Stargate (1994)

U-Lead Systems, Inc.

121 Minutes, Color, USA, 1994

Written By: Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich

Directed By: Roland Emmerich

Dramatis Personae:

Kurt Russell is Colonel Jack O’Neil, US Air Force officer with a troubled past.

James Spader is Doctor Daniel Jackson, disgraced historian and all-around quirky nerd.

Viveca Lindfors is Catherine Langford, Egyptologist and Dr. Jackson’s guide into the Stargate project.

John Diehl is Kawalsky, member of O’Neil’s team and standard-issue musclebound angry soldier.

French Stewart is Ferretti, member of O’Neil’s team and standard-issue skinny wisecracking soldier.

Derek Webster is Brown, combat engineer and member of O’Neil’s team.

Leon Rippy is General West, Air Force officer in charge of security at the Stargate project.

Erick Avari is Kasuf, native of the planet Abydos and leader of his particular tribe.

Alexis Cruz is Skaara, Kasuf’s young and impetuous son.

Mili Avital is Sha’uri, Kasuf’s daughter and love interest to Daniel Jackson.

Jaye Davidson is Ra, evil alien overlord, ruler of Abydos, and former Egyptian god.

Commentary:

In one week, the television show “Stargate SG-1” airs its final episode, after entertaining nerds for ten years – and ten years is a damned good long run for any American TV show, and especially so for a piece of science fiction. So I thought I would take this occasion to revisit the place where it all came from: the modest little 1994 sci-fi film that put the team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich on the map. Looking back on it after a decade and change, it’s still a serviceable little sci-fi movie, despite being clearly dated. And it gives me a little warm tickle of nostalgia to see it again after so long. Ah, 1990s film…good times, man…good times.

Our story begins in 1920’s Egypt, where the archaeologist Dr. Langford and his young daughter Catherine check out a dig site. As Catherine snatches a pendant as a keepsake, her father is introduced to the unprecedented discovery found at the site: a ring-like structure about 20 feet in diameter, constructed of a strange metal and inlaid with writing no one has ever seen before.

Flash forward to the present day, where Daniel Jackson gives a lecture to a skeptical and hostile crowd. Jackson is of the controversial belief that the Great Pyramid of Giza was not actually built by the Egyptians. While he doesn’t go so far as to say that it was built by aliens, his theories are apparently preposterous enough to make his audience get up and leave before his presentation is completed. After the lecture, Jackson is approached by two Air Force officers and the now-elderly Catherine Langford (you can tell it’s her because she’s still wearing the pendant she took as a girl, you see). Langford offers Jackson a job, and an opportunity to prove his theories right. Shut out of the respectable academic community, and with no other prospects on the horizon, Jackson accepts.

Elsewhere, two more Air Force officers travel to the home of one Colonel Jack O’Neil, to inform him that his commission has been reactivated and that he should report to General West for duty. O’Neil is despondent and suicidal after the accidental death of his young son (he shot himself playing with his father’s gun), but West needs him for a very special mission.

Jackson and Langford arrive at a top-secret facility underneath a mountain in Colorado, where Jackson is introduced to the rest of the team and an Egyptian cover stone with cryptic writing. The hieroglyphics make reference to something called a “Stargate,” and another set of figures which appear to be a writing system of some kind defy translation. After two long sleepless weeks, Jackson discovers the truth: the symbols are actually representations of star patterns in Earth’s sky. Each of the seven figures represents a constellation, and when put together they form a map to a distant location: the first six representing points in three-dimensional space which intersect at a specific point, and the seventh being the point of origin.

This breakthrough made, Langford reveals the true scope and purpose of the project to Jackson: the ring structure her father discovered in Egypt is the Stargate mentioned on the cover stone, a means of interstellar travel. The seven symbols are coordinates to a destination that can be reached by “dialing” them on the ring. Using Jackson’s discovery, they successfully make a connection to another world, on “the other side of the known universe,” as Langford puts it. A remote probe sent through the gate reveals a habitable planet, a man-made structure of some kind, and a corresponding gate on the other side. General West then reveals phase two of the project: a recon team led by Colonel O’Neil, to investigate the alien planet. Jackson volunteers to come along, claiming that he is the best chance they have of dialing home. O’Neil reluctantly agrees, and after Langford gives Jackson her pendant for good luck, the recon team heads off to the other side.

What they find on the other side is a desert planet (called “Abydos” in promotional material and the TV show to follow, but its name is never spoken in the film), and an Egyptian-style pyramid and temple in perfect condition. The soldiers establish a base camp (and O’Neil is suspiciously protective of a particular device among the luggage they took with them), and Jackson investigates the surrounding area to find some information on the proper address required to dial back to Earth. His investigations lead him to discover signs of civilization: a domesticated animal leads him, O’Neil, Kawalsky, and Brown to a primitive mining camp, where humans labor to extract a mineral which Brown discovers is the same material the Stargate is made of.

The people of this camp are led by Kasuf, and speak a dialect of ancient Egyptian that Jackson has trouble understanding. Seeing the pendant Jackson wears, the Abydonians mistake the Earthlings for divine messengers, and Kasuf invites them back to his place as honored guests. A sandstorm soon sweeps in, marooning Jackson and his team at the Abydonian settlement and forcing the team at base camp to fall back to the shelter of the temple. That night at a feast in their honor, Jackson attempts to communicate with Kasuf, only to discover that writing seems to be forbidden among his people: the nervous Kasuf quickly erases everything Jackson tries to draw in the sand, and attempts to placate the Earthling by offering his daughter Sha’uri’s hand in marriage. Jackson is understandably nonplussed by the gesture…until he realizes that Sha’uri knows how to read and write. Sha’uri leads him to a hidden cavern, where the history of Abydos is written down in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and where Jackson can find a base line to understand the spoken language of the Abydonians.

While this is going on, a massive pyramid-shaped spacecraft descends on the planet and docks at the temple where the rest of the soldiers have holed up. A few ominous rumblings and strange sounds later, and the team is taken out one man at a time by what appears to be the jackal-headed god Anubis.

Back at Kasuf’s place, O’Neil bonds with Skaara, and once he realizes Jackson is missing, goes in search of him. By the time he finds him, Jackson has translated the hieroglyphics and has learned the history of Abydos: the Egyptian god Ra was actually an alien being, member of a dying race who came to Earth thousands of years ago searching for a way to prolong his life. He discovered human beings, and took the body of one as his own. Ra ruled Egypt as a king and god, using humans to mine the mineral found on Abydos to build and maintain his technology, until ultimately he was overthrown and fled back to Abydos. The Stargate on Earth was buried by the victorious Egyptians, and Ra outlawed writing on Abydos so that the people would never remember the rebellion. Jackson also manages to locate the symbols to dial the Stargate back to Earth, but the tablet is broken and incomplete. Upon realizing this, and seeing that the sandstorm has passed, O’Neil orders the team back to the pyramid. But what they find back there is not promising: the spacecraft docked on the pyramid, the Anubis creature waiting for them in the temple below (who kills Brown and wounds Kawalsky), and the device O’Neil was fussing over earlier now missing. O’Neil and Jackson are captured and brought aboard the spacecraft, where they are confronted by Ra himself. Ra accuses them of trying to destroy him, and presents O’Neil’s device as evidence. The device is an atomic bomb; O’Neil had been ordered to destroy the Stargate if the team discovered evidence of hostile entities on the other side. Knowing O’Neil’s suicidal tendencies, General West knew he would have no problem blowing himself up for a greater good. When it is further revealed that Anubis and the other strange creatures that guard Ra are just humans in high-tech armor, O’Neil tries to fight his way free, but only succeeds in getting Jackson killed and himself thrown into a dungeon with the rest of his team.

Sometime later, Jackson awakens from his apparent death, having been healed of his injuries by one of Ra’s devices. He is summoned before Ra, who tells him of his plans. Ra has ordered a retaliatory assault on Kasuf’s settlement as punishment for helping them (which only serves to galvanize Skaara and Sha’uri’s desires for rebellion), and has decided to enhance the nuclear bomb’s destructive capabilities with his technology and will send it back through the Stargate to destroy human civilization. But before that, he has decreed that Jackson himself will execute O’Neil and his team to reinforce his authority as the one true god. The public execution is broken up, however, by Skaara and his friends, who use the weapons from O’Neil’s base camp to rescue the Earthlings and bring them to safety. While in hiding, Jackson accidently discovers the seventh symbol needed to operate the Stargate, and restores O’Neil’s will to live. Together they start planning a full assault on Ra’s temple, to free the Abydonians from slavery and to get back home before Ra destroys it.

While not an epic in any sense, Stargate is a serviceable little old-fashioned sci-fi movie, made at a time in movie history when serviceable little old-fashioned sci-fi movies were rare. The early 1990s was the era when the Internet began to take shape, and many contemporary sci-fi films took advantage of the trend, making small movies about identity and the nature of reality, so seeing a movie with aliens and laser beams and stuff was kind of a breath of fresh air. There are a lot of throwbacks to those classic Flash Gordon-esque sci-fi adventure stories, as our heroes match wits with an evil alien overlord and romance the alien princess. Classic speculative ideas about ancient astronauts and Egyptology show up in the storytelling, as do aspects of Clarke’s Third Law about advanced technology – and even a little taste of The Ten Commandments for good measure. There’s even a dig at those old safari movies, as Daniel Jackson’s first offering of friendship to Kasuf is a chocolate bar (Mmm, 5^th Avenue…). It’s a popcorn movie, basically; a pulp novel on film with actual production values.

And good use is made of the production values. Say what you will about Devlin and Emmerich, but for a brief shining moment in the 1990s they were the kings of the summer blockbuster. Their movies were amusement park rides, but they were damned good amusement park rides, with unique conceptual designs and ideas. In many ways Stargate was the trial run for their magnum opus Independence Day. They share many features in terms of production design and concepts. Alien motherships so huge and elaborate that they cause atmospheric disturbances when they make planetfall. Intricate, modular, almost organic technology that shows off that “smart metal” effect that we all thought was so cool back then. Humanity’s last hope lying in the hands of a band of cynical soldiers and comic-relief scientists who fight superior technology with intellect and guile. A lot of good concepts, for a popcorn movie, and they had their origins in Stargate.

The production design is the film’s strongest element. The pieces of Ra’s alien technology have a distinctly theatrical element, looking to be as much for show as functionality, and you can see the Egyptian influence in them. Ra’s healing chamber bears more than a passing reference to an Egyptian sarcophagus. The elaborate helmets and headdresses of Ra and his Anubis guards are capable of independent movement as the guards inside them speak and move, giving the impression of living alien creatures. Ra’s personal weapon of choice resembles an elaborate piece of jewelry that is capable of scrambling a person’s brain. He’s essentially killing people with his extravagance. Fitting for an immortal being with delusions of godhood. Ming the Merciless would be proud.

Our characters are pretty much adventure-movie archetypes (laconic soldier, squeamish scientist, hot alien chick, etc.), but they’re competently written and well performed by good actors. There is an effort to give some depth to Colonel O’Neil by giving him parental issues – issues he works through by semi-adopting Skaara – but all in all, there isn’t much to our characters other than what you’ll find in a typical square-jawed matinee feature. And you know, that’s not a bad thing. That’s what Devlin and Emmerlich did best: combining that old-fashioned rollicking adventure flick feel with new filmmaking technology to make a high-quality piece of entertainment. It’s basically a grab at the brass ring that is held by Spielberg and Lucas. Granted, it’s not quite as entertaining or endearing as an Indiana Jones picture, but it’s coming from the same place, and that can be a good thing indeed. While it’s a shame that Devlin and Emmerich crashed and burned so quickly, it’s somehow appropriate to their careers that their ultimate act of hubris involved a giant radioactive lizard. If only they’d stuck to creating their little popcorn movies rather than messing with a revered fictional character. Even I know you don’t mess with Godzilla, man.

That being said, it’s easy to see how Stargate inspired a TV show that managed to not only continue the adventure, but expand on it in ways the movie probably never intended. The movie and the TV show that followed were never very deep philosophically, and perhaps that’s the secret to their longevity. There’s an appeal to the sense of simple adventure, travel to exotic planets and meeting strange alien cultures. And there’s a certain comfort in a movie that doesn’t try to be something more than it is. It doesn’t try to be a serious human drama about loss or a meditation on the nature of divinity; it’s here to entertain you. Keep that in mind and you won’t be disappointed.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to plan my “Farewell SG-1 Party.” I hope I have plenty of snacks…

Things To Look For:

- It’s interesting to see this movie in retrospect, after watching “Stargate SG-1” for ten years, and see what elements were compelling enough to survive to make it into the show. Ra’s dying race becomes the Goa’uld, and his parasitic blending with a human becomes standard for his race. His soldiers become the Jaffa, a humanoid subrace bred as living incubators. The magic mineral Ra’s slaves mine becomes Naquadah, basis for all Goa’uld technology and an important plot device in many a TV episode. And most importantly, the Stargate can take our heroes other places besides Abydos. It expanded the Stargate universe, building on existing elements in surprisingly good ways. Too often TV shows based on movies just don’t work. This one works, and that’s a rare thing.

- A lot of people make fun of Jaye Davidson’s swishy performance as Ra, but I think it’s dead-on perfect for the character. First of all, Jaye Davidson is an astonishingly beautiful man – the kind of physical form that a parasitic alien with a vain streak and his pick of host bodies certainly would choose – and he’s just androgynous-looking enough to make an audience member slightly uneasy (the fact that Ra surrounds himself with children for no reason that is ever explained just adds to the sense of unease). Davidson’s Ra is vanity and decadence personified, and his physicality sells it perfectly. The way he sashays around his throne room, clad in his elaborate robes and garish jewelry, is pretty much how an advanced alien with aspirations toward divinity WOULD move. “Yes, I am a god. Drink me in.”

- Take a good look at the minor roles. You’ll see a couple of recognizable actors before they had big breaks. Djimon Honsou appears as an Anubis guard, and French Stewart as the soldier Ferretti. It’s weird to see them here – ESPECIALLY French Stewart; it’s hard to take him seriously as a tough-guy soldier after seeing him in “Third Rock From the Sun” – but there is plenty of entertainment value to be had. Watching Harry Solomon try to intimidate James Spader is comedy gold, man….

- I often wonder how much Hershey’s business picked up – if at all – from the blatant product placement. This is the movie that made me rediscover the 5^th Avenue bar, I know that much for sure. I definitely prefer it to the Butterfinger...

Date Posted: June 15^th, 2007

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