I do an annual Jeopardy!-style game at the big mapmakers conference, and this year I want to have a category about maps shown in movies. These can be scene-setters, such as at the beginning of Casablanca, explainers like the air journeys shown in The Descendants, incidental scenes like the tricycles on the playground map in That Thing You Do, or integral to the plot like the globe in Tintin.
Well-known American movies, please. Bring 'em on!
There’s the famous Traveling Red Line maps from the Indiana Jones movies. There’s also the map room scene, where he finds the location of the ark on a scale model of the old city.
And, of course, Time Bandits story revolves around a map showing the location of all the holes left in the universe after God made it.
The latest Muppet Movie did the map thing (they said they would “travel by map” because it would be quicker that way and then did the Indiana Jones red-line bit).
A more obscure one, but the pirate comedy Yellowbeard featured a young man whose pirate father tattooed a map to a buried treasure on his head when he was an infant.
National Treasure has that map hidden in the Declaration of Independence…
There’s a map in A Goofy Movie that Max changes so he can trick Goofy into driving to LA
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had the Marauder’s Map, which I thought was quite well executed.
Waterworld had a map to Dryland on the back of the kid.
Dr. Strangelove had the big map on the wall in the War Room.
Maybe obscure, but the best movie mentioned in this thread so far. Ok, that’s debatable, but definitely the best pirate comedy movie mentioned in this thread so far.
The Goonies comes to mind.
All the best examples I can think of come from TV shows. Should you also want to include such a category in your game, I can give you some pretty good ones!
If interactive maps count, I always liked the send-up of the “traveling dot” (with noises for the cars once it gets into a street-map; then it morphs into a Pac-Man eating the dots!) from Top Secret!
Not any more: The Princess and the Pirate also features a map tattooed on Bob Hope’s chest
Top Secret and The Emperor’s New Groove have maps illustrating the character’s movements that are themselves part of the joke.
The Guns of Navarone has maps throughout, showing where the action is supposed to be taking place, although, unlike most of the others mentioned, there are are no animated lines showing the paths people are taking.
The Rescuers has a very animated map (actualy a globe) showing how the message for help gets transmitted. I think there may be a map in the sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, but I’m not sure.
From Russia With Love has (non-animated) maps showing the progress of the Orient Express.
The Deadly Mantis opens with one of the most pointless maps in any movie, showing locations on the earth’s surface. I think they needed to pad out the film’s running time.
At the end of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, poor Terre Haute gets melted off the map. And on the map.
A pity, as they were just about to get a public library.
It’s not a projected or animated map, but in the 1985 cowboy parody Lust in the Dust, a treasure map is tattooed across two rear ends, one of them Divine’s.
I haven’t seen the film, but I’d love to know the rationale behind that plot point.
Let us not forget maps of fictional places such as Middle Earth in LOTR.
The kids in The Blair Witch Project had a fckin map. Until they fckin didn’t. Then fckin they were fckin screwed. But fckin they were fckin fckin screwed anyway. Fuckin.
Is this indeed in Top Secret!? 'Cause it sounds a lot like the interactive map Clark shows his family in National Lampoon’s Vacation, which is what I’d come in to mention…
Romancing the Stone has Kathleen Turner getting a treasure map in the mail, which she must take to Colombia to ransom for her kidnapped sister, but ends up using the map with Michael Douglas to find a priceless emerald.
I think the director in King Kong finds Skull Island with a map.
ISTR Charlie showing Rose a map of the river in The African Queen.
In Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks shows his son how unsuitable all the women who are writing to him are by pointing out their locations on a map.
