National Treasure Declared a National Treasure

The producers say that they never intended to shoot a sequel to National Treasure (not to be confused with Hua qi Shao Lin) but, for some odd reason, a $350m worldwide gross changed their minds. As you probably don't remember from the first film -- because you didn't see it -- Nicholas Cage plays some kind of ex-special forces or military engineering history buff whose family inherits the secret to a gigantic treasure passed to the Founding Fathers (who were Free Masons) by their Templar forebears. Cage then tracks down the treasure with a German employee of the National Archives after stealing the Declaration of Independence in order to keep it protected from a competing group of treasure hunters. Oh wait, why does he need to protect the Declaration at all? Because the foundational claim to American nationhood also guards one of the clues to the treasure, you dumbass! Eventually, after risking life and limb, blah blah blah, they find the treasure in a gigantic cavern beneath Wall Street in Manhattan which has apparently lain there undisturbed by centuries of underground digging that would have been necessary to provide New York with heat, electricity, water and, oh yeah, a subway. Anyway, the treasure itself is comprised of nearly every object of historical value and one half expects to see Plato himself bumbling around the scrolls from the Alexandrian library contained therein.



The new film, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, focuses on thirteen missing pages from the diary of John Wilkes-Boothe, President Abraham Lincoln's assassin. It seems the thirteen pages hold the key to an international conspiracy, one that, from Cage's vague narration in the tailer, is highly dangerous to someone somewhere.

I'm not sure how this film ends, but I think we can be reasonably assured that Nicholas Cage, his beautiful German girlfriend (the National Archives employee from the previous film), and his quirky but affable sidekick all survive and receive the sincerest thanks for saving the world (which, I'm sure, they manage to accomplish). This means it's not too early to ask, "What next?" The trilogy is a holy Hollywood tradition. How can we not expect a third installment in this exciting series of excuses to propound absurd conspiracy theories and blow things up?

My predictions:

National Treasure: Liberty Falls
The Statue of Liberty, gifted to the United States by France in 1886, stands as a shining beacon to all who would seek refuge in America. But Cage soon learns that it is more than a mere statue. Sculpted by Frédéric August Bartholdi, the symbolic edifice is actually the key to a conspiracy that originated in the waning days of the Napoleonic Empire. Unless Cage can stop them in time, the same French people who opposed the Iraq war will launch a deadly invasion on United States soil. If Cage does not succeed in deciphering the clues before his adversaries, they will destroy everything the Statue of Liberty represents.

National Treasure: The Birth of Apollo
For almost 40 years, the United States government has hidden a dark secret. Generations believed that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men on the moon. What they didn't know was that Armstrong and Aldrin actually discovered the remains of an ancient civilization, one that holds the key to explaining life on earth. Cage must break into Area 51, steal a space shuttle and travel to the lunar surface itself in order to uncover a secret so horrific it will shake the foundations of the world we know. If he fails, the entire planet may pay the ultimate price.

National Treasure: The Last Saint
In 1830, Joseph Smith Jr. published The Book of Mormon, a text that gave birth to one of the greatest religious movements in recent history. In 2007, Cage discovers that the text is actually a map to the secret tomb of Jesus Christ. Along with Robert Langdon, noted Harvard symbologist, Cage and Langdon must find the tomb before nefarious and diabolical conspirators from the world's most important religious and political institutions beat them to it. Together, they pose as polygamists in order to infiltrate Mormon circles of the highest influence. Risking his marriage (to a beautiful German curator at the National Archives) and his life, Cage must race through American history and into the ancient past before its too late.

National Treasure: The Key to the Map of Keys
One day in his recently deceased father's home, Nicholas Cage discovers a key underneath a pile of maps. He soon learns that they key holds the secret to a map, which is itself the key to finding a pile of keys which, when used correctly, reveal a book of maps. Because his rivals, a secret guild of locksmiths and cartographers, require the secret to achieve world domination, Cage must race against time in order to get the keys, I mean the maps, I mean the maps to the keys, I mean . . . Look, he just needs to get to whatever it is before they do. Anyway, once Cage gets wherever it is that he's going, he finds out that the maps or the keys are actually keys to maps and keys even darker than he could have possibly imagined.