Batman and Robin, Han Solo and Chewbacca, Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole. These great cinematic teams have added a new dynamic duo to their ranks. Benjamin Franklin Gates and Riley Poole are the stars in the classic films National Treasure, and they have taken the world of action by storm. After years and years of disappointing me with no new sequels to its Witch Mountain franchise, Disney finally manages to apologize by combining the magic of Nicolas Cage with the producing backbone of Jerry Bruckheimer and a plot about treasure hunting and puzzle solving.
I know you’re probably thinking “Enough with the Nicolas Cage, J’Mel! We all know he’s awesome, but you’re acting like he’s %&$#ing awesome!” Well, he IS &%$#ing awesome, and nowhere is it more evident than his nonchalant puzzle solving adventures in National Treasure. If you can’t acknowledge this, then you are some sort of terrorist.
Still, after National Treasure and National Treasure: Book of Secrets have been watched to the point where every subtle detail is embedded on the brain, what choice does one have? One can write their own adventures, that’s what one can do!
Fanfiction is the really cool and popular hobby of taking your favorite fictional characters, and writing your own adventures—or “fic”—so that everyone in the free world can share in your homemade love.
This task is actually easier than it sounds. All you need is a missing treasure, a load of conspiracies and an intermediate knowledge of the inner workings of the Freemasons. Then, you have to take these things and weave them together with a series of increasingly coincidental and convenient clues. Toss in a car crash and Jon Voight, and you have yourself some grade A fan fiction, son!
I have, once again, decided to use my freakish talent to help you get started. What follows are typical beginnings for great National Treasure fan fiction adventures. I’ve provided them to get you started. Use these to craft your own Ben and Riley adventures so that you can stave off crippling depression until Disney sees fit to give us another big screen National Treasure outing!
1. National Treasure: Man on the Moon! R: Well, I guess no one can ever say I never stole the moon. B: We’re not stealing it, Riley, we’re borrowing it. Besides, if there really is a treasure deep beneath the moon’s crust, then we have to find it. R: What if the mason’s find us before we get the moon back in place? B: There are only two people that know how to translate the map left on the flag planted here by the original moon walkers. R: And they are? B: Charles Manson and Rutherford B. Hayes. R: Well, I know who I’d rather deal with. B: I’m with you there, Riley. Are the stone keys in place? R: They are. B: Then let’s do this. R: Ben, if you’d told me three days ago that I’d be stealing the moon and using its secret time traveling capabilities in order to go back into time to find a map leading to a treasure buried deep within that very same moon... B: Yeah? R: I can’t say I’d have been too surprised. B: Then, let’s go!!!
2. National Treasure: Atlantis Ring Ring! B: Hello? R: Hey Ben! It’s Riley. B: Oh, hey Riley. What’s up? R: Nothing. I was just wondering if you saw the news... B: Yeah, I did. It looks like the president was an impostor the entire time. R: He was planted by the Freemasons so they could use the real president to go after the lost city of Atlantis I expect. B: Riley, there is no such thing as… R: …the city of Atlantis, I know. Except how do you explain those photographs I sent you? B: Hold on. I’ll get them. Hmmm, well, they look like aerial photos of the Atlantic ocean. R: Yeah, now hold them up to the light. B: Okay. R: Not just any light, find a red light bulb. B: I have one here in the kitchen—Ow! R: Ben! What happened! B: Ninjas hit me and took the photographs! R: See! B: Looks like you’re onto something, Riley. R: Well, I need you, Ben. What do we do now? B: I’ll tell you. We need to kidnap folk troubadour Donovan and steal the space shuttle. R: I’m in!
3. National Treasure: 2Pacolypse Ring Ring! B: Hello! Riley? R: Yeah, it’s me, Ben. Listen, I have just come across some pretty disturbing shit! B: Do tell, brother. R: Well, I was watching “E True Hollywood: JonBenét Ramsey”, and I discovered some unsettling clues about the death of 2Pac. B: Riley, everyone knows that those murders are connected, but in order to prove it you’d have to figure out a way to use the Liberty Bell to send out a tone low enough to raise them both from the dead. R: Yeah, but… B: THEN, you’d have to convince them to sit through a viewing of Dan Aykroyd’s Nothing But Trouble in order to collect the missing clues from the scene featuring 2Pac. R: Yeah, but… B: AND THEN, you’ll have to get them to use those clues to lead you back across the river Styx so that you can use the book of memories to recreate the moment in time when they were killed, then step into that memory as some sort of ghostly doppelganger of yourself and stop the murders. R: You’re right, but… B: Then, when they both return to life and you’ve completely torn a hole in the time space continuum, you take them back to the moon time-machine so that they can help you find all the gold that the Nazi’s hid in the Grand Canyon!? R: That’s about it, yeah. B: Then, let’s go!
J’Mel Davidson is the founder of a local improv comedy troupe called The Feminist Debutante Guild. You can send him the love—or a puzzlebox containing the secret to eternal life—via editor@bhamweekly.com or heinousclown@gmail.com.
J.P.
