I’d be curious to know the story of this movie’s scripting. Were there two writers? Three? A secret script whose middle pages were burned and the scriptwriter assassinated leaving others to try to fill in the blanks?
The movie suffered from a surfeit of ideas. Any one of the ideas would have done to make an excellent movie: the President’s Book, the lost city of Cibola, the involvement of the Copperheads in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, etc. Instead we have a writer who thought of so many great ideas they couldn’t stand to abandon any of them and tried to mish-mash them all into a coherent plot. Oops.
On the bright side, much got added to the storyline: more great characters, more backstory, a wider timeframe for historical exploration.
I’m hoping for National Treasure 3. Then I can assume this is just a – Empire Strikes Back, Mallrats, Temple of Doom – sophomore slump.