History Film / Stargate

---> '''Daniel:''' Well, the translation of the inner track is wrong. Must've used Budge. I don't know why they keep reprinting his books.

* WhatAreRecords: Besides EverythingsBetterWithSpinning, the idea behind the gate spinning to encode its coordinates was to draw the analogy with a rotary telephone for the viewership. This made sense in 1994, but in later media from TheVerse it has become TheArtifact.

* {{Agent Peacock}}: Ra.

* AmbiguousGender: Ra. [[Film/TheCryingGame Jaye Davidson]] was cast to provide the ambiguity.

%%* KillTheCutie: [[spoiler: [[UglyCute Nabeh]].]]

* LetsGetDangerous: Daniel acquits himself pretty well in combat, especially when [[spoiler: he turns the weapon meant for executing his team on Ra and his guards, allowing him and the team, save for Freeman, to escape back to the village]].

* MagicCountdown: In SPADES. [[spoiler: As O'Neil tries to disarm the nuke, the timer has 45 seconds left to detonation. Then the villagers arrive on the horizon, charge the pyramid/temple complex, and defeat the 2 Horus guards outside. Ra witnesses this and decides that it is time to beat a retreat, possibly also realizing that the nuke has not been sent through the Stargate to Earth anyway and therefore will wipe out his pesky opponents for him, along with him if he sticks around (a moment of FridgeLogic there, but what the hell). Ra puts the sunroof up on the pyramid ship, takes off, and manages to achieve AT LEAST a low orbit by the time Jackson and O'Neil use his portal to send the nuke from the temple to the ship above. When the nuke arrives, there are still 6 seconds left on the timer. This must be the longest 39 seconds in film history.]] The brilliant bit is, everything moves so fast that the audience doesn't have time to question what point the countdown must be at -- we are just rooting for the heroes to beat the clock!

** The snide little shout-out to Egyptologist E.A. Wallis Budge. Budge was a Victorian Egyptologist who wrote extensively on hieroglyphics, but his translations as well as his interpretations of Egyptian religion and culture were unfortunately all too influenced by his Victorian attitudes. [[http://fannyfae.com/2013/09/05/using-budge-bad-idea/ This essay explains why the line is appropriate and accurate]], if you're interested, [[http://ask.metafilter.com/46687/Is-E-A-Wallis-Budge-still-worth-reading here's some recommended reading.]] [[GeniusBonus The remark will fly right over the heads of 99% of the audience, but will have any Egyptologists watching rolling in the aisles.]]

* TrainingThePeacefulVillagers: Heavily downplayed. The oppressed natives are cowed through fear of Ra's power, but once they see evidence that Ra and his minions aren't actually gods and they can be challenged, they are quite ready, able, and willing to fight back. Once they've learned how to operate human weaponry, they're all good to go.

%%* HollywoodNerd: Daniel.

* TrainingThePeacefulVillagers: Heavily downplayed. The oppressed natives are cowed through fear of Ra's power, but once they see evidence that Ra and his minions aren't actually gods and they can be challenged, they are quite ready, able, and willing to fight back.

* BadBoss: Ra does ''not'' tolerate failure from his subordinates-[[YouHaveFailedMe fatally so]].

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy:

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Naturally, even aside from the aliens, the film premise depends on this. Jackson claims the Pyramids are much older than Egyptologists have found them to be, the evidence for them being made for the Pharoahs was forged and that Egyptian culture sprang up without precursors. Obviously this is not supported by the real evidence for this. The film itself portrays Jackson's theories as laughed at, though naturally he turns out to be right nonetheless. He is genuinely correct that Budge has long been debunked however. Hilariously though, while this is clearly fictional, it has precedence in Egyptian history. Countless pharaohs actively rewrote their own history to take credit for past events now attributed to their predecessors. The best case is Ramses the Second (Ozymandius for those familiar with Percy Shelley) whose countless achievements were either claimed by other pharaohs either claiming to have accomplished them or have simply been Ramses.
* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: Realistically the Abydonian language would've evolved ''far'' more dramatically in the ''ten thousand years'' since they were last on Earth, to the point where it would sound ''nothing'' like Ancient Egyptian. For example, just going back ''one'' thousand years we have Old English, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-_GwoO4xI which sounds nothing like Modern English]].
* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: While the film's treatment of the military is far from accurate or flattering in general, there is one military error that could have been corrected by ''anyone'' with a little military experience. At one point O'Neil calls Kawalski, his second in command, "Lieutenant". Not only that, he's credited as "Lieutenant Kawalski" in the credits. The problem is that his rank insignia are a pair of silver oak leaves, which he wears throughout the entire movie in plain sight. Those silver oak leaves mark him as a ''Lieutenant Colonel'', a considerably higher rank than Lieutenant. Possibly filmmakers Emmerich and Devlin were simply unaware that you don't call a Lieutenant Colonel "Lieutenant" unless you want him very, ''very'', angry at you. If you don't want to use his entire rank (and have enough standing yourself that you even get to decide that), you'd call him "Colonel." Alternately, they [[EnforcedTrope enforced the trope]] after finding that using the full title in dialogue was unwieldy, but using the shortened form was deemed [[ViewersAreMorons confusing for audiences]]. "Demoting" Kawalski to Major would have resolved this, but it may have been that the costumes had already been made by that point. Most likely, Kawalski was always intended to be a lieutenant, and the mistake was in making the costume; it would be odd to have two command-level officers on such a small team.

* TeleportersAndTransporters: The Stargate and the not-quite-''Franchise/StarTrek'' ring transporter.

* InfantImmortality: Harshly averted in the backstory; O'Neil's son died of a fatal gunshot wound suffered because he was playing around with O'Neil's service pistol.

** Averted -- the Earth-like planet is in a completely different galaxy.

*** Or course, it's all ArtisticLicenseLinguistics anyway. As mentioned earlier, it hasn't been a spoken language for millennia. Even the languages it evolved into (Middle Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic) have been extinct for centuries. We can barely hazard a guess at any pronunciation filtered through multiple different languages and even then only with certain letters. And the language spoken by the Abydosians would be evolved over thousands of years from ancient Egyptian

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: While the film's treatment of the military is far from accurate or flattering in general, there is one military error that could have been corrected by ''anyone'' with a little military experience. At one point O'Neil calls Kawalski, his second in command, "Lieutenant". Not only that, he's credited as "Lieutenant Kawalski" in the credits. The problem is that his rank insignia are a pair of silver oak leaves, which he wears throughout the entire movie in plain sight. Those silver oak leaves mark him as a ''Lieutenant Colonel'', a considerably higher rank than Lieutenant. It can be presumed that filmmakers Emmerich and Devlin were simply unaware that you don't call a Lieutenant Colonel "Lieutenant" unless you want him very, ''very'', angry at you. If you don't want to use his entire rank (and have enough standing yourself that you even get to decide that), you'd call him "Colonel." Alternately, they [[EnforcedTrope enforced the trope]] after finding that using the full title in dialogue was unwieldy, but using the shortened form was deemed [[ViewersAreMorons confusing for audiences]]. "Demoting" Kawalski to Major would have resolved this, but it may have been that the costumes had already been made by that point.

'''Jackson''': Well I could do that.\\

'''Jackson''': Positive.\\
'''O'Neil''': ''(mutters to West)'' He's full of shit.

** Averted -- the earth-like planet is in a completely different galaxy.

*** Or course, it's all ArtisticLicenseLinguistics anyway. As mentioned earlier, it hasn't been a spoken language for millennia. Even the languages it evolved into (Middle Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic) have been extinct for centuries. We can barely hazard a guess at any pronunciation filtered through multiple different languages and even then only with certain letters.

* DeadlyDustStorm: As the team is spending their first night on Abydos, a large sand storm comes up, forcing those not at the village to take shelter in the pyramid where the Stargate is. And then Ra shows up.

-->'''Daniel:''' "You had accepted the fact that no matter what happened, you would not be going home? Don't you have people who care about you? Do you have a family?"\\
'''Jack:''' "I had a family. No one should ever have to outlive their own child."\\
'''Daniel:''' "I don't want to die. Your men don't want to die, and these people here don't want to die. It's a shame you're in such a hurry to."

** Daniel just assumed the cover stone with the symbols needed to dial the Stargate back to earth would be nearby when they came through. He also didn't know what the seventh chevron (the point of origin) was going to be (see also IdiotBall). The fact that he didn't tell anyone this ''really'' pisses off the guys he came with.

* EurekaMoment: Daniel finally figures out that the symbols aren't hieroglyphs, but star constellations when he sees a picture of Orion on a guard's newspaper and recognizes the shape as one of the symbols.

* GodEmperor / GodGuise: Ra uses alien technologies to pose as one. The Abydonians believe it to be true, but the humans from Earth aren't fooled for even a second.

** Averted by the Abydonians, who have been purposefully halted in their technological development by Ra to prevent them from deducing his status as a fake god and revolting against him.
* HumansAreWhite: Strongly averted. The Abydonians are all clearly of non-white descent, which is really the only way it would make sense given that Egypt was where Ra got them from (although the actors' ethnicities aren't Egyptian, ranging from black to Indian, though in fairness ancient Egyptians likely had varied looks).

* IWasJustJoking: Meta-example: Jaye Davidson did not want to act again after ''Film/TheCryingGame'', so he demanded a million dollar salary, thinking it would be unreasonable. He got it.

* LastOfHisKind: Ra

* {{Constellations}}: The film used the constellations as seen from Earth as coordinates for the gate's destination, marked as the 38 symbols on the rim of the gate. The subsequent [[Franchise/StargateVerse TV series]] recognized the flaw in this idea (the constellations are not static and would look completely different from every planet with a gate anyway) and {{retcon}}ned them in various ways to make up for it, eventually settling on them being the letters of one form of the [[{{Precursors}} Ancient]] alphabet. Presumably they formed some type of comprehensible coordinate system when the gates were first built, but as the dialing devices periodically update to compensate for stellar drift they no longer do so.

* ConvenientlyPreciseTranslation: The term "Stargate".
* CoolGate: The titular Stargate.

-->'''Daniel:''' "You had accepted the fact that no matter what happened, you would not be going home? Don't you have people who care about you? Do you have a family?"
-->'''Jack:''' "I had a family. No one should ever have to outlive their own child."
-->'''Daniel:''' "I don't want to die. Your men don't want to die, and these people here don't want to die. It's a shame you're in such a hurry to."

* HollywoodNerd: Daniel.

* KillTheCutie: [[spoiler: [[UglyCute Nabeh]].]]

* TheSmartGuy: Daniel.
* SufficientlyAdvancedAlien:
** Ra. Did anyone say "Goa'uld"? Hmm...
** Ironically, his technology isn't very good in the context of his own civilization but it works wonders on human biology.

* TransplantedHumans
* TrappedInAnotherWorld

--> '''Kawalsky''': ''"Find it?"'' What do you mean ''"find it?"'' You didn't say about ''finding'' anything?!
--> '''Daniel''': Well, I assumed the tablet would be here, right here?
--> '''[=O'Neil=]''': You ''assumed?!''
--> '''Kawalsky''': You're a lying son of a bitch! *''knocks Daniel over''* You didn't say a word about '''FINDING ANYTHING!'''

* YouHaveGOTToBeKiddingMe

* PrettyBoy: Ra is well-groomed and slender. Even more so when compared with just about anyone else and especially the soldiers send to his planet.[[note]]Which led to some ViewerGenderConfusion - definitely understandable, given what movie [[Film/TheCryingGame the actor had previously appeared in]].[[/note]]

** Although one could argue that considering that he starts the film as a suicidal mess, his sense of humour returning at the end of the film is him finally [[CharacterDevelopment letting go]] of his own personal demons. Likewise, he often seems bemused at Jackson's antics and during his interaction with Skaara and the Abydonian kids, so it's clear he's not ''always'' TheStoic.

* TrainingThePeacefulVillagers

** While we're on the subject, constellations are not "points in space" as Daniel Jackson claims. If anything, they are *directions* in space, from Earth, and there's no real way to turn six *directions* into a point in 3-dimensional space.

* AppliedPhlebotinum

* AluminumChristmasTrees[=/=]WhatAreRecords: Besides EverythingsBetterWithSpinning, the idea behind the gate spinning to encode its coordinates was to draw the analogy with a rotary telephone for the viewership. This made sense in 1994, but in later media from TheVerse it has become TheArtifact.

* DeadlyDustStorm: As the team is spending their first night on Abydos, a large sand storm comes up, forcing those not at the village to take shelter in the pyramid where the stargate is. And then Ra shows up.

-->'''Daniel:''' I don't want to die. Your men don't want to die, and these people certainly don't want to die. It's a shame you're in such a hurry to.

* {{Adorkable}}: Daniel.

* EyeOfHorusMeansEgypt: The Eye is seen by Jackson in the town (he calls it the Eye of Ra however), indicating the people are descended from ancient Egypt originally.