The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

The Librarian
Directed by	Peter Winther
Produced by	Dean Devlin, Electric Entertainment
Written by	David Titcher
Starring	Noah Wyle Bob Newhart Jane Curtin Olympia Dukakis Kyle MacLachlan Sonya Walger Kelly Hu
Music by	Joseph LoDuca
Cinematography	Alan Caso
Editing by	Ron Rosen
Language	English
Original channel	TNT
Release date	December 5, 2004 (2004-12-05)
Running time	90 minutes

The Librarian: Quest for the Spear is the first in the Librarian franchise of movies, which was originally released on American cable channel TNT in December 2004, written by David Titcher, directed by Peter Winther and starring Noah Wyle in the title role.

The series is produced by Electric Entertainment.^[1]

Plot

Noah Wyle plays Flynn Carsen, a perpetual college student who has 22 academic degrees.^[2] Carsen’s professor kicks him out of college, telling Carsen that he lacks real life experience and needs to experience life outside of college. Carsen’s mother, Margie (Olympia Dukakis), is constantly worried about her son and encourages him to get a job, find a bride, and be happy.

Carsen receives a mysterious invitation for an interview at the Metropolitan Public Library. Shortly after Carsen’s odd but successful interview, he is shown the true duties of his new job by a doleful library employee, Charlene (Jane Curtin), and library head Judson (Bob Newhart). The position of librarian, Carsen’s new job, is said to have existed for centuries. Its purpose is to protect historical and often magical items in a secret section of the library. Some of the items Carsen is responsible for are Pandora's Box, Tesla's Death Ray, the Holy Grail, the transmuted corpse of King Midas, the Ark of the Covenant, the Golden Fleece, a live unicorn, the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs, Excalibur, the original Mona Lisa (of which the Louvre version is said to be a copy), the original "Little Boy" prototype atomic bomb, a working jet pack, Ali Baba's Flying Carpet, and the Spear of Destiny.

Carsen finds that the job entails more than he expected when one of three parts of the Spear of Destiny is stolen by the evil Serpent Brotherhood (members played by Kyle MacLachlan, David Dayan Fisher, and Kelly Hu). Whoever has the complete Spear of Destiny will control the destiny of the entire world (it is said in the film that "Hitler had only one" piece of the Spear). Carsen must now track down the remaining two pieces of the Spear of Destiny to prevent the Serpent Brotherhood from possessing all three pieces and gaining control of the world. His only tools are his mind and a book written in a previously untranslated language called the "Language of the birds".

On a plane, Carsen is ambushed by the Serpent Brotherhood and is rescued by a woman who forces him out of the plane in mid-air. Once they land, he finds that his rescuer, Nicole Noone (Sonya Walger), is a Library employee who blames herself for the death of the last librarian but resists any friendly feelings for Carsen. They travel through the Amazon rainforest, where they encounter waterfalls, headhunters, bridge collapses, and Maya death traps, all with often tongue-in-cheek comedy and a touch of romance. But they are captured by the Serpent Brotherhood, led by the former librarian Wilde (Kyle MacLachlan), who had faked his own death. Making a deal to find the last piece of the spear and spare Nicole's life, they next travel to the Himalayas, ending up in Shangri-La, all the time proving that Carsen’s years of book learning are useful.

At Shangri-La, they receive the last spear piece and flee while the temple collapses from taking it. When Flynn and Nicole arrive at a hotel, she gets him drunk and he passes out. Unfortunately she is kidnapped and the spear pieces are joined at a place where a powerful electromagnetic field of 15 on the Schumm Scale is during a full moon. That place is a pyramid with a golden capstone. Eventually though, Flynn defeats Wilde when the capstone falls on him because of a displaced support stone and Flynn reclaims the spear in the name of the Library.

The film closes when Nicole comes to Flynn, saying that the 'Death Scorpion Cult' has their hands on H. G. Wells' Time Machine (a real time machine, and not the novel) while Flynn comments on why these groups have insect names, which is kind of funny since scorpions are spiders.

Cast

DVD

An unrated, Region 1 NTSC DVD was released for this film on August 30, 2005, using an aspect ratio of 1:78:1.

The DVD features include deleted scenes, English and Spanish subtitles, a selected scenes commentary, and a "Behind The Scenes" featurette.

Sequels

A sequel, The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines, aired on TNT on December 3, 2006. It was released on DVD December 19. The second sequel, The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice, was released on December 7, 2008. A one-hour TV series, The Librarians, premiered on TNT on December 7, 2014, with a ten-episode season.

References

External links

• Official website
• The Librarian: Quest for the Spear at the Internet Movie Database
• The Librarian: Quest for the Spear at the TCM Movie Database
• The Librarian: Quest for the Spear at AllMovie