Stargate (film)
Stargate (film)
Main page

Stargate (film)

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Stargate (film)

Stargate is a 1994 science fiction action-adventure film directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Emmerich and Dean Devlin. The film is the first entry in the eponymous media franchise and stars Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Alexis Cruz, Mili Avital, and Viveca Lindfors. The plot centers on the "Stargate", an ancient ring-shaped device that creates a wormhole, enabling travel to a similar device elsewhere in the universe. The central plot explores the theory of extraterrestrial beings having an influence upon human civilization.

Stargate was released on October 28, 1994, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the United States, while it was released by AMLF in France. The film received mixed reviews, with its atmosphere, story, characters, and graphic content both praised and criticized. The film grossed $196.6 million worldwide against a production budget of $55 million.

In 1928 at Giza, Egypt, archaeologist Professor Paul Langford, accompanied by his daughter Catherine, unearths cover stones engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphs and other markings. Beneath he discovers a large metallic ring of unknown purpose. On a table of artifacts pulled from the excavation, Catherine finds and pockets a gold amulet with symbols carved in it.

In 1994, the now-elderly Catherine invites Egyptologist and linguist Daniel Jackson, Ph.D. to translate the hieroglyphs. The stones, located underground at a military installation in Colorado, are now part of a classified U.S. Air Force project overseen by Special Operations Colonel Jack O'Neil. Jackson sees the existing research and translations of the hieroglyphs and corrects them. The stones describe a "stargate" which uses six star constellations as spatial coordinates and the symbol for earth as the point of origin. Jackson is brought to see the Stargate, the ring device from Giza. They use his coordinates to align the Stargate's rotating inner track with V-shaped markings (or "chevrons") along its outside. When all seven chevrons are locked in, a wormhole opens, connecting the Stargate with a distant planet. A mechanical probe is sent through the stargate and manages to send back a few images showing different symbols on the ring on the other side of the portal before it closes. Catherine gives Jackson her amulet before he leaves with O'Neil and his team (Reilly, Porro, Freeman, Brown, Ferretti, and Kawalsky) to pass through the wormhole.

They emerge inside a temple at the base of a pyramid on an arid desert planet. Jackson searches for the symbols required for the return journey through the Stargate, but the pyramid complex lacks any visible markings. O'Neil orders Kawalsky to set up camp. Jackson sees a mastadge, a large animal with a harness, which drags him off when he approaches it to investigate. O'Neil, Kawalsky and Brown follow and they discover a tribe of humans working to mine a strange mineral, which Brown identifies as the same material the Stargate is made of. O'Neil radios the others to secure basecamp. Following them back to their city, Jackson realizes that the people speak a variant of Ancient Egyptian and is able to communicate with them. He learns that the tribe sees him and his comrades as emissaries of their god Ra because he is wearing Catherine's amulet. The tribe's chieftain Kasuf presents Jackson with his daughter Sha'uri as a gift, and although Jackson initially refuses her, he later becomes romantically attached to her. O'Neil befriends Kasuf's teenaged son Skaara and his friends. That night, Ra's ship arrives, causing a large sandstorm, and lands atop the pyramid structure. His soldiers capture Ferretti and Freeman while killing Porro and Reilly.

Jackson finds and translates hidden murals and heiroglyphs with help from Sha'uri and discussions with the tribe. He learns that Ra is an alien being who came to Earth during the Ancient Egyptian period to possess human bodies to extend his own life. Ra enslaved these humans and used the Stargate to bring some of them to Abydos to mine the mineral that is used in the alien technology. Humans on Earth revolted, overthrew Ra's overseers, and buried the Stargate to prevent its use. During this investigation, Jackson comes across a cartouche containing six of the seven symbols needed to configure the Stargate for the return to Earth, but the seventh has been broken off and has worn away.

When Jackson, O'Neil, Brown, and Kawalsky return to the pyramid, there is a firefight against Ra's soldiers. Brown is killed and Kawalsky is injured. Jackson and O'Neil are captured and brought before Ra and his guards. They reveal their true human-like forms by retracting their head pieces: Ra's funerary mask styled headdress and the soldier's Anubis-shaped armored head pieces. A firefight ensues and Jackson is killed; O'Neil is incapacitated and is incarcerated with the others. Ra places Jackson's body in a sarcophagus-like device that regenerates him. Ra then shows Jackson a nuclear bomb which O'Neil had secretly brought with him. Perceiving their arrival with the bomb as an act of war, Ra declares his intentions to send it back through the Stargate to Earth, along with a shipment of the mineral, which will increase its explosive power a hundred fold—essentially creating a civilization-ending event. Ra then orders the human tribe to watch as he prepares to force Jackson to execute the others to reinforce his place and power as their god, but Skaara and his friends create a diversion that allows Jackson, O'Neil, Kawalsky, and Ferretti to escape, while Freeman is killed. They flee to nearby caves to hide from Ra. Skaara and his friends celebrate, and Skaara draws a sign of victory on a wall, which Jackson recognizes as the final symbol, the point of origin, needed for the return to Earth.

O'Neil and his remaining men aid Skaara in overthrowing the remaining overseers, wearing Horus-head armor, and then launch an attack on Ra, who sends out fighter ships to strafe the humans while he orders his ship to depart. The humans outside run out of ammunition and are forced to surrender to the fighter ships' pilots, but the rest of the tribe, seeing that their false gods are really humanoid, rebel against the guards and overthrow them. Sha'uri is killed, but Jackson takes her body and sneaks aboard Ra's ship using a teleportation system, leaving O'Neil to fight Ra's guard captain, Anubis. Jackson places Sha'uri in the regeneration device, and she recovers, but Ra discovers them and attempts to kill Jackson with telekinetic powers. O'Neil activates the teleportation system, killing Anubis and allowing Jackson and Sha'uri to escape the ship. The rest of the humans arrive en masse, and overrun the remaining guards, defeating them. When O'Neil realizes the bomb cannot be disarmed, he and Jackson teleport the bomb to Ra's ship, destroying the ship and killing Ra as he tries to escape. With the humans freed, the remaining team—O'Neil, Kawalsky, and Ferretti—return to Earth while Jackson chooses to stay behind with Sha'uri and the others.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.