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Stargate is a 1994 science fiction action-adventure film directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich. The film is the first entry in the Stargate 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.
The production companies were Centropolis Film Productions, Carolco Pictures and Le Studio Canal.
Kurt
Russel
THE
PLOT
In 1928 at
Giza,
Egypt, archaeologist Professor Paul Langford, accompanied by his daughter Catherine, unearths cover stones (also called pyramidion or capstone) engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphs and other markings. Beneath he discovers a large metallic ring of unknown purpose.
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 determines that the hieroglyphs refer to a "stargate" which uses star constellations as spatial coordinates. He is then shown 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. Jackson joins O'Neil and his team (Reilly, Porro, Freeman, Brown, Ferretti, and Kawalsky) as they pass through the wormhole.
They emerge inside a pyramid on the arid desert planet of Abydos. Jackson attempts to locate the symbols required for the return journey through the Stargate but fails. 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 due to an amulet given to him by Catherine. 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 lands atop the pyramid structure, and his soldiers capture Ferretti and Freeman while killing Porro and Reilly.
Through hidden markings and discussions with the tribe, Jackson 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, who are revealed to be humanoids when they retract their 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 as an act of war, Ra declares his intentions to send the bomb 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 world-ending event. Ra then orders the human tribe to watch as he prepares to force Jackson to execute the others to demonstrate his power, 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 Stargate symbol needed for the return to Earth.
O'Neil and his remaining men aid Skaara in overthrowing the remaining overseers 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. O'Neil activates the teleportation system, killing Anubis and allowing Jackson and Sha'uri to escape the ship. O'Neil and Jackson teleport the bomb to Ra's ship, destroying the ship and killing Ra. 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.
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DEVELOPMENT
The film in its original cut and in the director's cut plays out in chronological order. When Devlin and Emmerich edited the film in the director's cut to tighten the narrative, they decided to add a scene at the very beginning of the film to show who the human host of Ra was before the aliens took him. Only Davidson's upper torso was filmed. The first scene was a combination of model shots and a set in Yuma, Arizona where Rambo III had been filmed. The scene of the excavation of the Stargate was also filmed in three days in Arizona. A golden look was achieved by filming near sunset. To keep within the budget, the producers put stick figures with cloth in the distant desert to appear as humans. The original Stargate was painted black, but it looked like a giant tire so it was repainted silver at the last moment.
Daniel Jackson's lecture on his theories was filmed in a hotel in Los Angeles. The scene was originally much longer and delved more into the theories that aliens had built the Egyptian pyramids, but it was trimmed for time concerns for the release. The scenes with O'Neil at his house were the first ones filmed with Kurt Russell; his hair was cut short afterwards. Russell requested his hair color to be brightened a little for the film. The fictional facility housing the Stargate was the largest set for the film, the former Spruce Goose Dome located in Long Beach, California. Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith joined the production to make all Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and spoken language as accurate as possible.
CAST
- Kurt Russell as Colonel Jonathan J. "Jack" O'Neil, a career U.S. Air Force Special Operations officer, who suffers a period of suicidal depression after his son accidentally shoots and kills himself with O'Neil's own pistol. When his commission is reactivated, he willingly enters the Stargate, fully aware that he will likely not survive to return to
Earth. In real life, Kurt Russell served in the
California Air National Guard and belonged to the 146th Tactical Airlift Wing, then based in Van Nuys. Russell turned down the role multiple times, until it was realized he was sent an early version of the script, so he was sent the completed shooting script and accepted it.
- James Spader as Dr. Daniel Jackson, an archaeologist and linguist whose theory that the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty did not build the
Great Pyramid of Giza is not very widely accepted. Actor James Spader was intrigued by the script because he found it "awful", but, after meeting director Roland Emmerich, got excited about it for he "realized that making this picture was going to be such an adventure that out of that would come an adventure on screen."
- Jaye Davidson as Ra, a powerful alien in human form. After voyaging across the universe, searching for a new host that could sustain his dying body, Ra took the form of a curious adolescent boy and enslaved the people of his planet
(Earth). Using a Stargate, he transported people from Earth to another planet until the
humans on Earth rebelled and buried their Stargate. Reluctant to continue acting after his debut in The Crying Game, Davidson took the role after his request for $1 million in pay was accepted. Stargate was the final major film for Davidson, who subsequently retired from acting. Kairon John plays the masked Ra and Dax Biagas plays the young Ra.
- Viveca Lindfors as Dr. Catherine Langford, the civilian leader of the Stargate project who was present when the Stargate was uncovered in Giza in 1928, where her father gave her the amulet depicting the Eye of Ra. Stargate was Lindfors' penultimate
film. Kelly Vint Castro portrays the young Catherine.
- Alexis Cruz as Skaara, the son of Kasuf and brother of Sha'uri. Skaara and his friends aid O'Neil and his men to fight Ra.
- Mili Avital as Sha'uri, the daughter of Kasuf. Kasuf offers Sha'uri to Daniel Jackson in marriage as a gift.
- Leon Rippy as Major General W. O. West, the commanding officer of the facility housing the Stargate device
- John Diehl as Lt. Colonel Charles Kawalsky, O'Neil's second-in-command
- Carlos Lauchu as Anubis, the captain of Ra's personal guard
- Djimon Hounsou as Horus, a personal guard of Ra
- Erick Avari as Kasuf, the local leader of the people living in a city near the Stargate, and the father of Sha'uri and Skaara
- French Stewart as Lt. Louis Ferretti, a member of O'Neil's team
- Christopher John Fields as Lt. Freeman, a member of O'Neil's team
- Derek Webster as Senior Airman Brown, a member of O'Neil's team
- Jack Moore as Senior Airman Reilly, a member of O'Neil's team
- Steve Giannelli as Lt. Porro, a member of O'Neil's team
- Rae Allen as Dr. Barbara Shore, a researcher studying the Stargate
- Richard Kind as Dr. Gary Meyers, a researcher studying the Stargate
MUSICAL
SCORE
The film's score was composed by David Arnold, played by the Sinfonia of London and conducted by Nicholas Dodd. It was the second motion picture score that Arnold had composed and his first major one. At the time of production, Arnold had recently started to work in a local video store in London.
Once hired, he spent several months in a hotel room working on the soundtrack, spending more time rewriting the music and improving it, during delays due to film companies trying to get the rights to distribution.
According to Arnold, "when I first read the script for Stargate, I knew what approach to take, which was to be as big and bold as possible," saying: "Every time there was an amazing sight, the characters would stand back and say, 'Oh my God!' But James would just smile and walk towards it. That was the basis for the Stargate score, moving forward with a sense of majesty instead of being frightened by what's around the corner."
FILMING
& SPECIAL EFFECTS
The mask of the pharaoh in the opening credits was made out of fiberglass and modeled in the workshop. The sequence used a motion-control camera to give better depth of field. The score of Stargate was composer David Arnold's first work on an American feature film. When Devlin and Emmerich first flew to London to meet with Arnold, they had not yet heard the score; hearing it, they felt "he had elevated the film to a whole other level". Arnold later interviewed the actors during principal photography, using the information to improve his score.
Jeff Kleiser and Kleiser-Walczak Construction Co.'s visual effects team of 40 people created the look of the Stargate. They used self-written image-creation and compositing software, as well as commercial digital packages to create the Stargate, the morphing helmets worn by Ra and the Horus guards, and the cityscape of Nagada. The morphing helmets were not true 3D but 2D elements, as Kleiser explained: "You shoot the character without the headdress, you shoot the character with a headdress. And then you have to go in and, and create all these little sections that you would then wipe off to
reveal - and it had to match up, the two things had to match up. I think the cameras were moving as well."
Footprints in the sand were often digitally removed. The creation of the wormhole, which was fully digital, was one of the biggest challenges in the making of the film. The ripples had to be digitally composited to appear accurate and realistic. Scanning lasers were lined up parallel to the gate to illustrate the amount of body that passed the surface of the Stargate plane. Afterwards, the parts of the body that had or had not yet gone through the gate (depending on the side of filming) were obliterated with a digital matte, a process that removes unwanted components from an individual frame or sequence of frames. The funnel of water that precedes the Stargate opening was filmed by discharging an air cannon into a water tank, as Jeff Kleiser explained: "We didn't know how much air pressure to set the cannon on but it went from 1 to 500 lb, so we said 'Let's try
100 - start the camera rolling and hit the thing.' It evacuated all the water out of the tank and onto the camera and everybody. It turned out that 1 lb was about the right amount."
The use of computers generating a big 3D storyboard allowed Emmerich to try out different shooting angles before settling on one angle.
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CRITICS & BOX OFFICE
The film received a warm reception from the public, grossing $71,567,262 at the United States box office and $125 million internationally for a worldwide total of $196,567,262. At the time, the film set a record for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a film released in the month of October. It would hold this record for four years until 1998 when Antz took it.
In its first run, Stargate made more money than film industry insiders predicted, considering the lukewarm reviews. Some regard it as Emmerich's breakthrough film. Stargate grossed over $16,651,000 in the United States during its opening week in October 1994. It was the 35th-highest-grossing film opening in the U.S. in October. From November 4–6, the film grossed around $12,368,700, declining 25%. It topped the box office for two weeks until it was dethroned by Interview with the Vampire. The film would continue this decline until the end of November, when the film garnered $4,777,198, or an 8.2% rise. The week before that the film garnered around $4,413,420, a 45.6% decline. In its last week playing theatrically, the film garnered around $1,170,500 in the U.S.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 53% based on 51 reviews, and an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's critics consensus states: "Stargate has splashy visuals and James Spader to recommend it, but corny characterization and a clunky script makes this a portal to ho-hum." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 42 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". At Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE), which assigns a normalized rating to mainstream critics, the film holds a score of 64 out of 100 based on 95 reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Most of the negativity focused on what was criticized as overuse of special effects, thinness of plot, and excessive use of clichés. Roger Ebert went so far as to say, "The movie Ed Wood, about the worst director of all time, was made to prepare us for Stargate". Ebert awarded the film one out of four stars and, even over 10 years later, Stargate remained on his list of most-hated films. Mike DiBella from Allmovie said, "There simply isn't enough spectacle in Stargate to make up for its many flaws." The film peaked at number one on the Billboard chart Top Video Rentals on April 29, 1995.
The positive reviews stated that it was an "instant camp classic" and praised the film for its special effects and entertainment value, with Chris Hicks of the Deseret News calling it "Star Wars meets Ben
Hur". Scott McKenzie from DVDactive said, "It's a shame because the world created around the Stargate is compelling and detailed. It's almost enough to make me want to watch the TV series, but not quite."
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REFERENCE
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