We all remember the Easter egg hunt from when we were little kids. We would spend Easter Sunday painting eggs and then go out with a basket to find the eggs that our parents had hidden in pretty obvious places. Since serials like Buck Rogers and the swashbuckling pirate movies of the 1930s, movies have also taken advantage of our desire to find hidden things. Later, filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg used treasure hunts in movies like the Indiana Jones movies, which they made after seeing these movies. In movies, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is sometimes a big bag of money. Other times, it’s an escaped criminal or a secret character that the main character is trying to find, like an egg hunt.
At their best, these kinds of movies put together a series of clues that are spread out over a wide area. This lets the directors lead us through different worlds while keeping us on the edge of our seats. These movies are pure entertainment, with no heavy-handed plots and a focus on the experience of going to the movies. They appeal to our love of movies as kids. Even though these movies can be pretty intellectual, their main goal is to put the audience right in the protagonists’ shoes and let them ride along with them as they try to find fame, fortune, and glory while collecting one egg after another.
Here are some of the most exciting Easter egg hunts in movies.
Ad Astra
In the Brad Pitt film Ad Astra, the main character, Major Roy McBride, goes on a sort of egg hunt to find his cosmonaut father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones), who is dead set (literally) on using deep space nukes to threaten our planet, much to Roy’s dismay as a company man. Pitt walks on a tightrope from one spaceship to the next, and the chase scene with the lunar rover is one of the best action scenes ever put on film. Even though we’d rather find something more interesting than a cranky Tommy Lee Jones when we go on an egg hunt, the movie does a good job of keeping us interested with its buildup and conclusion.
Da 5 Bloods
Spike Lee briefly made a war movie called Da 5 Bloods. It was about Vietnam veterans who went back to the country to find the bodies of their fallen comrades (and a hidden treasure to boot). Chadwick Boseman gives one of his last performances as “Stormin” Norman Earl Holloway, the dead soldier who comes back to life through flashbacks and spiritually guides the motley group of older servicemen as they try to dig up their buried treasure.
Die Hard With a Vengeance
John McTiernan is the best when it comes to playing cat and mouse. He was involved in the famous Anthony Pellicano case, which was the basis for Ray Donovan, and he ended up going to jail for it. Before that anti-climactic end to his career, he made some highly climactic movies, including Die Hard With a Vengeance, which saw evil Simon Peter-Gruber (Jeremy Irons) lead the dynamic duo of John McLain (Bruce Willis) and Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) on an action packed egg hunt through New York City’s parks and subways. The main characters look for a series of bombs that could only be found by solving the supervillain’s puzzles. The duo does a good job of causing chaos along the way by dropping sarcastic one-liners as they lead us through the long chase.
Inception
In the mind-bending thriller Inception by Christopher Nolan, there is an egg hunt in a person’s dreams. In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a lonely widower who lives in his dreams to spy for his company and spend time with his dead wife. The movie’s “dreams within dreams” create a physical world inside the mind and set the stage for Nolan’s signature “out-of-this-world” special effects. The movie takes the idea of intellectual property to new heights (and depths) as Leo “drops” deeper into the mind to avoid dream thieves and deal with his own loss.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is another egg hunt by Steven Spielberg. It uses historical events like the Crusades and Arthurian conquests as clues for Indy to follow in order to find the Holy Grail. Two great casting choices, Sean Connery as Indy’s father and the late River Phoenix, give the movie some of the best slapstick of the mega-franchise and make it the most likeable entry. In it, Indy fights fascists again to get the Grail cup, which gives you eternal life, which is history’s biggest Easter egg. Indy utilises his penitence and vast historical knowledge to outsmart booby traps with the aid of his father, as the love/hate relationship between the two characters provides the film’s many comedic highlights.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The crown jewel of the British comedy troupe’s epic 70s films, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, sees the Knights of the Round Table on a sidesplitting quest to find one of film history’s favourite Easter eggs, the Grail chalice. As they battle the annoying Knights Who Say “Ni!” and debate the provenance of coconuts, the semi-moronic Knights and squires guide us through one laughable conquest after another, burgeoning the Arthurian legend with its greatest absurdist entry. The funnest of fun facts about the epic comedy, revealed by Python Eric Idle in a much-shared tweet, is that the film was actually financed by some of Britain’s greatest musical talents of the 70s, including Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Sir Elton John.
National Treasure
If we’re just talking about egg hunting, no movie does it better than National Treasure, which was Jerry Bruckheimer’s best movie for Disney. Nicolas Cage plays Benjamin Franklin Gates, a treasure hunter and cryptologist. As he tightrope walks through an obstacle course left by our country’s founders, he gives us a lesson in American history full of cyphers, riddles, and masonic marvels. All of this can’t happen until they get the map written on the back of the Declaration of Independence. This historical heist is the start of a great adventure that shows Cage at his best.
O Brother, Where Art Thou
In O Brother, Where Art Thou, a loose adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey by the Coen Brothers, George Clooney leads a group of escaped prisoners through the wheat fields and swamps of rural Mississippi as they look for hidden treasure and try to avoid being caught by the authorities. The movie makes references to everything from Cool Hand Luke to the famous Homer poem, turning Cyclopses and Sirens into modern-day people. As the three escapees try to get away from the Coppers, they record a song that goes to the top of the charts. As the lovably clumsy convicts try to get famous and rich, the film slowly turns into an American epic. It includes Robert Johnson’s deal with the Devil and a harsh look at the Southern aristocracy.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
In the late 1970s, after Close Encounters of the Third Kind did well, Steven Spielberg asked his friend George Lucas for advice about what to do next. Spielberg was thinking about making a James Bond movie. Lucas had a better idea. He asked Spielberg to direct the script he had written for a character named Indiana Smith. Spielberg joined, the main character’s name was changed to Indiana Jones, and the rest is history. Raiders of the Lost Ark started a franchise that satisfied everyone’s desire to hunt for eggs. In this case, Indy was trying to find the Ark of the Covenant. He fought with another archaeologist, René Belloq, to find it before the Nazis did. Belloq’s face melted off because Indy didn’t get this Easter egg, but he did get the girl, the sassy Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), who matched his wits during this epic treasure hunt.
Ready Player One
Ready Player One was Steven Spielberg’s first movie about video games. It was set in a future world where most people have given up their real lives to play virtual reality games from their favela-like homes. Spielberg made references to popular movies like “The Shining” and “Back to the Future” to try to get gamers back into movie theatres. The director made an egg hunt with all the power-ups and big bosses of a real-life video game to make it feel like playing a game. While the movie was a financial success, Spielberg was fighting a losing battle, as theatrical film releases have continued to sag in proportion to the burgeoning video game industry.
Romancing the Stone
Before he became known for psychosexual thrillers like “Fatal Attraction” and “Basic Instinct,” Michael Douglas played an action hero in “Romancing the Stone,” a Robert Zemeckis movie that seemed to try to cash in on the popularity of the “Indiana Jones” movies. In this case, the egg hunt is looking for El Corazon, a big emerald that is hidden in the Colombian jungles. Douglas plays opposite a very sassy Kathleen Turner, and the two argue and banter their way through this adventure until they fall in love.
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code was made into a movie by Ron Howard, based on Dan Brown’s best-selling book of the same name. Tom Hanks played the main character, Robert Langdon, who leads the audience on a series of egg hunts based on Renaissance art. Both the book and the movie make the most of decoding anagrams, figuring out riddles, and rewriting religious history, which, despite having no real-world basis or facts, make for a very satisfying viewing experience. The movie takes us to many places where people hide, shows us some beautiful old buildings, and does a good job of making us forget about Tom Hanks’ weird long hair.
The Fugitive
In Andrew Davis’s version of the 1960s TV show The Fugitive, Harrison Ford plays Dr. Richard Kimble, who goes on an egg hunt to solve the murder of his wife and find a one-armed killer. In U.S. Marshall Sam Gerard, Tommy Lee Jones gives one of his best performances. This role won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and had him chasing the fugitive through tunnels and over waterfalls. As Kimble looks for one clue after another and Gerard looks for him, the two manhunts create a web of alliances and lies.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is Sergio Leone’s best Spaghetti Western. It is a treasure hunt set in the Old West during the Civil War. Clint Eastwood plays “Man With No Name,” who leads a cat-and-mouse game through the Old West. The three characters named in the title each go after the hidden Confederate gold to the beat of Ennio Morricone’s epic score. Eli Wallach’s performance as “The Ugly” is hilariously bumbling. The film’s colourful con artists and loud gunfights make it fun to watch and take your mind off of the badly dubbed Italian dialogue. Eastwood gives his most memorable performance in a career full of them.
The Goonies
The Goonies remains near and dear to the heart of any 80s baby, as the film stays memorable for one of the greatest child-ensemble casts ever to be assembled, as the pre-pubescent crew follow Chester Copperpots footsteps on a virtual egghunt to find One-Eyed Willy’s magical ship and hidden treasure.
The recent passing of director Richard Donner and Ke Huy Quan’s comeback Oscar triumph were a nostalgic reminder of the adventure film, which seems to only gain in popularity with every passing year. Through the use of slick shoes, truffle shuffles and the aid of the lovably grotesque ogre Sloth, the ragtag crew of kids make their way through one booby trap after another, as the evil Fratelli’s remain in hot pursuit. The film provided us all with some much-needed life lessons about greed, bullying and how never to judge a book by its cover, as the repulsive Sloth becomes The Goonies’ greatest ally in their quest to save Mikey’s parent’s home from foreclosure.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was made by the father-and-son team of Walter and John Huston, who wrote and directed the movie, respectively. It is another Western treasure hunt in which Humphrey Bogart gets even with his oil-rig foreman for stealing his wages. With the money he got back and a winning lottery ticket, Bogey buys supplies and goes prospecting. He fights Mexican Federales and gets help from some local indios to find a treasure he could never have imagined.
Three Kings
In the end, Three Kings was a meeting of the minds. Drawing together Oscar-nominated director David O. Russell and Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley, the film also assembled a star-studded cast including George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube, and even featured director Spike Jonze in his funniest acting role. In the movie, the disgruntled soldiers go on a wild goose chase to find Saddam Hussein’s gold, which is kind of like an egg hunt. Russell and Clooney got into a fight while making the super-satisfying movie. It seems like there were too many egos on the set.
Tracker
Sometimes the Easter egg in a movie is a man who has run away, like in the Ray Winstone movie Tracker. Winstone, who plays the Afrikaner commando Arjan, is asked to follow a Maori whaler named Kereama (Temuera Morrison) through the countryside of New Zealand. The plot twists and turns as Winstone’s allegiances change and as Temuera Morrison’s character changes sides. The historical connections give the movie a solid foundation and give an interesting look at the Boer War. However, the most exciting parts of the movie come from the clear-cut manhunt.
Uncharted
Uncharted was another action-comedy with a dynamic duo that audiences loved and critics hated. This time, Nate (Tom Holland) and Sully (Mark Wahlberg) went in search of Magellan’s legendary treasure. The movie follows the two of them as they steal Easter eggs from auctions and tombs and fight Santiago (Antonio Banderas) for all the glory of treasure hunting. The movie isn’t very interesting and has a lot of green screen, which is all we really want from a movie like this. It pays homage to everything from Indiana Jones movies to The Goonies, with all the relics and Nazi maps we’ve come to expect from hidden treasure movies.
Zodiac
David Fincher, the master of the psychological thriller, made the movie Zodiac about two journalists, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), who were looking for clues left by the Zodiac killer. As the Zodiac haunts one lover’s lane after another, the newspapermen break his codes and riddles to find out who he is, praising their intelligence over John Law’s weak attempts. The movie appeals to people’s love of word games and clues, giving them a satisfying experience as Graysmith, a simple cartoonist with big dreams, turns out to be the key to catching the killer.
