Stargate (film)

Movie
German title	Stargate
Original title	Stargate
Country of production	USA , France
original language	English
Publishing year	1994
length	Theatrical version: 116 minutes Director’s Cut: 130 minutes
Age rating	FSK 12
Rod
Director	Roland Emmerich
script	Dean Devlin Roland Emmerich
production	Dean Devlin Oliver Eberle Joel B. Michaels
music	David Arnold
camera	Karl Walter Lindenlaub
cut	Derek Brechin Michael J. Duthie
occupation
Kurt Russell : Col. Jonathan "Jack" O'Neil James Spader : Dr. Daniel Jackson Viveca Lindfors : Catherine Langford Erick Avari : Kasuf Alexis Cruz : Skaara Jaye Davidson : Ra Mili Avital : Sha'uri John Diehl : Lieutenant Colonel Kawalsky Leon Rippy : General WO West Djimon Hounsou : Horus French Stewart : Lieutenant Ferretti Richard Kind : Gary Meyers, Ph. D. Rae Allen : Barbara Shore, Ph. D. Nick Wilder : Taylor, the site manager
chronology
Successor  → Stargate - Command SG-1

Stargate is an American science fiction film by the German director Roland Emmerich from 1994 . The main roles are played by Kurt Russell and James Spader . The film opened in German cinemas on March 9, 1995.

In the film, a group of military personnel and an archaeologist travel through a wormhole to a distant planet with the help of an ancient gate found in Egypt . There they help to free an enslaved people from a false god .

The story of the cinema is continued in the television series Stargate - Kommando SG-1 , Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe . There is also an animated series called Stargate Infinity .

action

The Egyptologist Dr. Daniel Jackson is laughed at and avoided by experts for his theory that the Egyptian pyramids are considerably older than previously assumed. He is already sitting on the street without a teaching position when the US military approaches him and asks him for help. Jackson is taken to a secret military facility that contains an artifact found in 1928 on the Giza Plateau in Egypt . As the translation of the inscriptions on the cover stones turns out, it is a so-called Stargate , apparently a portal built by aliens , which allows travel to other star gates located in other galaxies with practically no loss of time.

In his further linguistic analysis of the covering stones, Dr. Jackson identified other characters that were previously considered untranslatable as constellations of stars, which serve as the starting and destination addresses for the stargate. With the help of this address it is possible to activate the gate and establish a connection to a counterpart on a desert planet in this alien galaxy.

Jackson and a military team under the command of Colonel Jack O'Neil, traumatized by the accidental death of his son, are sent through the stargate on a scouting mission to the planet. In the event that they discover a threat there, they should destroy the Stargate with an atom bomb that they have brought with them. When contacting the locals, the team learns that the people who live there are being oppressed and kept in slavery by the Egyptian sun god Ra . As Daniel finds out, it was Ra, an alien, who gave the primitive Egyptians of ancient times the technology and knowledge of pyramid building and astronomy and rose to be god above them. He used the earthly star gate to supply his mines with slaves from earth - until about 2000 BC. The people of Egypt rebelled against him. They killed his overseers and buried the stargate in the desert. Ra never returned to Earth.

The people of the earth are warmly welcomed by the locals and make friends with some of them. However, when they return to the stargate, there is a first confrontation with Ra, in which the team is captured. After being helped by their new friends to escape, they manage to stir up a revolt and overthrow the false god. While Ra tries to escape into orbit with his spaceship, Jackson and O'Neil can teleport the atomic bomb onto his ship, which destroys it and Ra.

At the end of the film, Dr. Jackson, who fell in love with Sha'uri, a local woman, made the decision to stay on the strange planet. The other members of the team, however, return to Earth.

Differences from the TV series

• The series Stargate - Kommando SG-1 , Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe differ from the film in many new content and characters. In contrast to the film, other gods of antiquity appear in the series as parasitic aliens that humans use as hosts (see pre-astronautics ), including not only Egyptian gods , but also gods from the Asian, African, Greek, Native American and Middle Eastern mythology . These are confronted in the series with the Asgard , who appear as Norse deities and as protectors of humans.
• Ras Planet is not named in the film; the name Abydos is only introduced in the series and its position is moved from the fictional Kaliangalaxy to the Milky Way.
• In the film, Daniel Jackson's Stargate is only referred to once as such in the German dubbing and is then only called Sternentor during the course of the film . In the series, the terms Stargate and Star Gate are used alternately.
• Another difference is the spelling of the name O'Neil . In the series it is written with two “l”, in the film, however, only with an “l”.
• The Stargate Center is located under the fictional Creek Mountain in the film, and under the real Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado in the series .
• The name of O'Neil's late son is Tyler, but in the series it is Charlie.
• The two stargates have different symbols in the film, but in the series the first 38 symbols (constellations) are always the same, except for the 39th symbol (the place of origin).
• In the film Daniel Jackson only presents his thesis that the evidence for the construction of the pyramids during the first dynasties was falsified and that the structures must be older. But since he cannot name the real builders, a spectator mocks him by mentioning aliens. In the series, however, it is shown in some episodes that Jackson claimed at the time that the pyramids were built by aliens and thus lost his job and recognition as a scientist.

Awards

• In 1994 the film was nominated for the Saturn Award in the categories of Best Science Fiction Film , Best Costumes and Best Special Effects , but only got the award for Best Science Fiction Film . The award for the best special effects, however, went to True Lies , the one for the costumes to Interview with a Vampire .
• In 1995 he was awarded the BMI Film Music Award and the Golden Screen and received the Universe Reader's Choice Award from Sci-Fi Universe Magazine for Best Science Fiction Film , Best Special Effects in a Genre Motion Picture and Best Supporting Actress in a Genre Motion Picture .
• He was also nominated for the Hugo in the Best Dramatic Presentation category and the International Fantasy Film Award in the Best Film category.

Remake

In May 2014, MGM, in cooperation with Warner Bros. Pictures, announced that Stargate would be remade. Roland Emmerich will also direct the new edition. This is intended as the start of a film trilogy. Dean Devlin will take over the production again.

In November 2016, the plan for the remake was abandoned. In an interview, producer Dean Devlin stated that too many studios owned the rights to the original film to shoot the film in a way that would please everyone. Stargate Origins, a 10-part web series, has been broadcast since the beginning of 2018 .

useful information

• The Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith was hired to reproduce the Egyptian language in the dialogues as faithfully as possible .
• The Goa'uld language that is used here is actually Urkoptic or Proto-Coptic, although the pronunciation of the individual words has to be questioned. Since the Egyptian hieroglyphs did not denote vowels, this process is very difficult to trace in detail in the pre-Coptic period. The language was therefore filled with reconstructed vowels (depending on the country a or e, y or i, j to e or i) and in some cases it differs considerably in German, English and Egyptian pronunciation. The Germans refer to Wolfgang Schenkel, the English more to Egerton. It is also used in the movie "The Mummy" and, according to rumors, even in "Lord of the Rings".
• When Dr. Jackson reads the hieroglyphs on the wall, he claims that if you know the vowels, their language is easy to learn. Similar to Arabic, the vowels were not written down in the ancient Egyptian script, which is why the sound of the language is difficult to reconstruct. When he understands the rules by which the different vowels are used, he is able to understand and speak the language.
• The very first design of the "Stargate" was completely black. However, Roland Emmerich did not like this as he claimed it looked like a large car tire . So it was sprayed silver and redesigned a bit to resemble a huge rotary dial .
• Jaye Davidson's dislike of the attention he received after The Crying Game (1992) made him reluctant to accept the role of Ra. He didn't want to simply turn down the offer, so he made what he expected to be an unacceptable request of a million dollars. However, this was accepted and he appeared.
• The glowing eye effect that Ra has was added in post-production because the test audience didn't find it strange enough. This trait was continued in Stargate Command SG-1 (1997) as an identifier for humans adopted from the Goa'uld, the name of his alien race.
• James Spader admitted that he starred in the film for the money as he found the script to be terrible. He said: “Acting, for me, is a passion, but it's also a job, and I've always approached it as such. I have a certain manual-laborist view of acting. There's no shame in taking a film, because you need some fucking money. “ Acting is a passion for me, but it's also a job, and I've always approached it as one. I have a certain artisanal understanding of acting. There's no shame in making a movie because you need the damn money.
• The horse-like creatures on the planet were actually real horses with outer robes draped over them. Dogs were used for the recordings far away.
• This film marks the debut of French Stewart and Roger Tils last film.
• The Stargate is a system designed to open a wormhole . A wormhole is a hypothetical type of space travel, also called the "Einstein-Rosen Bridge", named after scientists Nathan Rosen and Albert Einstein . According to them, the wormhole should be able to unite two distant points in the universe by changing the laws of space-time to get from one point to another in a short period of time. The same concept was used in Contact (1997).
• Ironically, one man in Jackson's lecture jokingly speculated that men from Atlantis built the pyramids . Although this was wrong, Atlantis later became the center of Stargate Atlantis and the "Men of Atlantis" were determined to build the Stargate.
• Djimon Hounsou , James Spader and Kurt Russell later each played villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe . Honsou played Korath in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Spader played Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), and Russell Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).

Web links

Commons : Stargate  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Stargate in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Stargate in the online film database
• Stargate atRotten Tomatoes(English)
• Stargate on Filmmusikwelt.de
• Article about the film in the German Stargate Wiki
• Comparison between the original theatrical version and the "Directors Cut" on Schnittberichte.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dt. VHS Title: Stargate - The Gateway to the Universe
2. ↑ It's official! Roland Emmerich will stage the Stargate reboot , accessed on May 30, 2014
3. ↑ Announcement on mgm.com ( English ) May 29, 2014. Accessed May 31, 2014.
4. ↑ The Stargate Reboot Trilogy is on hold , accessed April 30, 2017
5. ^ Martin Fitzenreiter: European constructions of ancient Egypt - The case of Egyptology. In: Thomas Glück, Ludwig Morenz (ed.): Exotic, Wisdom and Ancient. European constructions of ancient Egypt. Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-9392-7 , p. 327.
6. ↑ Audio commentary on “Director's Cut” DVD
7. ↑ [1]