Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke is the primary antagonist of Disney's 2001 animated feature film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Prior to the main events of the film, he was the Commander of a previous mission to Iceland where he assistedMilo Thatch's grandfather, Thaddeus, in locating the Shepherd's Journal.
Info[]
Personality[]
Rourke is seemingly composed, practical, resolute, pragmatic, brave, understanding, and reasonable. In truth, he is scheming, calculated, devilish, sarcastic, arrogant, cunning, unfriendly, ruthless, violent, and greedy.
According to Rourke, he also has quite a bit of control over his temper, as he tells Milo and congratulates Milo for setting it off.
Physical appearance[]
He bears resemblance to Bill Sykes, only with a more muscular build, and more of the Military Experience muscle as seen later in the film. He also bears resemblance to Major Chip Hazard on Small Soldiers and Colonel Miles Quaritch from Avatar.
History[]
Lyle T. Rourke was born in 1860 and learned the ways of military life at an early age while with father, a cavalry officer named Lt. Col. Jackson. In 1864 his father was killed in battle in during the Civil War. After repeated expulsions from boarding school for fighting, Rourke resolved to follow in his father's footsteps and joined the military at age fifteen. There, he exhibited a remarkable talent for leadership, owing to his analytical mind, charisma, and refusal to acknowledge the white flag surrender. He married in June 1887, but his wife left him after only four months.
He held numerous expeditions during his career, most notably leading the Whitmore Expedition to Atlantis.
Story[]
Atlantis: The Lost Empire[]
- “I love it when I win.”
- ―Lyle Tiberius Rourke
Rourke leads the expedition to find the Shepherd's Journal in Iceland with Milo's grandfather Thaddeus Thatch. When Thatch is not looking, Rourke rips out a page concerning a giant crystal which he later uses to convince virtually everyone else on the forthcoming expedition to Atlantis to retrieve it and sell it on the black market for a hefty sum.
As commanding officer of the expedition, he is primarily responsible for making the decisions that will ensure the mission's success as well as the survival of his crew. This includes the belief of there being acceptable losses in his attempt to defend the Ulysses from an attacking Leviathan before ordering all hands to abandon ship.
He has little contact with others outside of his directing orders, preferring to stand apart. When the expedition is dropped into a cavern while escaping the attack of fireflies, he recognizes a possible exit route through the top of the volcano they are in. With the discovery of Atlantis being alive and thriving, Rourke maintains to a hesitant Helga Sinclair that their primary objective remains as planned.
After attempting to learn from the Atlanteans where the crystal might be, he turns to Milo Thatch to decipher the stolen page, but not before Milo discovers Rourke's treachery when the young cryptographer sees his former allies armed with guns. As a result, Milo refuses to play along with him, and Rourke, in turn, becomes more forceful and has a gun pointed at Princess Kida He then has the doors to the king's chambers blown open and demands King Kashekim Nedakh explain the riddle that reveals the location of the crystal, going so far as to strike the already dying king in front of a horrified crew. Sitting on the throne and threatening to execute the king, Rourke manages to figure out the riddle on his own and proceeds to descend into the chamber with Helga dragging Milo and Kida along.
While Milo and Rourke argue over how the crystal is to be retrieved, Kida is called upon by the Heart of Atlantis and is bonded with it. Rourke then has Kida sealed up in a container and prepares to leave. Milo pleads that their actions will kill the Atlanteans, but Rourke does not care and decks him. Rourke punches Milo in the face and then breaks his picture with his foot. However, he ends up losing all of the key members of the expedition, but Helga, of when they develop a conscience. Rourke has the bridge destroyed to prevent them from following in an attempt to stop him.
Rourke has the top of the volcano blown open and has a hot air balloon ascending with the container when Milo and the others arrive in flying stone fish vehicles. During the chaos, Milo crashes his stone fish into one of the balloons, causing it to descend. With all of the extra weight having already been thrown off, Rourke tosses Helga off in an act of self-preservation. However, a dying Helga gets back by destroying the main balloon with a flare gun.
Enraged, Rourke begins to take his aggression out on Milo and uses an axe. He hits a glass cover of the container, with glass shards becoming embedded with the Heart of Atlantis. As Rourke holds Milo up for a killing blow, Milo cuts him with one of the shards and he begins to transform into crystal form. Rourke still attacks, but a chance situation causes him to be hoisted into the still moving propellers, destroying him for good.
When Milo's friends eventually return to the surface, they reenact a false story with Preston regarding the fates of the other crew members after explaining the truth of the situation to him earlier. When Preston "asked" about Rourke, Dr. Sweet responded that the crooked captain suffered a nervous breakdown and that he "shattered to pieces", while Cookie added that he was "transmogrified" before immediately restating his answer to simply "missing".
Against Sora's Team[]
He was promised money and his own world as Master Xehanort revived him. Now he has already became a threat to the team and gained various skills.