Stargate (movie)
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Stargate is a science fiction/action film released in 1994, directed by Roland Emmerich and written by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, with a soundtrack by David Arnold.
It was originally intended as the start of a movie franchise, but creators Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were distracted with Independence Day. Instead, it inspired the television series Stargate SG-1, still in production as of 2005, as well as its new spin-off, Stargate Atlantis, and an animated series Stargate Infinity. See Stargate for more about this science fictional universe.
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were sued by an Egyptology student for allegedly stealing the storyline as the student had submitted the story to them about ten years before the movie was made (they "rejected" the story at the time). The plaintiff had a respected Egyptologist from Johns Hopkins University vouch for him, since he had put his own theories into the story. The only differences between the story and the movie are slight name variations. The issue was finally settled out of court.
Storyline
In 1928, an expedition searching for ancient Egyptian relics discovers a large metal ring near the city of Giza, which is confiscated by the U.S. military for study. In the present (of the movie viewer), the brilliant but quirky Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (played by James Spader) is hired to decipher the symbols on the mysterious ring. It turns out to be a Stargate, an alien device that enables almost instantaneous teleportation to a complementary device on another planet, and the symbols are encoded dialing numbers.
Jackson is sent with a military team led by Colonel Jonathan "Jack" O'Neil (played by Kurt Russell) through the Stargate to a desert planet called Abydos. There, they find a small human civilization enslaved by an alien named Ra (played by Jaye Davidson) who the locals worship as Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god. Ra possesses a human body that is continuously regenerated in a high-tech sarcophagus. Ra's guards and soldiers wear animal-head helmets reminiscent of other ancient Egyptian gods, notably Anubis and Horus, but it's not clear whether Ra inspired the legends or is merely playing on them. (The film's novelization indicates that Ra created Egyptian mythology to help keep the human population subjugated.) It turns out that Ra had humans enslaved on both planets, but on Earth humans rebelled and closed the Stargate. While Ra plans to destroy Earth by sending a bomb through the re-opened gate, the Earth explorers spark a rebellion among the Abydos population, resulting in the death of Ra and the destruction of his starship.
Trivia
- Alexis Cruz (Skaara) and Erick Avari (Kasuf) are the only actors to appear in both this film and the subsequent spin-off series Stargate SG-1.
- Colonel Jonathan "Jack" O'Neil/Jack O'Neill and Dr. Daniel Jackson are the only characters to appear in the original Stargate film, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.
External links
- MGM official site (http://www.mgm.com/title_title.do?title_star=STARGATE)
- Template:Imdb titlebg:Старгейт
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