how do you know when love is real?

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What is love? Is it patient ? Is it kind ? Or is it just some made up feeling only found in Disney movies and Rom-coms?

Today we’re going to be exploring romance, taking a look at Evie and Rick, versus our villains imhotep and anck su namun. Both couples in the Mummy 2 will help us answer the most complex question since the beginning of time, how do you know when love is real?

It’s true that love can appear in different forms, and both couples are good examples that no two relationship ever looks the same. Both couples show affection, desire and devotion to each other in different ways.

imhotep and anck su namun romance starts with cheating and infidelity, anck su namun is someone else’s woman, but she falls for imhotep in secret despite the fatal repercussions for both their actions. Some may argue that this is a sign of love, I don’t mean the cheating part, but being so entranced by someone that you disregard all logic and consequence to be with them. There is a very thin line between love and insanity.

When they get caught during their sneaky rendezvous, anck su namun kills herself and tells imhotep to bring her back in the next life so they can be together, and imhotep not only gets tortured and killed for her, but as soon as he’s awaken again by Evie’s nosy ass, he goes on a relentless hunt to find the book of the dead in order to resurrect anck su namun. Come on how romantic is that !

Love can definitely be born out of lust and desire, but we’ll come to learn later on that their connection was shallow, despite spending centuries devoting themselves to getting back together and ruling side by side, it didn’t seem like they actually took the time to get to know each other.

On the other hand, Evie and Rick begin their journey slightly disliking each other and driven by their own individual purpose, Evie is trying to uncover Egypt and find the land of the dead as a career woman and a dedicated librarian, whereas Rick gets caught up trying to save his neck and keep a promise he made to Evie for giving him back his freedom. Both characters bond over their passion for history and their love for great adventure. Amongst all the bugs, fighting, mummy awakenings and near death experiences they learn to respect and lean on each other, Rick constantly goes to great lengths to protect and use his past experiences to help guide Evie, whereas she educates him and respects the man he is, once he allows her to feel safe and protected by him.

Let’s take a look at this iconic scene from the Mummy 2, which in my humble opinion illustrates everything you need to know about real love and infatuation:

Here we see Rick and imhotep caught in a similar predicament, they’re both hanging over hell, fighting for their dear lives. We see the interaction with both their partners. We see as Evie makes a decision to risk her life to save Rick, despite him pleading and begging for her to go and save herself.

Next, we see imhotep and anck su namun have an entirely opposite interaction, despite their desperate struggle to be together that spans through centuries, both of them show that when the chips are down they don’t value the other one’s life. As imhotep struggles to hang on with the ceiling caving in on them from above, he looks to anck su namun  and desperately begs for her to save him, he pleads for the woman he loves to risk her own life to save his. And, after centuries of imhotep loving anck su namun and trying to revive her soul, she looks at the man she loves and decides to leave him to die, and this ultimately leads to both their deaths.

This one clip tells you everything you need to know about love. It shows you that real love isn’t lust or momentary passion, it’s the endless desire to see the other person safe and out of pain. Rick would rather die than watch Evie risk her life to save his, and Evie couldn’t watch the man she loves fall to his death, without even trying to save him.

For the first time in this franchise, you really feel sorry for imhotep and see pain in his eyes as he comes to the realisation, it was never love he had with anck su namun , it was just pro-longed infatuation for someone he didn’t really take the time to get to know.

I think it’s safe to say we all walk around with different versions of love in our heads, some believe that if you truly love someone you should climb mountains, slay dragons and do whatever you can to win their hearts, some believe that love is lust and desire as we are ultimately just physical creatures and some believe that friendship is the main ingredient for true love. I think we can all agree that there’s often this common misconception of love that can be very self-centred, if you love me then you should do anything for me. This statement uses ‘me’ too many times, which is where imhotep and anck su namun failed in love. Neither of them were concerned enough about the safety of the other person. Whereas Evie and Rick’s relationship seems to be built on a selflessness, devotion and care for the other person.

This isn’t a lecture on risking your life for love because putting yourself first is always important, but approaching love with entitled beliefs and selfish requests that doesn’t take the other person into consideration, isn’t love at all, and in order for us to be one step closer to knowing what love is, we first need to understand what love isn’t.