How many examples can we come up with of ‘objects of desire’? That means items that are obsessively pursued by one or more protagonists of a film/novel/TV show/what-have-you.
Initial list- the Holy Grail (pursued in modern times in, among other films, “Excalibur” and “Monty Python’s Holy Grail”)
the One Ring (“the Lord of the Rings”)
Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase and its’ mysterious contents (“Pulp Fiction”)
’64 Chevy Malibu with radioactive alien cadavers in the trunk (“Repo Man”)
The Silmarils or Silmarilli from The Silmarillion.
The Arkenstone from the Hobbit.
Mithril is general in Moria and any fantasy world that has lifted Mithril for it’s own use.
White Gold in the Land (Thomas Covenant)
The Black Cauldron from the Chronicles of Prydain.
The Most Fabulous Object in the World in Time Bandits. Oh, and the map (of all the holes in the universe). Return the map! Return what you have stolen from Me!
A lost shaker of salt. Possibly a woman’s fault, but more likely my own.
A generic “Holy Sword”–sought by pretty much every AD&D paladin ever rolled. Especially those controlled by players that also owned a Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Pot of Gold at the end of a rainbow.
The Lombardi Trophy—about as likely to be found as The One Ring, from the perspective of a Saints fan.
The BIG chair in The Oval Office–lotta people chased it, only a few won it.
The Shards of the dark crystal in The Dark Crystal
The Eye of the Serpent and father’s sword in Conan the Barbarian
The horn of who’sit (Mithra?) from Conan the Destroyer
The Crystal Skull in the most recent Indiana Jones movie.
The stones in The Fifth Element
I don’t think Kandor counts. Superman took it from Brainiac the First as soon as he heard about its existence, and Brainiac never made any particular effort to get it back (he’d already downloaded all their music and had micro-cameras installed in all the women’s dressings rooms, so he didn’t care), so nobody ever went on a quest to get the bottle city.
The Spear of Destiny, on the other hand, is oft sought.
The Ruby Slippers weren’t pursued by the films protagonist (at least, not knowingly, they turned out to be what she needed all along, but she didn’t know that), Dorothy obtains them more or less by accident and then possesses them for the whole movie.
Now if you were to say a Brain, a Heart or Courage, then I’d agree with you.
