The Loyalty: Good and Bad

THE LOYALTY: GOOD AND BAD

The Dark Knight Rises artfully wraps up the Batman trilogy with a film depicting Gotham City’s close brush with utter destruction as super-villain, Bane, threatens to detonate the city only to be saved by the one and only one person, it is Batman. A major theme in the film is loyalty and the lengths one would go to in order to maintain that loyalty. The viewers see various forms of loyalty: from loyalty to family, to love, and to state; they are exhibited by the diverse range of characters. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises utilizes dialogue and cinematography to portray varying levels and types of loyalty throughout the film and how these loyalties shape characters’ actions.

This final Batman film introduced Miranda Tate, a Wayne Enterprises board member, who revealed her real identity to be Talia al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul who was deceased leader of The League of Shadows. Tate showed unwavering loyalty to her father and his mission of destroying Gotham City. This was shown when her dying words were, “My father’s work is done.” These words implied that completing her father’s goal was worth laying down her own life, out of the loyalty to her father. Tate’s familial loyalty was also shown in her flashback to her life in the pit. Not only was this flashback used as a plot device but emphasized the role that her father played in her past. A majority of the flashback was spent on what her father did for her. Nolan included two close-up shots of Ra’s in the flashback which set him up as a prominent figure in Tate’s past. Her childhood did not receive the privilege such as other normal children. Her innocence was destroyed; she was born in hell, forged from suffering, and hardened by pains. She acknowledged that her father was the main reason for the death of her mother and she never forgave him; however, she had to follow through with his crimes and The League. The viewer can assume that what drove Tate to follow her father and his wishes was the familial bond shared between a father and daughter, in spite of that there was a furious soul stay inside her; it made her to lust for revenge for her mother and created a terrible monster inside a pretty and beautiful body. She appeared as a mystery character in the movie, all her crimes and her past were hidden very meticulous. She gave the audiences a big surprise at the end of the movie when she showed up her real person who was the master mind of the whole terrorist plan. She indicated that, “Thought I am not ordinary, I am a citizen.” These words implied that she expressed the loyalty of a citizen for The League of Shadow.

The main antagonist of the film is Bane, a masked villain who proves to be a formidable opponent for the Batman. He spends the majority of the movie as supposedly the only person to ever escape a prison, often referred to as the pit. In the pit, he became a “protector”