Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

By Mariam El Hasan
May 24, 2009

Remember when history came to life in the hilarious movie Night at the Museum? Well, guess what? The sequel, Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian, will be opening in theaters May 22, just in time for the Memorial Day weekend. The movie is rated PG.

Scholastic News visited the set where the sequel was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, last summer to get the scoop on this upcoming summer blockbuster.

In the movie, artifacts from The Museum of Natural History in New York are moved to the Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. while the New York museum is closed for renovation.

All the artifacts that came to life in the first movie will again take center stage in the sequel. This time, they will be joined by aviator Amelia Earhart, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, inventor Albert Einstein, Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible, and plenty more.

Ben Stiller returns as Larry Daley, the museum security guard. Amy Adams plays Amelia Earhart. (You might remember her as “Princess Giselle” from the Disney movie Enchanted.)

And do you recall the mischievous monkey named Dexter from the first movie? Well, this go around Dexter befriends the space monkey from the Air and Space Museum. The two of them join forces to double the trouble!

Visiting the Set

On the set in Vancouver, reporters talked to the actors and director. Scholastic News asked Ben Stiller about the craziest job he has ever held.

The director, Shawn Levy, grinned mischievously and rubbed the palms of his hands together like a movie villain when he heard the question.

“Yes… Do tell,” he said in anticipation of Stiller’s answer.

“Well, I never really had any crazy jobs,” Stiller said. “I just had bad jobs. Probably the worst job I had was as a waiter. I was really bad at it.”

Amy Adams was asked who she identified more with, her character Princess Giselle from Enchanted or her character Amelia Earhart from Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

She thought about it for a moment and said that there’s a part of her that always feels like a princess. In the end, however, she decided on the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
 
“I would have to say that I identify more with Amelia Earhart,” she concluded.
 
Art Director Claude Pare gave reporters a tour of the set. He and his art team did an amazing job recreating the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, the second most popular of the Smithsonian Institute’s 19 museums and galleries. Everything looks exactly like the originals in the actual museum.

The institute was founded in 1846 to increase and spread knowledge about science, history, and culture. The museums have collected more than 136 million items from around the word and outer space, ranging from Lincoln’s top hat to Dorothy’s ruby red slippers from the movie Wizard of Oz to moon rocks.

Scholastic News asked Pare what he would put in the Smithsonian if given the opportunity.

“I would like to take all the information I’ve gathered to prepare this film and all the other films that I’ve made in my life and put it in the box so that people could come and look at it and share it,” he said.

Here’s something for you to think about as you head for the theater to see this movie: If you could put any of your prized belongings on display in the Smithsonian, what would it be and why?

 

Source: Scholastic News Online