Stargate Movie Review

Stargate Review

"Stargate" Overview

Rating: PG-13
1994

Cast and Crew

Director : Roland Emmerich
Producer : Dean Devlin,Oliver Eberle,Joel B. Michaels
Screenwiter : Dean Devlin,Roland Emmerich
Starring : Kurt Russell,James Spader,Viveca Lindfors,Alexis Cruz,Mili Avital,Leon Rippy,John Diehl,Carlos Lauchu,Djimon Hounsou,Erick Avari,French Stewart,Gianin Loffler,Jaye Davidson

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When did I miss the event that made Stargate worthy of an "Ultimate Edition" DVD, complete with director's cut? I guess that MacGyver-starring TV show thing is more popular than I thought.

Anyway, if you're unfamiliar with Stargate, the story is pretty straightforward. Military types unearth a big metal ring encoded with Egyptian hieroglyphics, then import a kooky archeologist (James Spader) to figure out what it does -- which, within 30 minutes, involves the opening up of a portal to another world, millions of light years away.

Based on the theory that aliens built the pyramids (and colonized the earth), Stargate outruns this hokey premise with a story that focuses on space-travelling pretty-boys (including The Crying Game's Jaye Davidson as Ra) who enslave a primitive human race (writing is forbidden!) and travel around via a network of stargates to enslave further races. The remainder of the film focuses on head military honcho Kurt Russell trying to nuke everything.

The thinness and bizarre randomness of the story (from big explosion-type scenes to ill-advised Spader-slave love moments to creepy Egyptianish kid-gods crawling around all over the place) is equalled by some unimpressive special effects -- the trip through the stargate is one of the least interesting "transport" effects in movie history. While Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin would get much bigger budgets for the entertaining Independence Day and the notoriously awful Godzilla, Stargate remains a mere curiosity among sci-fi flicks.

Strangely, the only two extras on the DVD are commentary from Emmerich and Devlin (somewhat interesting: for example, those aren't human extras, they're costumes on sticks!) and a short "documentary" about why the pyramids were really built by spacemen.

Grumpy alien!

Review by

Christopher Null

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Comments

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SGC (1)

posted on 14/02/2008 12:16

comments:

"When did I miss the event that made Stargate worthy of an "Ultimate Edition" DVD. I guess that MacGyver-starring TV show thing is more popular than I thought."-writes Christopher Nullhead. Yeah, I guess it is. Considering that STARGATE SG-1, the series that this MOVIE generated is the winner of 8 EMMY Award nominations. And it sounds like you missed a lot of events, because the Stargate series is also the Winner of 5 SATURN Awards including BEST Syndicated Cable Television Series, receiving over 24 Saturn Award Nominations including Best Actor. Stargate was also Nominated for over 25 GEMINI Awards including Best Photography in a Dramatic Program and Best Achievement in Production Design, It won 2 HUGO Award Nominations, 2 VESA Visual Effects Society Awards for Excellence in Visual Effects (by the way, other winners of the VES award that Stargate won include Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas) In addition the Stargate franchise won the presigious Golden Reel Award from the MPSE for Best Sound Editing in Television. Not only that, Stargate has won 23 LEO Award Nominations including Best Cinematography in a Dramatic Series, it is the Winner of 11 LEO Awards including Best Lead Performance, Winner of the first ever prestigious WGC Showrunner Award, and Stargate SG-1 has bee n inducted into the GUINNESS BOOK of WORLD RECORDS for the longest running US Science Fiction television program in history spanning over 10 years and over 220 episodes. Stargate now has fans in over 120 countries world wide. So, yeah, I guess it's a little bit more popular than you thought

screen name:

Hatshepsut ( 1)

posted on 05/12/2006 18:56

comments:

I get the feeling that your reviewer, Christopher Null, has not actually watched 'Stargate' - the movie, or if he did, he wasn't paying it very much attention. The "big metal ring" was *not* unearthed by "military types," it was discovered by archaeologists, including Catherine Langford's father on a dig at the Giza Plateau in Egypt - in 1928, if memory serves me. The "military types" did *not* "import a kooky archeologist (James Spader) to figure out what it does." Archaeologist Doctor Daniel Jackson was recruited by an elderly Catherine Langford to decipher the hieroglyphs, which he did. U.S.A.F. Col. Jack O'Neil was brought in shortly afterwards *in case* Dr. Jackson succeeded, which he did. If the rest of the review is as inaccurate as the opening paragraph, then it's not worth the effort of reading it. Best wishes, Hatshepsut. --

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