Re: The Last Treasure Book Summary
Ivy Auteri
The film starts with Pixie Hollow preparing for the season of Fall, as most of the fairies are in the mainland, while Terrance (Jesse McCartney) and Tinkerbell (Mae Whitman) are in Pixie Hollow. It is instantly clear that the film will be more about their relationship, as his Dust fairy workers tease him about Tinkerbell. They work together to help with an invention called the Pixie Express, which fails, and she gets annoyed.
Tinkerbell asks everyone for more pixie dust, from the Dust sector, to Iridessa (Raven Symone), Rosetta (Kristen Chenoweth), and Silvermist, but they all say no, since they are still in the process of bringing Fall to the mainland. Silvermist tells her to go to Terrance in hope that they make up, but the see you next tuesday Tinkerbell asks him for more dust without apologizing, and when he asks her why, she gets mad, claiming that a real friend would not ask why. Hell yes they do Tinkerbell, especially if it is against the rules, and you were dead ass wrong anyways.
Forced to stick with the dust she already has, she makes a cotton balloon to sprinkle pixie dust to go to the far off island that I do not care to remember identifying. A firefly named Blaze (Eliza Pollack Zebert) eats up all of her food, but after trying to kick him out, he flashes to the map, and she uses him to realize that they went the wrong way. After things done get screwed up with the balloon, and ends up stranded, she ends up dreaming about Terrance. A bunch of random things happen, and Tinkerbell is out of her luck. A bunch of bugs Blaze spoke to helped them to get to where she needs to go.
Tinkerbell ends up finding the mirror, but as she starts to repeat her mistake with Terrance onto Blaze, she tells him she wishes he would shut up for a minute, which the mirror grants. Realizing that she blew it, she cries, having no hope in any of this, and feels bad for everything she did, since it is her fault. She sees Terrance in the mirror, and thinks that she is delusional until he touches her shoulder. They make up, he ends up finding her balloon, and he tells her he stole some dust to find her. They end up finding a solution to the moonstone, and they barely make it to the ceremony on time. Once they see that they used metals and strings to hold up the broken pieces with the reflective diamond in the middle, everyone is horrified. Turns out, the moon hits them nicely, and they produced more dust than they have in centuries. The ceremony proceeds as usual, and the ceremony proceeds as usual, with the narrator reminding us that friendship is the most important treasure there is.
The characters are definitely not as good in this film as they were in the first film, and I am going to keep it real. A lot of it is because only two characters received screentime for the most part, and the stellar side cast was missing.
This is becoming my least favourite film of the franchise as well, though I have not watched the last two films yet. It seems like in the films, they either focus on only the team or Terrence; never both.
In this edition of "Presenting the Facts", we explore the 2004 blockbuster National Treasure. The story was written by Jim Kouf, Oren Aviv, and Charles Segars, and the screenplay was by Jim Kouf, Cormac Wibberley, and Marianne Wibberley. It was directed by Jon Turtletaub and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who is known for other action films based in historical details, including Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down. To quote the Critics Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, where the movie has a 44% rating, "National Treasure is no treasure, but it's a fun ride for those who can forgive its highly improbable plot."
A brief note on names: Nicolas Cage's character, Ben Gates, has the full name Benjamin Franklin Gates, as revealed in the opening scene with his grandfather. In fact, Ben's father's full name is Patrick Henry Gates (played by Jon Voight), and his grandfather's full name is John Adams Gates (played by Christopher Plummer). But the allusion to the founders doesn't stop with the Gates family. Diane Kruger's character is named Abigail Chase, a combination of Abigail Adams and Samuel Chase. Sean Bean's character is called Ian Howe (though it is revealed that this may be an alias), and General William Howe and Admiral Richard Howe were both high-ranking British commanders and the King's Commissioners to restore peace during the Revolutionary War.
Many of the scenes set in Philadelphia were shot on location, in such landmarks as Reading Terminal Market and the Franklin Institute. But one notable exception is Independence Hall. Rather than filming in the real building, a National Historical Park, the filmmakers substituted the brick-for-brick replica of Independence Hall at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. Walter Knott had a love for American history, and his replica which was constructed between 1964-1966 was based on historical records, photographs, blueprints, and exact measurements. So, there was no need for Nicolas Cage to run around a real "national treasure" when a truly exact replica existed.
The last three living signers were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton. But after both Jefferson and Adams died on July 4th, 1826, Carroll was the sole survivor. He died in Baltimore on November 14, 1832 at the age of 95.
Washington, Franklin, and Revere were all Masons. But when the conversation turns to signers of the Declaration of Independence, Ben says, "nine, for sure," were Masons, and we don't actually know that for sure. The exact count of the signers of the Declaration who were Masons differs from source to source. Eight signers, including Franklin, are recorded as being affiliated with specific Masonic lodges: Elbridge Gerry, John Hancock, William Hooper, Richard Stockton, Matthew Thornton, George Walton, and William Whipple. Several other signers visited a lodge, or had sons who became Masons, so there is a chance that more than eight signers were Masons.
When Ben discovers the meerschaum pipe clue in the Charlotte, a ship based on an actual ship named Charlotte which was reported as lost off Newfoundland in 1818, he uses blood as surrogate ink to reveal a message etched on the pipe's stem.
What follows is a sequence of thoughts that leads Ben to the conclusion that there is a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. But before we get to that, we need to correct the clue. Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence, not fifty-five. Since Thomas McKean signed sometime after January 1777 and possibly as late as 1781, it could be assumed that the map was aded to the parchment within this window, when only fifty-five men had signed. But, given how other numbers in the movie are just slightly off (see above and below: 9 Masons, 180 years of searching, 14 years old), this is more than likely a mistake.
After centuries of use, by the late 18th century, iron gall ink was still the most popular ink in use, especially for an official document like the Declaration of Independence. Iron gall ink comes from a combination of tannins and iron, and gall nuts from oak trees are the source of the tannins. For more on iron gall ink, check out Yale University Library's Traveling Scriptorium.
It is true that Timothy Matlack is believed to have been the scribe of the Declaration of Independence (there is no concrete evidence to confirm this, but his handwriting is a match). He was not the "official" scribe of the Continental Congress, as Ben claims, because a number of scribes worked for Secretary of the Congress, Charles Thomson. That being said, Matlack was the scribe of two of the most important documents produced by the Congress: the Declaration of Independence (1776) and George Washington's Commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army (1775).
Most of the buttons in Abigail's collection could be referred to as "the 1789 Inaugural". Also, the button Ben ultimately sends Abigail is the Pater Patriae button, which was already shown to be in her collection. For more, see Mount Vernon's Material Culture of the Presidency.
After Ben begins to describe his theory, Abigail makes this claim, which Ben joins halfway through. And it's correct. This note, written at the bottom of the reverse, would have been visible when the engrossed parchment was rolled up; it's essentially a label.
When Ben and Riley stand "three feet away" from the Declaration of Independence, Ben claims that his family has been searching for the treasure for 180 years, but it's actually closer to 170 years (or 172, to be precise). Given that Thomas Gates first heard about the treasure from Charles Carroll in 1832, for this statement to be true, the events of the movie would need to be set in 2012. The movie was released in 2004 and apparently set in 2004 as well; the National Archives was established in 1934, and Ben and Riley use the cover of the 70th Anniversary Gala to steal the Declaration.
Franklin was actually 16 years old when he began writing as Silence Dogood, but yes, he sent letters under the pseudonym to his brother, James Franklin, at the New-England Courant. Benjamin was working as an apprentice in his brother's print shop at the time. The letters, fourteen in total, were published in 1722. James later learned that it was his teenaged brother who had written the wildly popular letters, and it contributed to a growing rift between them, with Benjamin ultimately leaving his apprenticeship early, escaping to Philadelphia.
The bell now known as the Liberty Bell was commissioned from the London firm of Lester and Pack. It arrived in Philadelphia in 1752, but when the bell was struck to test the sound, its rim cracked. Authorities tried in vain to return the bell, so local founders John Pass and John Stow offered to recast it. Their first attempt didn't break when struck, but the sound was disappointing. So, Pass and Stow recast the bell again, and it was finally installed in the bell tower of the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in June 1753.
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