turns to face Smith. They empty their guns on each other, neither hitting the other. They then move into close combat, trading blows. Neo sweeps Agent Smith's head, breaking his glasses. ""I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson,"" says Smith. They trade some thunderous blows with Smith hitting Neo so hard he spits up blood in the Matrix and in the chair aboard the ship.""He's killing him,"" says Trinity.Neo gets back up, sets himself and beckons Smith to start again. This time it's Neo who delivers devastating blow after blow. But Smith counters, throwing Neo into a wall then pummeling him with body blows. A wind from the tunnel signals that a subway train is approaching and Smith has a wicked notion. He throws Neo into the subway tracks then drops down there himself. He puts Neo in a headlock and, in the glow of the oncoming subway says, ""You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Good-bye, Mr. Anderson.""""My name,"" he replies, ""is Neo."" Then, with a mighty leap, Neo propels them to the ceiling of the tunnel. They fall back down and Neo backflips off the tracks, leaving Agent Smith to the oncoming train.Neo heads for the stairs, but Smith has already appropriated another body and emerges from the doors of the train.Meanwhile the Sentinels have arrived to attack the Nebuchadnezzar; there are five of them and they are closing fast.Morpheus tells Tank to charge the EMP. Trinity reminds Morpheus that they can't use the EMP while Neo is in the Matrix.""I know, Trinity, don't worry,"" says Morpheus, ""He's going to make it.""Back in the streets of the Matrix, Neo swipes a cell phone from a nearby suit. He calls Tank: ""Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here."" He races through a crowded market while Agents appropriate bodies right and left. They force Neo down a dark alley. He kicks in a door and rushes through an apartment complex where the Agents appropriate more bodies, including that of a sweet little old lady who throws a knife at Neo as Agent Smith. Neo leaps down into a pile of garbage with the Agents in hot pursuit.On the Nebuchadnezzar the Sentinels have arrived. They begin to tear the ship apart.In the Matrix, Neo arrives back at the Heart O' the City Hotel. Tank tells him to go to room 303. The Agents are literally at his heels.The Sentinels breach the hull of the ship. They are inside. Trinity, standing next to Neo's body in the chair, begs him to hurry.Neo reaches room 303 and enters. He's immediately shot, point blank in the gut, by Agent Smith. Smith empties his magazine into Neo's body. Neo slumps to the floor, dead.On the ship Neo's vital signs drop to nothing. ""It can't be,"" says Morpheus.Agent Smith instructs the others to check Neo. ""He's gone,"" one replies. ""Good-bye, Mr. Anderson,"" says Smith.The Sentinels' lasers are beginning to cut through the major parts of the hovercraft. Trinity leans over his dead body.""Neo,"" she says, ""I'm not afraid anymore. The Oracle told me that I would fall in love and that that man... the man that I loved would be the One. So you see, you can't be dead. You can't be... because I love you. You hear me? I love you."" She kisses him. In the chair Neo suddenly breathes. In the Matrix, Neo opens his eyes. ""Now get up,"" orders Trinity.The Agents hear Neo rise behind them and they open fire. ""No,"" Neo says calmly, raising his hands. He stops their bullets in mid-air. They drop harmlessly to the floor.""What's happening?"" asks Tank. ""He is the One,"" says Morpheus.Back in the Matrix, Neo can see things for what they really are, green cascading code.Agent Smith is furious. He runs to Neo and attacks him. Neo blocks Smith's blows effortlessly before he sends Smith flying with one well-placed kick. Neo then leaps into Smith's body and appropriates him. Smith's shell explodes in a sea of code and Neo is all that is left, the walls buckling in waves as they did when the helicopter crashed. Agents Brown and Jones look at one another and run away.The Sentinels are now fully in the ship. They are right above Trinity and Morpheus.Back in the Matrix Neo sprints to the ringing phone in the room.Morpheus has no choice but to engage the EMP. He does and the Sentinels fall inert to the floor.Neo has made it back. He kisses Trinity.The screen is black. A command prompt appears: ""Call trans opt: received. 9-18-99 14:32:21 REC: Log>"" then ""Carrier anomaly"" ""Trace program: running"" As the grid of numbers appears again a warning appears ""System Failure."" Over it all is Neo's voice:""I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.""In the Matrix world, Neo hangs up the phone. He looks at the mindless masses around him, puts on his glasses and then looks up. From high above the city we see him take flight. The story is picked up in The Matrix Reloaded (2003), the second of three Matrix movies."
  27  "The prologue, spoken by Galadriel, shows the Dark Lord Sauron forging the One Ring which he can use to conquer the lands of Middle-earth through his enslavement of the bearers of the Rings of Power powerful magical rings given to individuals from the races of Elves, Dwarves and Men. A Last Alliance of Elves and Men is formed to counter Sauron and his forces at the foot of Mount Doom, but Sauron himself appears to kill Elendil, the High King of Arnor and Gondor, and Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor. After Elendil falls his son, Isildur, grabs the hilt of his father's broken sword Narsil, and slashes at Sauron's hand. The stroke cuts off Sauron's fingers, separating him from the Ring and vanquishing his army. However, because Sauron's life is bound in the Ring, he is not completely defeated until the Ring itself is destroyed. Isildur takes the Ring and succumbs to its temptation, refusing to destroy it, but he is later ambushed and killed by orcs and the Ring is lost in the River Anduin, into which Isildur fell.The Ring is found 2,500 years later, and eventually it comes to the creature Gollum, who takes it underground for five centuries, giving Gollum ""unnaturally long life."" The Ring leaves him however, and is found by the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, much to the grief of Gollum, who called it his ""precious"". Bilbo returns to his home in the Shire with the Ring, and the story jumps forward in time sixty years. At his 111th birthday, Bilbo leaves the Ring to his nephew and adopted heir Frodo Baggins. The Wizard Gandalf soon learns it is the One Ring, and sends him to Bree with Sam, with plans to meet him there after Gandalf goes to Isengard to meet the head of his order, Saruman. Saruman reveals that the Nazgûl, or Ringwraiths, have left Mordor to capture the Ring and kill whoever carries it; having already turned to Sauron's cause, he then imprisons Gandalf atop Orthanc. Gandalf sees Saruman's ultimate plan; he has begun to destroy the forest surrounding Isengard for fuel to forge weapons for an army of large orcs, the Uruk-hai.Frodo and Sam are soon joined by fellow hobbits Merry and Pippin. After encountering and eluding a Ringwraith on the road, they manage to reach Bree, and there they meet a man called Strider, who agrees to lead them to Rivendell and helps them elude the Ringwraiths again. The hobbits agree because Gandalf isn't there to guide them. After some travelling, they spend the night on the hill of Weathertop, where they are attacked by the Nazgûl. Strider battles the spectres and fights them off, but Frodo is grievously wounded with a Morgul blade, and they must quickly get him to Rivendell for healing. While chased by the Nazgûl, Frodo is taken by the elf Arwen to the elvish haven of Rivendell, and healed by her father, Elrond.In Rivendell Frodo meets Gandalf, who explains why he didn't meet them at Bree as planned -- while imprisoned atop Orthanc, he was able to escape with the aide of Gwaihir, a giant eagle. In the meantime, there are many meetings between various peoples, and Elrond calls a council to decide what should be done with the Ring. The Ring can only be destroyed by throwing it into the fires (that is, lava) of Mount Doom, where it was forged. Mount Doom is located in Mordor, near Sauron's fortress of Barad-dûr, and will be an incredibly dangerous journey. Frodo volunteers to take the Ring to Mount Doom as all the others argue about who should or shouldn't take it. He is accompanied by his hobbit friends and Gandalf, as well as Strider, who is revealed to be Aragorn, the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor. Also travelling with them are the Elf Legolas, the Dwarf Gimli and Boromir, the son of the Steward of Gondor. Together they comprise the Fellowship of the Ring. The Fellowship set out and try to pass the mountain Caradhras, but they are stopped by Saruman, who uses his wizardry to create an avalanche. They are forced to travel under the mountain through the Mines of Moria. After journeying partway through the Mines, Pippin accidentally gives away their presence to a band of orcs. The Fellowship encounter a Balrog, an ancient demon of fire and shadow, at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Gandalf confronts the Balrog on the bridge, allowing the others to escape the mines, while he falls with the creature into the abyss below.The group flees to the elvish realm of Lothlórien, where they are sheltered by its rulers, Galadriel and her husband Celeborn. Galadriel is tested when she tries to convince Frodo to give the ring to her but she regains her senses and bids him to protect the ring until it can be destroyed. After resting, the band decide to travel on the River Anduin towards Parth Galen. Before they leave, Galadriel gives Frodo the Phial of Galadriel, a light source. After landing at Parth Galen, Boromir, affected by the ring's power, tries to take the Ring from Frodo, who manages to escape by putting the Ring on his finger and vanishing. Knowing that the Ring's temptation will be too strong for the Fellowship, Frodo decides to leave them and go to Mordor alone. Meanwhile, the rest of the Fellowship are attacked by Uruk-hai, larger and stronger orcs bred by Saruman that can withstand sunlight. Merry and Pippin, realizing that Frodo is leaving, distract the orcs, allowing Frodo to escape. Boromir rushes to the aid of the two hobbits but is mortally wounded by the orc commander Lurtz, and Merry and Pippin are captured. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli find Boromir, who regrets attempting to steal the Ring and dies. They decide to pursue the orcs and rescue the hobbits, leaving Frodo to his fate. Sam joins Frodo before he leaves, and together the two head to Mordor."
  28  "In the opening scene, a flashback, two hobbits, Sméagol (Andy Serkis) and his friend Déagol (Thomas Robins), are fishing the River Anduin near the Gladden Fields in the North of Middle Earth. Déagol is dragged into the river by a powerful catch and discovers the One Ring glinting in the river bed. He collects it and climbs out of the water. Sméagol sees him fondling it and as they both succumb to the Ring's power they begin to quarrel. Sméagol demands the Ring, saying that it's his birthday and it should be his present. The squabble turns into a fight; Sméagol strangles his friend with his bare hands and pries the Ring from Déagol's clenched fist. Sméagol is ostracized from his community and driven away. Suffering terribly from loneliness and shame, Sméagol takes solace in his love for the Ring, which slowly tortures his mind. He takes solitary refuge in caves beneath the mountains, where under the influence of the Ring he lives to a very great age. He dwindles into a hunched, furtive, slinking creature known by the unpleasant noise he makes in his throat -- ""Gollum.""In the present, on the outskirts of Mordor, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are resting in an alcove. Sam awakes and sees that his master has not slept. The days are growing darker the closer they get to Minas Morgul and Mordor. Gollum arrives and urges them to move on.Away in the west, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Théoden (Bernard Hill), and Éomer (Karl Urban) ride through the forest of Fangorn to Isengard, where they meet Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) feasting among the wreckage. They find Treebeard at the tower of Orthanc in the center of Isengard, where Saruman (Christopher Lee) has been trapped. Gandalf opposes Gimli's call to kill Saruman, saying that the wizard has no power anymore and will pose no further threat. Saruman shows himself to them. Gandalf shatters Saruman's staff, robbing him of his power. Grima (Brad Dourif), who is still with him, stabs him with a knife. Legolas shoots Grima with an arrow, but Saruman falls to his death, landing on the spikes of a large waterwheel. As they are talking, Pippin sees Saruman's palantír amongst the flotsam and is entranced by it, but Gandalf quickly takes it from him and hides in under his cloak.The group rides to Edoras, where King Théoden has prepared a large banquet to 'hail the victorious dead' of the Battle of the Hornburg. There Éowyn (Miranda Otto) shows affection for Aragorn which Théoden notices; he tells her that he is happy for her, Aragorn being an honorable man and the architect of the victory at Helm's Deep. Gandalf expresses to Aragorn his concerns over the quest. Aragorn tells him to trust in what his heart tells him, that Frodo is still alive.Gollum awakes in the night as Frodo and Sam are sleeping and goes off to one side to murmur to himself. His evil half senses some doubt in Sméagol and insists that if he can murder once (like he murdered Déagol for the ring) he can do it again. Gollum then begins leading Sméagol through their plan, to deliver the hobbits into the clutches of Shelob in Cirith Ungol, after which the Ring can be reclaimed. Sam hears the conversation and beats Gollum for his treachery. Frodo intervenes, saying that as their guide Gollum is necessary for their quest. Sam glowers as Gollum flashes him an evil smile while Frodo's back is turned.That same night back in Edoras, Pippin's curiosity gets the better of him; relieving a sleeping Gandalf of the palantír, he looks into it. Pippin sees a vision of a white tree in a stone courtyard set ablaze, but in doing so he is caught by Sauron and submitted to mental torture and questioning. Aragorn tries to rescue him, briefly exposing himself to Sauron. Pippin recovers from his ordeal and it is discovered that he did not tell Sauron anything of the Ring's whereabouts. From Pippin's vision of the White Tree, Gandalf deduces that Sauron is now moving to attack the great Gondorian city of Minas Tirith and he rides off to send warning, taking Pippin with him, lest his urge to look into the palantír (left now in Aragorn's keeping) return again.Leaving Rivendell on her way to the Undying Lands, Arwen (Liv Tyler) has a vision of Eldarion (Sadwyn Brophy), the son she will have with Aragorn. She realises that her father lied to her when he said she and Aragorn had no future together. She returns to Rivendell and convinces Elrond (Hugo Weaving) that having forsaken the life of the Eldar, she cannot leave Aragorn now. She tells her father that as foretold, the time to reforge Narsil has come. Narsil, the sword of Elendil, is the birthright of the true heir of Isildur, the man who used the sword to cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand.Gandalf and Pippin arrive at Minas Tirith, City of Kings, that was built out of the rock of Mindolluin. There Pippin recognises the White Tree as they go to find the Steward Denethor (John Noble). They approach him as he mourns over Boromir (Sean Bean), his son. Pippin swears loyalty to him in recompense for Boromir's sacrifice. Denethor seems to be caught up in his grief and has not taken measures to fortify the city against the threat of Sauron.Meanwhile, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum arrive at Minas Morgul. Wary of the enemy, they locate the Winding Stair (leading to the pass of Cirith Ungol) that lies hidden in the cliffs surrounding the accursed city. Just at that moment, the doors of the city open and the Witch-king of Angmar, leader of the Nazgûl, dispatches his immense Orc army from his lair, heralding the start of the war. The outpouring of the army is witnessed by Gandalf and Pippin as a flash of lightning shoots up at the opening of the doors. At the urging of Gandalf, Pippin lights the first of the beacon signals to Edoras, alerting Théoden, Aragorn and the rest of the Rohirrim to muster at Dunharrow and thence to Minas Tirith. As they leave Edoras, Aragorn notices that Éowyn saddles up with them and that she is girt with a sword, but she insists that she rides only to see them off and that the men have found their captain in Aragorn.The Morgul army crosses Anduin at Osgiliath in makeshift boats and engages the Gondorian contingent (lead by Boromir's brother Faramir (David Wenham)) in battle. The orcs prove too strong and drive the Gondorians out of Osgiliath; Faramir and his few surviving men retreat to Minas Tirith, pursued by the Nazgûl. Gandalf, riding out to meet the retreating men, wards them off, saving Faramir. Upon his arrival, Faramir (who met Frodo, Sam, and Gollum in Ithilien just before they headed for the mountain pass into Mordor) tells Gandalf of the dangerous route Gollum is taking Frodo and Sam on, convincing Gandalf of Gollum's treachery. The hobbits, lead by Gollum, are struggling to climb the extremely steep stairs. Gollum reaches out and empathises with Frodo, saying that he understands his pain. Gollum also poisons Frodo against Sam, saying that Sam will try and take the Ring from Frodo.In the captured Osgiliath, the Witch-king orders his captain to ""send forth all legions"" and annihilate the population of Minas Tirith, saying that he himself will ""break"" the wizard Gandalf. Denethor, ill-pleased by Faramir's failed defence of Osgiliath, manipulates him into taking a doomed ride to reclaim the city. Gollum continues to play the hobbits against each other, this time by blaming Sam for eating their food provisions. Frodo, in his deluded state, is suspicious of Sam and orders him back home when Sam, trying to be helpful, offers to carry the Ring, thereby fulfilling Gollum's cunning prediction. Faramir rides head-long into the arrows of the encamped orcs as Pippin sings for Denethor who unconcernedly eats his noon meal. Faramir's attack fails and Faramir is dragged back by his horse in a death-like coma.At the weapon-take at Dunharrow, a hooded figure slowly rides on a white horse along the winding road to the encampment in the hills. The figure reveals himself to Aragorn as Elrond. He presents Aragorn with his birthright -- the newly reforged sword Narsil, now named Anduril, Flame of the West. He urges Aragorn to use this sword to recall the Dead Men of Dunharrow and use their allegiance to the heir of Isildur (i.e. Aragorn) to stop the attack of the Corsairs' ships, which are already sailing from the south. Aragorn accepts this counsel and rides off that very night into the Dimholt, along with Legolas and Gimli. As he is preparing to go, a tearful Éowyn comes to Aragorn and begs him not to go, declaring her love for him, but Aragorn, knowing now that Arwen has refused the promise of Valinor, likewise refuses Éowyn's love. The next morning, Théoden rides off to war with six thousand riders, unaware that Éowyn and Merry, who were both told to remain behind by the King, are part of his army.The Morgul forces, composed mostly of Orcs, begin the siege of Minas Tirith by catapulting the heads of captured prisoners over the walls. Denethor sees his son Faramir and believes him to be dead; he also beholds the might of the forces marshaled against him and at this he loses hope and his mind, ordering the Gondorians to abandon their positions. Gandalf, however, steps in and incapacitates Denethor, assuming control of the defense. A skirmish between Gondorian trebuchets and Mordor's catapults ensues until the Witch-king and the other Ringwraiths on their Fell Beasts attack, destroying the trebuchets and sewing terror among the defenders.Away in Cirith Ungol, Gollum betrays Frodo to the giant spider-creature Shelob, but Sam returns to fight her off. Sam believes Frodo is dead, but when Orcs from the Tower of Cirith Ungol come and investigate, Sam overhears that Frodo has only been paralysed by Shelob's stinger.In Minas Tirith, Denethor, stricken mad with grief at having spent both his sons, prepares a funeral pyre for himself and the unconscious Faramir. Denethor is unaware that Faramir is not dead and the pyre will burn him alive. Gandalf and Pippin arrive in the Hallows and manage to save Faramir, but Denethor is thrown onto the pyre and as he burns to death, he turns and sees his son stirring awake from his injuries and exhaustion. Down in the city, the battle goes ill with the Gondorians, as the huge battering ram Grond shatters the gates of the city and trolls pour in. As the defenders retreat to the upper levels of the city, the orcs crawl through the streets of the lower levels, looting, burning and massacring the men of Gondor. But suddenly in the midst of the chaos a lone horn penetrates the air and all turn to the west and see the army of Rohan arrive at last, to the rising of the sun. The Rohirrim charge into the Orcs with great effect. However their joy is cut short by the arrival of the forces of Harad and the immense elephants, the Mûmakil. The Witch-king descends on Théoden, killing Snowmane his horse and fatally wounding the King. Seemingly in the nick of time, the Corsairs' ships arrive to help the stranded Orcs, but it is Aragorn who jumps off the lead ship, followed by an army of the dead. They completely destroy the Orcs and Mûmakil, while Éowyn and Merry kill the Witch-king. Théoden dies of his wounds and Aragorn holds the Dead Army's oath fulfilled, releasing them from their curse so that they may rest in peace.Sam rescues Frodo from Cirith Ungol, which is mostly empty following a fight between the two factions of the Tower's Orc garrison over Frodo's valuable mithril shirt. They begin the long trek across Mordor to Mount Doom. Gandalf realizes that ten thousand Orcs stand between Cirith Ungol and Mount Doom, which will prevent Frodo from reaching his destination. Aragorn proposes they lead the remaining soldiers to the Black Gate to draw the Orcs away from Frodo's path, as well as distract the Eye of Sauron. Sam carries Frodo up to Mount Doom, but Gollum arrives and attacks them, just as the Battle of the Morannon begins. At the Crack of Doom, Frodo, instead of dropping the Ring into the fire, succumbs to its power and puts it on, disappearing from sight. The act alerts Sauron, who sends the Ringwraiths racing towards Mount Doom. Gollum renders Sam unconscious then attacks Frodo, seizing his ring finger and biting it off. As Gollum rejoices at finally having reclaimed his Precious, Frodo, still under the sway of the Ring's attraction, charges at Gollum. After a brief struggle, they both fall over the edge of the precipice. Gollum falls into the fire with the Ring, while Frodo barely hangs on with his strength failing. Sam rescues Frodo as the Ring finally sinks into the lava and is destroyed. Sauron's Eye screams as his essence fades before the tower of Barad-dûr collapses and then explodes, forever banishing his power. The Orcs, Ringwraiths and the remaining forces of Sauron are consumed in the ensuing shockwave as the earth collapses under their feet; the Black Gate and Mordor are both shaken apart. Frodo and Sam become stranded when the entire top of Mount Doom is blown off in a large eruption. They voice their regrets at not being able to see the Shire again amidst the torrents of lava and the destruction of Barad-dur. With the destruction of the Nazgul, Gandalf is able to call upon the Eagles to carry the hobbits to safety. They awake in Minas Tirith, reuniting with the other members of the fellowship, all of them but Boromir having survived the War of the Ring.In Minas Tirith, Aragorn is crowned King of the West, heralding the new age of peace, and marries Arwen. Here is when everybody kneels down in homage to the little hobbits. The hobbits return to the Shire, where Sam marries Rosie Cotton (Sarah McLeod). Frodo, having finished writing his entry in the Red Book of Westmarch, is still suffering from the effects of the wounds he received from the Ringwraiths at Weathertop and from Shelob. Realizing that he will never have peace in Middle Earth, he decides to go with Gandalf, Bilbo, Elrond, and Galadriel to the Grey Havens and sail to Valinor, the Undying Lands. Before embarking at the havens, Frodo passes the Red Book to Sam to record the years of his life to come. Then the last ship to leave Middle Earth sets off, pulling slowly away from the shore and passing along the Straight Road into the Uttermost West. Pippin and Merry take their leave and Sam is left staring into the golden sunset. In the last scene, Sam walks back up the lane to Bag End, where he is greeted by his wife Rosie, and his children. Surrounded by his family and with the rest of his life ahead of him, Sam sighs and says ""Well, I'm back."" He goes inside and shuts the door as the screen fades to black."
  29  "In late summer 1945, guests are gathered for the wedding reception of Don Vito Corleone's daughter Connie (Talia Shire) and Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo). Vito (Marlon Brando), the head of the Corleone Mafia family, is known to friends and associates as ""Godfather."" He and Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), the Corleone family lawyer, are hearing requests for favors because, according to Italian tradition, ""no Sicilian can refuse a request on his daughter's wedding day."" One of the men who asks the Don for a favor is Amerigo Bonasera, a successful mortician and acquaintance of the Don, whose daughter was brutally beaten by two young men because she refused their advances; the men received minimal punishment from the presiding judge. The Don is disappointed in Bonasera, who'd avoided most contact with the Don due to Corleone's nefarious business dealings. The Don's wife is godmother to Bonasera's shamed daughter, a relationship the Don uses to extract new loyalty from the undertaker. The Don agrees to have his men punish the young men responsible (in a non-lethal manner) in return for future service if necessary.Meanwhile, the Don's youngest son Michael (Al Pacino), a decorated US Marine hero returning from World War II service, arrives at the wedding and tells his girlfriend Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) anecdotes about his family, informing her about his father's criminal life; he reassures her that he is different from his family and doesn't plan to join them in their criminal dealings. The wedding scene serves as critical exposition for the remainder of the film, as Michael introduces the main characters to Kay. Fredo (John Cazale), Michael's next older brother, is a bit dim-witted and quite drunk by the time he finds Michael at the party. Santino, who is nicknamed Sonny (James Caan), the Don's eldest child and next in line to become Don upon his father's retirement, is married but he is a hot-tempered philanderer who sneaks into a bedroom to have sex with one of Connie's bridesmaids, Lucy Mancini (Jeannie Linero). Tom Hagen is not related to the family by blood but is considered one of the Don's sons because he was homeless when he befriended Sonny in the Little Italy neighborhood of Manhattan and the Don took him in and saw to Tom's upbringing and education. Now a talented attorney, Tom is being groomed for the important position of consigliere (counselor) to the Don, despite his non-Sicilian heritage.Also among the guests at the celebration is the famous singer Johnny Fontane (Al Martino), Corleone's godson, who has come from Hollywood to petition Vito's help in landing a movie role that will revitalize his flagging career. Jack Woltz (John Marley), the head of the studio, denies Fontane the part (a character much like Johnny himself), which will make him an even bigger star, but Don Corleone explains to Johnny: ""I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."" The Don also receives congratulatory salutations from Luca Brasi, a terrifying enforcer in the criminal underworld, and fills a request from the baker who made Connie's wedding cake who wishes for his nephew Enzo to become an American citizen.After the wedding, Hagen is dispatched to Los Angeles to meet with Woltz, but Woltz angrily tells him that he will never cast Fontane in the role. Woltz holds a grudge because Fontane seduced and ""ruined"" a starlet who Woltz had been grooming for stardom and with whom he had a sexual relationship. Woltz is persuaded to give Johnny the role, however, when he wakes up early the next morning and feels something wet in his bed. He pulls back the sheets and finds himself in a pool of blood; he screams in horror when he discovers the severed head of his prized $600,000 stud horse, Khartoum, in the bed with him. (A deleted scene from the film implies that Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana), Vito's top ""button man"" or hitman, is responsible.)Upon Hagen's return, the family meets with Virgil ""The Turk"" Sollozzo (Al Lettieri), who is being backed by the rival Tattaglia family. He asks Don Corleone for financing as well as political and legal protection for importing and distributing heroin. Despite the huge profit to be made, Vito Corleone refuses, explaining that his political influence would be jeopardized by a move into the narcotics trade -- the judges and politicians he's allied himself with over the course of several decades would renounce their friendships with him if he were to enter the drug trade. The Don's eldest son, Sonny, who had earlier urged the family to enter the narcotics trade, breaks rank during the meeting and begins to question Sollozzo's assurances as to the Corleone Family's investment being guaranteed by the Tattaglia Family. His father, angry at Sonny's dissension in a non-family member's presence, silences Sonny with a single look and privately rebukes him later. Don Corleone then dispatches Luca Brasi to infiltrate Sollozzo's organization and report back with information. During the meeting, while Brasi is bent over to allow Bruno Tattaglia to light his cigarette, he is stabbed in the hand by Sollozzo, and is subsequently garroted by an assassin.Soon after his meeting with Sollozzo, Don Corleone is gunned down in an assassination attempt just outside his office, and it is not immediately known whether he has survived. Fredo Corleone had been assigned driving and protection duty for his father when Paulie Gatto, the Don's usual bodyguard, had called in sick. Fredo proves to be ineffectual, fumbling with his gun and unable to shoot back. When Sonny hears about the Don being shot and Paulie's absence, he orders Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano) to find Paulie and bring him to the Don's house.Sollozzo abducts Tom Hagen and persuades him to offer Sonny the deal previously offered to his father. When Tom is released, Sollozzo gets word that the Don has survived the attempt on his life. He angrily tells Tom to persuade Sonny to accept his offer.Enraged, Sonny refuses to consider it and issues an ultimatum to the Tattaglias: turn over Sollozzo or face a lengthy, bloody and costly (for both sides) gang war. They refuse, and instead send Sonny ""a Sicilian message,"" in the form of two fresh fish wrapped in Luca Brasi's bullet-proof vest, telling the Corleones that Luca Brasi ""sleeps with the fishes.""Clemenza later takes Paulie and one of the family's hitmen, Rocco Lampone, for a drive into Manhattan. Sonny wants to ""go to the mattresses"" -- set up beds in apartments for Corleone button men to operate out of in the event that the crime war breaks out. On their way back from Manhattan, Clemenza has Paulie stop the car in a remote area so he can urinate. Rocco shoots Paulie dead; he and Clemenza leave Paulie and the car behind.Michael, whom the other Mafia families consider a ""civilian"" and not involved in mob business, visits his father at a small private hospital. He is shocked to find that no one is guarding him -- a nurse tells him that the men were interfering with hospital policy and were told to leave by the police about 10 minutes before Mike's arrival. Realizing that his father is again being set up to be killed, he calls Sonny for help, moves his father to another room, and goes outside to watch the entrance. Michael enlists help from Enzo the baker (Gabriele Torrei), who has come to the hospital to pay his respects. Together, they bluff away Sollozzo's men as they drive by. Police cars soon appear bringing the corrupt Captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden), who viciously punches Michael in the cheek and breaks his jaw when Michael insinuates that Sollozzo paid McCluskey to set up his father. Just then, Hagen arrives with ""private detectives"" licensed to carry guns to protect Don Corleone, and he takes the injured Michael home. Sonny responds by having Bruno Tattaglia (Tony Giorgio), the eldest son and underboss of Don Phillip Tattaglia (Victor Rendina), killed (off-camera).Following the attempt on the Don's life at the hospital, Sollozzo requests a meeting with the Corleones, which Captain McCluskey will attend as Sollozzo's bodyguard. When Michael volunteers to kill both men during the meeting, Sonny and the other senior Family members are amused; however, Michael convinces them that he is serious and that killing Sollozzo and McCluskey is in the family's interest: ""It's not personal. It's strictly business."" Because Michael is considered a civilian, he won't be regarded as a suspicious ambassador for the Corleones. Although police officers are usually off limits for hits, Michael argues that since McCluskey is corrupt and has illegal dealings with Sollozzo, he is fair game. Michael also implies that newspaper reporters that the Corleones have on their payroll would delight in publishing stories about a corrupt police captain.Michael meets with Clemenza, one of his father's caporegimes (captains), who prepares a small pistol for him, covering the trigger and grip with tape to prevent any fingerprint evidence. He instructs Michael about the proper way to perform the assassination and tells him to leave the gun behind. He also tells Michael that the family were all very proud of Michael for becoming a war hero during his service in the Marines. Clemenza shows great confidence that Michael can perform the job and tells him it will all go smoothly. The plan is to have the Corleone's informers find out the location of the meeting and plant the revolver before Michael, Sollozzo and McCluskey arrive.Before the meeting in a small Italian restaurant, McCluskey frisks Michael for weapons and finds him clean. After a few minutes where Michael and Sollozzo converse in Italian, Michael excuses himself to go to the bathroom, where he retrieves the planted revolver. Returning to the table, he fatally shoots Sollozzo, then McCluskey. Michael is sent to hide in Sicily while the Corleone family prepares for all-out warfare with the Five Families (who are united against the Corleones) as well as a general clampdown on the mob by the police and government authorities. When the don returns home from the hospital, he is distraught to learn that it was Michael who killed Sollozzo and McCluskey.Meanwhile, Connie and Carlo's marriage is disintegrating. They argue publicly over Carlo's suspected infidelity and his possessive behavior toward Connie. By Italian tradition, nobody, not even a high-ranking Mafia don, can intervene in a married couple's personal disputes, even if they involve infidelity, money, or domestic abuse. One day, Sonny sees a bruise on Connie's face and she tells him that Carlo hit her after she asked him if he was having an affair. Sonny tracks down and severely beats Carlo in the middle of a crowded street for brutalizing the pregnant Connie, and threatens to kill Carlo if he ever abuses Connie again. An angry Carlo responds by plotting with Tattaglia and Don Emilio Barzini (Richard Conte), the Corleones' chief rivals, to have Sonny killed.Later, Carlo has one of his mistresses phone his house, knowing that Connie will answer. The woman asks Connie to tell Carlo not to meet her tonight. The very pregnant and distraught Connie throws a tantrum, throwing the plates with their dinner around the kitchen and then breaking everything in the dining; he takes advantage of the altercation to beat Connie in order to lure Sonny out in the open and away from the Corleone compound. When Connie phones the compound to tell Sonny that Carlo has beaten her again, the enraged Sonny drives off (alone and unescorted) to fulfill his threat against Carlo. On the way to Connie and Carlo's house, Sonny is ambushed at a toll booth on the Long Island Causeway and violently shot to death by several carloads of hitmen wielding Thompson sub-machine guns.Tom Hagen relays the news of Sonny's massacre to the Don, who calls in the favor from Bonasera to personally handle the embalming of Sonny's body. Rather than seek revenge for Sonny's killing, Don Corleone meets with the heads of the Five Families to negotiate a cease-fire. Not only is the conflict draining all their assets and threatening their survival, but ending it is the only way that Michael can return home safely. Reversing his previous decision, Vito agrees that the Corleone family will provide political protection for Tattaglia's traffic in heroin, as long as it is controlled and not sold to children. At the meeting, Don Corleone deduces that Don Barzini, not Tattaglia, was ultimately behind the start of the mob war and Sonny's death, despite showing early signs of senility.In Sicily, Michael patiently waits out his exile, protected by Don Tommasino (Corrado Gaipa), an old family friend. Michael aimlessly wanders the countryside, accompanied by his ever-present bodyguards, Calo (Franco Citti) and Fabrizio (Angelo Infanti). In a small village, Michael meets and falls in love with Apollonia Vitelli (Simonetta Stefanelli), the beautiful young daughter of a bar owner. They court and marry in the traditional Sicilian fashion, but soon Michael's presence becomes known to Corleone enemies. As the couple is about to be moved to a safer location, Apollonia is killed as a result of a rigged car (originally intended for Michael) exploding on ignition; Michael, who saw the car explodes, spots Fabrizio hurriedly leaving the grounds seconds before the explosion, implicating him in the assassination plot. (In a deleted scene, Fabrizio is found years later and killed.)With his safety guaranteed, Michael returns home. More than a year later, in 1950, he reunites with his former girlfriend Kay after a total of four years of separation -- three in Italy and one in America. He tells her he wants them to be married. Although Kay is hurt that he waited so long to contact her, she accepts his proposal. With Don Vito semi-retired, Sonny dead, and middle brother Fredo considered incapable of running the family business, Michael is now in charge; he promises Kay he will make the family business completely legitimate within five years.Two years later, Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio (Abe Vigoda), complain that they are being pushed around by the Barzini Family and ask permission to strike back, but Michael denies the request. He plans to move the family operations to Nevada and after that, Clemenza and Tessio may break away to form their own families in the New York area. Michael further promises Connie's husband, Carlo, that he will be his right hand man in Nevada (Carlo had grown up there), unaware of his part in Sonny's assassination. Tom Hagen has been removed as consigliere and is now merely the family's lawyer, with Vito serving as consigliere. Privately, Hagen inquires about his change in status, and also questions Michael about a new regime of ""soldiers"" secretly being built under Rocco Lampone (Tom Rosqui). Don Vito explains to Hagen that Michael is acting on his advice.Another year or so later, Michael travels to Las Vegas and meets with Moe Greene (Alex Rocco), a rich and shrewd casino boss looking to expand his business dealings. After the Don's attempted assassination, Fredo had been sent to Las Vegas to learn about the casino business from Greene. Michael arrogantly offers to buy out Greene but is rudely rebuffed. Greene believes the Corleones are weak and that he can secure a better deal from Barzini. As Moe and Michael heatedly negotiate, Fredo sides with Moe. Afterward, Michael warns Fredo to never again ""take sides with anyone against the family.""Michael returns home. In a private moment, Vito explains his expectation that the Family's enemies will attempt to murder Michael by using a trusted associate to arrange a meeting as a pretext for assassination. Vito also reveals that he had never really intended a life of crime for Michael, hoping that his youngest son would hold legitimate power as a senator or governor. Some months later, Vito collapses and dies while playing with his young grandson Anthony (Anthony Gounaris) in his tomato garden. At the burial, Tessio conveys a proposal for a meeting with Barzini, which identifies Tessio as the traitor that Vito was expecting.Kay asks Michael if he'll agree to be godfather to Connie and Carlo's newborn son. Michael agrees and seizes the opportunity to eliminate competition from the other five families while also using the baptism as an alibi. The murders occur simultaneously during the ceremony:Don Stracci (Don Costello) is gunned down along with his bodyguard in a hotel elevator by a shotgun-wielding Clemenza.Moe Greene is killed while having a massage, shot through the eye by an unidentified assassin.Don Cuneo (Rudy Bond) is trapped in a revolving door at the St. Regis Hotel and shot dead by soldier Willi Cicci (Joe Spinell).Don Tattaglia is assassinated in bed, along with a prostitute, by Rocco Lampone and an unknown associate.Don Barzini is killed on the steps of his office building along with his bodyguard and driver, shot by Al Neri (Richard Bright), disguised in his old police uniform.After the baptism, Tessio believes he and Hagen are on their way to the meeting between Michael and Barzini that he has arranged. Instead, he is surrounded by Willi Cicci and other button men as Hagen steps away. Realizing that Michael has uncovered his betrayal, Tessio tells Hagen that he always respected Michael, and that his disloyalty ""was only business."" He asks if Tom can get him off for ""old times' sake,"" but Tom says he cannot. Tessio is driven away and never seen again (it is implied that Cicci shoots and kills Tessio with his own gun after he disarms him prior to entering the car).Meanwhile, Michael confronts Carlo about Sonny's murder and forces him to admit his role in setting up the ambush, having been approached by Barzini himself. (The hitmen who killed Sonny were the core members of Barzini's personal bodyguard.) Michael assures Carlo he will not be killed, but his punishment is exclusion from all family business. He hands Carlo a plane ticket to exile in Las Vegas. However, when Carlo gets into a car headed for the airport, he is immediately garroted to death by Clemenza, on Michael's orders.Later, a hysterical Connie confronts Michael at the Corleone compound as movers carry away the furniture in preparation for the family move to Nevada. She accuses him of murdering Carlo in retribution for Carlo's brutal treatment of her and for Carlo's suspected involvement in Sonny's murder. After Connie is removed from the house, Kay questions Michael about Connie's accusation, but he refuses to answer, reminding her to never ask him about his business or what he does for a living. She insists, and Michael outright lies, reassuring his wife that he played no role in Carlo's death. Kay believes him and is relieved. The film ends with Clemenza and new caporegimes Rocco Lampone and Al Neri arriving and paying their respects to Michael. Clemenza kisses Michael's hand and greets him as ""Don Corleone."" As Kay watches, the office door is closed."
  30  "A group of elderly people are giving interviews about having lived in a climate of crop blight and constant dust reminiscent of The Great Depression of the 1930's. The first one seen is an elderly woman stating her father was a farmer, but did not start out that way.The scene changes. We are introduced to a farmer and widower named Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey). He is a college-educated former NASA test pilot and engineer who was forced to give up his occupation to farm, living in a run down farmhouse, presumably owned by his father in law. They farm corn, with wheat no longer available and okra just now having become extinct due to blight. We see no animal life.It is the 2060's in eastern Colorado. More than half of the world's population has been decimated from famine and America has been reduced to a struggling agrarian society for the past 30 years. Technology has come to a standstill for the past 40 or so years, with automobiles no longer produced and a computer laptop is a luxury item. However on a good note, there are no more wars or militaries in the world anymore. At a certain age, kids are tested to determine what occupations they will have to take to help humanity survive. In school, it is taught that the US going to the moon in 1969 was a hoax to drive the Soviet Union into bankruptcy and win the Cold War.Cooper's family consists of his 65-year-old father-in-law, Donald (John Lithgow),15-year-old son Tom (Timothée Chalamet), and 10-year-old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Donald was born at the end of the 20th or beginning of the 21st century and fondly recalls times when technology was constantly changing and new gadgets being invented. He is a down-to-Earth man who takes care of the household duties and gets along well with Cooper. The two of them sit on the porch drinking beer in the evening and philosophize about the condition of the world and how things should be. Joe's son Tom is a boy of average intelligence already being ruled out to be a farmer by the school administration, since a college education is now something only a very small percentage those will enjoy the privilege of. His daughter Murph is a feisty and highly intelligent girl whom Cooper is very close to and who shares his affinity with space and science. She believes her room is haunted by a ghost because books keep falling off her shelves and a lunar ship model was just knocked over.The Cooper family lives a pretty simple life and have a rare treat of attending a game of a supposedly major league baseball team at a local ball field similar to what the little league play on today. His father in law is unimpressed at the amateurishness of the players and having only popcorn for refreshments and no hot dogs. An approaching dust cloud interrupts the game reminding them of the grim world they live in, and ends it prematurely. The Cooper family makes back to the farmhouse during the dust storm and Murph's bedroom did not have the window closed and the dust settled into perfect lines on the floor. Cooper spends the entire night studying the lines and Cooper thinks the lines are binary code and coordinates for a place he feels the need to find and uses a map. He spends the next day driving to the Rockies and his daughter sneaks into the truck to come with him.Soon after arriving at his final destination (a fenced off gated area), Cooper is apprehended and tasered into unconsciousness. When Cooper wakes up, he is in a room being interrogated by a strange looking robot called TARS. It turns out Cooper is in the best-kept secret in the world, a bunker, and meets his old boss from NASA, an Englishman named Dr. John Brand (Michael Caine), plus his beautiful young daughter, Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway). Nobody is convinced that Cooper just stumbled into the place by accident and Dr. Brand believes a force brought Cooper there. The compound Cooper found is actually the remnants of NASA, inhabiting the facility in secret and no longer funded by the government because of the scarcity of resources. There is a space mission leaving soon to go through a wormhole of unknown origin near Saturn that will take them to three potentially habitable planets, two of them orbiting a super-massive black hole named Gargantua; a large black sphere about the size in diameter of Earth's sun but which has a solar mass of about 50 million Earth suns. Ten years earlier, 12 individual astronauts were sent out through the wormhole in 12 different ships, but only three (Miller, Mann, and Edmond's) activated the thumbs up beacon, all of whom are at three planets. At the moment, NASA has nobody to pilot the spacecraft and at the last minute they want Cooper to go, despite his family responsibilities.The bunker itself is actually a centrifuge, which is projected to become something else later on. The mission has two plans: Plan A is to get the centrifuge into orbit as a space station and rescue a large number of people; this requires Dr. Brand to solve the equation that will allow the scientists to overcome gravity and get the centrifuge into orbit. Plan B is to colonize the most habitable of the three planets along with a bunch of frozen embryos to repopulate the species. Dr. Brand assures Cooper the Earth is dying and humanity doesn't have much longer and that he needs to pilot the craft and explore, lest his family and the rest of the world all die soon. Cooper is very reluctant, because he's barely left Earth's atmosphere, but Brand reassures Cooper the twelve astronauts sent on the mission never even left the simulators beforehand.The next day, Cooper and Murph return to the farmhouse, his daughter is extremely upset with him for choosing the mission. That night Cooper and Donald are sitting on the porch drinking beer and Cooper reminding Donald once again of the futility of staying and the conditions they live in. Donald assures Cooper he's doing the right thing, but needs to set things right with Murph. The next morning, Cooper does his best to comfort a sobbing Murph and promises to come back to her and that they might even be the same age when he returns, giving her a wristwatch to compare time. Murph refuses his assurance and that her bookshelf is communicating with her in Morse Code to ""stay"". Despite her pleas, Cooper won't back down and one more book falls down before he leaves, but Cooper disregards it. Cooper leaves and says goodbye to Tom and Donald and while he's driving away, Murph storms out the front door wanting to see him one last time, but it's too late.The space shuttle-craft rockets away from Earth at high speed with Cooper, Amelia Brand, Dr. Doyle (Wes Bentley), Dr. Nikolai ""Rom"" Romilly (David Gyasi), and the TARS and CASE robots on board. Doyle and Romilly are two scientists that were in the conference room at NASA during the meeting with Cooper. When the spacecraft leaves the atmosphere, everything goes quiet all of a sudden, except the inside. The ring shaped Endurance is up ahead and they dock with it, which has all their needs for space travel. The Endurance is leaving Earth and they bid farewell to a spinning Earth and have to look forward to the lonely, claustrophobic, and potentially dangerous reality of space and put themselves in a plastic-covered water cryosleep bed for the two-year journey to Saturn.Dr. Brand makes a trip in Cooper's old 2010 Dodge ram truck to deliver the vehicle back to the homestead and give a tape recorded message from Cooper to his family. Murph appears hoping her father is home, but angrily storms back into the house. Donald tells Dr. Brand about how Murph is making fools out of her teachers, but Brand tells Donald maybe she'll eventually make a fool out of him.Two years later.The Endurance is orbiting Saturn and Cooper is out of cryosleep, reviewing video messages. His son Tom tells him he's doing okay and Donald says hi, telling Cooper that Murph still refuses to talk to him. The Endurance crew come upon the wormhole, which resembles a plasma globe and will provide a quick channel for the crew to reach the three planets in the next galaxy. The crew take off for the rough ride, (a la 2001 infinity) and come to their first mission, Miller's Planet. During the time through the wormhole, Amelia reaches out and feels she touched someone's hand.They find themselves in a region of space around 10 billion light years from planet Earth. They decide to head first to Miller's planet, intending to stop there only briefly as its close proximity to Gargantua causes severe gravitational time dilation with each hour spent on the surface costing seven Earth years. Cooper, Amelia, Doyle, and the robot CASE decide to risk themselves and intend to be in and out of there in just minutes to survey while Romilly remains on the Endurance to study the black hole and get quantum data from it. When they land, all they find is shallow water and wreckage of Miller's ship, who apparently died and had arrived just an hour or two earlier, even though she sent the thumbs up beacon on Earth 10 years before. The crew think there are mountains in the distance that turn out to be giant tsunami waves. Brand becomes trapped under the Miller wreckage and has to be rescued and carried back by CASE, Doyle is drowned, and the ship is flooded and won't be able to make it out for another hour, costing them years. Cooper is frustrated at Brand, but forgives her mistake. After the engines are mostly emptied of water, Cooper fires them up and just manages to escape the next tidal wave and fly off the surface.Cooper and Brand make it back to the Endurance to find an aged and gray Romilly in a robe -- 23 Earth years have passed and Romilly has spent most of the time waiting with a couple of stretches in cryosleep. It is now about the year 2090 on Earth. They are all beyond crushed, but Brand is relieved to know her father is still alive and well. They are receiving messages from Earth, but unable to transmit out. Cooper reviews all the videos and breaks down looking at 23 years of recorded videos and sees before his very eyes his 17-year-old son Tom showing a picture of what he believes is the right girl for him. In the next video, Tom (now played by Casey Affleck) introduces to Cooper to his grandson Jesse. In the next video, a now weather-beaten and 40-year-old Tom reveals that Donald died a week ago and is buried next to Jesse and that he believes Cooper to be missing or dead and needs to let him go. Then afterwards an apparent live recording comes from Murph (now played by Jessica Chastain). After 25 years of silence, a still stubborn and saddened Murph tells off her father for not fulfilling the possibility of being back because she is now 35 years of age, which is the same age he was when he left Earth. It's like a knife has been plunged into his heart and he feels he has betrayed her badly and has no way to communicate back with her.On Earth, Murph stops recording the video. She is now working for Dr. Brand and living in the NASA bunker, who is now about 90-years-old and confined to a wheelchair. Brand is still trying to solve the incomplete gravity equation to get Plan A rolling and is reassuring Murph that the crew of the Endurance are receiving their recorded messages, but the crew can't transmit out.Now that the Endurance crew have recovered emotionally from Murph's video, they debate whether to visit Mann's planet or Edmond's planet, because they only have enough fuel to visit one of them before they head back to Earth. Brand wants to visit Edmond's Planet because his planet appears to be the better prospect, but Cooper wants to visit Mann's because he's still transmitting his beacon.On Earth, Murph returns to the old Cooper homestead with her brother Tom, a farmer. He has just torched a third of his crop because of blight, which is spreading. He now has his old neighbor's crop to cultivate since the neighbor moved or died. They believe the farm will soon produce nothing. She has dinner of corn soufflé and corn-on-the-cob with Tom, his wife Lois (Leah Cairns), and son Coop. She discovers Coop has a bad cough. They want her to stay the night, but she refuses because of bad memories from her childhood. Murph is aware that the nitrogen levels in the air are taking their toll more and more each day on their son.A day or two later, Murph is back at the NASA bunker and learns Dr. Brand is dying. He confesses to her that Plan A is not possible and that he had lied to her. He could never solve the gravity equation to get people off Earth. She believes her father knew all about Brand's scheme and that he escaped and purposefully left her and everyone else to die. Dr Brand dies. Murph sends a video message to Amelia informing her of her father's death and begs him to tell the truth that the whole thing had been a sham.The Endurance crew make it to Mann's Planet a few months later; the planet is perpetually cold, covered with glaciers, and has a poisonous atmosphere of methane filled with ice clouds. Dr. Mann (Matt Damon), who has been in cryosleep for over 35 years, is awakened by Cooper and has a mental breakdown and relieved he is rescued. He tells the story of the frigid, but beautiful world he lives in, indicating it has 80% of Earth's gravity and a lower part is livable, possibly even a source of fresh water.Brand sees the video Murph sent about her father dying and Plan A being a sham. She is absolutely shocked and had no idea, but Mann reassures her the equation was actually solved long ago and determined to be impossible before he ever went on the mission. The only way to ever get data would be to get inside a black hole, which is impossible without being killed.Back on Earth, Murph and her boyfriend, Dr. Getty (Topher Grace), another NASA physicist, are driving in her Jeep through the bleak plains surveying the endless clouds of black smoke and families with their decrepit 80-90 year old vehicles on the road with their belongings in tow, much like Midwestern farmers in the 1930's escaping to go west to find a better life. She knows the equation is solvable as long as it comes from a black hole and that Dr. Brand only gave part of it. Somewhere in her subconscious, she has a gut feeling that the coordinates of dust on the floor of her bedroom long ago gave her a hint, along the books being pushed off the shelf, and with the Morse code message for Cooper to ""stay"". She has a feeling this ""ghost"" is a being that has tried to comfort her and help save humanity. She knows it's not the end and that humanity is running out of time.Simultaneously, Mann is showing Cooper the icy and forbidding world. Murph is back at the Cooper homestead with Dr. Getty examining Tom's son for his lungs. Dr. Mann pulls off Cooper's voice beacon and pushes Cooper off the cliff and Murph's brother Tom is outraged by Dr. Getty's comment that they can't stay and will die, hitting him in the face. Mann reveals to Cooper that the planet is uninhabitable and that he sent the signal so he could take Cooper's spaceship to return to Earth. Murph confronts Tom that her father never meant to save them, but escape and leave it up to her and Tom outright refuses and tells her to leave, believing it's his duty to take care of the farm to fulfill his promise for his father. Mann is trying to kill Cooper by breaking his helmet's visor, allowing the ammonia-rich air to suffocate Cooper.Cooper manages to reach his voice beacon that was taken off of his helmet by Mann to call out for Brand to rescue him. Murph and Dr. Getty are driving back to NASA, but in a fit of rage, she pulls over and pours gasoline over corn crops and sets them on fire, in order to distract Tom and get back to the farmhouse. Cooper has been rescued by Brand. Mann's living quarters on the planet has exploded and Romilly killed. Romilly was killed because he was trying to retrieve data from Mann's robot KIPP, which was booby trapped and supposed to reveal the truth about the planet. TARS comes out of the rubble to be rescued by Cooper and Brand and they leave the planet.On Earth, Tom's family is now out of the house and Murph is now in her old bedroom trying to make sense of the past. Cooper and Brand are leaving the planet, but Mann is also in another shuttle trying to do so and refuses to listen to their pleas to not attempt to dock with the Endurance. Murph is in her bedroom examining her old belongings to find out what the ""ghost"" might be telling her.Dr. Mann has steadfastly refused to listen to the warnings from Cooper and Brand not to dock with the Endurance, but he continues his efforts. He's manually maneuvered the ship into docking position, but ignores the computer's warnings of ""imperfect lock"" and we see the docking pincers attempting to grab but failing to lock in. In mid-sentence the coupling release and the violent expulsion of air into space carries him with it, and resulting collision causes an explosion. The Endurance is now out of control and Cooper tells Brand that he is going to dock with it, even though it is now in a rapid rotation. Though the centrifugal g-forces from the spin are enormous, Cooper is able to dock. However, they are unable to get back to Earth and have to go to Edmond's Planet to even hope to survive, because of the life support being destroyed. They have to slingshot around the black hole Gargantua in order to make it to Edmond's Planet and on manual controls.During the harrowing orbit around Gargantua, Cooper and TARS detach their respective shuttles and get sucked into the black hole, sacrificing themselves to collect data on the singularity, and propel Amelia and CASE faster by reducing the ship's mass. Cooper separates from Brand in his Ranger, without her prior knowledge, and Brand is on a path that will take her to Edmond's Planet. He realizes the cost of orbiting the black hole due to the gravitational time dilation will be 51 Earth years, but takes the chance. Brand is outraged with Cooper and now left alone with CASE.As Cooper's shuttle falls into the black hole, gravitational forces begin to rip it apart. Cooper is descending towards the center of the black hole with pellets that look like sleet hitting his Ranger spaceship. The computer of his ship tells him to eject himself and without reluctance, he does it.Cooper descends in the black hole towards a grid full of cubbyholes thinking he's dead and finds himself in some sort of afterlife and unaware of what sort of surroundings he's in which resembles a tesseract. He hits an object along with a bunch of others that look like books stacked and knocks one down, revealing ten-year-old Murph reacting at an object falling from her bookshelf back at the farmhouse. He knocked down the lunar lander model shown at the beginning of the movie. He's screaming out for Murph, but she walks away with it and doesn't hear him. Then he sees Murph in another part of the grid pleading for her father not to leave. Cooper watches this begging himself not to go and to stay using Morse Code by knocking the books off the shelf. Cooper breaks down realizing that he should have listened and not gone on the mission. Then there is adult Murph at the bedroom while the fire is still burning and she realizes all along that her father himself was the ghost communicating with her feeling comforted and reassured. Now it's all making sense to her and she's no longer angry with him and has hope. But she's still trying to find out what her father is trying to signal to her, recalling the events of the dust storm coordinates and the books falling off.TARS gets Cooper out of his grief-stricken state that he survived and tells Cooper that some fifth dimensional beings sent him there to communicate with Murph and that his love for his daughter sent him there to help her. Cooper is delighted to see TARS is there with him. Cooper realizes that the mission was not a mistake and that he will get done what he needs to. Murph has been the chosen one to save humanity, but Cooper is the one chosen to help engineer it. He sends the coordinates to himself at the farmhouse to NASA, then the data from the black hole through TARS via Morse Code to a wristwatch he gave Murph before he left, which is the gravity equation. Preteen Murph put the watch back on the shelf making it possible for Cooper to add the black hole equation to it. Adult Murph picks up the old wristwatch out of a box of her old keepsakes seeing the second hand with the Morse Code realizing it's the key. Dr. Getty is pleading with Murph to get out and for them to leave because the fire is out. Murph leaves the farmhouse with the watch in her hand, and angry Tom returns, but she tells him about the watch, embraces him assuring her father was the ghost all along and will save them. Tom is befuddled by it all, but accepts her hug.Murph returns to the NASA bunker and completes the equation using the data from the wristwatch. She writes it all down, and throws the papers off the deck of the centrifuge under construction that the equation is solved. She kisses Dr. Getty in a fit of happiness. So what's going to happen soon might save most of remaining humanity.Back in the black hole, the tesseract is now closing up, with Cooper convinced it all worked and Cooper is comforted that future human beings constructed it to make all this happen and tells TARS everything is okay. He comes across the Endurance when it passed through the wormhole and touches Brand's hand, then knocked unconscious into the orbit of Saturn with a couple of beaming lights approaching him.Cooper wakes up to find himself in a hospital bed. A very clean room with background noise of a baseball bat cracking a ball and birds chirping. A doctor tells him to take it easy jokingly telling him he is now 124 years old, but he still looks the same in his mid to late 30s. The doctor tells Cooper he's very lucky to be alive because space rangers found him with only minutes left in his oxygen. Cooper looks outside the window of his room with kids playing baseball with a batter hitting a ball into the sky, which turns out to be the skylight of an upside down house with kids cheering at the window being broken. Cooper is told he's on Cooper Station orbiting Saturn and thinks the station is named after him, but it was named after his daughter Murph. She's still living and on another space station and will be there to visit him in a couple of weeks despite her age and health. Cooper is delighted that Plan A did indeed work out and that the gravity equation was solved. The very centrifuge that was the NASA bunker is now a space station to sustain human life.Cooper is now released from his hospital room by a tour guide and shown the station, an O'Neill cylinder with a old world rural American environment and has artificial sunlight beaming from one side, which was the same place the rocket took off from 89 years ago. They pass by a group of sleek ranger ships that are more efficient than what he used and he takes a great interest in them. He is led to a museum exhibit, which is his old farmhouse, only much cleaner and restored. There are videos all over the place of elderly people telling of the dust bowl they lived in, whom you saw at the beginning of the movie, one of which is his daughter. He finds a shorted out TARS in the farmhouse the rangers recovered and immediately repairs him.Cooper is sitting on the front porch that ""night"" with TARS drinking beer like he and Donald used to do, but very dissatisfied at the artificial surroundings and pretending to be home. He's more interested in the spaceships than anything else and still yearning to explore the unknown. Plus almost everybody he knew is now dead and he wasn't welcomed back as a hero.Cooper is about to go to the hospital room where the elderly Murph (now played by Ellen Burstyn) is living out the final days of her life -- she'd insisted on being brought to the station to say goodbye to her father. A nurse tells Cooper that her family is in there and that she's spent the last two years in cryosleep. He wasn't aware she had a family and carefully opens the door with over a dozen people, from small children to middle aged adults surrounding her bed. His grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and their spouses are there, yet he pays no mind to them while they are puzzled by his appearance. His main interest is seeing his daughter. Murph breaks down in delight at the sight of him, and he takes her hand without any reluctance or awkwardness, even though he's the same age he was when he left and she's 99-years-old and near death. He assures her he was the ghost that communicated to her in her room and she already knew for years even though nobody believed her. He tells her he's now here for her, but in her still feisty and stubborn ways, she doesn't want him to see her die, saying her kids are here for her and that she forgave him and made peace with his disappearance decades ago.Cooper slowly leaves her room to see her one last time and she's surrounded by her beloved family and his descendants he knows nothing about. Knowing the space station is not where he belongs, he takes Murph's advice to go seek out Amelia Brand, who has landed on Edmond's Planet to start colonization. It is a desolate place resembling Mars, but the air is breathable and can sustain life, so it's the best humanity can do outside the space stations. Edmonds died long ago and is buried by CASE, but Amelia continues to set up camp and puts herself in cryosleep. Cooper steals one of the new generation ranger ships he's been obsessed with and goes with TARS through the wormhole to find her and beat the rangers at their mission."
  31  "Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) is delivering a eulogy for Harvey Dent at the end of The Dark Knight: ""I knew Harvey Dent. I was his friend. And it will be a very long time before someone... inspires us the way he did. I believed in Harvey Dent...""Eight years later, a van is driving across a field, occupied by Russian soldiers. They are transporting a nuclear scientist, Dr. Leonid Pavel (Alon Aboutboul). Sitting in the backseats are three prisoners, who are handcuffed, hooded, and have rifles trained on them. The van arrives at an airfield, where it meets a jet occupied by a CIA agent, Bill Wilson, (Aidan Gillen) and U.S. Special Ops soldiers from an extraction team, whom Dr. Pavel has cut a deal with. The CIA agent refuses to let the hooded prisoners come on his aircraft. The agent is told by the truck driver, Barsad (Josh Stewart), that they are mercenaries who work for the masked man. He takes it that the ""masked man"" is Bane, an infamous terrorist, and brings them on board.During the flight, Wilson interrogates the prisoners for information about Bane. He has one prisoner dragged to the cargo door and demands to know who paid the men to kidnap Dr. Pavel. When the man refuses to talk, Wilson pulls his pistol and fires a shot away from the man's head and pulls the man back inside. The second prisoner is pulled over to the door and given the same treatment. This time, Wilson asks him about the mask that Bane wears. The man fails to talk leading Wilson to believe he's ""awfully loyal for a hired gun"".At this point, the third prisoner - who sounds like he is talking through a voice amplifier- suggests that his comrade is wondering why would someone ""shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane?"" Wilson signals for one soldier to seal the door and asks this prisoner for his name. The hooded man says that it doesn't matter who he and his comrades are, but it's their plan that matters. As the man admits that ""no one cared who I was 'til I put on the mask"", Wilson removes his hood, revealing a bald, muscular brute wearing an intimidating breathing apparatus over his mouth - Bane (Tom Hardy).Wilson asks Bane if he will die if he takes off the mask, and Bane assures him it would be extremely painful...for Wilson. Wilson congratulates Bane for getting himself caught, and asks him what the next step of his master plan is. Bane boldly announces it: crashing the very plane they are on right now.... with no survivors!On cue, a team of henchmen fast-rope out of a C-130 Hercules that has descended over the jet, land on the small plane's wings, and shoot out the side windows with guns, while Bane breaks his handcuffs and punches Wilson. The henchmen attach cables to the plane with hooks behind the wings, and plant bombs in the fuselage. As the plane begins to nosedive, the stress tears the wings off. Two henchmen then climb up and set off charges to blow off the tail section. One soldier draws his pistol and manages to get off one round before he is shot dead by a mercenary descending into the plane. The mercenaries also lower in a body bag containing the corpse of a man who resembles Dr. Pavel.Bane grabs Dr. Pavel, and pulls out a small tube with needles on both ends. He inserts one end into Dr. Pavel's arm and the other into the corpse, and starts to perform a blood transfer. Bane spots one of his comrades escaping and orders the man to stop, as the authorities expect to find one of them in the wreckage. The man asks Bane if they've started a fire, and Bane says, ""Yes, the fire rises."" Bane attaches the harness to himself and Dr. Pavel, and tells the doctor that the time to panic will come later. He sets off a detonator, which releases the fuselage. Bane and Dr. Pavel are then reeled up into the bigger plane.In Gotham, the eighth anniversary of Harvey Dent's death is being celebrated as Dent Day. At a Wayne Manor charity event hosted by the forever-absent Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), Gordon prepares to deliver a speech revealing the truth about Dent and the murders for which the Batman had taken the fall 8 years ago followed by his own resignation as commissioner, but deciding that the time is not right, and having flashbacks of Dent holding his son hostage, he stuffs the speech into his jacket. His Deputy Commissioner Peter Foley (Matthew Modine) talks with the city's congressman Byron Gilly (Brett Cullen), who informs him that with the drop in crime, Gordon is a war hero in peacetime, and the mayor plans on dumping him in the spring. Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), a wealthy investor, and businessman John Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn) try to meet the reclusive Bruce to get him to invest in her clean energy project, but are unable to meet him. Daggett is curious why Miranda is interested in seeing a guy who threw away her investment, but Miranda chides him for only understanding money and the power he thinks it buys.One of the maids for the event is Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a young cat burglar, who breaks into Bruce's room on the pretense of delivering dinner. She cracks his safe, stealing his mother's pearl necklace, which has a tracking device built into it. She starts looking around the place, observing a photo of Bruce's parents. As she notices a target with several arrows embedded in it, Bruce comes in, hobbling on a cane, and announces himself by shooting another arrow into the bullseye, causing Selina to jump. She tries to apologize, and comments that Bruce doesn't look anything like the rumors make him out to be. Bruce immediately notices the necklace and outs her as a thief. Caught, Selina's tone and attitude change. She points out that Bruce wouldn't beat up a woman so much as she would beat up a cripple.... ""of course exceptions have to be made."" She kicks his cane out from under him, spilling him to the floor, then escapes by doing a backflip out of a window. She changes out of her disguise as she makes her way to the Congressman's car and asks for a ride.Alfred (Michael Caine) comes up to Bruce's room and finds Bruce looking at the breached safe. Learning that the intruder was one of the maids, he dryly suggests that Bruce stop letting maids into this part of the house. Bruce has found print dust and realizes that Selina also took a copy of his fingerprints.Later that night, Gordon looks through some files on the police station's roof, next to the destroyed Batsignal, when he is approached by rookie police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who informs him about the Congressman's disappearance. Blake reveals that he has suspicions about Dent's death and the last confirmed Batman sighting, but Gordon dismisses him, takes one look at the Batsignal, and departs.The next morning, Alfred finds Bruce working on the computers in the Batcave. The prints their jewel thief was using were not her own, but rather those of a male armed-robbery suspect. Bruce notes that by using the pearls' tracking device, he was able to get their thief's address and cross-reference it with police information to produce Selina's name. Selina is a master jewel thief nicknamed as ""the Cat"". She's been arrested a few times for various crimes like assault, resisting arrest, even breaking out of a women's correctional facility when she just sixteen years old. Alfred suggests that Bruce go out with Selina, and move on from the grief he's had over Rachel's death eight years ago.Alfred surprises Bruce when informing him that during the seven years before Bruce returned to Gotham to become Batman, Alfred hoped that Bruce would never return. He tells Bruce that he wished that while in a cafe during his yearly vacation Florence, Italy after Bruce had disappeared, he would see Bruce happily with a woman, married, having a normal life. They would silently acknowledge each other.Blake and his partner Officer Tyler Ross (Reggie Lee) show up at a sewage treatment plant, where a dead body has washed up out of one of the tunnels. Blake recognizes the body as that of a kid staying at St. Swithin's orphanage. Blake has a very close relationship with the orphanage and with Father Reilly (Chris Ellis), the warden, and we realize that he grew up in that orphanage, which had been funded by the Wayne Foundation until recently. One of the kids at the orphanage informs him that the sewers provide good employment, which makes Blake suspicious.A few nights later, Selina Kyle walks into a bar with a drunk man. She seats him at the counter, then walks over to another table and meets with Philip Stryver (Burn Gorman), Daggett's assistant CEO. She hands him a slide that contains four of Bruce's right hand fingerprints. When Selina asks if Stryver has something in return for her, he signals for one of his men to lock the door. Selina smiles, and admits that although she doesn't want to know what Stryver is planning to use Bruce's prints for, she knows he'll need a thumbprint as well. Stryver has another hoodlum put a pistol to Selina's head to threaten her. She hesitates for a moment, but hands her cell phone to Stryver and tells him to hit the send button.There is a knock at the door, and Selina's friend, a young woman named Jen (Juno Temple), comes in. She enters and notices that the place seems a little quiet, but Selina assures her that the place will liven up in a few minutes, and Jen leaves.Selina then hands Stryver another envelope containing the thumbprint slide. He draws his pistol, prepared to shoot her, and informs Selina that, even in the black dress she's decided to wear tonight, she will not be missed by anyone. Unfortunately for Stryver, Selina reveals that she has anticipated this, for she says that while that might be true about her, the cops are missing her friend, the drunk, who is, in fact, the missing congressman, and Stryver has just accidentally used the congressman's cell phone to send a message to the police.Suddenly, the room is filled with the sound of police cars screeching to a halt outside. Immediately, the thugs draw their pistols and Selina attacks them, disarming one thug. Outside, a SWAT team advances up to the front doors with submachine guns drawn. Selina wrestles with Stryver and drags him over the table, knocking him out, while other henchmen escape out through the kitchen. Just then, the SWAT officers begin swinging a battering ram at the locked front doors. With seconds to act, Selina grabs Stryver's pistol, inserts a fresh magazine, and shoots one henchman, killing him instantly. Selina pistolwhips Stryver, then shoots another thug as he tries to draw his weapon.The SWAT team breaches the doors, shooting a third henchman as they enter. Selina promptly screams hysterically, pretending to be a frightened hostage. The SWAT officers chase the thugs into the kitchen and out the back door, where the hoodlums open fire on them and a shootout ensues. Amidst the echoes of gunfire, Selina walks over to the congressman, who has taken a bullet in the leg, tells him to apply pressure to his wound, then saunters out the front door, where she immediately runs into Blake, to whom she passes herself off as a bystander.While Selina escapes, Blake makes his way through the bar with his pistol. He heads out back to the alleyway to provide support to the SWAT officers, who have been pinned down behind a parked truck. As they break cover and prepare to fire their guns at the henchmen, Barsad, stationed on a fire escape, shoots three of them in the back with a sniper rifle. The remaining henchmen sprint for safety, and as they disappear around another corner, Gordon and Foley arrive with backup. They enter the alley the henchmen fled into, but find that the men have vanished. While a few officers head up a stairwell to look for the henchmen there, Gordon spots a displaced manhole and takes three SWAT officers with him to search the tunnel.The four men climb down the ladder into the sewers in pursuit. As they are searching the tunnel, thugs ambush and open fire on them. A bomb goes off, taking out Gordon's backup and shooting a fireball out of the open manhole. Foley mistakes the blast for a gas explosion, but Blake realizes where Gordon might turn up and quickly runs to his car.As Gordon starts further into the tunnel with his flashlight and pistol drawn, and no backup to help him, two of Bane's men corner him from behind and knock him out. They grab him by his arms, and drag him, still semi-conscious, through a labyrinth of tunnels. As Gordon is dragged deeper in, he notices men with assault rifles and submachine guns overseeing teams of hoodlums doing construction on the walls. The two henchmen bring Gordon to an cavern with a waterfall, where they deposit him in front of a shirtless Bane.Bane asks the two henchmen why they thought to bring Gordon down here. When the first one says he and his comrade didn't know what to do, Bane tells them that they've failed in their duties, and their weakness has cost the lives of three people. He immediately the first guy's neck, then tells the other he will kill him after he searches Gordon's jacket. The second thug empties Gordon's pockets, taking Gordon's badge, wallet, pistol, and Gordon's speech about Harvey Dent. Bane looks over Gordon's speech, deciding that it is useful to his plans.Gordon sees that his captors are occupied, and when Bane has his back turned, he rolls off the platform into a waterway. Bane's men open fire on Gordon as he floats away, hitting him several times. Barsad hands Bane a tracking device, which he places on the second thug. He then shoots him dead with Gordon's pistol and throws his body into the waterway.Outside the tunnels, Blake jumps out of his car near the sewer outlet, and rushes to the exit grate, where he finds Gordon, soaked and barely clinging onto life.After rushing Gordon to the hospital, Blake goes to Wayne Manor to inform Bruce of the shooting, the reason being that he's figured out himself that Bruce is Batman. He explains to Bruce that when he was five years old, his mother died in a car accident, and a few years later, his father was shot dead in a gambling dispute. He's figured out Bruce's identity from the fact that while growing up as an orphan, Blake learned to smile in the mirror to hide his anger. None of Gordon's own cops, not even Foley, believe Gordon's babbling about an underground army, and Blake makes a plea for Bruce to return as Batman to stop Bane.As Bruce watches Blake drive off, he asks Alfred about Bane. Alfred mentions that Bane is a mercenary and it is known that he and his men carried out a coup in a West African country that secured diamond mining operations for Daggett. Bruce asks Alfred why his foundation stopped funding Blake's orphanage, and Alfred reveals that the Wayne Foundation is funded by Wayne Enterprises profits. Figuring it's time to talk to Fox, Bruce asks Alfred for a car and for an appointment at Gordon's hospital for an examination on his leg. He is then seen pulling out of the driveway in his Lamborghini.The orthopedist at the hospital tells Bruce that the cartilage in his left knee is gone and combined with the other damage to his body, he cannot recommend that Bruce go heliskiing. As soon as the doctor leaves the room, Bruce dons a ski mask and fast-ropes down to Gordon's hospital room. He finds Gordon hooked up to multiple machines. Though barely able to talk, Gordon insists that Batman must return to stop Bane.Bruce next tracks down Selina Kyle to her apartment in a rundown neighborhood, using the tracking device planted in his mother's necklace. Inside, Selina has put on the necklace and is preparing to go out for a night on the town when she hears a commotion in the hallway. Jen is being threatened by a yuppie she has pickpocketed. Selina defuses the situation by twisting the guy's hand and forcing him against the wall, in the process stealing his watch. Bruce then watches as she emerges and climbs into a cab, and follows her.Bruce ends up tailing Selina to a gala costume ball. As he leaves his car with the valet, the paparazzi recognize him and start to snap photos of him, but Bruce uses a remote in his pocket that shuts down everyone's cameras, then is waved through by the greeter. Inside, Bruce watches Selina as she is dancing with an older man. She is wearing a domino mask and a headband with a set of cat ears. As he watches her, he is approached by Miranda Tate, the party organizer. She is astonished to see him, since Bruce rarely ever came to charity events even before he retired from his role as Batman. They make some small-talk about the Wayne Enterprises energy project, and then Miranda departs, leaving Bruce free to track down Selina.Bruce cuts in with Selina's dancing partner as the next routine begins. She is annoyed that he came. As they slowly waltz, Selina reveals her desire to get a fresh start, and claims she wants to see the rich lose and the city burn. Bruce tells her that all of her assumptions of him are wrong. Selina tells him that there's a storm coming, having some knowledge of Bane's plans, and that she's adaptable. Although he admits that his mother's necklace looks better on Selina than locked in a safe, he doesn't believe she deserves it, and he removes them from her neck. Selina responds to this by suddenly planting a passionate kiss on him, in the process pickpocketing his valet ticket, and then leaves. Bruce then finds out the hard way that she has stolen his car by pretending to be his wife.Bruce goes to his company offices the next day to meet with Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who assures him that his majority ownership of Wayne Enterprises keeps Daggett from taking over the company despite him blowing the R&D department's budget on the mothballed nuclear project. He takes Bruce down to the R&D department and shows him a new toy - a sleek flying aircraft. It is a U.S. army project designed for urban combat, with rotors that make it capable of navigating between buildings without recirculation. The project, which has a long project designation, is one that Fox simply nicknames ""the Bat"", and that yes, it does come in black. The Bat currently works fine, although Fox warns that the broken autopilot could be repaired with someone of Bruce's intellect.To get back into physical shape, Bruce straps on motorized leg braces and does basic martial arts in the Batcave. Alfred walks in while Bruce is practicing a roundhouse kick, and tells Bruce that he needs to know about rumors that surround Bane. Supposedly, Bane escaped from a middle-eastern prison known for brutality and simply called the ""Pits of Hell."" Bane then became a member of the League of Shadows, and was trained by Ra's al-Ghul. Bane was excommunicated from the group for extreme behavior beyond the boundaries of the League. Alfred warns Bruce that anyone too extreme for the likes of Ra's al-Ghul is not to be trifled with. He believes Bruce has a death wish to go back to being Batman.That evening, Bane and three of his men carry out an assault and robbery on the Gotham Stock Exchange. One henchman, McGarrity, (David Dayan Fisher) enters the building by posing as a shoeshiner, working at a stand by an entrance to the trading floor, stashing a submachine gun in his gym bag. A second unnamed henchman (Massi Furlan) enters disguised as a janitor, and pretends to mop the floor in the front stairwell, hiding a submachine gun in his water bucket. A third henchman, Petrov, sneaks onto the trading floor by posing as a sandwich delivery man.Prior to closing time, McGarrity and the janitor drop what they are doing, wait until there is no one around to see them, then draw their weapons and make their way to the trading floor. At the same time, Bane arrives at the rear entrance disguised as a deliveryman, and wearing a motorcycle helmet to hide his face. When he walks through the metal detector, an alarm goes off. A female security guard stops Bane and orders him to take off his helmet so their cameras can see his face. He removes his helmet, revealing his gas mask. Before the guards can react, Bane lashes out with lethal blows, punching the female guard with his helmet. He knocks out a second guard. A third guard tries to draw his gun, but Bane twists his gun hand, punches him in the crotch with his other hand, shoots a fourth guard, and lastly fracture's the third guard's skull.Upstairs, as McGarrity and the janitor walk into the trading floor, Petrov suddenly draws a pistol from a paper bag, whips his customer over the shoulder with the barrel, and shoots a nearby trader. McGarrity and the janitor raise their submachine guns and open fire, sending traders diving for cover. The three henchmen cease shooting as Bane strides onto the floor. He looks around, and notices a trader who we just saw getting his shoes shined by McGarrity moments earlier. As the trader protests that there is no money for Bane to steal, Bane drags the man by his necktie over to another terminal, and slams his head against the table, knocking him out. McGarrity pulls a laptop out of his bag and uses a USB cable to hook it into the computer terminal. Bane uses the trader's security card to log in to the system, and a series of trades begin running across the screen.The police, including Foley and several SWAT teams, arrive outside the exchange in full force. The security chief at the exchange is worried as Bane has access to everyone's financial assets. Foley refuses to risk endangering hostages. He orders the fiber line and cell tower shut down in an attempt to stall Bane. Inside, Bane is not alarmed when McGarrity reports this to him.While Foley is dealing with the stock exchange's security chief, Blake arrives, climbs out of his car, and notices a cement mixer truck parked on the nearby corner, obstructing the street. He walks over and tells the driver to move his truck. There is a short argument as the driver insists he has nowhere to move. Blake tells him to back his truck up. Suddenly, an alarm goes off, and a barrier ramp is raised at the end of the block to keep the robbers from leaving the street. Blake orders the driver to stay in his truck and rushes off.Inside the exchange, Bane asks McGarrity for a progress report. McGarrity reports that they need eight more minutes to complete the program. Bane looks at the clock and says that they are leaving. The janitor orders everyone to stand, raises his submachine gun and fires into the ceiling, sending hostages scrambling to their feet. McGarrity stuffs his tablet into his bag, while Bane grabs his helmet and starts for the exit.The officers aim their pistols and rifles at the front doors as the hostages begin to exit the building with their hands raised over their heads. A sniper stationed on a rooftop across the street notices a couple of bright headlights inside the lobby. Before he can register what they are, the crowd dives for cover as Bane bursts out of the building riding a motorcycle, followed by McGarrity, Petrov, and the janitor. Each robber is carrying a hostage, strapped to the back of his motorcycle. Foley yells for the officers to hold their fire. Bane and his men weave through the police cars, speed past Blake and the cement truck, use the crash barriers as ramps to jump over a few police cars, and escape. As they pass the cement truck and Blake's position, Bane and the janitor throw their hostages off. Foley shouts orders, and officers jump into the cars and speed away, tires screeching, as they give chase.Bane and his men race through the streets. As they enter a tunnel, a single police car, driven by rookie officer Simon Jansen (Will Estes) and his veteran partner Kelly (Brent Briscoe) catches on to them. Jansen tells Kelly, riding shotgun, to shoot the tires, but Kelly doesn't have a clean shot. Foley orders them over the radio to drop back to avoid endangering the hostages.Suddenly, Jansen notices the tunnel lights behind them going out by themselves. The tunnel goes dark, and the police car's engine and battery suddenly cut off for a few seconds. Something sleek and black races past their car and Kelly tells his partner, ""Oh boy! You are in for a show tonight, son."" Seconds later, Petrov's motorcycle suddenly sputters out. As Petrov comes to a stop, his hostage makes a break for it. Petrov aims his pistol, preparing to shoot the hostage, when Batman slams into him, knocking off his bike. He then climbs back on the Batpod, aims an EMP gun, and shorts out the janitor's motorcycle, bringing him to a stop. Just then, Officer Jansen shoots Batman's weapon. Jansen apologizes before his partner orders him back in the car.Receiving word of the Batman's return, Foley jumps into Blake's cruiser, and they drive off to join the chase. As they drive, Foley orders every unit brought in, eager to take down Batman, even though Blake believes they should be focusing on stopping Bane from escaping.While the car chase unfolds, Selina breaks into Daggett's safe looking for the Clean Slate software program, which has the potential to expunge her criminal record. She is using special safecracking goggles that flip up and look like cat ears when she is not using them. When she opens the safe, she is enraged to find that it is empty.As Batman chases Bane and McGarrity on the Batpod, Bane notices that the laptop application is 91% complete. With the cops closing in, Bane signals to McGarrity, then makes a tight u-turn. A pursuing officer reports this to Foley over the radio, but Foley orders the officers to let Bane go and instead stay on Batman's trail. As a result, Bane is able to race through the police cars without any of them trying to intercept him, doing a second glance over his shoulder as he passes Batman. Once at a safe spot, he watches the chase for a few moments to make sure no one has seen him, then rides into a storm drain to head back to his hideout.Batman rescues McGarrity's hostage and uses his bike to block the mercenary near a highway on-ramp. Batman steps up to McGarrity, shatters his visor with his fist, and looks at the laptop, which now reads ""application complete."" As the police surround him, Batman grabs the laptop hard drive, then sets off an explosion with the Batpod cannons and jumps off of a stopped auto carrier. After another harrowing chase, the police box him in, and Batman turns into an alleyway. It appears that Batman has been cornered ""like a rat in a trap,"" but as Foley prepares to speak into a megaphone, a blue light and odd humming noise appears at the end of the alleyway, and Kelly tells Foley he's got the wrong animal. The Bat emerges, and flies out and over the police officers, its downdraft pinning the cops down. Blake casually asks Foley if he's sure that was Batman who just flew off. Furious, Foley shoves the megaphone into Blake's hand.At Daggett's penthouse, Stryver reports to Daggett that the robbery was successful even with Batman's interference, and Bane has assured him the men who were captured will die before talking. Daggett tells a servant to open champagne and heads to his office. As he enters the office, he asks ""Can we get some girls in here?"" A voice promptly says, ""Careful what you wish for,"" at which point Selina suddenly appears, attacks Daggett from behind, throws him across the room and pins him to the wall with her left boot restraining his right arm and her hand grasping his neck. She demands to know where the Clean Slate program is. Stryver comes in and puts a pistol to the back of Selina's head, but she disarms him by stomping her serrated heel on his instep. One of Daggett's bodyguards bursts in. Selina holds him off by aiming her pistol at the bodyguard while collaring Daggett. She shoots out the window, and jumps onto a window-washing platform with Daggett, which she lowers to the ground.On the nearby rooftop, Selina pins Daggett down, and jams Stryver's pistol into his neck, trying to get him to talk. Daggett admits that he lied about the Clean Slate, which he considered a ""gangland myth"". As Selina tries to control herself and takes this in, Bane's men surround her. She grabs Daggett and tries using him as a human shield to warn the henchmen to back off, but they ignore her. Batman appears, and he and Selina attack the mercenaries, disarming several of them. Selina is annoyed when Batman disarms her of her pistol when she's about to shoot a henchman. Suddenly, Barsad and some other mercenaries appear and open fire on them, forcing Batman and Selina to run towards the edge of the roof. Batman jumps off the roof and into the Bat, parked below the roof ledge. Selina hesitates for a moment, but makes the jump when she sees Bane approaching her. Bane can only watch as the Bat flies away.Batman deposits Selina on a rooftop. She is annoyed that he tried to interfere, not even so much as giving a ""thank you"" to him. Bruce manages to figure out what she did with his fingerprints and learns that Daggett was interested in the exchange robbery. However, before Bruce can find out more, he is forced to duck as the spotlight of a police helicopter flying by shines over the roof. When he looks back up, Selina has vanished. ""So that's what it feels like,"" he says to himself.Returning to the Batcave, Bruce asks Alfred to have Fox decode the hard drive and also notices his thumbprint scan is on the application. His decision to return as Batman leads to a spat with Alfred, who is afraid he has a death wish. Alfred leaves Bruce and the mansion for good after revealing the contents of Rachel's farewell letter to Bruce, given to Alfred prior to her death at the Joker's hands in The Dark Knight. Alfred had burned the letter to protect Bruce from pain, since before her death Rachel chose Harvey Dent over Bruce as her lover.The next morning, Bruce learns from Fox that in the course of the robbery, Bane made stock trades to bankrupt Wayne Enterprises, meaning Wayne Enterprises is about to fall into Daggett's hands. To protect one secret, Bruce and Fox show Miranda the fusion reactor. Fox and Miranda intend to use it for generating clean energy for the entire city, although Bruce is afraid of the chance that someone will turn the reactor into a nuclear weapon, as Dr. Pavel managed to discover. None of them are aware that Bane has in fact kidnapped Dr. Pavel for this purpose. The reactor is hidden in a chamber underneath the river so that it can be flooded for containment in emergencies. Bruce wants Miranda to become acting CEO of Wayne Enterprises to safeguard the reactor.Bruce is later booted out of a Wayne Enterprises board meeting at Daggett's behest. As he leaves the building, he finds his car being towed. Blake shows up and offers Bruce a ride.Daggett is not happy that Miranda Tate was appointed to the board, and when he returns to his apartment, he demands to see Bane. Stryver hesitates, but Bane suddenly appears behind Daggett. Daggett turns his anger on Bane, not happy that Bane's attack on the stock exchange didn't help Daggett take over Wayne Enterprises, and furthermore, is not happy about the fact that Bane also has been working Daggett's construction crews around the clock all across the city for unknown purposes. Bane dismisses Stryver, calmly and casually revealing that the small fortune Daggett paid him does not give him complete power over him, and it was only for the construction machinery that he required to build the sophisticated underground sewers and accomplish his own future plans that he complied with Daggett's orders, which render him Gotham's reckoning. Daggett calls Bane pure evil, but Bane replies that he is ""necessary evil"" and he breaks Daggett's neck. He then has the body thrown in a dumpster.Blake shows up at the hospital while Foley is talking to Gordon, to report the discovery of Daggett's body. He has files that show Daggett's name all over construction permits for underground digging across the city, which make him suspect that Daggett was somehow associated with Bane. Foley still is skeptical of Bane's existence, but Gordon, impressed with Blake's honesty and hard work, promotes him to detective, telling him he's not allowed to believe in coincidences anymore.Bruce finds Selina at her apartment and says his powerful friend needs her help. He says he knows about the Clean Slate program and he has it. Selina says she'll think about it. She apologizes to Bruce about him losing all of his money in Bane's attack.When Bruce arrives home in a cab, he finds Miranda there. Bruce finds he doesn't have any keys, so they break into the house through a window. Bruce's electricity is off, as he can't afford it anymore. As they sleep together, Miranda talks about how fire made her family feel rich when they were growing up. Bruce notices a scar on her shoulder, which she calls a mistake.While Miranda is sleeping, Bruce sneaks down to the Batcave, puts on his Batsuit, and goes to meet with Selina, who says that Wayne wasn't lying about his powerful friend. They take out a couple of mercenaries on the way. As Batman steps onto a catwalk, a grate slams shut, and Selina admits that she turned him over to keep Bane's men from killing her. Batman is telling her she's made a mistake when Bane appears behind him. Batman isn't surprised when Bane reveals that he knows that it's Bruce underneath the mask, knowing Bruce's identity through the League of Shadows. Although he was excommunicated before Bruce's arrival and training, Bane claims that now, he *is* the League of Shadows, and must have had the information of Bruce's alter ego reported to him through one of the members of the League who survived the assault on Gotham in Batman Begins. Bane also claims he's in Gotham to fulfill Ra's al-Ghul's destiny of destroying the city.A lengthy battle of hand-to-hand combat between the two ensues. Bruce appears to be more aggressive and offensive than his usual sense, knowing the strength of his opponent. Bane begins to defeat Bruce, who tries several diversions, like flashbangs and disabling the lights, but these prove useless against a trained League of Shadows member like Bane, who mocks his tactics. Bane beats Bruce into submission, breaking his cowl with a few blows to his head. As Bruce lies prone, Bane reveals where he has established his base. One of his men hands him a detonator, and upon pressing it, explosions go off and a Tumbler falls through the ceiling, revealing that Bane has set up his base underneath Wayne Enterprises' Applied Sciences office. Bane is Batman's most formidable enemy because he targets Bruce Wayne directly and uses Wayne's resources against the city of Gotham. As henchmen climb up ropes to raid Applied Sciences and capture Bruce's armory, Bruce engages Bane again, but is beaten down again. Bane lifts Batman over his head and brings him down brutally on his knee, breaking his back. Bane tears off the broken section of Batman's cowl and drops it, victorious. Selina, shocked that she just sent Bruce to his doom, slinks off as mercenaries grab Bruce and drag him away.The scene cuts to the next morning. Blake knocks on Wayne Manor's front door, looking for Bruce, but finding no one home, he goes into the city, and while sitting his car, he spots Selina getting into a cab. Recognizing her from the shootout at the bar, he tails her to the airport. Noticing the increased police presence, she ducks into an off-limits area. A uniformed officer spots her and asks to see her boarding pass. Selina hands the cop her hat and pretends to check her purse, then punches him. As she is walking down the jet bridge, Blake comes out of a door in front of her, flashing his badge.Blake talks to Selina in an airport office, asking her why she's trying to run. He is able to determine that she's trying to escape from Bane. Selina says she's not sure if Batman is alive, given what she saw of his fight with Bane. She is then arrested, and placed in Blackgate prison.Meanwhile, Bruce wakes up in a foreign prison, still in pain from the fight. As he is regaining consciousness, he sees Bane standing over him. The prison sits at the bottom of a deep circular shaft, with the only way in or out being by climbing the stone walls. When Bruce asks Bane why he did not just kill him, Bane taunts Bruce that he intends to kill his soul first, making him witness Gotham City's downfall. Bane promises Bruce that he'll live at least long enough to see Gotham destroyed, and that only when he is done, and Gotham is ashes, will he give Bruce permission to die.The prison is where Bane claims to have been born, and it is notorious as a ""Hell on Earth"", from which nobody has managed to escape. However, one of the prisoners (Tony Amen) tells Bruce that a child had managed to escape. The child was born of a mercenary, who fell in love with a warlord's daughter. The mercenary was sentenced to life in the prison, but the daughter made a deal with her father to free him and instead ended up a prisoner there herself. One day a riot broke out in the prison. She was raped and murdered, but her child escaped. Bruce concludes that the child must have been Bane.While in his cell, Bruce sees several prisoners attempt to escape by using a rope, and climbing up the shaft towards the light, but fail to clear the final jump on to a ledge required to escape, instead falling and being slung into the brick walls on the sides of the shaft, severely wounding them.Back in Gotham, Miranda and Fox arrive at Wayne Enterprises for a board meeting on the reactor project. They enter the board room....to find Bane and his men holding the board of directors hostage. Bane welcomes Fox and asks him to nominate another board member to come with him. Fredericks, another board member, volunteers before Fox can name a nominee. Bane and his men take Fox, Miranda and Fredericks down through the hole in Applied Sciences. As he is led along, Fox is horrified watching henchmen fixing parts on the Tumblers.Blake is talking with Gordon at the hospital about Batman's disappearance when Foley bursts in and informs him of Bane's latest move. This is the last straw for Gordon. He immediately orders Foley to send every available cop to search the sewers to smoke out Bane and his men, on (at Blake's suggestion) the pretense that they're performing a 'training exercise' (so as to avoid causing panic). Foley apologizes to Gordon for not taking him seriously earlier, and departs. Blake prepares to leave with Foley, but Gordon holds him back and orders him to look up Daggett's leads instead.Foley oversees the operation from outside a subway tunnel portal, and watches as officers of every rank walk into the tunnel, not knowing that it will be a long time before they will see daylight again. Elsewhere, teams assemble at subway stations, sewer portals, manhole covers, and drainage pipes and descend into the tunnels, searching for Bane and his men.Bane and his men lead Miranda, Fox, and Fredericks into a tunnel, where Fox and Miranda notice Dr. Pavel. They arrive at a dead end where henchmen plant explosive charges into a wall. Bane gives a nod, and all of the henchmen cover their ears as the wall is blasted, clearing a path into the reactor chamber. The explosion echoes through the underground tunnel network, audible to cops searching tunnels elsewhere in the city. Inside the chamber, Bane orders Fox to turn the reactor on. Fox refuses, so Bane signals for Barsad to hold a pistol to Fredericks' head. After Miranda pleads with him to cooperate, she and Fox put their hands on a handprint scanner to turn on the reactor. Bane then orders his men to take the three board members back to the surface.Blake drives around in his unmarked unit, logging Daggett's cement plants and locations they've done construction in. He is talking on his cell phone with Gordon, who tells him to keep looking deeper. He then pulls up to a cement plant.In the reactor plant, Dr. Pavel completes his work - converting the reactor into a four megaton nuclear bomb. Bane orders his men to remove the reactor's core, which Dr. Pavel objects to - removing the core will render the bomb unstable and cause it to melt down within five months - until Bane threatens to harm Dr. Pavel's family if he doesn't cooperate.As he walks through the cement plant, Blake recognizes one of the construction workers as the cement truck driver whose truck prevented the police from getting closer to the stock exchange during the raid. Blake mentions that he is not allowed to believe in coincidences. On cue, the driver's colleague tries to swing a knife at him. Blake twists the guy's arm and shoots him. The driver grabs Blake from behind, and after a struggle, Blake fires his gun at the truck. The bullet ricochets off the barrel and hits the driver in the back. Blake tries to get the driver to reveal what he's working on, but it is too late - the man has died. Blake is disgusted with his use of lethal force and tosses his pistol away. When he gets out his cell phone and leaves a message for Gordon, Blake notices barrels of polyisobutylene and motor oil, and realizes that using Daggett's construction crews, Bane has rigged numerous construction areas around the city with C4 explosive charges.As he drives away from the cement plant, Blake gets on his radio and warns Foley that the cops are about to head into a trap. Foley immediately yells to the watch commanders with him to start withdrawing the officers under their charge.Meanwhile, the mayor shows up at Heinz Field to watch the Gotham Rogues play against the Rapid City Monuments. He heads to his private box after shrugging off reporters asking him about cops heading underground, using the training exercise story Blake suggested to Foley.As cops search the tunnels, Bane and his men arrive at the stadium, breaking in through the boiler room, and take up positions in the locker room tunnel as a young boy sings the national anthem. All of them are carrying detonators in their hands. During the national anthem, numerous Rogues players are seen, ready to take the field, including Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Wide Receivers Mike Wallace and Hines Ward, Safety Troy Polamalu, and Tight End Heath Miller, along with former Steelers coach Bill Cowher. When Bane catches the child's singing, he comments, ""That's a lovely, lovely voice.""At the end of the song, Rapid City kicker Ravenstahl (Pittsburgh's own mayor Luke Ravenstahl in a cameo appearance) kicks off to begin the first quarter. Bane comments, ""Let the games begin!"" and presses the button on a remote control detonator. Several different events occur simultaneously:--In the tunnels, officers stop when they hear booms. As they are trying to register and identify the noise, portions of the ceilings across the sewer and subway system collapse, trapping them underground.--A series of large explosions rip through Manhattan, destroying buildings and infrastructure alike. Bridges leading up to the city, with the exception of the Queensboro Bridge, are destroyed by Bane's explosives, trapping the entire population of the city inside.--Blake is driving down another street, siren wailing, when the street starts to blow up. Street lamps, buildings, and telephone poles collapse all around his car, while other vehicles are tossed. He manages to stay ahead of the explosives for a short amount of time until one blast causes his car to flip over once before landing upright on its wheels, demolished.Once he comes to his senses, Blake gets on the radio with Foley, who confirms Blake's predictions: every cop in the city is trapped in the tunnels. But Blake realizes that not every cop is stuck down there, and realizes that Bane will try to assassinate Gordon. Unfortunately, his car has been demolished. With no other option, Blake grabs a shotgun from the trunk of his car, and commandeers an SUV from another uninjured motorist.Two of Bane's henchmen arrive at the hospital, searching for Gordon. They fire short bursts with their submachine guns as they enter the lobby, causing patients and guards to take cover. As they search the hospital, Gordon is alerted to their presence when the power goes out and the hospital switches to emergency lighting. He climbs out of his bed.Outside, Blake screeches to a halt and runs through the lobby. As he searches the corridor, he hears gunshots. He runs to Gordon's room, draws his shotgun, and kicks down the door, to discover that Gordon has already killed the two henchmen. Blake only has a second to register this before Gordon puts a pistol to the back of his head and orders him to get his coat.--At Heinz Field, wide receiver Hines Ward is running the ball down the field when explosions go off in the support columns to the foundation, causing the field to collapse and swallow the players, except for Ward, who manages to run the ball to the end zone for a touchdown, only noticing the destruction when he looks behind him. An additional bomb goes off in the mayor's box, incinerating him and his aides. As the debris settles, Bane's men storm the bleachers, taking the crowd hostage, while Bane, Barsad and other mercenaries march onto the remains of the field. He declares to the crowd that he and his men have come to liberate Gotham. He displays the fusion reactor core, calling it the ""instrument of their liberation"" and ""interviews"" Dr. Pavel in front of the shocked audience. After having Dr. Pavel admit that he is the only person who knows how to disarm the bomb, Bane thanks him, then breaks Dr. Pavel's neck. Bane also declares that he has left one citizen in charge of the detonator who will trigger the bomb in case of any sort of civil rebellion. Bane also threatens the government forces that should anybody try to enter or leave the city, he will detonate the nuclear weapon, thus forcing the government forces to guard the city and stop anybody from leaving.The Queensboro Bridge is left intact as a means to provide food and supplies to Gotham's citizens.As Blake drives to his apartment with Gordon, Gordon says he has to get in front of a camera, but Blake discourages him, saying that Bane will shoot him if he shows his face.The next day, Bane proceeds to Blackgate Prison, where more than 1,000 prisoners have been incarcerated as per the Dent Act, which gave power to the police. He reads out Gordon's speech revealing the truth about Harvey Dent, and declares the prisoners free, as the man who drew up the Dent Act himself was a murderer and a madman.The prisoners join Bane and together enforce what Bane calls ""martial law"": forcing the elite out of their homes, holding kangaroo courts presided over by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) and offering them a choice: exile or death. ""Exile"" means being forced to walk on the frozen East River underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, where the ice cracks and drowns anyone making the crossing. ""Death"" is revealed to be the same thing, as those who choose it get sentenced to ""death by exile.""84 days into the siege, the Army slips an intelligence team into Gotham disguised as relief workers, under the command of Captain Mark Jones (Daniel Sunjata). They meet with Gordon, Foley, Blake, and some other cops who managed to escape being trapped underground. The soldiers, Blake, and the surviving cops begin tracking three military trucks, one of which carries the nuclear weapon (they can't tell which one has the bomb because they all have lead-lined roofs). To avoid detection of the weapon, the three trucks are being driven around the city continuously.Blake takes Jones and his men to a Wayne Enterprises office that Fox and Miranda are sheltered in. Miranda takes responsibility for the creation of the reactor which the bomb was molded from. Fox explains that as the reactor's cells deteriorate, the reactor will become very unstable, and regardless of what happens, the bomb will go off in three weeks. Fox admits that he could reconnect the core to the reactor to re-stabilize it. Blake prepares to leave with Jones, but Jones orders him to stay with Fox and Miranda while he goes to call in a report.Unfortunately, someone has betrayed Jones and his team, for just as they are leaving the hideout, a group of Bane's henchmen ambush them and open fire on them. Blake and Miranda quickly escape by slipping out a back door, while Fox is captured by a henchman. Jones' team draws their weapons and begin shooting back, but prove no match for Bane's men, and they are shot dead. When Jones breaks cover and tries to flee, he is shot in the chest and falls. As he lies on the ground, Bane appears over him. Jones says he'll die before he can talk to his commander. Bane assures him, ""I'm on your schedule, captain,"" and crushes Jones's neck. Bane orders his men to round up Fox and the others for judgment and to hang the soldiers' bodies from one of the bridges as a message for the world.All this time, Bruce, holed up in the prison, is watching the havoc in Gotham on a TV set in the prison. He gets the doctor there to crudely fix his back; as his fight with Bane partially dislocated his vertebrae. The doctor puts Bruce into a crude form of traction and pushes the vertebrae back into place. The doctor tells Bruce to remain in that position until he can stand by himself. Enduring the pain, Bruce hallucinates that he sees Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) who proclaims his immortality. As the days wear on in the prison, Bruce's anger builds, and he is determined to save Gotham. He rigorously trains his body with pullups, pushups, and situps and he attempts to make the escape with the rope twice, but fails each time.After the second attempt, Bruce questions how a child could have escaped, but he could not. The doctor explains that while paradoxically, it seems as if having no fear of death should enhance his escape chances, in reality the human trait of fearing death is the necessary ingredient. There are suggestions that Bruce--in his grief over Rachel's death, physical disability, 8-year retirement from his Batman persona, and isolation-- is inured to mortality. He seems to have the death wish that Alfred had tried to remedy earlier with the shock of his leaving Bruce. Bruce solves the dilemma in replying that he fears dying in prison when the people of Gotham can only be saved by him if he were to escape. He realizes that the child had escaped without the safety rope, and chooses not to use the rope in his third attempt. Bruce reveals his confidence by packing supplies for himself in a bag. He begins the climb to the Arabic chants of ""Deshi deshi basara basara"" meaning ""Rise."" When he reaches the pivotal point, requiring the jump, a stream of bats flows from a tunnel inside the cave and startle him, but increase his confidence. Bruce takes the jump and latches onto the protruding rock and succeeds in his final attempt. He subsequently throws down a rope from the top, allowing all the current prisoners to escape as well.Bruce returns to Gotham as Batman. He manages to gain trust from Selina after he catches her in the act of beating up two gangbangers trying to harm a young boy by offering her the Clean Slate program; Selina accepts. Bruce gets to Miranda and Fox by letting Bane's men capture him, as Fox has access to Bruce's backup Batsuit. To escape, Selina comes in and declares to the mercenaries that Bane wants Bruce and Fox by themselves. She knocks out the mercenaries and undoes their handcuffs. Fox tells Bruce he's found a nice girlfriend and Selina says, ""He should be so lucky"".Once Fox has put Bruce in his Batsuit, and Bruce has found the Bat, he saves Gordon and some of the surviving cops after they are captured and are forced to cross the frozen river, simultaneously lighting a huge Batman symbol which lets everyone in Gotham know that he is back. When Bane sees the symbol he states, ""Impossible. Keep her close (pointing at Miranda). He'll come for her."" Fox reveals that trigger or no trigger, the nuclear device is unstable and will detonate anyway the next day, and recovers a signal jammer from the Bat which can block the signals from the trigger.With Blake and Selina's help, Batman frees the police trapped in the sewers by using the Bat to destroy debris blocking the tunnels, and rescues Blake after he is captured trying to rescue cops through a manhole cover.The next morning, the rallied police forces, led by Foley, assemble on Wall Street, facing against Bane's army. One of Bane's men gets on a megaphone and orders the cops to disperse or be shot at. Foley replies back, ""There's only one police in this town!"" Bane orders his Tumblers to open fire, but as one of the Tumblers prepares to blast the cops with its cannons, the Bat appears and disables the cannons. As it flies off, the incited cops cheer and rush Bane's men. Physical combat ensues between Bane's men and the cops.Batman fights Bane again, with more success. He punches Bane's mask, detaching some of the tubes on his mask that feed Bane his anesthetic, which weakens him greatly, angers the villain, and forces Bane into the offensive. Batman avoids blow after blow and then lands a series of furious punches on Bane's mask and body, culminating with a roundhouse kick that sends Bane to the floor. When Bane asks him how he escaped and came back, stating ""I broke you,"" Batman tries to force Bane to reveal the location of the trigger device stating, ""Tell me where the trigger is. Then you have my permission to die,"" appropriately using Bane's own phrase against him. After Batman tells Bane that he is not the only person who can escape from that prison, Miranda suddenly stabs Batman in the side in a soft spot in the suit with her dagger sliding dangerously between his ribs.It is then revealed that ""Miranda""'s real name is Talia, and that she was the child who escaped from the Hell on Earth prison. Bane had been a prisoner there and her protector. During the prison riot that claimed her mother's life, Bane helped her escape, but in the process was hurt severely. The prison doctor attempted to repair the damage, but his methods resulted in Bane needing anesthetics to constantly keep the pain at bay.After she escaped, Talia tracked down her father: Ra's Al Ghul. She convinced her father to rescue Bane, and both were trained within the League of Shadows. Apart from the realization that Bane was an extremist monster, the injuries inflicted on Bane's face became a reminiscence of the suffering endured by Talia's mother in the pit for Ra's Al Ghul, which was why Bane was excommunicated from the group. Talia's intention is to take revenge on Batman for killing her father, as well as finishing the mission of destroying Gotham for its greed that cost her father's life. She hits the trigger of the nuclear weapon, but Gordon has managed to fit the signal jammer on the weapon just in time. However, there are only eleven minutes left for the nuke to detonate. Miranda/Talia says farewell and leaves Bane to kill Batman.As Bane is about to execute Batman with a shotgun, Selina crashes into the lobby on the Batpod and mortally wounds Bane by blasting him with the Pod's large cannons. Talia and Barsad walk out to the Tumblers. As they are climbing in, Barsad is shot dead by Foley with a submachine gun as he fires from outside the stock exchange. He and several other officers are killed when Talia orders her Tumbler's driver to gun them down. She takes control of the truck carrying the weapon, but her escorts are finished off in a prolonged chase sequence, with Selina riding the Batpod and Batman flying the Bat in the air, and attacking the convoy. Talia's truck goes off the road and crashes, and she is fatally wounded because she isn't wearing a seatbelt. In her last moments alive, she explains how her access to the reactor chamber allowed her to set a timer to flood it, preventing the weapon from being returned there. She dies believing she had finally completed her father's work and avenged his death.Fox escapes the flooding chamber and realizes there is no way of stabilizing the weapon. The weapon cannot be deactivated, and will detonate in less than 2 minutes. Batman explains that the Bat has no autopilot, and that he will need to fly the bomb out of Gotham. Batman shares a kiss with Selina, before revealing to Gordon his true identity: He says that a true hero puts a coat on a young boy after his parents are killed, and says, ""it's going to be alright son,"" as Gordon does to Bruce in Batman Begins. As he exits, Gordon says his true name.With not much time left, Batman attaches the bomb to the Bat, and flies it away from the city, and out over the bay. The citizens of Gotham watch as the weapon detonates on the horizon, and the mushroom-cloud balloons over the bay.In the aftermath, the police recapture all of those released by Bane.A private funeral is held on the grounds of Wayne Manor for Bruce, by those who knew his true identity (including Gordon and Blake). Alfred sobs quietly, feeling that he let Bruce's parents down by not protecting him.Blake resigns from the police force, and explains to Gordon that Gotham will never really know who saved it. Gordon tells him that they will know that it was 'The Batman' who saved them. In tribute, a statue has been erected in Batman's memory.In the aftermath of Bruce Wayne's death, certain provisions are made. The majority of the estate is sold, with the money given to Alfred. Wayne Manor is given to the city of Gotham, as a place for orphaned boys to stay. Strangely, one of the Wayne family's treasures (a string of pearls) cannot be located.Blake is also given a duffel bag as part of Bruce's will. When presenting his I.D., the clerk who checks it suggests that he go by his real first name as it appears on his I.D.: Robin.Back in Applied Sciences, Lucius has workers go over the second camouflage rotor(The Bat) in the underground storage area. Wanting to know what he could have done to get the autopilot functioning, he is surprised when the workers explain that the autopilot is functional, and the computer log shows that Bruce Wayne made the changes 6 months prior.Up on the roof of Gotham's Police Department, Gordon finds the once broken Batsignal (destroyed by him personally by the end of the second movie) repaired.Meanwhile, Blake has opened the duffel bag, and finds a spelunking rope, and GPS coordinates. The information leads him to a waterfall (the entrance to the batcave). He makes his way past the waterfall, and into the cave, where his light attracts a flurry of bats. The light he uses, given to him by Wayne, is the same the Bruce uses when he first enters the cave in Batman Begins.In Florence, Italy, Alfred has returned to the restaurant that he had visited during Bruce's absence long ago. As he scans the tables, he sees Bruce and Selina at a nearby table and smiles. A fleeting glance between both Alfred and Bruce is enough to assure the other that each of them will be alright. After Bruce had attached the bomb to the Bat and taken off, he ejected with an escape pod to distance himself from the explosion and allowed the autopilot to continue to transport the bomb. There is a shot of Batman in a flying vehicle with a timer at five seconds, leading viewers to believe the explosion killed him, but Batman was not in the Bat carrying the bomb and was not within the blast radius of the bomb in that time-frame.In the final shot, we see Blake walking over a pool of water. As he does so, his movement activates the black flooring containing the batsuit. Blake stares around him as the flooring rises up."
  32  "Season 1A struggling high school chemistry teacher, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), is diagnosed with inoperable, advanced lung cancer. On a ride along with his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), Walter sees a former student of his, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), fleeing the scene of a meth lab. He later contacts Jesse and devises a scheme to become partners in an attempt to combine their skills to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine, with Walter cooking the product and Jesse using his street connections to distribute it. Walter says he wants to provide financial stability for his pregnant wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn) and disabled son, and to pay for his expensive cancer treatment. During Walter and Jesse's first days of selling Albuquerque's finest meth, they encounter a series of problems with local drug dealers. Walter takes to selling the meth he produces to a local druglord, Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz), using the alias 'Heisenberg'.Season 2Walter continues to find himself facing insurmountable medical bills from his cancer treatment. Despite having had several bad experiences while producing meth with Jesse, Walter agrees to rejoin his partner. The two begin producing meth but run into multiple problems. Jesse's friend Badger (Matt L. Jones) is arrested while selling meth in a sting operation. Walter hires a lawyer, Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), to help Badger. Walter and Jesse drive a recreational vehicle into the desert and produce meth for four days. Later, Combo, another of Jesse's friends and distributors, is killed by a rival gang for selling meth in their territory. Saul suggests the two find a new distribution model. Throughout this, Jesse has been building a relationship with his neighbor and landlord, Jane Margolis (Krysten Ritter). Jane, who is a recovering addict, relapses and the two begin doing heroin. Saul finds them a new business partner, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), who is willing to pay $1.2 million for the 38 pounds of meth they produced. Walter hastily delivers the product to Gus, but misses his daughter's birth. Walt withholds Jesse's half of the money because of his drug use, but Jane finds out about it and blackmails Walt. Walt visits Jesse's house and witnesses Jane overdosing and choking on her own vomit, but perceiving her as an enemy, sits idly beside her and lets her die. Skyler confronts Walter about his frequent absences and excuses. She begins to piece together his secret life and demands that they separate.Season 3Walter wishes to reunite his family, but Skyler is still suspicious of Walter's second life. Walter believes he can mend the tension between them by confessing to her that he has been producing meth. Skyler is appalled by the confession and demands a formal divorce. Meanwhile, Gus offers to pay Walter $3M for three months of his service. He even offers to provide Walter with a state-of-the-art production facility and a brilliant lab assistant, Gale (David Costabile). Jesse is continuing to produce and sell meth by himself.Hank is working with the DEA to investigate Jesse and is slowly gathering evidence to make an arrest. He survives an assassination attempt made by Tuco's twin cousins and manages to kill one of his assailants and critically injure the other, who later dies in the hospital. Hank suffers critical wounds but survives.Jesse threatens to report Walter to the police if he is arrested, but Walter offers him Gale's position at the lab. After obtaining the position, Jesse begins stealing meth from the lab and selling it in secret on the side. Jesse gets romantically involved with a woman he meets in his rehab group and learns her kid brother, age 11, was put up by Gus and his street dealers to kill Combo. Jesse decides to avenge Combo. Walter aids Jesse in escaping from Gus's wrath. Gus begins to lose trust in Walter and asks Gale to take over the lab. He orders his henchmen to kill Walter and Jesse. After he is abducted by the henchmen, Walter instructs Jesse over the phone to kill Gale in order to force Gus not to kill Walter (and, by extension, Jesse) lest he eliminate his only remaining trained chemist.Season 4Jesse follows Walter's instructions and murders Gale. Gus decides to discipline the two by enforcing stricter policies at the lab. He also tries to break Walter and Jesse's friendship by assigning them to separate work details. While Walter works in the meth lab, Jesse escorts Mike (Jonathan Banks), one of Gus's enforcers, to retrieve payments and provide back-up. Walter and Jesse become increasingly distant from, and hostile to, each other. Meanwhile, Hank, who has been recovering from his last engagement with the cartel, finds evidence linking Gale to Gus. He believes Gus is a major drug distributor and starts looking for tangible evidence to file charges. Gus realizes Walter's close ties with Hank could jeopardize his entire operation. Gus fires Walter and informs him Hank will be killed. He also warns Walter that if he intervenes his entire family will be murdered. Jesse and Walter put their differences aside and agree to murder Gus, convincing former cartel enforcer Hector Salamanca to detonate a suicide bomb; Hector succeeds in this endeavor, killing himself, Gus, and Tyrus, Gus's henchman. Walter and Jesse then destroy the meth lab and Walter declares to his wife, ""I won.""Season 5Following Gus Fring's death, Walter partners with Jesse and Mike to create a new meth production and distribution operation. Mike handles all business aspects of the partnership, while Walter and Jesse work with a team of house fumigators to produce meth in tented houses. Hank and the DEA are able to identify nine prison inmates and one lawyer with criminal ties to Mike. Walter kills Mike, and is fearful that the informants will flip on Walter's operation since Mike is no longer able to pay them to keep quiet. He hires Jack Welker, the leader of a neo-Nazi gang, to kill the ten informants from within prison. Walter's business continues unimpeded until he decides to retire after accruing $80 million, which he buries in the desert.Later, Hank is invited to the Whites' home, where he unintentionally stumbles upon one of Walter's books with a signed message from Gale Boetticher. He realizes that Walter is the infamous Heisenberg and secretly restarts the investigation. Hank forms an alliance with Jesse, who now despises Walter for all his wrongdoings. Left with no options, Walter hires Jack again to murder Jesse. Walter attempts to confront Jesse in the desert, but instead Hank traps and arrests him. The neo-Nazi gang arrives and engages Hank in a fierce firefight. Jack executes Hank despite Walter's pleas. Jesse is captured and forced into slavery, producing meth for the gang. Before leaving, Jack and his gang take a majority of Walter's money, leaving him with only $11 million.Skyler and Walter Jr. are distraught over Hank's death and hold Walter accountable. They refuse to leave Albuquerque with Walter and instead contact the police. Walter spends the next several months hiding in a cabin in New Hampshire while struggling with cancer. He returns to New Mexico in order to visit his family one final time and seek revenge against Jack. Later that night, Walter executes all of the gang's members and frees Jesse, who escapes from the compound before the police arrive. Walter realizes he is mortally wounded from a gunshot and slowly succumbs to his injury as the police search the compound."
  33  "The film begins with a flashback to the first film, with Gandalf battling the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, but this time continues from Gandalf's perspective, with the scene continuing to follow both as they hurtle down below, fighting while in free-fall. The moment they hit the water of an underground lake, Frodo awakens from his dream and continues his journey with his trusted and loyal friend, Sam through the rocky region of Emyn Muil, where they become lost. Soon they are attacked by the ring-possessed Gollum wishing to retrieve ""his precious"" from the ones he thinks stole it from him. The Hobbits subdue and bind him with Sam's Elven rope given to him by the Elven elder Galadriel in Lórien. Sam distrusts Gollum and wishes to abandon him, but Frodo understands the burden of the creature and takes pity on him. In need of a guide, Frodo removes the rope from Gollum's neck and persuades him to lead them to the Black Gate of Mordor.In Rohan, the pack of Uruk-hai run across the grassy landscape with their captives Merry and Pippin. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are in pursuit, following three days of running, Legolas surmises the Hobbits are being taken to Isengard, where Saruman is marshaling his Uruk-hai forces to do the bidding of Sauron. In the kingdom of Rohan, home of the horse lords, King Théoden is mentally and physically weak due to the enchantments of his steward, Gríma Wormtongue, who is secretly in the service of Saruman. Orcs and Wild Men of Dunland incited by Saruman freely roam the land and kill the people including the king's only son Théodred. Théoden's nephew Éomer interrogates Gríma, angrily realizing he has lustful eyes for Éomer's sister Éowyn and that he is now an agent of Saruman. Gríma banishes Éomer for undermining his authority and Éomer sets forth to gather the remaining loyal men of the Rohirrim throughout the land.Éomer and his Rohirrim ambush and kill all of the Orcs and Uruk-hai holding the two Hobbits captive at nightfall. During the battle, Merry and Pippin narrowly escape their captors by fleeing into the nearby Fangorn forest. Éomer later encounters Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli and in turn tells Aragorn there were no survivors of the Orc/Uruk-hai slaughter. Upon arriving at the battle site, Aragorn uses his tracking skills and finds hobbit tracks that lead into Fangorn. We see Merry & Pippin as they flee into the forest pursued by the orc who previously attacked them. They are aided by Treebeard the oldest of the tree-like creatures, the Ents, who takes them to the one he calls the white wizard, whom Merry & Pippin assume to be Saruman; we leave them looking up at him.Frodo and Sam traverse the Dead Marshes, passing the undead fallen warriors of the Second Age who haunt the marshes. Frodo becomes enchanted by the spirits living in the waters of the marsh and falls in. He's pulled out before he drowns by Gollum. The three also hide from a newly-seated Ringwraith on his flying fell beast, a large black dragon.In Fangorn Forest, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli discover the mysterious white wizard who is ultimately shown to be Gandalf reborn, now known as Gandalf the White. He speaks of his ordeal w/ the Balrog, & we see his defeat of the Balrog. Gandalf summons Shadowfax, the lord of the Mearas - an ancient & noble race of horses - & the quartet proceed to Edoras. Meanwhile, Frodo, Sam & Gollum reach the Black Gate, finding it to be heavily guarded, (they observe a contingent of Easterlings from Rhûn arrive to reinforce the garrison) only to have Gollum reveal to them a less risky path; Sam remains distrustful, but Frodo gives him the benefit of the doubt & begins calling him Sméagol. While observing the gate, the rocky ledge on which Sam lays gives way and he tumbles down the cliff. Frodo rushes to help him and, in desperation, throws the cloak given him by Galadriel over them both. Easterlings who'd wandered over to investigate the disturbance, are unable to see them under the cloak which has the appearance of a boulder.Gandalf & company approach Meduseld in Edoras, where Theodred has just died with Éowyn at his bedside. After much ado, they exorcise Saruman's spirit from King Théoden and banish Wormtongue. Théoden is confronted with his dead son and, rather than risk open war, decides to flee to a large fortress called Helm's Deep which in times of trouble has saved the people of Rohan. Gandalf leaves to find Éomer and his Rohirrim, promising to return within five days, as a strong attraction draws Éowyn to Aragorn during the journey to Helm's Deep. Wormtongue flees to Orthanc and tells Saruman of Rohan breaking from their grip; Saruman then decides to destroy Rohan.In Ithilien, Sméagol battles his split personality in an attempt to befriend Frodo and Sam and ultimately banishes Gollum, his ""evil"" half. The two hobbits are witness to an ambush of Southrons but are taken captive by soldiers of Gondor.Meanwhile, along the journey to Helm's Deep, Éowyn becomes more attracted to Aragorn. When the travelers are attacked by Saruman's Wargs and their Orc riders, an unhappy Éowyn is tasked with seeing the people of Edoras safely to Helm's Deep. During the battle, Aragorn is dragged by a Warg and falls off a cliff into a raging river as the grief-stricken survivors reluctantly move on to the fortress.In Isengard, Saruman reveals his huge army to Wormtongue & sends them off to make war on Helm's Deep; Merry & Pippin in the company of Treebeard, realize the war is starting; in Rohan, Aragorn washes up on the river's edge and is nudged back to consciousness by his horse, Brego. Battered but undaunted, he rides to Helm's Deep. In Rivendell, Elrond knows that the age of Elves is ending and convinces Arwen that it is hopeless to stay and she should leave for the Grey Havens. Elrond shows her a prophetic vision that if she waits for Aragorn, even if he succeeds in destroying Sauron and becomes King of Gondor, he will still succumb to mortality; Arwen will suffer grievously once he is dead and will be left to wither away...she reluctantly agrees to leave. Meanwhile back in Gondor, Frodo and Sam are taken to Henneth Annûn and brought before Faramir, where they learn their captor is the younger brother of Boromir. Sméagol eluded capture and, in order to save his life, is lured unknowingly into a trap by Frodo, bringing back his Gollum alter-ego. Faramir learns of the One Ring and, seeking to prove his worth to his father, decides the Ring shall go to Gondor.On his way to Helm's Deep, Aragorn passes Saruman's army of Uruk-hai, which numbers at least 10,000 strong. His arrival is met with relief but it is short-lived with the news that there are only 300 men in the stronghold. He counsels Théoden to send for aid, but his pleas fall on deaf & despairing ears. At Fangorn forest, Treebeard and the other Ents, w/ Merry & Pippin along for the ride, hold a Council to decide on the role of the Ents in the war with Saruman. Back at Helm's Deep, every male old enough to hold a sword is called to service, & the women fall back into the fortress. Night falls, the defenders ready for attack; then, in the midst of despair, a battalion of Elven archers from Lórien, led by Haldir, arrives to assist in the ensuing battle.The defenders wait on the walls as lightning reveals Saruman's massive army. In the pouring rain, an old man on the wall accidentally lets loose an arrow, killing an Uruk. The battle of Helm's Deep begins with a flurry of arrows from both human and Elven archers cutting down dozens of Uruk-hai. Scaling ladders are placed upon the Deeping Wall, and the Uruk-Hai swarm up to engage the defenders. Meanwhile, back at the Entish council, Merry & Pippin become frustrated by the slow progress. Back to Helm's Deep...The defenses are slowly being breached and the enemy manages to breech the wall through its sewer drain - which the treacherous Wormtongue told Saruman of - using a rudimentary explosive device created by the wizard. Despite Aragorn and Gimli's best efforts, the Uruk-hai manage to penetrate the main gate and soon the stronghold is overrun. In Fangorn, Treebeard and the other Ents have decided to not have any involvement in the war. In the midst of battle, Haldir falls in battle and the few remaining Elves fall back into the Keep. In the Hornburg,the Uruks have scaled the walls, and have breached the gate, forcing the defenders to also retreat into the Keep. Frustrated further by the Ents' decision to not participate in the war, Pippin cleverly takes Treebeard to the section of Fangorn Forest near Isengard that Saruman has decimated to build the