He certainly accrues plenty of it, but he make it clear enough (to me) that he is waiting for something before he acts – either getting more waste or seeing more of the plane, or something. He’s also in a stupor when they find him, which (while not making it impossible) seems to counter-indicate “the desire to seek.”
Archetypes are collections of traits, and I would say that they are generally rare. Protagonist tends to be loosely used to indicate the character who has the pursuit trait.
If you follow Kurt Vonnegut’s rule (“Everybody has to want something, even if it’s a glass of water”) you run into the problem of seeing everyone as having pursuit. But just because someone wants something and they go for it doesn’t make it pursuit. Woody Harrelson’s character in Zombieland wanted and went for Twinkies whenever he could – but that was Temptation and not pursuit.
Where does it say that the Protagonist has to bring the story to its conclusion? (Read Lord of the Flies for a story where this doesn’t happen.)
What story does Namgoong bring to a conclusion? How is that ending different from Curtis putting his arm into the engine? Are you seeing his work as the end because it happens closer to the end of the movie?
Look, I was no fan of the end of this movie. I found it brutally nihilistic, and I was frustrated that – after investing so much time in Curtis – we followed someone else’s plan. (See @JBarker’s comment above.) This doesn’t mean Curtis wasn’t the protagonist. It just means the movie was uncomfortable.
