National Treasure is a 2004 adventure fil rom the Walt Disney Studios. It is the first film in the National Treasure franchise. Nicolas Cage plays Benjamin Franklin Gates, a historian and amateur cryptologist searching for a lost treasure, once protected by the Knights Templar and hidden by the Freemasons during the early years of the United States. A coded map on the back of the Declaration of Independence points to the location of the "national treasure", but Gates isn't alone in his quest. Whoever can steal the Declaration and decode it first, will find the greatest treasure in history.