Stargate (movie)

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Stargate
Directed by	Roland Emmerich
Produced by	Dean Devlin Oliver Eberle Ute Emmerich Mario Kassar Joel B. Michaels Ramsey Thomas Peter Winthers
Written by	Roland Emmerich Dean Devlin
Starring	Kurt Russell James Spader
Music by	David Arnold
Cinematography	Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Editing by	Derek Brechin Michael J. Duthie
Released date(s)	28 October, 1994
Running time	121 min. (original) 128 min. (special edition)
Preceded by	None
Followed by	"Children of the Gods" (in the SG-1/Atlantis canon)
View Transcript	Stargate - Transcript

The entire Stargate franchise began with the feature film Stargate, released in theatres in 1994 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film is directed by Roland Emmerich and written by Emmerich and Dean Devlin, starring Kurt Russell, James Spader and Jaye Davidson.

Synopsis

Dr. Daniel Jackson is called in by Catherine Langford and the US Air Force to solve the mysteries of the device, Stargate, with which the Air Forces scientists have been struggling with for years. When they manage to activate the device it opens a wormhole to another planet. Jackson and a team of soldiers, led by Col. Jack O'Neill are planned to go through, Catherine gives Daniel her necklace, which has an icon of Ra. O'Neills son recently shot himself by accident, and he is given a nuclear bomb to bring along to the other side and use it to destroy any threat to Earth. They arrive at a pyramid at the desert planet Abydos, which has its own gate, but they find out that Jackson can't dial them home like they all thought and they are stuck there. They encounter locals who think them to be sent by their ruler Ra because of Jacksons necklace. Daniel is, unknown to him at first, married to the Abydonian Sha're, daughter of the local leader Kasuf. After exploring the settlement they are captured by Ra, who just arrived in his ship. After being brought before Ra O'Neill tries to escape, but it only leads to the death of Jackson. He is brought back to life by a sarcophagus, and Ra reveal his plan to Jackson: Having deduced where they came from by the necklace, he will enhance the nuclear bomb with the element naquadah and send it to Earth, which will cause massive damage. They are all about to be executed, but a group of Abydonians help them escape. They find the address to return home, and convince the rest of the local populace that Ra is not a god as he claims. Together they assault the pyramid on which his ship has landed, Sha're is killed, but Daniel manages to use the ships sarcophagus to revive her. Ra's forces are overpowered and he takes off in his ship. O'Neill and Jackson find the bomb in the pyramid. Realizing that it can't be deactivated, they use the ring transporters in the pyramid to send the bomb aboard Ra's vessel, obliterating him. The team returns home, but Jackson decides to stay behind live the rest of his days on Abydos with his new wife.

Notes

• Stargate was a combination of two films: Necropol: The City of the Dead and another unnamed film.
• Stargate was originally planned by the creators to be a film trilogy.

Goofs

• Revealing mistakes: Kawalsky's rank insignia is 'Lieutenant Colonel' when he is referred to as 'Lieutenant' throughout the film.
  Crew or equipment visible: The camera crew is clearly visible reflected in the dark sunglasses O'Neil and the rest of the team wear in the beginning of the movie. This is most noticeable in the Blu-ray release of the movie due to the higher resolution video.
• Continuity: Shadow sizes and directions in the desert scenes.
• Continuity: You can see 'Kurt Russell' 's shirt is already cut before the "kid" scratches him on the back in the last fight scene.
• Continuity: When Daniel and his team first enter the city, his pendant is tucked under his shirt, but in the next shot out of his shirt, then in the next shot, tucked back into his shirt.
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: As Colonel O'Neil tries to defuse the bomb, Daniel's mouth doesn't move when he asks "How much time do we have left?" and O'Neill's doesn't move when he answers "forty-five seconds."
• Revealing mistakes: In the first attack on the village, after the leader is knocked down by an explosion, a ship swoops down from the sky and the model's cables and guide wires can be seen.
• Continuity: The pace at which the bomb's timer ticks down changes several times.
• Revealing mistakes: When Jackson and O'Neil are brought before Ra and the guards knock them to their knees, the guard that "hits" O'Neill completely misses his knee and he does not fall until the staff is already past his knee.
• Revealing mistakes: When the transport rings are coming down on the last warrior and Ra screams, his fillings are visible.
• Continuity: When Jackson first picks up the "dead" Sha'uri, her legs are exposed. A brief moment later, they are covered.
• Continuity: Blood on Anubis' face when he is decapitated by the transport rings.
• Continuity: Cloud patterns changing constantly, and sometimes no clouds at all, between shots during last battle scene.
• Continuity: When O'Neil arms the bomb, he flips the toggle switch up from its downward position. Later, when he tries to disarm the device, the switch is down again and he once more flips it up. The bomb's switch could have been broken or designed to return to that position.
• Revealing mistakes: When the team first exits the pyramid, Jackson presses his hands against the "solid" stone wall as if testing it for stability. The wall can be seen moving when Jackson presses it.
• Revealing mistakes: During the desert battles, crowds of immobile mannequins are visible in the background.
• Revealing mistakes: When O'Neil kills one of the guards in front of Kasuf, the guard had previously been beating the workers with his staff. Although the slaves are shown to be rigid in the battle scenes, here it wiggles and recoils after striking the worker, obviously made of rubber so as not to injure the actor playing the worker.
• Continuity: When Daniel is explaining the six point theory on the white-board, the shape of the cube and the six points vary noticeably between shots.
• Continuity: When Dr. Jackson and company encounter the guards in the pyramid, he is not wearing his glasses, however, in the next shot after the guard shoots at the others outside, we see Dr. Jackson with his glasses on.
• Continuity: When O'Neil is thrown into the watery prison cell, the second-in-command's dog tag jumps about between shots.
• Miscellaneous: John Deihl's character is continually referred to as "Lieutenant Kawalsky", however, his rank insignia is that of a "Lieutenant Colonel". A lieutenant colonel is usually addressed as "Colonel", and never a "lieutenant" since the Lt. Col rank is four steps higher than a lieutenant.
• Continuity: When Daniel Jackson reaches the other end of the Stargate for the first time, his face is all sweaty. In the next shot his face is completely dry.
• Continuity: Right before the team goes into the Stargate for the first time, Catherine gives her necklace to Daniel. Shortly after, there is a shot of Catherine watching them go, and you can clearly see the necklace still around her neck.
• Revealing mistakes: The three "moons of Abydos" seen above the pyramid are obviously images of Earth's moon, merely re-sized and rotated relative to each other.
• Continuity: The symbol for Orion that doctor Jackson identifies using the newspaper changes. In earlier shots it does not look like the symbol Jackson draws but when he goes over to the cover stone to compare the symbols they suddenly match. (Orion's arm and bow appear to make the symbol easier to recognize).
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Despite the amount of machinery used to activate the gate on Earth, none was needed on Abydos. The Stargate's ring spins like a combination lock. Once the correct symbol is aligned, the mechanism locks it in and the ring is twisted to the next one. All the machinery in the silo was to ensure that no one had to turn the ring by hand.
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: It is clear that the cat's mouth does not move the last time the cat meows on-screen.
• Revealing mistakes: When the team first gets to the village from the mine camp, Brown takes a picture of the town. If you look closely, you can see that the shutter on the camera is still closed.
• Anachronisms: In the opening scene, depicting a car from the 1920s, the sound effect of the horn is obviously of a dual-note horn from a modern car.
• Revealing mistakes: The candy bar that Daniel gives to the village leader isn't melted but still crunchy even after hours spent in the desert in his shirt pocket and being dragged through the sand by the yak-like creature.
• Revealing mistakes: When Ra looks out into the desert and states "The caravan is coming", we see the caravan moving in the distance, approaching the two obelisks near the pyramid. The shadow of the obelisks is at about 10 o'clock (with the caravan at 12). The scene then shifts momentarily to seeing the caravan approaching the obelisks from much closer to the obelisks. The shadow of the obelisks now point down, towards 7 o'clock.
• Factual errors: Dr. Jackson at one point refers to the writing as "hieroglyphics," which no self-respecting Egyptologist would ever do. "Hieroglyphic" is an adjective. An Egyptologist would call the writing either "hieroglyphs" or "hieroglyphic writing."
• Miscellaneous: In the introduction to O'Neil's character, just before the camera pans to him sitting on the bed, you can see a diploma of some sorts next to his son's picture. The name reads "Tyler O'Neal".
• Revealing mistakes: when one of the recon team are first dragged before Ra's Sarcophagus, just as the two servant guards kneel, it can be seen that the rectangular section is open on the sarcophagus.
• Plot holes: When the villagers assist in the Earth group's break for freedom, they seem to have quickly gained an understanding of how sub-machine guns are operated, without anyone's help. While the principle of "point and pull the trigger" is pretty obvious and could quickly be discovered, there is the issue of the safety catch, which would no doubt have been enabled while the weapons were stored. Linked to that, it would appear that O'Neil's soldiers all stored their weapons with the magazines inserted and the guns cocked - something no soldier with any sense would do with a weapon being transported. However, Kawalsky had to get a gun from a storage box, load and cock it despite the fact that they were already loaded and cocked in the cases.
• Continuity: When Jackson's suitcase is thrown down the hill near the pyramid, the contents are on the ground, but the suitcase clearly has not been opened.
• Miscellaneous: In the subtitles, whenever they refer to an Egyptian god, they capitalize the "g". This is an error because it does not mean the Abrahamic God of most modern religions.
• Visual: Apparently the true form of Ra is a serpentine parasite. But when the 'alien from within' is shown in the scene where the bomb is aboard Ra's ship seconds away from detonation, he shows the face of his host before the human Ra. (Of course, this film was made well before the ideas of the SG-1 series were formulated)
• Continuity: When Jackson enters the lab with the cover stones, he is carrying his luggage. In the next shot of him, his luggage is nowhere to be found.