While having lunch together, Michael asks Kay's forgiveness for giving in to his desire for revenge 20 years earlier, and admits he truly intended to live an honest life, telling her, "I had a whole different destiny planned." Kay admits that she still loves Michael.
At the very end of the movie, Michael lies to his wife, Kay, about having Carlo killed. This shows that he's set his course: she won't be able to be a part of his real world and will be shut out from seeing his true, ruthless nature in action.
His love for Apollonia is hot, but his love for Kay is deep. She challenges him. And let's not forget, Kay is also the mother of his children. Michael loved Kay more than anyone.
Michael escapes to Sicily and spends two years under Corleone ally Don Tommasino's (Corrado Gaipa) protection. Michael falls in love with and marries a young local woman named Apollonia Vitelli (Simonetta Stefanelli).
Kay did not know. In the Movie, Michael tracks Kay down after he has been back for several years. In the movie Kay does not know. In the book Kay does not know.
He then flees to Sicily, where he falls in love with Simonetta Stefanelli's Apollonia. Tragically, she's later killed in a car bomb planted by Michael's bodyguard Fabrizio (Angelo Infanti), who betrayed him to his enemies. While Michael gets revenge on those who ordered the hit, Fabrizio is never seen again.
While having lunch together, Michael asks Kay's forgiveness for giving in to his desire for revenge 20 years earlier, and admits he truly intended to live an honest life, telling her, "I had a whole different destiny planned." Kay admits that she still loves Michael.
Michael has become a true Corleone (embracing both Italian culture and mob affiliation), and his marriage to Apollonia signifies Michael's official acceptance of this change and what it means for his future. When Michael marries Apollonia, he is wedding himself not just to her, but to Sicily and his father's values.
Even people who aren't familiar with the film can recognise Marlon Brando's weary, wheezy Mafia boss, Vito Corleone, and his favourite son Michael, played by Al Pacino.
Michael may appear to get the better of the argument in Part II—he kicks her out of the house and keeps the children—but eventually Kay remarries and becomes the children's principal parent. Still, she admits in Part III that, even though she has moved on, she continues to love Michael and always will.
Michael and Vito might have placed some of the blame for Sonny's assassination on Tom. Though it turns out that Carlo Rizzi plotted with Barzini to set Sonny up, Michael and Vito probably believed that Tom didn't do enough to stop Sonny from leaving the safety of the family compound that day to find Carlo.
Unlike his sister Connie's sumptuous and lighthearted reception, Michael's marriage to Apollonia is old-fashioned and deeply Sicilian. While Connie's wedding features Sicilian traditions, like her wedding purse and songs sung in Italian, it does not diverge too sharply from a normal (though lavish) American wedding.
Why did Michael Corleone wait an entire year, maybe more, before he came to see Kay Corleone? Because Michael knew that Kay had read the papers and heard the rumors about Michael assassinating Sollozzo and McCluskey, and he feared that Kay would know they were true and want nothing to do with him.
In The Godfather, why did Michael Corleone treat his wife, Kay Adams-Corleone so poorly? Well, at the end of their marriage, it was because she aborted his unborn son and planned to take their remaining children away from him; at the beginning, it was to keep her in the dark about the family business.
Because a group of men threatened Michael's father, Vito Corleone, and the well-being of the Corleone Family. As much as Michael had always dreamed of a life outside the underworld, he was loyal to his father and his family.
This signifies Michael's transformation into ruthless crime lord, sealing Kay outside of his inner world. He's not the golden, studious war hero with whom she was originally in love. He's gone into a different realm, and the closing door symbolizes that he's fully entered into that new world of wickedness.
No one was more loyal to the Corleone Crime Family than the first capo, Clemenza. Among his most iconic scenes was when he had the traitor Paulie executed and when he trained Michael on how to whack Sollozzo and McCluskey. Clemenza was likable because he carried with him all the old school mob tropes.
While in Havana negotiating with Roth, Michael discovers that Fredo is the family traitor behind the assassination attempt on him. After telling Michael that he has never met Ola, Fredo later carelessly tells Geary that he had been to a nightclub with Ola.
Described as the child Italian parents prayed to the saints for, Fredo was the weakest and least intelligent of the Corleone brothers; his own brother, Michael, dismissed him as weak and stupid.
While in Havana, Michael learned that Fredo betrayed him when Fredo accidentally let it slip that he and Johnny Ola had been to a sex show in Havana. He confronted Fredo at a New Year's party in Havana, telling Fredo that he knew he was the traitor, and that he broke Michael's heart.
The story views the Mafia from the inside. That is its secret, its charm, its spell; in a way, it has shaped the public perception of the Mafia ever since. The real world is replaced by an authoritarian patriarchy where power and justice flow from the Godfather, and the only villains are traitors.
To her, being the wife of Michael would be like inheriting a large fortune by virtue of her Italian heritage. In the Corleone estate, Apollonia would be protected, not to be harmed by the enemies of the Corleone. The car bomb that killed her in Sicily was an accident.
After Apollonia's death, Michael returns to the United States and marries Kay Adams, though she is unaware that he had been married, then made a widower while he was living in Sicily.
Why does Michael want Kay? Kay was Michael's intellectual equal, and she would have always been the woman who he thought of even had he spent the remainder of his days married to Apollonia. He HAD to go back to her when he return to the United States because she was the only woman who he truly loved.
After the death of his old friend Don Tomasino Michael decided to retire from the family business. He elevated Vincent to be the new Don of the Corleone family, telling him that going forward he was to call himself Vincent Corleone.