Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Treasure Memories
As I sat in the "cheap seats" movie theater on Saturday I wondered if I had somehow missed a word in the title. Maybe instead of National Treasure, it was supposed to be National Lampoon's Treasure. Because this is definitely one of the most ridiculous movies I've seen in a long time. This is a film that starts out in the Arctic Circle with characters wearing ordinary winter coats and no protection for their faces or ears. From there, it gets less realistic.
I knew it would be ridiculous, of course, from the trailers. The premise of the movie is that the founding fathers of the U.S. had some vast treasure and hid it somewhere, leaving behind clues to its whereabouts. This is a pretty stupid premise. Consider:
To: Benjamin Franklin
From: George Washington, General, Valley Forge
Ben:
We are freezing and starving. At this rate we will never make it through the winter. SELL THE BLOODY TREASURE and get us food, blankets, and ammunition!
--George
I won't go into all the rest of the silliness--it's just too easy. But I did wonder later why anyone would come up with such a thing. It may be too much of a stretch, but it seems to me that this is an attempt to re-imagine those founding fathers in a way that's more friendly to our greedy, materialistic society. It's not enough that they risked their lives to try to do something unheard of and break away from one of the super-powers of the day and establish a functional republic with protections for individual liberties: they have to have been rich, too.
I knew it would be ridiculous, of course, from the trailers. The premise of the movie is that the founding fathers of the U.S. had some vast treasure and hid it somewhere, leaving behind clues to its whereabouts. This is a pretty stupid premise. Consider:
To: Benjamin Franklin
From: George Washington, General, Valley Forge
Ben:
We are freezing and starving. At this rate we will never make it through the winter. SELL THE BLOODY TREASURE and get us food, blankets, and ammunition!
--George
I won't go into all the rest of the silliness--it's just too easy. But I did wonder later why anyone would come up with such a thing. It may be too much of a stretch, but it seems to me that this is an attempt to re-imagine those founding fathers in a way that's more friendly to our greedy, materialistic society. It's not enough that they risked their lives to try to do something unheard of and break away from one of the super-powers of the day and establish a functional republic with protections for individual liberties: they have to have been rich, too.
