The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

Plot

Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle), a perpetual college student with 22 academic degrees, is kicked out of college by his professor, who tells Flynn that he lacks real life experience and needs to experience life outside of college. Flynn's mother, Margie (Olympia Dukakis), is constantly worried about her son and encourages him to get a job, find a wife, and be happy.

Flynn receives a mysterious invitation for an interview at the Metropolitan Public Library. Shortly after his 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, Flynn's new job, is said to have existed for centuries and that his purpose is to protect historical and often magical items in a secret section of the library. Some of the items Flynn 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.

Flynn finds that the job entails more than he expected when one of three parts of the Spear of Destiny is stolen by a cult known as the Serpent Brotherhood. Flynn then soon realizes that 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). As such, he must now track down the remaining two pieces to prevent the Serpent Brotherhood from possessing all three. The only tools he has left to use are his mind and a book written in a previously untranslated language called the "Language of the birds".

On a plane, Flynn is ambushed by members of 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 him. The two then travel through the Amazon rainforest, where they encounter waterfalls, headhunters, bridge collapses, and Maya death traps, which they manage to survive with little difficulty thanks to Flynn's extensive knowledge and Nicole's physical prowess. However, they are captured by the 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 Flynn'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, they make love only for Flynn to wake up the next morning with both Nicole and the spear piece missing. Unfortunately she has been kidnapped by members of the cult, who bring her to their hideout. The cult then witness Wilde assemble the spear's pieces within a golden capstoned pyramid at their hideout, augmented by a powerful electromagnetic field during a full moon. Coming to Nicole's aid, Flynn is forced to defend himself against the cult, then against Wilde inside the pyramid. Although Flynn is nearly killed by Wilde, the power of the repaired spear damages the pyramid support pillars causing the pyramid to crumble. The capstone then falls onto Wilde, killing him. Flynn reclaims the assembled spear in the name of the Library.

Three months later, Flynn is at a café talking with his mother about his new job at the public library and his girlfriend, Nicole who suddenly arrives by motorcycle, informing him that the 'Death Scorpion Cult' has their hands on H. G. Wells' Time Machine (a real time machine, and not the novel). As Flynn comments on why so many evil groups have insect names, they take off, pursued by several members of said cult.

DVD

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

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.