A Reel 20: NATIONAL TREASURE

“Who wants to go down the creepy tunnel inside the tomb first?”

This month marks the 20^th anniversary of NATIONAL TREASURE. 

 

Directed by Jon Turteltaub and released by Walt Disney Pictures, NATIONAL TREASURE was a treasure hunt and heist film where a historian races against competing treasure hunters and the FBI to find a Freemason fortune lost for hundreds of years…which includes a map hidden on the Declaration of Independence. 

 

The search for this treasure began in 1999, when filmmaker Jon Turteltaub, who had success in directing 3 NINJAS (1992), COOL RUNNINGS (1993), and PHENOMENON (1996), developed the idea along with film executive Charles Segars, with a script by Jim Kouf. In 2001, the project was picked up by Touchstone Pictures and would be produced by legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Drafts of the script would be written by nine different writers. 

 

The impressive cast would include Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates, along with Sean Bean as his rival. Diane Kruger would play an archivist, and Justin Bartha would play Gates’ sidekick. Jon Voight would play Bates’ father, and Christopher Plummer would play his grandfather. Harvey Keitel would play the FBI agent in charge of the chase. Filming would take place mostly on location in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York, Philadelphia, and Utah. Trevor Rabin would provide the score. 

 

Despite mixed reviews, NATIONAL TREASURE would be a box office hit, and would have the best opening weekend for a Disney film until it was surpassed by CHICKEN LITTLE in 2005. It held on to the No. 1 spot for three weekends, and would finish as the 12^th highest grossing film of the year worldwide. Trevor Rabin would win a BMI Film & TV Award for the score. A sequel would follow in 2007, along with a TV series in 2022. 

 

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NATIONAL TREASURE, showing no shame, borrows heavily from the famed INDIANA JONES franchise; racing from location to location following clues while being pursued by bad guys, searching tombs and tunnels, and providing a thrill a minute. NATIONAL TREASURE did not quite reach the heights of INDY, but it certainly did try its hardest and does recapture the spirit. Saturated in American history, it takes its liberties with what really happened and has a blast with it, and is a good example of how much fun the movies can be when they don’t follow the rules of reality. Over time it has become a bit of a cult classic, and perhaps its best legacy happens on the streets of Philadelphia. Much like tourists pointing at the Empire State Building looking for King Kong, tourists in Philly point at Independence Hall where Nic Cage went sprinting after another clue. That’s the type of thing that goes for a couple hundred years.

 

 

“I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence…”