How many of these movie treasures would you brave secret temples, devious traps, and supernatural forces to steal for your private collection (read: your one-bedroom apartment)?
The Goonies
The Gooniesis easily our favorite childhood movie about the role of generational wealth in gentrification. The titular gang of elementary school friends are spending their last day together before their neighborhood is demolished by the local rich family to make way for a country club. The only way to stop the massive foreclosure is to find a bunch of pirate treasure by sunrise the next morning, because that’s how banks work.
The Goonies go hunting for the unfortunately-named One-Eyed Willy’s legendary pirate treasure, braving sewers, riddles, ancient traps, and aggressive Mafia stereotypes. They eventually discover an entire pirate galleon, completely intact and full of gems and gold (and also, in a quick Easter egg cameo, C3P0 and R2-D2). The ship even sails away into the sunset, presumably driven by the ghosts of its pirate crew. We’d crawl through several Northern California sewers for a ship full of money, ghosts, and Star Wars references.
Treasure Island
Treasure Islandis the prototypical treasure hunting adventure story that also addresses madness, paranoia, and the distrust of anyone with a physical disability. Legendary pirate Long John Silver (Robert Newton) befriends Jim Hawkins (Bobby Driscoll) as they join an expedition to recover the lost treasure of Captain Flint, although Silver quickly reveals that he was Flint’s mutinous first mate and plans to steal the loot for himself.
The treasure itself is 700,000 pounds in 1700s British money, which is roughly 121 million pounds (or $157 million) in today’s money. That’s nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in pirate doubloons. We would hijack a zeppelin for that much cash, so taking over an old-timey British galleon with a bunch of our creepy old drinking buddies is a no-brainer.
Indiana Jones
Despite being the benchmark of treasure-hunting adventure movies, most of the loot in theIndiana Jonesseries are things you want to avoid. The Ark of the Covenant is full of face-melting, skull-detonating Bible ghosts, the sacred Sankara stones feed you to crocodiles if they get angry, and the crystal alien skull from the fabled city of Akator grants you so much knowledge that your brain literally catches fire inside of your head. But there is oneIndiana Jonestreasure we’d like to get our hands on.
The Holy Grail grants you eternal life, so long as you stay inside the magic temple in which it is kept. That may sound like a boring way to spend centuries of extended life, but if you brought a bunch of books and an internet connection, it wouldn’t be so bad. You could finally get caught up on The Sopranos. Also, the Grail can heal any wound or ailment, so you could technically set up the world’s most successful day spa right there in the temple.
The Maltese Falcon
The classic hardboiled detective yarnThe Maltese Falconsees rough-and-tumble PI Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) at the center of a web of murder and deceit, all revolving around the recovery of a near-mythological artifact, the titular Maltese Falcon. The Falcon inspires such extreme levels of double-crossing that by the end of the film, nobody gets to claim the treasure. Which means it’s fair game!
A big golden falcon bedazzled with priceless gems is worth throwing a couple of grimy private detectives under the bus. Even if you don’t immediately sell the thing for the incalculable number of dollars it is clearly worth, you’d have a pretty sweet conversation piece with the built-in antitheft device of absolutely blinding any would-be burglars the second the lights come on.
National Treasure
If you don’t celebrateNational Treasurelike the mid-week teacher work day during which it was designed to be watched, we cannot help you. Treasure hunter and solver of impossible riddles Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) steals the Declaration of Independence to prevent it from being stolen by the villainousSean Bean, but the Declaration is just a map to an even greater treasure.
The greater treasure in question is a vault filled with gold, artwork, and other priceless artifacts gathered from various countries over the centuries by the Knights Templar. It’s basically a private museum of stolen culture. You’d go a long way towards repairing relations with several nations by returning some of these artifacts to their rightful homes, or you could auction them at Sotheby’s and buy a palatial speedboat.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
ThePirates of the Caribbeanseries has been pretty good at coming up with mythical treasure that we’d actually want to track down and plunder. Most treasure hunting movies involving supernatural loot (we’re looking at you, Dr. Jones) involve some bizarre curse that discourage you from even being in the same room as the treasure, butPiratesbucks that trend by making even the cursed booty pretty righteous.
InCurse of the Black Pearl, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his crew are cursed by Aztec gold they stole from an uncharted island that you’re able to only find if you’ve already been there. You’ve gotta be grandfathered in, like a country club membership. Barbossatellsus that the curse sucks, but when we see it in action, it looks pretty great. You turn into a gnarly skeleton in the moonlight, you can’t be killed, you can breathe underwater – these all sound like reasonable trade-offs in exchange for not being able to feel anything. It’s hard to understand how weepy Barbossa gets about not being able to taste apples when you can get shot in the chest with a cannon and keep right on pirating.
InDead Man’s Chest, the secondPiratesmovie, we’re introduced to the titular chest. It’s a magic lock box containing the undead heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), a legendary ghost pirate with a tentacled beard. Anyone who possesses the heart can command Davy Jones and his crew of mutant sea people, including a shark man and a guy with a conch shell for a face.
That’s a pretty good treasure to hunt, considering the film’s villainous Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) and his East India Trading Company want to use the chest to basically rule the world by eliminating all other competition (and pirates) in the shipping and trading market. Being able to conjure an army of ghost pirates who are also Ninja Turtle villains is a pretty awesome power. On top of that, Davy Jones commands the Kraken, a virtually indestructible sea monster that can instantly destroy any ship with the 18thcentury piratical version of a Final Fantasy limit break.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
On Stranger Tidesputs Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and the infamous pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane) on the trail of the Fountain of Youth, but that’s not the only treasure in the film. Blackbeard himself wields the Sword of Triton, which uses dark magic to control his supernatural shipQueen Anne’s Revenge, although we don’t think Ian McShane necessarily needs the sword. We fully believe ghosts just do whatever McShane says.
Having a pirate crew powered by voodoo magic is pretty appealing, especially if you’ve already got the heart of Davy Jones (which we are assuming we do in this scenario). You basically have two immortal pirate ships at your disposal, but each with a distinct and interesting theme. Also, the Fountain of Youth would be a good resource to have in your holster. According to the rules inOn Stranger Tides, you basically have to feed another person to the Fountain to gain their remaining years, but that’s what your immortal pirate crews are for! Just toss one of those undead shark men in there and gain however many centuries he had left.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Talesbrings the whole Pirates Cinematic Treasureverse (PCU) full circle by introducing the Trident of Poseidon. Yet another undead pirate crew, this time comprised of water phantoms and commanded by Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), blow up just about everything in the ocean to find it, and only Captain Jack and his frenemy Barbossa can stop him by, um, stealing it first.
The trident has the power to undo every curse of the sea, meaning it will bring Salazar and his crew back to life. If you’ve been paying attention, that also means that it will essentially suck the magic right out of all the previousPiratestreasure. That makes the trident an indispensable addition to your treasure vault, because you definitely don’t want anyoneelserunning around with that damn thing. It’s like handing somebody else the ability to cancel your credit cards, only in this metaphor your credit line is cursed ocean magic.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Nicolas Cage and the most courageous hairpiece in cinema history continue their adventures as globetrotting treasure hunter Ben Gates inNational Treasure: Book of Secrets. The stakes have never been higher in this sequel to 2004’sNational Treasure, sending Gates after not one but two history-altering MacGuffins of incredible importance.
The titular Book of Secrets is a hidden tome entrusted to each President of the United States. As it’s name suggests, the book contains pretty much every secret the government has ever tried to keep, including the truth about aliens at Area 51 and who was really responsible for the Kennedy assassination (probably aliens). The book alone is worth the risk of breaking in the White House and getting shot by Secret Service agents, but it also reveals the location of a literal city of gold hidden within Mount Rushmore.
