StarGate turns 25 today!

I just wanted to type something about one of my all-time favourite movies. StarGate has a fascinating premise (the old aliens-built-the-pyramids idea is turned into a plot point); the tone, while fairly serious, still instils a sense of awe and adventure; and the scale borders on truly epic, with its large sets, vast swathes of Arizona desert, literal hundreds of extras, and David Arnold's majestic score.

James Spader is charming and interesting to watch as the enthusiastic Daniel Jackson, and Kurt Russell's suicidal Jack O'Neil is a great counterpoint to Spader's enthusiasm. Don't be fooled by Jaye Davidson's androgynous appearance - he is thoroughly creepy and grandiose as Ra. StarGate would prove to be one of Viveca Lindfors' last movies, and you can spot Djimon Hounsou in a minor part in his first big movie.

The plot point of the aliens not speaking English is a great touch, setting StarGate apart from sci-fi movies where aliens speak English, and it's not just gibberish, either: an Egyptologist, Stuart Tyson-Smith, was hired to not only write authentic hieroglyphs for the art department, but to also construct a derivation of ancient Egyptian to be spoken by the actors for authenticity. He would later do the same for Stephen Sommers' The Mummy movies.

I like to think that StarGate largely holds up 25 years later, save for some dated effects shots, namely the retracting helmets Ra's guards wear and the odd visible wire or cable on a model. These are also the first CGI retracting helmets seen in a movie, if I'm not mistaken; next would be Lost in Space, then the helmets worn by Iron Man, War Machine, and Thor seen in later MCU movies.

Is it perfect? No. The second half hour drags, even though nearly everything in it furthers the plot or fleshes out the world or characters, and whoever was in charge of dubbing in sound effects went nuts with the gun cocking sound effect even though the actors aren't seen to be operating their guns' levers.

It's no secret that writer-producer Dean Devlin has wanted to make StarGate a trilogy. As early as 1994, he was quoted in the official movie magazine as saying that "if the first one works, we will automatically make the second and third", and in a 1995 Sci-Fi Universe article, he said that he expected to be working on StarGate 2 after finishing what would become Independence Day. MGM, which acquired the franchise rights from Carolco, had other ideas, and while we got quite a bit of good television from that decision, I have wanted to see Devlin's original plans for a true cinematic sequel ever since I first read about them.

Despite being a solid hit on release, setting an October opening weekend record and grossing $196.6m worldwide against a $55m budget in 1994 when it was considered 'high-risk', carving out its own little franchise with tie-in merchandise and a series of sequel comics and novels, and marking Devlin and Emmerich as a moviemaking team to watch out for, it's awfully tempting to call StarGate underappreciated these days, because I've seen it dismissed as 'a dumb Roland Emmerich movie' or, more pertinently, it's merely seen as the progenitor to the long-running TV franchise (mention StarGate and more often than not people talk about the TV series), when it is an interesting and entertaining movie in its own right.

Now, where is that 25th anniversary 4K Blu-ray release?

Submitted October 28, 2019 at 11:44AM by Vanquisher1000 https://ift.tt/2WkLDJe