Stargate (1994)

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I grew up with this movie as bad a$$. Now rewatching in 2018. Maybe too many movie ripping off this movie, but this movie is a slow sci fi movie. Eye glasses to protect them from the sand. Foot steps u never see in the sand tell then. Lady's combing the hair fast. U give a cig, that's wasting a cig or 2. 1 hour and 10 min tell it gets interesting. Shooting the sky wasting bullets.

First, I do have to feel sorry for the people who considered Stargate "typical" or "old fashioned". Makes me wonder what kinds of lives they lead.Stargate didn't have a major book to emulate, it is pure imagination...and some darned good imagination at that. Emerich and crew created not only a new world for us, they created a whole new Universe that spawned one of the most successful series ever...it does not get much better than that my friends...The story itself is straight forward scifi, with little bits of background stories woven in to keep the flavor interesting...a few might call it fairly slow moving, and frankly it is, but I think they had to do that to tell the whole story...I liked it just the way it was produced, and became an avid fan of the series that followed...Yup, it is a classic movie, by anyone's standards...

Having laid the foundation of a nexus of television spin-offs thenceforward (persisting two and a half decades and ongoing, with a possible reboot in gestation), Roland Emmerich's filmic progenitor is de facto less a hardcore Sci-Fi adventure than a thinly veiled propaganda piece of colonialism, which nominally transports a contingent of earthlings (all American soldiers bar one scientist) into a terra incognita through a wormhole generated by Stargate, a mysterious instrument disinterred in Egypt. A classic pair of brain and brawn, Daniel Jackson (Spader, when he is personable to a fault), an Egyptologist and Colonel Jack O'Neil (Russell, sporting a neat crew-cut) takes the leads, what they discover is a desert planet inhabited by Ancient Egyptians, enslaved by Ra, the God of Sun (an epicene Jay Davidson in his second and last film role before retiring from the showbiz altogether), a big question mark should be alerted for the ethnic semblance here, which can be readily construed as a crass fable boasting USA's heroic inference of a less developed nation here on earth, liberating its downtrodden people and debunking the truth of their God (or any totalitarian figure), tellingly, the film's atheist and scientific stance looks promising, but soon a sweeping whiff of smugness and self-congratulation will swamp everything and tenacious to dissipate. As it turns out, the real identity of the so-called Ra, is an alien hosting a human body (thousands of years before he hijacked early humans to this remote planet and started his draconian rule), and what he presides over is a pretty tinpot reign (in spite of his stately pyramid-shaped spaceship), not only is he doomed to be vanquished by a team of earthlings in the end (yes, O'Neil follows the order, and surreptitiously brings a portable nuclear bomb on board in case of contingency, this is very American), but also he is clearly in short measure of both materiel and personnel in the first place (a dozen underlings and three laser-shooting aircrafts, that is all), not to mention the sole victim subjected to his seemingly almighty puissance is after all, one of his own incompetent guard.Among the extraterrestrial hoi polloi, due focal points are projected to a rebellious youngster Skaara (Cruz) and a beauteous Sha'uri (Avital), who is bequeathed as a wife to Jackson by her father Kasuf (Avari), the leader of the tribe, whose awakening-to-rising route is a well-trodden but insipidly crafted one. If one must single out an asset from the entire enterprise, it could only be the set-up of the titular Stargate, an abstruse device can literally open portals to every nook and cranny of our cosmic universe (depending on which group of coordinates one employs), however, Emmerich is not a Sci-Fi polymath but a workmanlike skin-scratcher, so the end result is proximate to anyone's skeptic forecast.

Like so many other movies this one has been politicized in some of the more negative reviews because...well, I really can't say,I honestly have no clue what Stargate has to do with international politics...at all.Ostensibly it's because it is the American Military meets folks still living like its Ancient Egypt and kill their god that critics are objecting to on IMDb......Forgetting, of course, that their god enslaved them all.I am further to the left than most people I've met and...I just don't buy that this has ANYTHING to do with politics.I think this flick was pitched as "Indiana Jones meets Star Wars" and I am 100% certain that it was made to be Indiana Jones Meets Star Wars.And of course they can't name it that so they called it "Stargate" And I am going to review it like it was meant to be reviewed.This film is Indiana Jones meets Star Wars. It was made to be a hit, in fact, it should have been a far bigger hit than it turned out to be.I mean, just the concept makes me want to watch it all over again...It's the same concept as "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" except they remembered that Indiana Jones has no place in the world of Aliens.In fact I would have even loved the TV show if, you know, all the Alien worlds they visited didn't look a lot like Canada.All you have here is a really fun action adventure sci-fi movie that doesn't try to make any statements. It is just fun.Stop putting politics into pulp trash.