Of course, the way they ended the first one...maybe they'll be able to improve it to a sort of urban Indy? Who knows.

Story here.

Link to thread on the first film.

Link to 'Sahara vs. National Treasure' thread.

ComingSoon.net:

Discussing the National Treasure 2 script, Bruckheimer revealed: "It's another little treasure hunt, and this time it involves [Abe] Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth and 18 pages which are actually missing from [Lincoln's] diary."

Teasing the plot further, Bruckheimer posed the central question of the sequel. "What was in those 18 pages?" he asked.

Yawn.

I love this genre, but less than a year after seeing both Sahara and the first National Treasure, I can scarcely remember the basic plots of either.

I *love* Sahara...

Saw the trailer this morning. I assumed the reference to 18 pages missing from John Wilkes Booth's diary was a joke, a nudge-wink homage to the fact that 18 minutes were missing from one of Nixon's Watergate tapes. But... apparently 18 pages really ARE missing from the diary! (Or so say sites like FreemasonryWatch.org.) Weird.

So if the original film was the American-history version of The Da Vinci Code, is this film the American-history version of Angels & Demons?

hmm..wasn't there also 18 hours of static on Ellie's video recording in _Contact_ ?

And isn't it true that there are eighteen ways to leave your lover??

-s.

It's quite true. Been to the museum. Seen the diary. IIRC this is one of several things that are always mentioned by people who want to implicate Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's secretary of war, in the assassination plot ... the removal of pages allegedly happened on his watch, or some such rot. Believe there was a film in '70s making this among other allegations.

There is a significant plot element in this film that really needs to be addressed in some way, but a colleague of mine thinks it is spoiler-ish, so I am now not sure what to do about it. Ordinarily I would agree, BUT ... if you check the trailers available here, you will see that ...

... the teaser posted May 24 features a scene (since deleted from the film) in which Riley says the illegal thing has ALREADY HAPPENED.

... the trailer posted August 10 features a scene (still in the film) in which Nicolas Cage says -- twice! -- that he's GOING TO DO the illegal thing.

... the trailer posted November 1 features scenes of the illegal thing in question happening, and in such a way that you know something illegal is being done, but without making clear what, exactly, is happening.

So, the trailers initially GAVE AWAY this plot point, seven whole months ago, and since then they have gradually backed away from being so explicit. Does that make this plot element a "spoiler" again? Or, given that I and millions of other people knew this plot point months before we got a chance to see the film -- and all with the studio's blessing -- is it fair to assume that this plot point can be discussed openly in a review?

My father and I had a couple of hours to kill yesterday afternoon, so we checked out National Treasure 2. As Darryl Armstrong posted, the plot is largely forgettable, but it's a good fun--with an emphasis on fun--and very much a family movie, with Helen Mirren as Ben Gates' (Nick Cage) mother joining the team. Mirren classes up anything she appears in, but Jon Voight and Ed Harris also add their skills to what otherwise could have been a routine thrill ride. We enjoyed the movie. Will it be on my top 10 list of all time, or even 2007? Probably not, but it was worth a big-screen viewing.
I think the part I liked best was when they discover the treasure (seriously, you can't consider that a spoiler? you KNOW they're going to discover the treasure) and Prof. Gates (Mirren) is most excited about the pre-Columbian hieroglyphics, never mind that they're carved into solid gold.

FWIW, my junket report and my review.

BethR wrote:
: . . . very much a family movie . . .

For the most part, I agree. Though the subplot involving Kruger kicking Cage out of the house and bringing another man home -- and then using her body to distract him in the White House -- seemed a tad "mature", to me.

The back story that Cage and Kruger had been living together, and the implication that any rapprochement would involve a return to this arrangement, did bother me (if bother is the right word; I just mean it was a check regarding the film's family-friendly status). The Oval Office shenanigans, OTOH, seemed to me not incomparable to any number of Looney Tunes cartoons I could mention -- not something that I personally would sweat regarding my kids' viewing at any age.

Huh. The breakup-and-reunion aspect of the story seemed comparable to other Disney films like The Parent Trap, to me, and thus not quite so bothersome. (Married or cohabitating, it doesn't make as much difference these days; the odds are good that kids will know people living under both arrangements, and the key point to me is that the people who separate in these stories will eventually get back together.) But watching one half of the couple get frisky, as it were, with "another man" during the separation did bug me a little.

As for Looney Tunes ... well, I'm pondering when and how to expose my kids to those, too.

I don't think I've *ever* seen such blatant product placement in a movie. Ever. HP, Mercedes, you name it. Wow. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that the locations were sponsored (by funding from Paris, London, and other tourism agencies).

That being said, and any expectations of serious cinema aside, this was a fun way to spend a couple of hours, in a Saturday-matinee, guy-gets-the-girl sorta way. I also like the Helen Mirren character, who injected a real love for history and culture into the film, although the Hollywood every-separated-couple-gets-back-together-shtick was a bit heavy.

I was also thinking about how this movie, carefully created to reach a broad American demographic, ends up saying a lot more about that demographic, and what the filmmakers think of it, and less about the 'artists' involved. It's reverse-art, in that sense, an arguably cynical expression of the audience more than an expression of the creative personalities involved.

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Friday & Weekend Estimates
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (Disney) will officially become Nicolas Cage's biggest hit ever some time next week. The continuing adventures of treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates scooped up another $6.1M on Friday, lifting its domestic cume to $156.9M. The holiday blockbuster will likely deliver a weekend haul of $18.9M, more than enough to win the 3-day frame. By Wednesday or so, NT2 will pass its predecessor for a new Cage best.
Fantasy Moguls, January 5

- - -

If this prediction is correct, then National Treasure: Book of Secrets would be the first movie to be #1 for three weeks in a row since Disturbia came out back in April. And prior to that, you'd have to go back to Night at the Museum, which came out in December 2006. And prior to that, Happy Feet, which came out in November 2006. And prior to that, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which came out in in July 2006. And prior to that ... you might or might not want to count The Chronicles of Narnia, which came out in December 2005 and was #1 in its 1st and 4th weeks but not for two, let alone three, weeks in a row. And prior to that ... oh, okay, I'll stop there. (Though I do believe the last movie to be #1 for FOUR weeks in a row was The Return of the King, which came out in December 2003; however, shortly after that, The Passion of the Christ was #1 in its 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 7th weeks.)

When Movies Don't Live Up to the Trailer
But this one got me thinking: Just how different can a trailer be without becoming false advertising?
In this case, those lines from Riley made the movie seem funnier than it was, the president's line made the dramatic stakes seem higher than they were, and the scenes at the Lincoln Memorial made the historical conspiracy seem more ingenious than it was (historical clues hidden right under our noses!). I can say with confidence that some of those elements played a part in my wanting to see the movie.
Rearranging scenes in the trailer is one thing. But what about this business of putting stuff in the trailer -- a *lot* of stuff -- that isn't in the movie at all? If they can get away with "National Treasure"-style misrepresentation, what’s to stop other moviemakers from putting special effects, witty lines, exotic locales and hot-looking actors into *their* trailers, just to get us to go to a movie that doesn't have any of those things?
David Pogue, New York Times, January 3

Your trash, my Treasure
More informative about American history than Fahrenheit 9/11. More brain-teasing, and far more enjoyable, than I'm Not There. Less graphically violent than almost any other movie you're likely to see. What else could I be talking about but National Treasure: Book of Secrets? . . .
My colleagues, students, and wife think I'm nuts to like National Treasure. In defense I could point to evocative images like the one surmounting today's entry, the superimposition of Grandpa Gates' eye on a pyramid as a condensation of the Masonic/ monetary/ paternity motifs swarming through the movie. But I needn't strain so far. The pleasures are more elemental. . . .
Of course some will say Spielberg/ Lucas/ Kasdan did it already with Raiders. But that was a knowing effort to relive somebody's phantom vision of B serials. Besides, does anybody believe that Indy knows as much about archaeology as Ben Gates does about nearly everything? . . .
David Bordwell, January 8

- - -

I hadn't realized that this film was being shown with a brand-new Goofy cartoon; the screening I attended at the junket over a month ago didn't have any "hors d'oeuvres" of that sort. Dang. As an animation buff, I will almost certainly have to pick up whatever DVD this cartoon ends up on eventually. Might be the DVD for this film. Might be some other DVD altogether.

National Treasure 3 & 4 ?! Big Thunder Mountain ... The Movie ?!
Why For returns with answers to your Disney-related questions. This time around, Jim Hill talks about the company's plans to expand its "National Treasure" franchise as well as reveals the studio's next theme park-based film.
Jim Hill Media, February 1