Teaching isn't an easy job — take it from these movie mentors and their students.
Who's the Jedi with a family problem? Which beleaguered bride had the worst wedding day
ever? And what the heck is up with Tyler Durden? Keep watching to find out.
The first film in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, Batman Begins is an origin
story that hinges on what Bruce Wayne learns — and rejects — from the man he knows
as Henri Ducard. Ducard trains Wayne to fight and offers him the opportunity to join the
League of Shadows. Yet, when Ducard and the man that Wayne believes to be Ra's al Ghul
inform him that the League intends to destroy Gotham, he burns their headquarters down.
Wayne makes it crystal clear that he disagrees with the League's evil plot,
but he's still loyal to his mentor, and so he saves Ducard from the destruction.
That decision comes back to haunt him, though, when Ducard shows up in Gotham. He reveals that
he's the real Ra's al Ghul and that he still plans on tearing down the crime-ridden city,
despite the objections of his appalled protégé. Of course, Wayne is unwilling to give up on Gotham.
The two engage in their final confrontation on a train, in which a confident Ra's
seems to be sure he'll win. That confidence is misplaced — he has grossly underestimated Batman,
who is willing to let the train crash instead of stopping it as Ra's had wrongly assumed.
"I won't kill you…
but I don't have to save you."
Just as Ra's realizes what's about to happen,
the Caped Crusader flies away, leaving his former mentor to his fate.
Quentin Tarantino's two-part tour de force Kill Bill centers on a woman,
known for most of the story as the Bride, who leaves the assassination
squad she is a member of after learning she is pregnant. When Bill, the squad's leader,
discovers she is getting married and starting over, he and the other assassins crash the wedding
and kill everyone apart from her. It's not through lack of trying,
however — Bill shoots her in the head just as she tells him that the baby she's carrying is his.
Four years later, the Bride wakes up from a coma and immediately sets out to kill
every last one of her old comrades, saving the most important target for last.
When the Bride eventually comes face to face with her former lover and mentor in Kill Bill Vol. 2,
Bill reveals that their daughter survived and that he's been raising her. This isn't
enough to gain her forgiveness, though. Accepting that she won't be talked down,
Bill attacks the Bride. The two engage in a brief but thrilling battle in which the Bride sheathes
Bill's sword and then performs the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique on him. Bill's
death doesn't exactly come as a shock, but it's still an immensely satisfying showdown.
Several mentors have clashed with their protégés over the course of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
a trend that started with 2008's Iron Man. The movie begins with Tony Stark,
the CEO of weapons manufacturer Stark Industries, being kidnapped during an ambush in Afghanistan.
Stark is subsequently held captive in a cave for months on end. During this time,
he invents the first Iron Man suit as well as the miniature arc reactor that powers it,
enabling his escape. Upon returning home, he's relieved to be reunited with his friends,
including Obadiah Stane, his father's former business partner and Tony's mentor.
What Stark doesn't know is that Stane has been plotting to have him killed this whole time,
even engineering the kidnapping attempt against him. When that doesn't work out and Stane learns
that Stark has miniaturized the arc reactor, he takes that from Tony instead — right out
of his chest. Knowing that Stane plans to use his invention to create weapons,
he powers up his Iron Man suit with another reactor and goes after Stane. Unfortunately,
Stane has created his own, far larger suit, making it an uneven fight from the start. So, when Stark
realizes he can't physically beat Stane, he orders Pepper to overload Stark Industries' arc reactor,
sending a surge of electricity through Stane's suit and killing the man inside.
The Star Wars franchise contains numerous examples of mentors coming to blows with their protégés.
A prime example takes place during The Last Jedi, in which Kylo Ren and his uncle, Luke Skywalker,
face off in battle. Kylo was known as Ben Solo when he was sent to train with Luke to
become a Jedi. Sadly, Supreme Leader Snoke soon wormed his way into the young apprentice's head,
luring him to the dark side. When Ben woke up one night to find Luke standing over him with
a lightsaber, he lashed out in fear and confusion, finally giving up on the light side of the Force.
By the time he meets Luke again, Kylo has killed
Snoke and taken over as Supreme Leader of the First Order. He initially tries
to use the First Order's overwhelming firepower to kill his one-time master.
"Do you think you got him?"
When Luke emerges unscathed, Kylo engages him in a lightsaber duel — one that is made all the
more intense by their fractured relationship. At first, the crazed Kylo struggles to land
a blow on the wise Jedi, and when he eventually manages to run his weapon through him, he realizes
that Luke isn't really there — he's projecting himself to give the Resistance time to escape.
His ruse uncovered, Luke vanishes; he then passes away from the effort of his projection,
confident that the Resistance, and the Jedi, will live on.
While the title character is the focus of Doctor Strange,
his pursuit of the magical arts places him in the middle of a struggle between his mentor,
the Ancient One, and her former student, Kaecilius.
While Strange is told that Kaecilius wants to bring Dormammu from the Dark Dimension to
Earth in a bid to give everyone eternal life, he isn't told why Kaecilius turned against
the Ancient One. As it turns out, Kaecilius became disenchanted with the Ancient One when
he learned that she has been drawing power from the Dark Dimension to extend her life.
Because of this betrayal, when the Ancient One tells Kaecilius that bringing Dormammu
to Earth will end in pain, he doesn't believe her. Eventually, Strange and his ally, Mordo,
are forced to fight Kaecilius in the Mirror Dimension. Just when it seems as though they're
outmatched, the Ancient One appears, pushing her current protégés to the side and taking on
Kaecilius and his followers alone. She gets the upper hand at first, but Kaecilius stabs her in
the abdomen and kicks her through a portal into the real world, where she falls to the
ground from several stories up. Despite Strange's best efforts, nothing can be done to save her.
Rocky V begins with Rocky Balboa reveling in his win over Ivan Drago,
which took place in the previous movie — but he and his family soon fall on hard times.
The head trauma he suffered in the ring has forced him to retire from boxing, and, to make
matters worse, his accountant has squandered all of his money. So Rocky decides to move back to his
old rough-and-tumble Philadelphia neighborhood, where he reopens his late trainer Mickey's gym.
It's here that Rocky meets Tommy Gunn, a boxer who all but begs Rocky to train and manage him.
"What do you think?" "What do I think? I don't think you listen too good.
But you, you fight and you brawl like you was a street fighter."
Inspired by his memories of Mickey, Rocky agrees and quickly becomes preoccupied with Tommy's
career. He ushers Tommy to success, but Tommy grows resentful when he realizes that he's seen
as little more than an avatar of Rocky himself. At the same time, slimy promoter George Washington
Duke starts bending Tommy's ear about the riches he could amass if George took over his management.
Tommy goes for the deal, but after winning the championship and being told it means nothing
because he didn't beat Rocky, he goes to Rocky's gym and calls him out. When Tommy refuses to back
down, Rocky challenges him to a street fight. While Rocky easily beats his protégé at first,
Tommy attacks from behind and practically knocks his former mentor out. Of course,
Rocky quickly comes back and eventually triumphs, proving to everyone that he's the real champion.
Early on in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the protagonist is known simply as "Shaun."
Nobody in his adopted home of San Francisco is aware that Shaun is actually Shang-Chi,
the son of Xu Wenwu, owner of the titular rings and head of a criminal empire.
His reasons for keeping his family a secret are understandable: After his mother was killed,
his dad started to treat him like a member of his personal army, training him to be
a killer. When the opportunity arose, the traumatized Shang-Chi ran away from home.
A decade later, Wenwu finds Shang-Chi and takes him back to his compound by force.
Shang-Chi doesn't believe his father when he tells him that he's been hearing his mother's voice,
who is claiming she's held captive in her homeland of Ta-Lo. Concerned,
Shang-Chi goes to Ta-Lo ahead of Wenwu and learns that his father is being fooled by
the soul-eating Dweller-in-Darkness, who the community is keeping sealed behind a gate.
When Wenwu arrives at Ta-Lo and attempts to break that gate, Shang-Chi stands in his way.
The powerful Wenwu gets the better of his son to begin with, but Shang-Chi reengages him and they
have a dramatic one-on-one battle. Wenwu manages to release the Dweller-in-Darkness, however,
and quickly realizes he was wrong all along. During the final showdown,
Wenwu sacrifices his life for his son, passing on the Rings before he dies.
When the unnamed main character of Fight Club meets Tyler Durden, he's feeling smothered by
a society that prizes material possessions over more primal urges. Tyler, a compulsive man who
rails against the institutions that bind, becomes his guru by offering him a way to rid himself
of society's shackles. Together they create the titular fight club, which gives the Narrator the
cathartic opportunity to get his aggressions out. It isn't until well into the movie,
when the Narrator finally begins to question Tyler's motives, that he realizes his mentor
is actually a dissociated personality he created to deal with his disillusionment.
When the Narrator wakes up after a blackout and discovers that Tyler has made plans to blow up
a series of buildings, he attempts to stop it from happening. However,
since Tyler is always right there with him, he inevitably fights back against the Narrator.
To everyone else, it looks like the Narrator is beating himself to a bloody pulp and
throwing himself down stairs, but to the Narrator, Tyler is doing it all.
When the Narrator comes to the realization that he really does hold power over Tyler,
he gains control of Tyler's gun and shoots himself in the cheek,
finally eradicating his other personality. That said, it's Tyler who really gets the last laugh…
Before the release of Revenge of the Sith, there may have been no single event in movie history
more anticipated than the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader.
"He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct."
Star Wars fans learned Vader's backstory in the original trilogy,
but it took more than 20 years to see it play out on screen. The incident that precipitates
Anakin's final transformation involves a fight with his mentor, the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Earlier in the movie, Anakin falls to the dark side and is dubbed Darth Vader, but it's not until
he fights Obi-Wan on the fiery planet Mustafar that he becomes the black-suit clad baddie that
fans love to hate. Learning of Anakin's embrace of the dark side, Obi-Wan enlists his wife Padmé to
help turn him back to the light. When they reach Mustafar, Padmé tries to reason with Anakin,
but when he sees Obi-Wan, he concludes she's betrayed him, demonstrating he's beyond saving.
Anakin Force-chokes Padmé and then battles Obi-Wan in an epic lightsaber duel across the lava world.
He is blind with rage, but Obi-Wan still manages to beat him, eventually cutting off Anakin's legs
as well as one of his arms, leaving him broken and consumed by flames. Despite this, Vader survives,
and, many years later, finally kills his one-time master in another lightsaber duel.
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