National Treasure

National Treasure opened on November 19, 2004, with a premise so audacious it could have collapsed under its own weight. Walt Disney Pictures and producer Jerry Bruckheimer asked audiences to follow Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates, a treasure hunter and history obsessive convinced that a lost Freemason treasure exists — and that its map is hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence. The logical conclusion: Gates decides to steal the Declaration of Independence. Not to sell it, not as a heist-movie flourish, but as a means to an end, as matter-of-factly as walking into a library for a book. The film committed to this premise entirely and dared the audience to follow.

Director Jon Turteltaub surrounded Cage with an ensemble that lent the script the credibility it needed: Diane Kruger as Dr. Abigail Chase, the scholarly foil; Justin Bartha as tech-sidekick Riley Poole; Sean Bean as the rival Ian Howe; Jon Voight as Ben's father Patrick; Harvey Keitel as Agent Sadusky, the FBI man in pursuit. The Declaration heist could have read as absurd; instead it read as inevitable.

The box office vindicated Bruckheimer's bet: $347.5 million worldwide on a $100 million budget, and a sequel — National Treasure: Book of Secrets — followed on December 21, 2007. But the real legacy emerged on cable television, where National Treasure became one of the 2000s' reliable perennials: the movie that was always on, somewhere. Channel-surfing, you'd find Cage contemplating the Declaration, the heist unfolding, the conspiracy unraveling — and you'd watch it again, not despite having seen it before, but because you had.