If there’s anything that the X-Files and the History Channel have taught me, it’s that anything that could be explained by human effort of natural phenomenon was almost certainly done by aliens. Mysterious lights in the sky? Aliens. Crop circles? Aliens. Stonehenge. The Nazca symbols? Aliens. The Easter Island statues? Aliens. Celebrities saying or doing anything? They’re either aliens or members of the Illuminati, which is made up of Reptilians, which are an intelligent non-human species, which is basically another word for aliens. Yeah, no one has actually ever seen these aliens, and there’s no concrete proof that anything extraterrestrial has ever visited Earth, but they’ve apparently been hanging out here the whole, probing our B-holes without our express written permission. Turns out that whole ‘space travel’ thing we thought about doing back in the 70s was actually just redundant guys, we could have just just called Kl’rrk and asked for a lift.
Anyway, out of all the ‘aliens did it’ theories there are in the world, none is quite so prevalent and quite so heavily argued as the idea that aliens created the pyramids of Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of South America are apparently fine). Yes, despite the fact that Egypt, one of the oldest and most powerful civilizations of early man, had access to thousands of slaves and ramps with which to move large stones up inclines, there is very vocal minority that claims that alien beings traveled millions of miles across the galaxy in order to make a couple stacks of rocks in the desert. Why they would bother to do it, why would they make it out of of rocks and not a more lasting material, if it was some sort of message or beacon why would they not just place a satellite in orbit like you see in Star Trek or something, all these questions don’t really matter. Obviously early man didn’t have the intelligence or the technology to put rocks on top of each other, so we needed the help of beings that had mastered faster than light travel in order to do it. They didn’t even send us a bill for the consultation either. Thanks aliens!
It is a pretty decent concept for a movie though.
The story of Stargate goes as follows: Way back in the present day of 1994, disgraced Egyptologist Daniel Jackson is commissioned by the United States Air Force in order to translate a mysterious stone disk, discovered in Giza in 1928. This disk, as it turns out, is actually a star chart, a map providing a code with which to travel to another world via something known as a ‘stargate’. The stargate, as it happens, was also found in Giza, and is indeed a portal to another world. More specifically, when the exact sequence of symbols is entered into it, the stargate creates a wormhole which links itself to a receiver stargate at another location, in this case a planet on the far end of another galaxy entirely. A planet that has just the right temperature, gravity and atmosphere to support human life. Because it would be kind of a boring movie if it ended up on some planet made of liquid phosphorus.
Thus the decision is made to mount a reconnaissance mission, and a team is assembled. Daniel Jackson, to translate the symbols needed for the return trip, bitter/jaded Col. Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell, who can’t pull off a buzz cut), famed television actor French Stewart, and a couple of other soldiers who I don’t remember the names of and who don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Their orders: Travel through the stargate, identify any lifeforms and any potential threats to the safety of mankind, and then return ASAP. Sounds simple enough, and that’s when the alien tyrants masquerading as ancient Egyptian gods come in.
If you’re familiar with Independence Day, or maybe the 1998 turkey known as Godzilla, then you’ve already picked apart the secret to Roland Emmerich’s filmmaking style: Spectacle. Big special effects, big set pieces, big action sequences, big names, all the things that would be really exciting to look at on the big screen with popcorn and a box of Goobers, and none of the things that would make you think too hard about stuff. Blockbusters, basically. The biggest gamble in the film industry, and one that Hollywood has increasingly started to rely on as the years have passed. After all, even a normal movie is a risk because you’re investing money into something with no guarantee you’ll make a profit or break even, and the more money you sink into a movie (as is the case with blockbusters) the less tolerable the idea of failure is and the more attempts are made at normalizing it, at doing everything possible not to rock the boat and minimize that. Which at the end of the day still might not work, because all the time spent polishing a turd doesn’t necessarily mean people will want to look at shit. For any successful film Emmerich has done, Independence Day for example, there’s been a Godzilla or a 2012. Michael Bay hasn’t made a movie in years that wasn’t a punchline, and yet his movies rake in the dosh hand over fist. There’s no way to explain it really, and with studios ballooning budgets up to a billion dollars because they think they’ll get 2 billion out of it, it’s unsustainable at best and ultimately destructive at worst. Too much pressure, in my opinion. If I ever become a filmmaker, I’ll stick with making critically-acclaimed indie gems.
So what did the miniature rant have to do with Stargate? Not much I guess, except to temper your expectations. I mean, the concept of Stargate is sound, the film looks great, great set design, great costumes and makeup (especially love the look of the guard’s armor), but there’s not really anything… all that exciting about it, I guess is what I’m trying to say. The story plays out about exactly as you’d expect, the scene when the characters don’t believe in themselves then get inspired to victory, the big battle scene, the scene when the protagonist lets off a witty one-liner before killing the villain, the same things you’ve probably seen in a dozen other movies. Kurt Russell and James Spader put on commendable performances, but you can tell the direction of their character arcs as soon as they’re introduced, and the rest of the cast all drop into the standard roles. The love interest whose only importance is to be the love interest, the fearful town leader, the young character who bonds with the older bitter character and teaches them how to care about living again, there’s a reason they’re called archetypes. I give Stargate some points for having 90% of the cast speak in an entirely different language for most of the movie without subtitles, at least there were no subtitles on the version I watched. Really pushes the physical and visual aspects of acting, rather than relying on dialogue to push the story forward. However, when you’ve got 2+ minute long dialogue scenes with characters talking to each other in another language and that’s all that’s happening, it does get grating.
If you’re looking for a movie where you can turn your brain off and enjoy something for a while, and you’re a fan of all things old-school Egypt (the 90s were big on Egypt, man. The Mummy remake, The Scorpion King, and Mummies Alive! just to name a few), then you’ll most likely get what you want out of Stargate. If you’re a fan of the concept, the ‘universe’ of Stargate and you want to see it explored in greater depth, than I direct you to the TV series Stargate SG-1, which picks up where the film left off. I’ve only watched a few episodes myself so I can’t really make a judgement call, but I know that I’ve often heard it lauded as one of the great science fiction shows. Which may not seem like much considering there’s only been like 5 of them in the United States, but if you’re a budding sci-fi fan trying to get your feet wet, SG-1 is at least slightly more grounded in real world stuff than shows like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica, so you might find it a bit more palatable. Stargate gets the recommendation.
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