National Treasure: Edge of History

If this is to engage younger audiences, then understandable. However don't write down and simplify narrative and story .... To broaden your audience because you get this drivel... I love Catherine Zeta Jones and Harvey Keitel. They were the only characters keeping me in. The lead young woman Lisette Olivers is also great... it's the supporting cast and the sloppy writing that makes me wish they all would fall into a well, never to be found. If Zuri Reed shouts "patriarchy" one more time I'm gonna throw my shoe at my tv. I get it, the original cast is too expensive en masse (I guess) but then spend on writers. This seems sooooooo boring but there's a great story tucked away. I cannot relate to any characters because they're just so naive, dumb and trivial... I don't care about any of them. Except for Catherine Zeta & Lisette.

ALSO! Disney! Stop being so lazy!!!! The last two relatively Hispanic characters have been named "Jess Valenzuela" and "America Chavez". Why not add a Lisa Porto Rico, James Brazilo and Gloria Chilis. It's juror terrible and lazy. I get it... "America Chavez" is a Marvel creation BUT she's a marvel creation from 2021..... so DO BETTER. Some of us brown people have names like, George, Abby, Peter with last names like Richards, Moro, and Jones.

The two takeaways from this rant... is your writing is poor and honestly superficial. I, and maybe more of us with a 4-5 star review do not care about these characters. Nor if they take on this adventure. Try harder with character development and names.

Also I love that Charley Koontz (Fat Neil) was in this!

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 definitely feels like a CW show, but not necessarily in a bad way. It still has a lot of the charm of the original, albeit without Nic Cage, Sean Bean, or Diane Kruger lending their charisma. Some of the clues and character decisions are cheesey, but so were the ones in the original movies. The historical references are...dubious, but again so were the ones in the original movies. Some of the dialogue is over the top, but not irredeemably so. They also got several actors from the movies to lend their talents, which is nice.

Overall despite a few drawbacks it's a fun romp, and definitely more enjoyable than Peacock's "The Lost Symbol," which I felt kind of lost the charm of the movies it was based on.

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.

This show is so stupid (or thinks its viewers are), i don't even know where to start. Its so stereotypical - Every "Villain" couldn't spread butter on bread because of a lack of brain cells, and the "super smart" (can convert days to years months and weeks - wow, mensa here we come...) main character can do no wrong and apparently having learned latin at some point is a sign of beeing smart in someone eyes. As per usual these days when Disney allows writers to ruin their IPs that they would not have let anywhere near their scripts 20 years ago, the show does not know what it wants to be, adventure?, teen drama maybe? Comedy? .. Gotta cram everything in there and make it as cringe as humanly possible. While i think the underlying idea had some potential, the execution did not. The Show clearly struggles to even know who it is targeted at (age and interest wise)(with a 14+ Rating, it can't target the age group (12 and under) that it seems to target). The Story has more holes in it than a mile of Swiss cheese and unless you pay absolutely no attention to what's going on , you will be left shaking your head and rolling your eyes more times than i would consider healthy. The Cast is fine, but obviously can't overcome the bad writing. When your character is written with no depths and so agenda driven that the character development feels like someone with no understanding of Peoples behaviour / any kind of human interaction was in charge of that, blaming the cast for anything just feels wrong. It has None of the charm of the Movies, (my suspicion is Bruckheimer had only in name anything to do with this show and actually had 0 input) the few throwbacks to the movies feel forced and completely arbitrary. The Fx in the show would be outdated and perceived as bad in a 90s show. There was a lot of potential with the "National Treasure" IP ,but this show does not realize any of that potential, it could be just a generic teen treasure hunter show on the cw for that matter. The only reason this gets 2 stars instead of 1 is the cast.

Overall it is dissapointing and sad that it is so bad, yet not completely unexpected.