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Stargate
Writing-producing-directing team Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin cross-breed matinee pulp with militaristic sci-fi to create this untaxing romp about a device that transports a gang of Americans to an ancient Egypt-style alien world
Before their smash Independence Day, filmmaking team Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (the former directs, they both write, the latter produces) selected another clutch of fantasy and sci-fi notions to blend into a movie. The result fits into Hollywood production somewhere between Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Mummy and Aliens, with bits of Contact and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The similarity to the latter two, more meditative pieces of sci-fi, comes with the Stargate itself, a piece of alien hardware dug up by archaeologists in 1920s Egypt that, it transpires, has the function of whisking people down rollercoster space-time tunnels to other locations in the universe. It is down-on-his-luck maverick Egyptologist Dr Daniel Jackson (Spader, doing specky geek), who cracks the Stargate's hieroglyphic code (he "solves in 14 days what they couldn't solve in two years"). Soon he's accompanying a gang of US grunts led by Col Jack O'Neill (Russell, doing buzz-cut soldier) through the intergalactic meniscus - "a doorway into a world they know nothing about". What they find is a desert resembling ancient Egypt, run by a cruel feudal overlord who is none other than Ra (Davidson, The Crying Game. After this he pretty much left movie-making)! The Egyptian god in question, however, turns out to be an ancient alien who is possessing the body of a boy he nabbed in 8000BC. Overcoming their bewilderment, Jackson, O'Neill and the soldiers stir up revolution, and the rag-tag, enslaved locals (actually descendants of other humans imported through the Stargate) are soon fighting off oppression. Made on a middling blockbuster budget of $55 million, Stargate is actually a very striking film. The Egyptian theme allows for plenty of inventive design for starters, but what is even more fun is the film's use of traditional special effects. Made moments before Hollywood's wholesale adoption of digital effects, the use of mere water to create the Stargate effect is great, plus the models (flying pyramid spacecraft, alien fighters) are charmingly physical. The story itself sags in the middle, but Spader and Russell have enough charm in these typecast roles to keep it trundling on to the all-action final act. |
