National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) - 9 questions

Question: In the legend of Cibola, the ship landed in Florida. Why did they show him the City of Gold in South Dakota? In those days for an entire group of people to travel that far (on foot) would have been deadly.

Answer: You (or the movie) have your legends confused. Cibola was supposed to be somewhere north of New Spain (now Mexico). The Spanish conquistadors explored much of the southwest looking for it. Coronado travelled from central Mexico all the way to the northwest of Kansas and back (without dying!) looking for Cibola and Quivera.

Question: Why does Ben need to find the city of gold to beat the kidnap charge? The President's story of "We got trapped and he saved my life" would work just as well without the discovery.

Answer: I've wondered that myself. It is a rather obvious plot hole, but it appears that the writers thought it added to the story's "suspense" by having Ben eluding the federal authorities while racing to find the treasure.

Question: What did Ben Gates know about Mitch Wilkinson that made him know that Mitch "NEEDED" to find the City of Gold?

Answer: It wasn't that Mitch knew anything about him, just that like himself family history was very important to him. Mitch needed to find the city of gold to redeem his family name in that it was his family that was traterious in the past not Ben's.

Question: Just curious what was on page 47 that the President asked Ben Gates to help him with. . . Was it finding the City of Gold??

Answer: No one knows. It had nothing to do with the city of gold. We are led to believe that page 47 has something to do with National Treasure 3.

Question: At the end of the film there are a bunch of people in the lost city of gold. If the devices were busted up and didn't work any longer, how did they get the water out? Also, if there's not really a way in any more, how did they all get in?

Answer: You can see the hoses and pumps that were used to pump the water out. Now that the location is known, even though the entrance was blocked, they could gain entrance by drilling/blasting/tunneling/etc.

Question: How, exactly, would one decode a playfair cipher?

Answer: Best explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playfair_cipher

Question: Why was Thomas Gates' name on that page?

Answer: Gates' name was added by Wilkinson to get Ben to do all the work in finding the treasure (as that would prove Thomas's innocence).

Question: Why was the playfair cipher on the missing page invisible? Thomas Gates wrote it in normal ink.

Answer: Thomas Gates didn't write it in normal ink. He wrote in pencil. The cipher wasn't written on that page, it was written on the facing page and minute bits "transferred" onto the page with the names.

Question: How does finding the treasure clear Thomas Gates of plotting Lincoln's death?

Answer: Because it verifies the story that the Gates family has passed down, that the pages were burned to protect the city of gold's location, not to hide his name as a plotter.