(Click the above link. Upload's not working, sorry :(. )
The basic premise behind this is that Ian is lying to himself about how well he's taking Shaw's death.
Photos courtesy of bean-daily.livejournal.com, phantompanther (Livejournal user), bald-daily.livejournal.com, and Google Image search. I do not own National Treasure, Three Days Grace's "Gone Forever", and this is not, by any means, an effort to profit. This is purely for entertainment and because inspiration struck.
I've got a question for anyone and everyone who happens to be in the National Treasure fandom (which I will be crossposting on my tumblr). Where in the hell is Ian's motivation for finding the treasure explicitly stated to be monetary gain? I see this notion in nearly every review of the movie online, but there is literally no evidence for it in the film itself, unless I've missed it. For all I know, he's probably bored out of his skull and needs something to do with his life and this just happened to fall into his lap. Seriously, where does this monetary gain thing even come from?
The guy in the center is the guy slated to play a nameless pharaoh in Secret of the Tomb--Sir Ben Kingsley. And this is starting to make me wonder: maybe there's more going on here than Lancelot going around being a vain ponce and causing trouble for Larry. This is something I've suspected from the start, and you can see the archives for a variety of examples, but this is really starting to make me suspect that it's the pharaoh who might be the main cause of all sorts of trouble. (Not to typecast, but we've got three guys known to play British baddies all in one place here, thanks to Jaguar and, again, the brilliance of their advertising manager, so personally, I'm a bit suspish at this point.)
I personally recommend the sections The Pyramids (22:41) and Egyptian "Light Bulb" (1:27:01) for the purposes of this blog, but the rest of it is actually quite informative in and of itself. The entire three hours is spent laying out the lies and truth behind the claims made in the series Ancient Aliens, which narrator and creator of the piece Chris White, the mind also behind ancientaliensdebunked.com, where you may find his references, to which his footnotes correspond, organizes into such categories as megalithic sites, ancient artifacts, and ancient texts. They are further subdivided to cover such topics as the aforementioned pyramids and "light bulb", as well as Puma Punku, the Anunaki (Sumerian gods), Vimanas (mentioned in Indian epic poetry such as the Mahabarata and the Ramayana), etc. Overall it's really interesting, but the part on the pyramids, especially where White gets to talking about the Internal Ramp/Grand-Gallery-as-Freight-Elevator theory is absolutely fascinating.
ETA
At about 54:25 or so we learn about Sumerian dictionaries. "Yes, the Sumerians wrote their own extensive dictionaries. So we don't have to trust Sitchin or anyone else; we can basically just ask the Sumerians what they thought a word meant." - Chris White. This is something I find very interesting as well, and so I have made note of it.
"Three thousand degrees...That's a lot." And I facepalm at the stupidity of that statement. No wonder it's so easy to lampoon Ancient Aliens.
For the Mayan myth freaks of my readership, be sure to check out Pacal's Rocket (1:05:26), which lays out for the uninformed the exact details of the World Tree, the vision serpent, the Celestial Bird, the Sun Monster, and everything else you care to know about the Mayan concept of inter-world (which is to specifically say inter-plane) travel, or transition from, say, the world of the living to the world of the dead. I know I didn't know all of that going in.
"If you asked an ancient Nazcan what they believed about the world and how it worked, they would likely say something like, we take hallucinogenic drugs, we cut off a lot of heads, all in hopes that the Monkey Spirit will help us have good crops this year." - Chris White, c. 1:19:30 (He goes on to suggest that "If it is true [the theory on ancient aliens], they apparently couldn't have cared any less, because there is no hint of it in their mythology." Really, just check out the Nazca Lines commentary, because it really is astoundingly amusing.)
Now, before I get to their take on the light bulb at Dendera, I've got to say this, and I have a feeling White will, too. The light bulb is commonly believed to actually be a depiction of a lotus flower, and not just any lotus flower, but the lotus flower, the one that sprang up at the dawn of time, the one Ra was born out of before he went on to create everyone and everything else, gods included. Or at least, that's how some of the ancient creation myths go. No electricity involved, and certainly no aliens. White goes into detail about the years of soot which do indeed exist and cover very colorful ceiling artwork, the fact that torches do, indeed, work in the pyramids and have for millennia, to the point where there are receipts for lamp wicks, etc., the fact that tombs were built in sunlight and not even supposed to be lit in the first place, and, of course, the aforementioned creation myth (with the mention that Atum is often represented by a snake and that is, in fact, what is depicted where these theorists see filaments. He quotes an expert who notes that "Only one god (Atum) is responsible for the emergence of the universe as a bubble of air in the vast, limitless, inert ocean" (please refer to his website for the reference).)
"Khefri and Atum sort of traded off being aspects of Ra in Egyptian mythology." - White, an interesting note which I have yet to make something of.
I actually didn't know that depicting the sun and moon in Christian artwork as witnesses to the Crucifixtion was a Byzantine thing, or that it was a carryover from artwork depicting the gods of the Sun and Moon in Roman religion. See, there are a lot of interesting things in this world without having to involve aliens.
"It [the reference to ten thousand suns] does not refer to the specific flash of a nuclear blast unless one imagines the gods to be exploding." - Jason Colavito (It amused me.)
Fake text appears in 1952. Quick, NATM Fans, what else happened in 1952? (There are points for the people who get this right.)
Anu has a crown on it, which is cute. It makes sense in context.
Winged Genies who go around fertilizing everything, occasionally accompanying the king because of his responsibility for the fertility of the land. Very interesting stuff, especially for the Sumerian nerds who happen to be reading this.
I'm shifting into commentary because there are specific things I happen across as I (slowly) make my way through this documentary that I find noteworthy, interesting, amusing, etc. and I would like to point them out should anyone decide to skip the entire three hours and just check out what I've decided to pull. Again, I do suggest, for specific purposes of this blog, The Pyramids and the Egyptian "Light Bulb" sections, mentioned above with time stamps, simply because of their specific focus on ancient Egypt, homeland of our favorite brothers (or my favorite brothers, at least), and a focus of interest for me and a large segment of the population and (I hope) my readership.
I really like the way the third trailer opens, even though it makes Ahkmenrah look like the bad guy. The angle for popping that lid off was amazing, and that entire sequence reminded me of Tale of the Mummy. Poor sap trapped in a museum with a reanimated mummy (even though he turns out to be a pretty okay guy) is a beautiful set-up for a horror movie. Anyway, I just had to gush about that trailer's opening sequence for a bit.
And McPhee's chaos speech inter-cut with the chaos of the museum. Beautiful.
And I feel like reposting this, because it actually is pretty cool. And please note, that Christmas wasn't a silent night, and neither will this one be (though six days in advance).
That's all for now, folks. Sadly we're still waiting on the trailer for SOTT, but I can only assume that a lot of special effects work needs to be done. Or they're trying to keep this in the dark as long as possible to tantalize. Either way, this had better be good.
