Stargate (1994)

Stargate is one of the best science fiction movies of the modern generation. With an extremely compelling storyline, and effects that are still on par with today's highest rated movies, this fine cinematic treat is a must see!

I grew up with this movie as bad a$$. Now rewatching in 2018. Maybe too many movie ripping off this movie, but this movie is a slow sci fi movie. Eye glasses to protect them from the sand. Foot steps u never see in the sand tell then. Lady's combing the hair fast. U give a cig, that's wasting a cig or 2. 1 hour and 10 min tell it gets interesting. Shooting the sky wasting bullets.

In 1928 archaeologists in Egypt discover a circular device and an accompanying cover-stone; cutting to the present Dr Daniel Jackson, an Egyptologist with some radical views, finds himself invited to work on a secret project run by the US Air Force; they want him to translate the symbols on the cover stone. At first he can't identify some of the key symbols but then he realises they represent the constellations and together they point to a location the other side of the universe. At this point he is shown the device… the 'star gate'. Programming the symbols in activates the device and opens a gateway between it and a second star gate on a distant planet. A team, led by US Air Force Colonel Jack O'Neil is to be sent to explore, Jackson will accompany them to program the other gate to bring them home.Once there they learn that they are no symbols for them to copy into the device; they will have to find them if they are ever to see Earth again. Soon they discover a primitive society, not dissimilar to ancient Egypt. Here they gradually learn the truth about the star gate and things that happened in Egypt millennia ago. An alien being with godlike powers arrived seeking immortality; he took over the body of a young man and took slaves from Earth to work for him before a slave revolt in Egypt shut off his access to Earth… until now. When Ra turns up he is far from happy and attacks the people; the small group of troops and Daniel will end up leading a revolt that will save not only the local population but also that of Earth.It shouldn't be a surprise that this film is pretty good given that it led to a successful TV series and various spin offs. The general idea of what is going on is quickly established and little time is wasted before translation difficulties are solved and the team are on the distant planet. This world is interesting without being obviously alien; apart from a creature the only living beings we see are human. I liked the fact that it took a while before they could understand the local; trying to understand each other with gestures seemed more real yet having Daniel eventually realise how their language was related to one he knew meant they could communicate when it was essential. Similarly I liked how the science fiction was combined with ancient Egyptian mythology. The cast do a fine job, most notably James Spader as Dr Jackson and Kurt Russell as Col. O'Neil. There is a decent amount of action although it isn't too violent… even so I was a little surprised to see a severed head in a (UK) PG rated film. The effects are pretty good; especially the armour worn by Ra's troops and the Star Gate itself. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to fans of action sci-fi who want a film that is suitable for all but very young viewers.

It's interesting to come to Stargate about 22 years after it first came out without having seen it before; I didn't have the nostalgia for it that people I know have or had (my wife at one point in her very young life called it her favorite film), and it also comes after seeing everything else that Roland Emmerich (with occasional collaborator Dean Devlin) put out since. The impression that I get from it is that it's clear why it got so many sequels and spin-offs and TV series and books and so on. The premise - and in fact the first half hour of the movie - is terrific and stimulating for a science fiction fan: what if you could get a gateway to other worlds? What would you go to to find? The set-up gives us James Spader as a nerdy scientist (a less overbearing version of what was presented with Matthew Broderick in Godzilla years later) who is plucked from semi-obscurity/mockery as someone who believes the pyramids may not have been made by the figures history has taught us. He's selected to look at some hieroglyphics and... something else - there's a series of stars that makes up a constellation that maps out how we're at an origin point to go into other dimensions. And as it turns out the very device is in the possession of some, uh, government types I suppose, and with the leadership of military man Kurt Russell a team is dispatched to check out what is beyond the Stargate.I was on board with this idea, if only on the basis of 'hey, what can we explore and use as data and so on'. What the characters find is... a lot of clichés and hokum, a desert world that is equal parts Return of the Jedi Endor and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Egyptian 'natives' and then other assorted Star Wars and other "homages" (or plain rip-offs) from other movies, not least of which Lawrence of Arabia and Indiana Jones and so on. This may be all on me though, since this is me as an adult coming to this and having years of knowledge of cinema history... on the other hand, large chunks of this movie are dumb. There's no other way to phrase it except moments show characters and situations with stupid things, though they're still "stupid-movie" things, if that makes sense.So there's some wasted opportunity for something, I won't say 'unique' as far be it from me to expect that from Emmerich, but less expected and hokey. But the story moves at a great pace, despite its wacked and dopey moving parts, and Spader and Russell ground it as two characters you can care about in a sea of people who are walking-talking tropes and types (oh, there's also the element of Aliens with it being a military group dispatched to check out this alien land and the violence they come up against), and things like culture-clash and language/communication barriers and villains with amazing Egyptian masks and sets and all sorts of things.Stargate has parts that work really well in a sea of things that flat-out don't. It may be perspective considering what else Emmerich would do with himself in the intervening years of Hollywood, but there's at least a, shall one say, 'restraint' with what he puts out here, at least when it comes to cheesy Hollywood sci-fi. I won't say it's very good, but it's also not terrible either.