National Treasure

Jon Turteltaub’s 2004 film follows Ben Gates, who believes the founders left a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. The script had circulated since 1997 and nine writers worked on it before the story credit settled on Jim Kouf, Oren Aviv and Charles Segars. Everything that feels authentic here is a facade. The Washington buildings are real, but almost no interior that matters is. The Archives heist was staged in a full recreation built in a Hollywood studio. The Independence Hall rooftop chase used the 1966 brick for brick copy at Knott’s Berry Farm, California. Trinity Church inside is First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, and its crypt was a set. The Arctic prologue used a Utah reservoir, with the ship’s hold built inside a Van Nuys ice company freezer. The National Archives answered the film in print. The only writing on the reverse of the parchment reads “Original Declaration of Independence dated 4th July 1776”, upside down along the bottom edge; the Archives added that it is not invisible and includes no map, contrary to the Disney feature. A good fit if you want history used as a lock mechanism and do not mind the poster’s theft giving way to a long chase. Not for a reader of that Archives correction, which the plot inverts.