National Treasure: Edge of History

I've just binged through season 1. Frankly I am really surprised at the ratings and reviews here on IMDB. Seems like a lot of folks have an ax to grind with Disney. This was never intended as an intellectual masterpiece. It's a very simple family (primarily teenagers and younger) entertainment. I am a few decades past being a teen yet was a big fan of the National Treasure movies. This series is a pleasant resurection of an age old premise that works: a treasure hunt. I particularly liked and appreciated the homage paid to the original movies. The premise set up with agent Sandusky, the inclusion of artifacts from the films, and the integration of Riley into the story was delightful. Come on guys, TV can be just a pleasant pastime and this fills the bill. The actors are all fine, and it's always a delight to see Catherine Zeta Jones.

This series is actually very enjoyable if you can get over one glaring problem. Every 10 min the writers felt they needed to make a social justice comment. The characters constantly spew out irrelevant and non-sensical statements about racism, poverty, indigenous issues, LGTBQ issues, feminist, etc, etc, etc. That's all and fine but they make no sense to the story or the series. They are just there hanging out like a big zit on their nose. Could they not just make a National Treasure story? It was compelling and exciting. The characters were well developed. But I suspect that one of the new "diversity" producers or writers got to the script and simply added all this nonsense. It really does take away from the series and is a major reason it was not renewed.

If any of you remember the 90's, Disney was great at taking established successful stories and turning their sequels into junk. Lately all this Disney plus stuff has felt like that. Other than Star Wars, most of the marvel stuff, willow, and now this. I will still watch them but very disappointed. Mandalorian bad batch, and Andor have all been relatively huge successes compared to anything else original that Disney plus is putting out. National treasure started from cheesy but entertaining films. Nicholas cage made those movies fun. How can disney think they can do this without him? He is an icon!

I've got through the first two episodes, find it interesting enough. Realize this IS NOT going to be extravagant like the movies, and slower burn as it's a series. It has no more plot devices than the movies either, so don't hang on that withering piece of fruit from other reviewers...

On to the review.

First episode is getting to know Jess and her friend Tess. Setup is on par with Laura Croft IMO, makes sense for this type of character. I think she's a little too curious, too quickly but they have to start somewhere. Love that, just like in the movies, she's taking in info, looking for clues, acting on them, stuff happens. A pleasant cameo by a certain master mason from movies is a great touch. I'm looking forward to seeing how the world building progresses, story unfolds, and treasures to be found.

Disney once again ruins a franchise....instead of giving us a sequel to Book of Secrets,they give us a crappy show with terrible actors and crap story...who is in charge with Disney entertainment because they need to be fired...

At least they could have tried to get Nicolas Cage or any of the original cast besides Harvey Keitel.

This is definitely one show to skip and keep your fingers crossed that they'll do a sequel movie with Nicolas Cage because he needs a hit movie since most of his movies are horrible now.

Lately Disney has had a lot of misses with the quality of their movies and that's a shame.