Batman Begins (2005)

Though they drifted apart in the wake of his parents’ deaths, in a moment of crisis when Bruce’s obsession with avenging their murders threatens to destroy his life, it is Rachel who helps him make a crucial distinction between vengeance and justice. “Justice is about harmony,” she cautions. “Vengeance is about making yourself feel better.”

“Rachel reminds Bruce of his father’s legacy, his duty to carry on his family’s philanthropic tradition, and she encourages him to do something meaningful with his life,” Thomas says.

“One of the things about Rachel that I find so appealing is that she’s so idealistic,” says Katie Holmes, the popular actress who first came to national attention as a star of the hit television drama Dawson’s Creek and has since established a successful career in feature films including Wonder Boys, Phone Booth, Pieces of April and The Ice Storm. “At one point she says to Bruce, ‘It’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you.’ That line defines who she is. She’s the type of person that wants to make the world a better place. She wants to help people, she wants to save her city and she doesn’t have time for excuses.”

Though Bruce is formulating his own dynamic method for fighting crime in Gotham, he must present to Rachel his “public” Bruce Wayne persona – the frivolous, womanizing playboy who doesn’t seem to notice, let alone care, that the city is crumbling to ruins around them.

“One of the consequences of Bruce Wayne’s decision to transform himself into Batman is that he’s put in a position of having to debase himself in Rachel’s eyes,” Nolan says. “She believes him to be capable of extraordinary things, but she cannot know that he is indeed performing extraordinary good. She has to see him as somebody wasting his resources and his talents, and she really can’t bear to see that.”

“Rachel is very hard on Bruce,” Holmes admits. “She can’t understand why her best friend isn’t more concerned about the crime and corruption that are overtaking Gotham City. When you really know and care about someone the way she does for Bruce, and you think they’re not living up to their potential, it can be very disappointing and difficult to accept.”

The heartbreaking realization that he cannot share his true self with the one person besides Alfred who truly believes in him further fuels Bruce’s pain and anguish. According to Nolan, he and Goyer created the character of Rachel – the only main character in Batman Begins who is not based on one from the comic book mythology – to “represent the life Bruce Wayne might have if he weren’t tied into his destiny of having to create a very dark alter ego through which he helps people.”

“One of the great things about their relationship is that it’s not about Rachel falling for Batman,” Roven notes. “She has loved Bruce since they were kids, and even though she is disappointed with who she thinks he’s become, she never stops believing in the man he has the potential to be.”

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