This is one of my favorite movies, I won’t lie. I often put it on as background noise if I’m not watching or listening to something specific. It’s essentially my favorite kind of story – adventure, curses, found family, and hijinks. A kind of happy ending that gives me resolution while also leaving it open for future stories. However, one of my favorite parts of it is the characterization of the main protagonists. Specifically Jonathan Carnahan.
Jonathan occupies a really important role in the movie, serving as comic relief that is actually comic rather than stupid and who also serves as a valuable plot mover. He comes off as the incompetent buffoon except while the buffoon part could possibly be argued for, Jonathan is anything but incompetent.
So let’s review what we know to be true from the film itself. Jonathan can read Ancient Egyptian, even if it is not to the same degree his sister can. He’s clearly interested in archaeology to the point of being on digs himself – which would have required extensive schooling to qualify for those kinds of permits. The “dig down in Thebes” line alludes to that and Evie clearly believes him when he tells her where he found it.
Jonathan also doesn’t miss when he shoots and he clearly has some boxing experience. Given the timeperiod of the movie, he’s the right age to have fought in WWI (So’s Rick and the French Foreign Legion did fight in WWI but that’s a different post) and that makes everything about him make so much more sense.
Jonathan, much like Phryne Fisher in one of my favorite period mystery shows, hasn’t taken anything seriously since 1918 and for pretty much the same reasons. He’s exactly the sort of soldier who got disillusioned from seeing what he did and since it didn’t actually kill him, he’s jumped from that into something slightly less dangerous. Archaeology was dangerous, not necessarily from curses, but just from people with guns shooting at you. He’s living it up when he can and trying not to give in to those darker impulses.
Evie: Have you no respect for the dead?
Jonathan: Of course I do, but sometimes I’d rather like to join them.
John Hannah, who plays Jonathan, conveyed all this perfectly on screen. He didn’t have to spell it out for us, just the hints of it existing were perfect.