Katie Holme's Rachel Dawes said that the true face of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne is the one Gotham City's criminals fear, The Batman.
This is why it was not out of place for Maggie Gyllenhaal's interpretation of the character to later say that the day might never come when he no longer needs to assume the only identity he has ever known.
She might be correct.
Her words say a lot about the psyche of Bruce Wayne, who spent his youth traveling the world in an attempt to understand and combat the injustice that robbed him of a life of blissful luxury. He is essentially a soldier away at war with nothing to come home to once the conflict is over.
That alone seemingly limits further exploration of a character that only makes sense when the tragedy that defines his life persists, and crime is something that will go on no matter what vigilante measures The Batman employs. Because it is a fact of life, it is also a likely fact of director Christopher Nolan's realistic Gotham City.
What remains ahead for what Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) dubbed the monster that Bruce Wayne created in "Batman Begins" are challenges from criminals of a lesser degree of danger and unpredictability than Heath Ledger's The Joker and Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face in that things already got worse and are bound to get better.
Nolan must be well aware of this as the director considers what to do for an encore and as fans promote names on the Web from The Batman's gallery of rogues that would merely serve as welcome distractions for a character that has no apparent reason to continue to exist other than to wrap things up. A selfishness of contemporary moviegoers to experience events that should be left to the imagination and that only serve to rob protagonists on the silver screen of their mystique.
As Nolan might already know, a suitable conclusion to the cinematic masterpiece he started telling in "Batman Begins" will not be found in DC Comics archives or from the clever reinterpretation of small time crooks such as The Riddler, The Penguin, or Catwoman.
The war on crime waged by The Batman can only end when he refuses to give up the power the people of Gotham gave the vigilante when they allowed mobsters and corrupt public officials to control the city. Remember that the monster in most stories tends to destroy himself.
Bruce Wayne's monster teeters on the edge of self-destruction, an early indication of which is his use of sonar-based technology to spy on the phone conversations of private citizens.
How much farther The Batman will go to hold on to his identity as a watchful guardian now that he is more notably on the wrong side of the law remains to be seen in a sequel.
As Harvey Dent said in "The Dark Knight," "You either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
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