| “ | "Mercenary?" I prefer the term “adventure capitalist.” | „ |
| ~ Rourke mocking Milo for the former's mercenary status |
| “ | Academics. You never want to get your hands dirty. Think about it. If you gave back every stolen artifact from a museum, you'd be left with an empty building. We're just providing a necessary service to the archaeological community. | „ |
| ~ Rourke on his methods of thievery. |
| “ | Nothing personal! | „ |
| ~ Rourke after immediately betraying Helga. |
| “ | Tired, Mr. Thatch? Aw, that a darn shame, 'CAUSE I'M JUST GETTING WARMED UP! | „ |
| ~ Rourke attempting to kill Milo, also his last words before getting crystalized. |
Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke is the main antagonist of Disney's 41st full-length animated feature film Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and the overarching antagonist of its 2003 sequel, Atlantis: Milo's Return.
He initially appears as a very reliable and praiseworthy commander able to lead his men through perils, but as the film progresses, he turns out to be a highly greedy and ruthless mercenary who is out to capture the Heart of Atlantis and make money off of it. He is Milo Thatch's archenemy/pure evil counterpart.
He was voiced by the late James Garner.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- Though he does have some comedic moments, they don’t detract from his evilness, and he’s still played seriously in-universe.
- He was likely already a bad person since his youth, as according to his official backstory, he was repeatedly expelled from boarding schools due to fighting and married a woman who merely stayed with him for four months before leaving him.
- While his backstory mentions that he lost his father during the Civil War, there's no mention he cared for or loved him.
- Prior to the events of the movie, as mentioned by Vinny, he and his crew used to rob graves and plunder tombs, showing he has no respect for the dead.
- Upon helping the team discover the Shepherd's Journal in Iceland and learning about the existence of the Heart of Atlantis detailed inside the journal, he then decides to steal the Heart.
- He deliberately hides the missing page of the Heart of Atlantis before the expedition started.
- When Rourke reveals his true colors to Milo, he reveals the Heart of Atlantis' missing page himself to confirm Milo's suspicions. When Milo furiously points out that Rourke's plot will condemn thousands of Atlanteans to death, Rourke merely jocosely suggests that this might boost the worth of the artifact on the market.
- Earlier on, during the expedition crew's attempt to discover the city of Atlantis, Helga shows some concern for the Atlantean beings, but Rourke just shrugs it off as if it's unnecessary to him.
- After revealing his true nature to Milo, he gets several of his mercenaries to hold Kida, the Princess of Atlantis, as a hostage in order to get Milo to cooperate and reveal the location of the Heart.
- He has his men vandalize King Kashekim Nedakh's throne room, then punches the King hard in the stomach for refusing to tell him where the Heart is.
- Rourke threatens to kill the King with his gun, though this is avoided when Rourke actually finds out the location by himself but the King later dies from the injury Rourke gives him.
- Upon entering the crystal chamber, he gets Kida infused with the Heart of Atlantis before having his men lock her up in a storage container. He even gets them to prevent Milo and the Atlanteans from interfering.
- After having Kida and the Heart secured for transport, he punches Milo in the face and then steps on his picture of his grandfather to spite him before leaving him behind in Atlantis. This ultimately drives the specialized expedition crew to develop a change of heart and side with Milo.
- Upon seeing that the crew has changed their minds, Rourke is simply frustrated with the fact that they've grown a conscience and left them behind with Milo, along with keeping all the money for himself (also showing that while we would have to spare some of it to them, he’s doing it out of pragmatism and nothing else), condemning them to share a surely deadly fate with the rest of Atlantis's population.
- He detonates the bridge in and out of Atlantis to prevent the crew from escaping the city or stopping him.
- He gets one of his men to fire a missile at the bowels of the volcano so that they can activate a blimp to transport Kida and the Heart to the surface, even gloating about how much he likes getting his way.
- He doesn’t show any care for his mercenaries who are killed in the final battle, nor showing any shock, concern or sadness about them; he then throws Helga off the blimp to her death just to lighten the load and escape quickly, though this backfires when Helga uses a flare gun to destroy the blimp in retaliation before she dies.
- While he seemingly pays respect to the deceased members of the Ulysses after its destruction by the Leviathan, it's most likely out of pragmatism to sway Milo and his surviving crew members to stay on his side by making it look like he cares for them. He even seemingly gets over it quickly.
- Such action of his against Helga makes his reaction towards the majority of the expedition crew turning against him earlier rather hypocritical on his end.
- Upon watching his blimp burn and lose altitude, Rourke loses his sanity and attempts to kill Milo with an axe for seemingly no reason besides sheer spite. After being crystallized, he still attempts to attack Milo until the propeller kills Rourke and shatters him to pieces.
- Despite Rourke's brutal yet well-deserved death, his actions cause the volcano to erupt, which would've destroyed Atlantis if Milo and the crew hadn't returned Kida and the Heart back to Atlantis.
- While King Kashekim Nedakh is implied to have killed far more people than Rourke, the King's actions as a violent conqueror aren't given proper elaboration, and Rourke has less resources than him as well.
- While Ashtin Carnaby from Milo's Return bears similarities to him due to being greedy (and decided to kill Milo and his friends slowly by immuring them), he was stealing from a dead civilization instead of a living one (though it was being guarded by a spirit), so Rourke is still worse than he is.
Trivia[]
- Despite his PE status, Atlantis: The Lost Empire directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise claimed that in terms of his characterization and portrayal as a villain, they wanted Rourke to be a complex, three-dimensional antagonist by making him greedy though not inherently evil, unlike past Disney villains. Thus, it's possible that Trousdale and Wise do think Rourke has some redeeming qualities and that his immense greed is his greatest flaw. However, he is shown to have evil traits that cannot be explained by greed alone, such as his treachery and violent sadism, so these possible "redeeming" qualities weren't touched upon in the finished film. Furthermore, a villain can be Pure Evil and still complex (like Judge Claude Frollo), which means his intended characterization and nature as PE don't contradict each other.
External Links[]
- Commander Lyle Rourke on the Villains Wiki.
- Commander Lyle Rourke on the Disney Wiki.
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 Pure Evils
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