NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY: Episodes 1.1 – 1.4

Name: NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY: Episodes 1.1 – 1.4
Item: NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY: Episodes 1.1 – 1.4
Author: Gaby Gaduh

"Skip the History, Just Enjoy the Ride"

Content: -1 Caution advised for older children, including teenagers, and sensitive adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY is an action adventure series on Disney Plus based on Disney’s NATIONAL TREASURE movies. In the first four episodes, a college student on DACA named Jess Valenzuela and her friends are thrust into a treasure hunt for a Latin American treasure against a ruthless female billionaire and unscrupulous antiquities dealer named Billie Pearce. As Jess searches for the treasure, she discovers that her father, who she thought was good for nothing, was a guardian of this treasure and her mother had a thesis paper rejected based on the treasure. In addition, Jess finds herself the target of an FBI investigation after making some trouble at historical sites.

The first four episodes of NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY are fun and interesting. Each episode has some emotional moments, playful banter and intriguing his-torical facts. However, the characters often do what they feel rather than what’s right. The episodes have some action violence, brief foul language and suggestive comments and scenes. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children for the first four episodes of NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY.

Content:

(RoRo, PC, AP, RH, FR, C, L, VV, S, A, D, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong Romantic worldview overall where each character does what they want based on how they feel rather than focusing on morals from a biblical or ethical standpoint, heroine’s motives include proving herself and her fam-ily to not be liars rather than the morals of a religion; heroine’s friends are motivated by their love of her rather than what’s right, a politically correct, Anti-American moment of revisionist history when a former FBI agent says, America was “founded by criminals,” a friend of the heroine says, “I’m Pro Goddess,” and a brief fight occurs in a Catholic church with a statue of the Virgin Mary featured

Foul Language:

There is a small level of foul language involved, such as a few instances of “crap” being substituted for “s” words, and a few instances of “h” words

Violence:

Some violent scenes such as man uses a chain to fend off three thugs in a church, young woman’s father gets beat up and shot during a flashback in the first episode, some scenes of bloodless war violence are shown, a house gets set on fire during a fight in the first episode, man gets kidnapped and beaten and threatened by female villain’s goons in the second episode, guns are used, two people are nearly killed by a death trap, and two characters punch and shove a guard in the fourth epi-sode

Sex:

There are a few moments where sex is implied or the need for sex is implied such as woman encourages another woman to hook up with a guy because “a girl’s got needs,” and a man and his girlfriend walk out in tasteful pajamas in the third episode, im-plying they had slept together

Nudity:

No nudity

Alcohol Use:

Two characters work in a bar, and each bar scene implies people are drinking

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

A few characters in a bar scene seem to be smoking in the background; and, Mis-cellaneous Immorality: There is a fair share of moral ambiguity among the characters such as it’s implied that heroine’s mother raised her as a single mom, and the main charac-ters seem to live together out of wedlock, the Freemasons are played in a positive light, heroine tries to lie to keep her friends safe from female villain and the FBI, and an Ameri-can flag is thrown aside without proper folding.

More Detail:

Disney+ has added a new treasure hunt for a new generation in the form of its new original series, NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY. Based on the movies starring Nicolas Cage and Jon Voight, the story follows four college age young adults Jess, Tasha, Oren, and Ethan. Jess, a student in America on DACA, is given a puz-zle at work in the form of a storage unit, which leads her to the home of former FBI Agent Peter Sadusky. Sadusky decides that Jess is worthy enough to receive the clue to an ancient South American treasure created by the Aztec, Mayan and Incan cultures.

Jess at first doesn’t want anything to do with the treasure until she encounters a mysterious, ruthless female crypto billionaire and unscrupulous antiquities dealer named Billie Pearce who’s after the treasure. Jess then follows the clue Agent Sadusky left her and decides to look for the treasure. Along the way, Jess discovers that her long lost father, Raffael, was in fact one of the treasure’s guardians.

Although Jess tries not to get involved, her three best friends decide to help her. Over time, she ends up in a battle of wits with Billie as Billie tries to intimidate, threaten and attack Jess and her friends. They do, however, end up making a variety of allies, including Liam Sadusky, Peter Sadusky’s grandson, and Riley Poole, Ben Gates’ hacker and best friend from the original movies. In addition to having Billie on her tail, the FBI starts to catch wind of the misdeeds done by Jess and Billie and start chasing both parties.

Being a sequel to the NATIONAL TREASURE movies, this show is a fun ride. The main story is that of an underdog in a deadly treasure hunt trying to outwit a powerful billionaire. The characters are all fun and interesting as the adventure seems to test friendships and ro-mances, as well as the viewer’s intelligence. Each of the first four episodes has a fun collec-tion of historical facts as each clue to the puzzle. In addition to the series having an intri-guing and fun story, it also is well shot, well cast and has an amazing soundtrack to go along with the adventure, mystery and suspense.

However, despite all the good the show offers, it still has some issues. The overall worldview in the first four episodes is a Romantic one. Various characters seem to do what they feel is right instead of what might really be right. The first four episodes also have a medium level of action violence, which includes gun use, fighting and destruction of histor-ical artifacts. In addition, there are moments where sex is implied or encouraged, along with brief foul language and some alcohol use. As a fun series, NATIONAL TREASURE: EDGE OF HISTORY isn’t meant for younger children. MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children for the first four episodes.

Finally, a brief flashback shows the Spanish conquistadores attacking the capital city of the Aztecs. In reality, of course, the Spaniards were aided by many warriors from surrounding tribes who were mad at the Aztecs for how brutally they treated the other tribes.

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