I am deeply offended by this! I was reading thoughts on what D&D classes the characters of The Mummy (1999) would be, and there was a comment that Jonathan was obviously a rogue, but either a badly built one or one with shit dice rolls. And! Excuse you? Jonathan is a perfectly acceptable rogue! He rolls fine when he’s actually attempting to do something!
In the first movie alone, some of his greatest hits:
Successfully pickpocketed Rick on their first meeting, without Rick so much as joining the dots until later.
Survives a pitched battle on a burning ship without a scratch, and somehow gets the key from a burning hook-handed enemy mook in the process. (“And did I panic? I think not!”)
Survives a pitched battle in the Hamunaptra ruins while drunk, through liberal use of cover and picking off targets at range.
Rolls a Nat 20 on his deception check to avoid being massacred by a large group of hynotised enemies in the museum.
Survives the final pitched battle with the undead (again, through liberal use of cover, hiding and running).
Successfully makes his intelligence roll to translate the Book of Amun Ra (with the Help action from Evie).
Successfully uses the resulting control over the undead mooks to even out the battlefield, including the genius brain move of sending them after Ankh-Su-Namun to both save Evie and distract Imhotep.
Successfully pickpockets a lich while being strangled by him to regain the key and enable Evie to use the book to banish Imhotep altogether.
Yes, he’s fairly flimsy in direct battle, and if at all possible refuses to get to melee range with anybody. So he’s a ranged rogue, and has a tendency to use the environment to his advantage. But he’s clearly designed around Sleight of Hand, Charisma, and a decent sprinkling of Intelligence, and prefers to use object interactions and battlefield control to even out his odds. For all that, though, he fully will stay in melee range if he has no other choice, and take the opportunity to pickpocket the BBEG while he’s at it.
He's a perfectly serviceable rogue, he’s just not optimised for straight combat. And even there, as the second movie shows, he’s excellent at ranged combat. He just doesn’t like getting up close and personal.
Actually, going back and rewatching that final battle again ... I don't think that Jonathan stayed in range of Imhotep because he had no choice. He stayed in range specifically to pickpocket him.
I didn't realise before, but this whole battle starts with Evie telling Jonathan that the only way to kill Imhotep is to open the book and read the spell to banish him. Jonathan says it's locked, they need the key, and Evie then tells him it's in Imhotep's robes.
When Jonathan sends the priest mummies after Ankh-Su-Namun with the spell on the cover (saving both Rick and Evie in the process), Imhotep is coming right for him. However, Imhotep is then briefly disabled by watching the brutal murder of his lover all over again, and Jonathan ... could have run. There's a beat there where Imhotep is completely focused on something else, and Jonathan absolutely has the presence of mind to use that, but he doesn't. Imhotep, now incensed that Jonathan has murdered his lover, promptly spins back around and goes to murder him back, and is only stopped because Rick returns the favour from earlier and saves him.
At which point a lightly-strangled Jonathan stands back up and tells Evie he got the key.
He fucking stayed put on purpose because he knew they needed the key, that Imhotep had the key, and that he was the only person who could fucking pickpocket the BBEG mid-strangulation and get away with it, so long as someone could swoop in before the undead wizard actually killed him. Imhotep is immortal and immune to damage if they don't do something about that. This is a fight of attrition they cannot win. And his sister told him what they needed to stop it, so Jonathan went and got it.
He cheerfully calls himself a coward, and then he goes and fatally pisses off a lich as a distraction, and then stands still to be murdered for it in order to get close enough to pickpocket the immortal pissed off undead. It wasn't that he took the opportunity while being strangled, he set up being strangled in order to have the opportunity.
Say whatever the hell you like about that man, but he has never once failed to do something his family actually needed him to do.
Given the movie's release date, it's not that he's a 5e rogue but not one optimized for melee combat, he's a 2nd-edition thief.
somehow I completely missed the pickpocketing. twice.
