My wife and I are continuing to introduce our daughters to some classic sci-fi films, and this week we went for strange portals and space-faring Egyptian gods. The girls thought it was cool as hell.
Stargate (1994) was written by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the duo behind Independence Day and Godzilla, and portrays an alternate history in which the pyramids of Ancient Egypt were built by aliens who possessed human bodies and posed as gods. After recovering a portal left behind by the now-forgotten overlords, Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (David Spader) and traumatised soldier Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell) lead a team to a desert planet where descendants of Egyptian culture still toil under the rule of the sun god Ra. Outnumbered and outgunned, it’s up to Jack and Daniel to overthrow Ra and save two worlds.
Watching this again, I was struck by the pacing of the story. It’s a very slow burn film, taking its time to flesh out Jackson, O’Neil, and the secret of the stargate itself. Once the soldiers travel to the new world, the story starts to unfold, and it’s not until the halfway mark that the villains of the piece finally make their appearance. This is a deliberate move – the power and technology of the aliens is always hinted at, so by the time the pyramid-sized spaceship looms over the horizon the audience is well aware of the threat they represent. This kind of slow burn runs the risk of letting the energy escape from the story, but the individual scenes of the film are surprisingly short, touching on the vital plot points and merely hinting at the larger complexities of the world. Another writing point to note is that once the aliens arrive, the writers reset the audience’s mental clock by stopping to outline the alien’s backstory, re-orienting the plot goals of all the characters to counter the villains.
Character development is secondary to the story, given the changing plot goals, and there’s no dramatic speeches or grand revelations. This is ok; the motivations of Jack and Daniel are clearly laid out so their growth by reacting to the increasingly desperate situations feels organic, with Jackson in particular changing from a helpless nerd to a saviour of the people.
Stargate is all about building up to the final payoff, and the climax doesn’t disappoint. All the usual finale tropes are here – the daring plan goes wrong, there’s a countdown to destruction, and the main characters must face off against the villain. What’s interesting here is that victory is not achieved through skill in battle, but by the learned knowledge of how the portals work. A stargate initiates the story, and it’s a stargate that turns the tables on Ra at the last second.
As I’m sure you know, Stargate spawned a sprawling television universe that retconned a number of the original movie elements. The TV series stargates are not intergalactic portals, and the alien gods, now known as Goa’uld, were changed from X-file style greys to parasitic worms. Jackson and O’Neil were tweaked, but the original awesomeness of ancient gods as alien invaders still carried on the spirit of the original movie.
Have another classic you’d like me to review? Leave a comment below!
Leave a Reply