Longform community posts about this title
An interstellar teleportation device, found in Egypt, leads to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship the god Ra.
Watch for free here: http://tinyurl.com/ms3rd698
Posted using CineTV
No comments yet — be the first.
The trailer doesn't do this film justice, and I can't honestly believe I was 14 when this came out. Crazy.
I am a sci-fi junkie nerd and love almost all of the sci-fi films that were from the 1990's and before. They were just brimming full of imagination and awesomeness. I bow in awe to the imagination of the writers back then because they sure don't make the cut now. With their weak willed attempts at sci fi, glossed over by the teflon shine of Disney. But that's a story for another day.
This story on the other hand begins with Daniel, a crazy scientist who believed that the pyramids were not ancient tombs for the Egyptian Pharaohs, but more so landing pads for superior and space worthy ships. Of course Daniel struggles to get any recognition from anyone, as soon as he starts talking about Aliens and Spaceships then he's laughed at and loses all of his audience as they begin to leave.
That's when he is approached by Catherine Langford and he is taken from his talk to a secret underground bunker in Colorado Springs under the mountains where the US Army is up to its tricks again with secret experiments. He is asked to work out a puzzle they had in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, to which he promptly solves.
That's where they show him the Stargate and as a test, they pump in the co-ordinates he deciphered and it opens the gate. A blue light flashes after several moments of thunderous shaking and the whole room is blinded to what looks like portal filled with water. It's the first time they've ever opened it and now they are curious as to what lies beyond.
That's when Daniel realises he's going through the gate, and despite protests, Colonel O'Neill (played by Kurt Russel) assembles a gate team together including Daniel as their main scientist. They have to go through now that they've opened it and everyone has the burning curiosity of where it leads to.
Ah, human curiosity.. it never gets old!
Anyway, after several scenes of CGI and showing the team going through the Portal they arrive in a dark room where light is barely visible apart from the glowing portal behind them that they've just travelled through. They light up some flares and cautiously move out of the building, guns at the ready in case they come across any hostiles.
They come to the entrance and realise they are on a different planet. The planet also seems a desert planet, that's very hot and has more than one sun. Crazy, right? Yup. Anyway. The team find out that they cannot dial home because some of the co-ordinates are missing on this strange new planet. That's when they begin to get angry at Daniel.
As Daniel was walking around trying to find a way home he finds an animal which looks domesticated because it has a harness. The animal is then frightened and catches Daniel by accident with his harness and runs away, taking Daniel along with it.
That's when they stumble on what looks to be like a people of basic nature mining some kind of element at a mining hole. Then, the story unfolds in some crazy and interesting ways.
You'll enjoy it if you like sci fi, and are a bit of a sci fi geek like me. There's several spin of series too from this film alone which I completely loved.
Would definitely recommend it.
(SPECIAL NOTE: Capsule version of the review is available here.)
According to many critics and movie aficionados, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich are the worst thing that happened to science fiction cinema in 1990s. This widespread animosity towards Devlin-Emmerich duo can be partially explained with the quality of their work in the past decade. However, the real reason for such animosity lies less in the quality of their movies and more in the massive hype that preceded them and ensured huge disappointments among their future audience. Taken by their own merit and without hype, those films can be seen not only as passable, but also sometimes a very good entertainment. One of such examples is Stargate, 1994 science fiction spectacle by Roland Emmerich, often heralded "the best science fiction film since *Star Wars".
The plot of this film begins in Egypt 1928 when the group of Norwegian archaeologists digs out huge stone artefact with strange, indecipherable hieroglyphs. Many decades later, the artefact is in possession of US Air Force. Dr. Daniel Jackson (played by James Spader), young and unconventional Egyptologist, is called to decipher those hieroglyphs. To the utter surprise of everybody, he manages to decipher those symbols and finds that the artefact represents Stargate - trandimensional portal that leads to distant planet millions of light years away. US Air Force quickly assembles expedition led by Colonel Jonathan "Jack" O'Neill (played by Kurt Russell). This expedition enters Stargate and finds itself on the desert world, populated by primitive people that resemble ancient Egyptians and are ruled by god- likes aliens led by evil Ra (played by Jaye Davidson).
All those who succumbed to hype in 1994 and expected another masterpiece like 2001: A Space Odyssey have all the reasons to feel disappointed. Stargate could hardly be seen as an example of creative geniuses at work. Director Emmerich and Dean Devlin (who co-wrote the script) had wonderful idea, as well as huge budget and numerous talents at their disposal. Despite all of that the best they could do was space opera filled with every possible cliche (including alien world modelled on Earth's deserts, something which is more expected in SF films with much lower budget) and numerous plot holes. However, all those flaws can be forgiven for one reason - unlike almost all the other SF films in 1990s, Stargate can induce the sense of wonder among the audience. First part of the film manages to arouse viewers' curiosity with the promises of strange new worlds on the Other Side. Unlike most of the other science fiction films that use genre only as an excuse to make standard horrors, dramas or action films, Stargate returns to the roots of science fiction - pure adventure and tales of wondrous lost cities, civilisations and continents. Resurrection of this more innocent, almost infantile yet purer approach to the science fiction is probably the most important legacy of Stargate.
Lack of Devlin's and Emmerich's script-writing talents was fortunately compensated with the talents among cast and crew. James Spader is great as Lennon-like scientist, while Russell makes represents great contrast to him as no-nonsense military professional. Jaye Davidson, on the other hand, wasn't very convincing as evil alien, although he tried very hard to avoid typecasting after his memorable The Crying Game role. Production design, costumes and special effects are superb and they all make the alien world very convincing. Musical soundtrack by David Arnold is very good and it features one of the rare 1990s film themes that managed to stick in popular memory.
Finally, Stargate had flaws yet it managed to overcome them by being reincarnated in another medium. Being the basis for awarded television series is just another reason why this film shouldn't have the same reputation as its unjustifiably criticised creators. .
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on July 18th 2000)
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ Leofinance blog https://leofinance.io/@drax.leo Cent profile https://beta.cent.co/@drax Minds profile https://www.minds.com/drax_rp_nc Uptrennd profile https://www.uptrennd.com/user/MTYzNA
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
