An action-adventure film, released in 1994, that later bloomed into the Stargate Verse.In 1928, a strange circular device is uncovered in Egypt. Cut to the present day, where it somehow ended up in possession of the United States military. With the mind of the unorthodox, absent-minded archaeologist and linguist Daniel Jackson (James Spader), they manage to figure out how to use that ancient device. What they learn is that this "Stargate" opens a wormhole, leading to a desert planetA recon team led by Colonel Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell), and with Jackson along to reopen the gate from the other side, finds an Egyptian-style pyramid and primitive human society. While Jackson is struggling to identify the correct symbols to get the team back to Earth, the Sufficiently Advanced Alien Ra (supposedly the same entity as the Egyptian god of the sun) appears on a humongous pyramid-like starship, using the alien pyramid as a landing pad. Declaring his intentions to eliminate the Eartheans, it forces the team to cooperate with the natives to free them from Ra's tyrannical control. In the end, O'Neil destroys Ra's ship with a nuclear bomb and leaves via the Stargate with the rest of the team — except for Daniel Jackson, who chooses to stay with his new wife Sha'uri (Mili Avital) and live Happily Ever After.Well until Stargate SG-1 came along.Originally, two feature film sequels were planned, but they were scrapped by director Roland Emmerich in favor of Independence Day. A lot of back story was written for the movie and the supposed sequels, which was eventually released in the form of several tie-in novels. However, when the sequel series Stargate SG-1 was handed to Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright, the new producers threw out most of this behind-the-scenes backstory, while keeping most of the actual on-screen Canon intact.The TV series it spawned was very popular and went on for 10 seasons - it is the third-longest-running scifi series after Doctor Who and Star Trek. The planet where this movie takes place was named "Abydos" in the series, so if you are new to this movie and haven't seen the series and you see that name listed on this page or a subpage, it means the planet in this movie. If you are curious about the series, but intimidated by the prospect of ten seasons, you can rest assured it's not bad. The series picks up the story (spoiler is okay to highlight after you've seen the movie) one year after Daniel is left behind on the planet. Several warriors come through the since-mothballed gate by surprise, prompting the team from the movie to be reformed and sent back through to see if the the forces had come from the planet. Sha're (not named Sha'uri in the series), now Daniel's wife, is captured by hostile forces and Daniel returns to Earth to assist with the Stargate and find his wife.This film also has significance, in that it was the first movie to get its own website.
Accidental Marriage: Sha'uri is given as a gift to Daniel. After he turns her down sexually, he thinks this is the end of it. Once he knows their language though, he hears Skaara refer to him as her husband and finally puts two and two together.
Aliens Speaking English: Notably averted — the only time in the entire Stargate franchise that this trope is not in effect — with Ra and the local humans speaking an Ancient Egyptian dialect throughout the film. Interestingly, the language isn't subtitled until Daniel learns how to speak it.
Always Save the Girl: Daniel, who is the only one who can get the others home, goes up onto Ra's ship to revive Sha'uri. Meanwhile, tons of other people are dying and the clock is ticking on a nuclear device that is going to kill them all. But it's perfectly reasonable for Daniel to take the time out to get his girlfriend back.
In all fairness he did ask Jack to stop the bomb before he left, he just didn't know the thing couldn't be shut off anymore!
Ancient Astronauts: Ra. And the Pyramids were, indeed, landing platforms for spaceships.
Artistic License - Military: 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? He's wearing silver oak leaves throughout the entire movie, making him a Lieutenant Colonel. While the film's treatment of the military is far from accurate or flattering, that's actually a pretty easy mistake to make. After all, he's a "lieutenant colonel." It can be presumed that filmmakers Emmerich and Devlin were simply unaware that the appropriate abbreviation of the rank "lieutenant colonel" is not "lieutenant" but rather "colonel."
Not only are the three moons too close to the planet, but they look exactly like our moon.
They're also all in alignment (all on the same side of the planet at once) - the tidal forces on that planet would be insane.
You can't - or at least shouldn't - use constellations for coordinates for a transportation system that can exist for thousands of years. Stars move - not much during our own lifetimes, over the course of thousands of years.
The TV series uses this as a Hand Wave to explain why they never found any other gates until they thought to make the dialing computer take stellar drift into account. Apparently the DHD network as shown in the series does this automatically, so the symbols wind up being more like a phone number than coordinates.
Most galaxies don't have names - and certainly not ones "on the other side of the known universe".
The clear "map" they have the tracker move across when they open the Stargate makes no sense at all - the first issue of all being that it is 2-dimensional.
Background Halo: Ra invokes this trope with a classical Sun Disk.
Dead Little Sister: Colonel O'Neil originally left the military and went basket case because his son accidentally killed himself with O'Neil's own gun. He only joins the mission to the alien planet (from which there is little chance of returning) because he's downright suicidal.
Didn't Think This Through: 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 Idiot Ball)
The fact that he didn't tell anyone this really pisses off the guys he came with.
Eureka Moment: 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.
Fake Nationality: The inhabitants, who presumably should be ethnically Egyptian, are played by actors of various nationalities. Most of them are Hispanic.
Idiot Ball: As Siskel & Ebert point out in their review, the leaders of the Stargate program take Daniel at his word that he can bring them back...without asking him how. So of course, once on the other side, when they ask Daniel to take them back, he says he can't because they don't have the coordinate symbols and that he just assumed they'd be there.
Inferred Holocaust: So all those children on Ra's ship got nuked? Sure, the bomb was rigged to go off anyway, so the choice was between letting innocent people die or killing the Big Bad and presumably fewer innocent people. Thus, nuking Ra and the kids is arguably the lesser of two evils, but the Fridge Logic still pushes the act straight into Black and Gray Morality.
The morality of that still doesn't seem too gray to me. We only saw a handful of kids on the ship, versus a colony of thousands of men, women and children on the planet's surface. The good guys had no way to disarm the bomb, nor any other way to stop Ra. It was a decision made in the heat of battle. All things considered, the morality of the ending was as close to black-and-white as it could get without the good guys using some kind of phlebotinum of their own. If there's any Inferred Holocaust in the movie, it's simply from blowing up the ship in relatively low orbit.
I Was Just Joking: Meta-example: Jaye Davidson did not want to act again after The Crying Game, so he demanded a million dollar salary, thinking it would be unreasonable. He got it.
Leaving Audience: The audience at Daniel's lecture laughs at him and walks out after he admits that even though he is certain that the 4th Dynasty Egyptians did not build the pyramids, he has no ready explanation as to who did.
Lost Colony: The humans were originally transported from Earth by Ra.
Money, Dear Boy: Jaye Davidson wasn't very fond of acting and originally intended that The Crying Game would be the only film he ever made. However, the producers of this film were desperate to sign him on, and he agreed to do it for a million dollars; enough, he figured, to give him some financial security for the rest of his life.
Same for James Spader, who said in an Entertainment Weekly interview that he found the script "awful". Director Roland Emmerich did say that Spader did enjoy himself enough to be up for a sequel if it ever happens.
No Sense of Humor: Colonel O'Neil. Used for a joke in the television series, whose Colonel O'Neill actively distinguishes himself from the movie version.
Nuclear Option: They send O'Neill in because they know any nuclear deployment will be last ditch and suicidal.
Nuke 'Em: Daniel finds out about the plan, which would kill all the locals to seal the gate.
Shown Their Work: Kurt Russel gets a detail of military etiquette right that some people who actually were in the military often forget (or choose to ignore): you don't salute civilians. When the young rebels salute him, he clearly appreciates the gesture and wants to return it, but doesn't until his own men salute him so that he can salute them in return.
Ironically, his technology isn't very good in the context of his own civilization but it works wonders on human biology.
Tastes Like Chicken: The desert lizard thing the locals eat, according to Daniel. And you should see him trying to convey this to a group of people whose language he doesn't speak and who have never seen a chicken.
This was explained in the Expanded Universe as Ra's former host being an Asgard. Because their physiology is able to reject Goa'uld symbiotes, this was why he was dying when he came to Earth.
You Didn't Ask: The team are not happy when they find out that Daniel admits he can't get them home, meekly explaining that he'd been under the assumption that the tablets with the address to dial home would be located near the Gate.
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!
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