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Few movies have made American history look as entertainingly unhinged as National Treasure. Nicolas Cage’s Benjamin Franklin Gates follows centuries-old clues, outruns a team of mercenaries and steals the Declaration of Independence because there might be an invisible treasure map on the back. It should be ridiculous. Instead, it became one of the most rewatchable adventure movies of the 2000s.
Nearly 20 years after National Treasure: Book of Secrets, there is finally reason to start thinking about Ben Gates again. Director Jon Turteltaub revealed in August 2026 that a third movie is moving forward with a script he is happy with and Disney believes it can make. He also said the intention is to reunite as much of the original cast as possible, although Disney has not announced a release date.
A new movie or long-awaited sequel can also be the perfect excuse to revisit an entire genre. Project Hail Mary, for example, has sent viewers searching for hard sci-fi movies that are even better. The possible return of National Treasure offers the same opportunity for old-fashioned adventure movies.
The best adventure movies offer the same pleasures that made National Treasure so easy to love, whether that means buried treasure, impossible escapes or heroes getting themselves into situations no sensible person would consider. A few do it even better. Presented in release order, these 10 adventure movies deserve a place on the watchlist while we wait to see whether Ben Gates really has one more treasure hunt in him.
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
There was never any chance of making this list without Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark throws Harrison Ford’s archaeologist into a race against the Nazis to recover the Ark of the Covenant, moving from Peruvian ruins to Nepal and Egypt without wasting much time between one disaster and the next.
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas created the template that countless modern treasure-hunt movies have followed, including National Treasure. What still separates Raiders is how effortlessly it moves. The traps are ingenious, the action remains thrilling and Ford makes Indiana Jones seem heroic even when his carefully considered archaeological plan amounts to grabbing something valuable and running for his life.
Romancing The Stone
Kathleen Turner plays romance novelist Joan Wilder, whose quiet New York life disappears when her sister is kidnapped in Colombia. A mysterious treasure map sends Joan into the jungle, where she crosses paths with Michael Douglas’ mercenary adventurer Jack Colton and discovers that writing adventure stories did not exactly prepare her to live through one.
Romancing the Stone has the puzzles and hidden treasure National Treasure fans want, but its greatest asset is the chemistry between Turner and Douglas. The movie is funny without treating the adventure as a joke, and Joan gets to become much more than a passenger in somebody else’s story. Four decades later, it remains one of the most purely entertaining adventure movies of its era.
The Goonies
A treasure map hidden in an attic is all The Goonies needs to send a group of kids searching for the legendary fortune of pirate One-Eyed Willy. The hunt leads beneath Astoria, Oregon, where booby traps and the criminal Fratelli family stand between the Goonies and the treasure that could save their homes.
The setup is considerably smaller than stealing the Declaration of Independence, but the sense of discovery is arguably even stronger. Richard Donner makes every underground passage feel like it might contain another secret, while the young cast sells the idea that this could be the greatest day of their lives or an absolutely terrible mistake. That combination has made The Goonies virtually indestructible as a family adventure movie.
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
If Raiders of the Lost Ark established the adventure formula, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade may be the installment that comes closest to National Treasure specifically. Indy follows a trail of historical clues in search of the Holy Grail after his father, Professor Henry Jones, disappears while pursuing the same artifact.
Sean Connery changes the entire dynamic of the franchise as Indy’s scholarly, frequently disapproving father. There is a reason The Last Crusade still ranks among the most beloved Indiana Jones movies: the Grail diary gives the story the puzzle-solving quality that later became central to National Treasure. From the Roman-numeral floor trap to the leap of faith, every clue has an actual payoff.
The Mask Of Zorro
Antonio Banderas’ Alejandro Murrieta begins The Mask of Zorro as a reckless outlaw and ends up being trained to inherit the identity of the legendary masked hero. Anthony Hopkins plays the original Zorro, Don Diego de la Vega, while Catherine Zeta-Jones turns Elena into far more than the standard love interest caught between two swordsmen.
The Mask of Zorro belongs alongside the best historical adventure movies ever made, even if there is less puzzle-solving here than in National Treasure. The sword fights have personality, the villains are genuinely threatening and Banderas has the kind of movie-star charisma that makes elaborate escapes look easy. Few modern swashbucklers have ever been this much fun.
The Mummy
Rick O’Connell probably would have gotten along very well with Ben Gates, assuming neither of them accidentally unleashed an ancient curse first. Brendan Fraser’s adventurer joins librarian Evelyn Carnahan and her brother Jonathan on an expedition to the lost Egyptian city of Hamunaptra, only to awaken the very dead and very angry Imhotep.
The Mummy has become even more beloved with age, and the franchise is about to become relevant all over again with Brendan Fraser returning for The Mummy 4. Fraser and Rachel Weisz have terrific chemistry, the horror never overwhelms the fun and Stephen Sommers keeps the story moving at blockbuster speed. National Treasure is enormously rewatchable, but The Mummy may be the definitive comfort adventure movie of its generation.
The Count Of Monte Cristo
Edmond Dantès does not begin The Count of Monte Cristo looking for treasure. He begins as a sailor betrayed by his best friend and sentenced to imprisonment in the Château d’If. After years behind bars, a fellow prisoner teaches Edmond how to escape and gives him the location of a hidden fortune that allows him to reinvent himself.
There is something refreshingly old-fashioned about The Count of Monte Cristo. It draws from the same kind of sweeping storytelling that produced some of the greatest movie epics of the 1970s, but packages it into a brisk revenge adventure. Jim Caviezel gives Edmond’s transformation real weight, while Guy Pearce embraces every inch of Fernand’s villainy.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Disney took an amusement park ride and somehow turned it into one of the defining adventure movies of the 2000s. The Curse of the Black Pearl follows Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann into the orbit of Captain Jack Sparrow as they become caught up in a hunt involving stolen Aztec gold and a crew of pirates who cannot die.
The sequels eventually became tangled in their own mythology, but the first movie is remarkably clean storytelling. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow was unlike any blockbuster hero audiences had seen, while Geoffrey Rush gives the movie a villain worthy of him. Disney has plenty of movies worth rewatching before their upcoming sequels, but The Curse of the Black Pearl remains one of the studio’s strongest adventure movies. National Treasure arrived only a year later, but Pirates still has the edge.
The Adventures Of Tintin
Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin has spent years feeling like a one-off, but that may finally change. Peter Jackson recently confirmed that The Adventures of Tintin 2 is moving forward, making this an especially good time to revisit Spielberg’s ridiculously energetic 2011 treasure hunt.
Tintin purchases a model ship called the Unicorn and soon discovers that it contains a clue leading to a long-lost fortune. Motion capture allows Spielberg to stage sequences that would have been nearly impossible in live action, including a spectacular chase through Bagghar. Anyone who loves watching Ben and Riley decipher an absurd historical clue should feel immediately at home.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
A thief breaking into a heavily guarded location to steal a magical artifact sounds surprisingly close to National Treasure once the Declaration of Independence is replaced with a resurrection tablet. Chris Pine stars as Edgin Darvis, whose attempt to recover the artifact and reunite with his daughter turns into a much larger fight than he anticipated.
Honor Among Thieves works because it never requires viewers to know anything about Dungeons & Dragons before the movie starts. The rules of its world become part of the joke, but the characters are never reduced to punchlines. Pine and Michelle Rodriguez anchor an adventure packed with elaborate plans that repeatedly go wrong, which makes it an unexpectedly perfect modern companion to National Treasure.