Rick O'Connell: Heroic Swashbuckler & A Modern Day Quincy Morris

And Warrior of Love

When we first meet Rick O’Connell he’s shown to be an over-aggressive, bear of a man, covered in hair and eyes alight with disdain for most of those around him. Referring to Evie as ‘broad’ to her outrage, he soons kisses her because ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ and proceeds to nearly get hanged. It is in that hour that Evie looms over him, rescuing him and restoring him to life it seems.

A remarkable bond is thus forged between them; one in which Rick is left desirous of her approval and to repay the debt he owes her, for which she seems equally attached. Her reason is that he’s rippling with muscle, treats her honourably and is rather more dashing than any of her other compatriots and because she’s obviously quite sheltered.

It is interesting to note that though aware that Jonathan has sheltered her her entire life, and that she is nothing like other women he’s met in Egypt and elsewhere, the ferocious Rick is quite taken with her from the moment after they leave the ship up until and past the ending.

The romance between the two is one of the most wholesome in horror history and is easily one of the best parts of the Mummy duology.

Rick’s own natural heroism, bravery and goodness is also quite noteworthy, as he is shown to have had a troubled past but never do we get the impression that he might relapse. What is more is that other than a few vague references to his past most of it is a mystery. We know as a child he spent a little time in an orphanage in Cairo, we know that he joined the French Foreign Legion, learnt a little French after spending some time in America so that he became an American (judging by the name he is likely of Irish descent, with the accent giving him away as an American).

Rick is thus a strange creature but one can assume not an unlikely one, given how his past is not unlike that of a great many Americans that must have trotted the globe back then and judging by WWI & WWII amazed humanity to this day with their heroics.

Rick is also a hero who follows like Evie in the footsteps of the likes of Indiana Jones and other such archeaologically focused heroes, with there being a pulp feeling to his movies.

He is also of the main trio of the two movies, with the most good-sense so that he is often the one delivering good advice, and also ‘zippy one-liners’ yet interestingly he doesn’t do it against Imhotep as often as he does his own friend and (future) wife. It is these two that he reserves most of his ire and sardonic wit for, favouring them with his irritation whenever they make one of their frequent mistakes.

One such mistake is reading from a certain book, with Rick prone throughout the remainder of the film to point out that it was not a group decision but one that she made on her own.

Prone to doing as she pleases, regardless of what he might wishes, it is she who unleashes Imhotep back upon the earth, and inadvertently nearly causes her own demise at his hands.

Sure one could blame Evie for everything that follows, yet what follows is not entirely her fault as she was operating with a modern mind-set, and modernity in this film has not served to prepare her or anyone like her for such a situation.

And this is one thing that the movie does attack; the trouble with modernity. Because those of the modern world are at a complete loss when confronted by the mysticism and the ancientness of Imhotep.

Only Rick with his warrior instincts, his familiarity with some of the dark places of the world seems to have some sort of inkling. He it is who warns about the evil therein the ancient ruins, and it is he who seeks to shield the Carnahans’ from danger.

In this regard as an archetype he’s not simply the explorer, but the classic warrior, Gawain coming to the rescue of the innocent and fair maidens. And though he can be a thief and fairly guileful, Jonathan make no mistake is an innocent in the world of murder, magic and dark sorcery, just as Evie is.

This is his duty, and his status as a Medjai though he doesn’t know it, is to serve as a ‘knight’ of sorts to protect the innocent and fair maidens just as it is to serve God himself, as a warrior battling for redemption of souls and for the safety of others. The difference between him and others, is that where other knights and warriors fight with blades, Rick fights typically with pistols and a shot-gun and on occasion dynamite.

If Rick feels familiar in this regard, it is because he is a modern day Quincy Morris. He is one who while certainly a little more rough around the edges is no less heroic, the chief difference between the two of them being that Quincy dies at the end and doesn’t get the girl while Rick does.

He is also the one who plunges the blade into Imhotep’s guts killing him at the end of the first movie, so that in this first film, except he doesn’t use a modern blade but instead an ancient one. This is important as guns can run out of ammo, and so they represent some of the limitations of modernity so that Rick resorts to swordsmanship, a weapon of a prior age that one could associate more fully with a prior state of man.

This is Rick returning to the roots of his being, the soil so to speak from which he sprung, to rescue the woman he loves and the brother he has found and adopted as his own. This is his Celtic roots coming out and the core of his being shining through in the last act of the movie.