Roland
Emmerich’s Stargate (1994) is the movie that launched a thousand ships, or
at least several hundred episodes of popular cult television. As the initiator of the durable (though now
dormant…) Stargate franchise, the film sets up a universe that, broadly-speaking,
is based on the once-popular Von Daniken Chariots of the Gods (1968) notion
that “God” is an ancient astronaut…an alien.
In
movie-based terms, Stargate is the film that landed Emmerich on the map in A-list
Hollywood. Although Emmerich had already
directed Universal Soldier (1992), Stargate quickly proved a massive,
world-wide hit, and paved the way for the director’s busy career, which has
included such films as Independence Day (1996), Godzilla
(1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 10,000 BC (2008), and 2012
(2010).
Frankly,
I don’t regard the bulk of Emmerich’s oeuvre in very positive terms. Despite the bad reviews it received on
release, Stargate likely dominates
even today as the best Emmerich sci-fi film in the aforementioned pack. In part
that’s because the film’s opening act is so engaging, and it builds up a real
sense of anticipation, mystery, and excitement.
Not
that a number of critics would agree with that assessment.
Roger
Ebert awarded Stargate one star (out of four) and derided the film’s use
of “action movie clichés.” Hal Hinson at
The
Washington Post felt that the film degenerated by the end into “routine
pyrotechnics,” and The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mike
LaSalle termed the film “imitation Spielberg” that “crashed
inside 20 minutes.”
Probably
all of those comments are accurate to some degree. The movie is indeed girded with action movie
clichés, it does resolve with fireballs and pyrotechnics, and Stargate
plays, at points, like low-grade Spielberg.
The film’s first half-hour is also undeniably its strongest.
And
yet, in spite of these admittedly on-the-mark criticisms, Stargate is a hell of a
lot of fun. .
In
part, that fun emerges from the cast’s dedicated and sometimes herculean efforts. James Spader plays the comedy and wonder aspects
of the tale wittily, while Kurt Russell – acting
as though he’s starring in a hard-boiled John Carpenter or Howard Hawks
adventure – brilliantly essays the role of laconic but tortured Colonel
O’Neil.
And
although Jaye Davidson (The Crying Game [1992]) remains a
decidedly unconventional choice for a primary villain -- being delicate and androgynous rather than physically menacing in the
conventional sense -- the very unpredictability of his physical presence
adds to the film’s sense of menace, as well as the villain’s unique decadence
and obsession with youth and beauty.
Davidson’s Ra is bizarre, but also incredibly sinister.
I
remember when I first screened Stargate in the theater in October
of 1994. There was much talk that it was “the next Star Wars.” That kind of chatter proved to be hyperbole,
and yet Stargate is a film that, somehow – and indeed a lot like Star Wars
– is much more than the sum of its individual parts. The heroic theme music by David Arnold, the
knowing performances from Russell and Spader, and the film’s strong action
chops combine with the intriguing Von Daniken presence to render a film
experience much more buoyant and enjoyable than it surely could have been.
In
other words, Stargate works on a crowd-pleasing, blockbuster level, and in
this case, that’s more than enough. The
film has been assaulted as being stupid on many occasions, but in some fashion Stargate
is very canny in how it manipulates the audience and audience
expectations. It’s a film about guns
winning the day, and yet it also delivers an anti-gun message, underneath. It’s
a film that reveals the Ancient Astronauts, not mankind, achieved wonders in our
antiquity, and yet the film also showcases modern man confronting those
astronauts and proving his worth.
In
short, Stargate boasts a great premise, some terrific production
design, capable actors who are clearly having fun, and enough sci-fi gadgetry
to, well, sturdily launch a franchise. I
should probably add that the film absolutely plays like high-art in comparison
to underwhelming and even laughable Emmerich fare such as 10,000 BC or 2012.
“I
created your civilization. Now I will destroy it.”
Down-on-his-luck
linguist and translator Daniel Jackson (Spader) is recruited by the Air Force
to help translate an ancient Egyptian artifact, one unearthed in 1928, near the
Great Pyramids. He determines that a
series of symbols on the artifact represent not letters in an alphabet, but
coordinates in outer space. The artifact
is actually a stargate: a door connecting Earth to a world on the other side of
the known galaxy.
Jackson
and a team of soldiers, led by Colonel O’Neil (Russell), travel through the
stargate and find a barren desert world where human slaves toil to build a
pyramid for a “God” called Ra (Davidson).
With the help of a beautiful local, Sha’uri (Mili Avital), Jackson
learns Ra’s story. He is a ruthless alien being who survived his race’s
extinction and went out into the galaxy seeking a way to extend his life.
Ra
found that way on ancient Earth by possessing the body of a young man, and
setting himself up as a God. The
primitive people were amazed by Ra’s technology, and fell in line. But a group of slaves rebelled against the
alien king’s authority, and Ra’s stargate to Earth was buried and forgotten, so
he could no longer return.
Now,
Ra – who possesses the power to resurrect
the dead – plans to punish Earth for that long ago rebellion and its recent
incursion. O’Neil has brought a bomb
through the Stargate to destroy any threats, and now Ra plans to send it
back…to destroy the planet.
Jackson and O’Neil must not only find a way home now, they must help the humans of
this faraway planet defeat Ra, and save the Earth in the process.
So you think you've solved
in fourteen days what they couldn't solve in two years?
Erich
Von Daniken’s published works about “ancient astronauts” represented a major
fad in the 1970s, even though the books were widely debunked and ridiculed by
the scientific establishment. Von
Daniken’s theory suggests that artifacts and constructs of the ancient world --
such as the Pyramids or Stonehenge --
are the works of advanced, star-faring aliens because humans of those historic eras
did not possess the technology or skill to build them.
Primitive
man thus perceived the builders – aliens
– as “Gods.” Von Daniken interpreted
stories from the Old Testament (like Ezekiel’s description of a ship of angels
in the Old Testaments) as being literal stories of alien encounters and incursions.
Von
Daniken’s ideas have found significant currency in science fiction television and cinema over the decades since Chariots
of the Gods was published. Battlestar
Galactica (1978) and The Phoenix (1982) both traded on
the idea of ancient astronauts and “brothers of man” in space. More recent films such as Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and
Knowing (2009) also developed these Von Daniken-esque notions. The upcoming Prometheus (2012) also
appears as though it will mine this idea rather thoroughly: that aliens visited
man in antiquity and helped shape his future and his very world.
The
appeal of these stories (and thus the appeal of Stargate) rests on twin concepts. First, that we are not alone in the universe.
And secondly, that we are intimately
connected with the alien races out there, existing beyond the stars. Meeting these alien races, we are faced with the
resolution of a mystery that connects our most distant past to our immediate future. The promise is that we will join our cosmic
brothers one day, and with a full understanding of where we came from. In other words, the key to knowing who and
what we really are rests on contacting the ancient peoples who set our culture
in motion. In space, then, we find our
both our origin and our ultimate destination as a species.
The
first twenty-three minutes or so of Stargate, -- the film’s strongest -- tread deeply into such ancient mysteries. Who
built the pyramids? Why were they built?
And what can we learn from the Ancients?
As
Stargate
opens, Dr. Jackson is asked to translate the symbols that will activate a
stargate, the doorway to the other side of the known universe. The film lands the audience on Jackson’s side
almost immediately, as he is ruthlessly mocked by his narrow-minded colleagues. Then, the audience shares Jackson’s excitement
as he translates the alien language inscribed on a 10,000 year old alien device.
This
part of the film races by with intrigue, humor and excitement. The sense of
anticipation, of wonder, is palpable. Spader proves especially strong here as the
audience surrogate and as a committed detective. Jackson’s obsession with “knowing” becomes
the audience’s obsession thanks to Spader’s enthusiastic portrayal, and his
self-deprecating sense of humor. A lot of this could seem like dry, dull exposition, but Spader makes the material riveting to watch, and colors it with his character's idiosyncrasies.
Once
the Stargate
is discovered and activated, however, the film gets mired down in
familiar-seeming desert terrains and the like. After the visually-amazing “ultimate trip” to
another planet, it’s a little disconcerting to come down to Earth, literally,
and see familiar sand dunes and sky. And
watching Jackson and O’Neil encounter a city of primitive slaves is not exactly
heart-pounding.
But
by the time the first hour is over, Ra arrives and the film picks up again. Emmerich
makes the most of the film’s unseen menace at this juncture. In particular, he shoots an underground siege
absolutely perfectly by utilizing P.O.V.
shots. Members of O’Neil’s team are
picked off one at a time, and we don’t see the hunters. Instead, the camera creeps up on the
unsuspecting soldiers, and then the film cuts to their bodies being dragged
off-screen by unseen creatures. It’s
almost as though we’ve shifted gears into a horror movie, and the grunting,
inhuman sound effects of Ra’s soldiers augment the idea of a terrifying,
unknown presence. Even the final,
momentous reveal of these minions remains quite powerful. Looking at these glowing eyes, metal-headed
soldiers, it’s easy to see how man could misinterpret them to be Gods.
When
Ra is finally introduced, he isn’t at all what we expect. But in an action film, that kind of surprise can
be a good thing, indeed. We expect a seven-foot
tall monster -- a Darth Vader, perhaps
-- and are instead presented with a wispy, lithe, uncomfortable presence in
Jaye Davidson. Ra lives inside a human
form, so it’s appropriate that we feel ambivalent about his appearance. We
don’t know how to process him, at least not initially. Is he male? Female? Some strange combination of both? Impressively, Jaye Davidson conveys a sense
of both uncomfortable beauty and absolute malevolence at the same time. He may look beautiful on the surface, but his
eyes and movements pulsate with a brand of wickedness that suggests the alien’s
true nature.
Again,
there’s something to be said for choosing an atypical direction in a
spectacular like Stargate. The filmmakers
might have cast a bulky strong-man as Ra, but their selection of the slight, whisper-thing
Davidson unhinges matters a bit. The
story becomes almost instantly more unpredictable because there is a sense in
watching Davidson that we don’t know what he is, literally, and therefore what he will do. On the few occasions that his alien features
shine through his skin, we get a sense of the diabolical Ra’s inner ugliness.
Action
films made today depend a great deal on quick cutting and herky-jerky,
hand-held camera moves to transmit a sense of urgency. However, the nearly twenty-year old Stargate
plays as refreshingly retro during its accomplished action scenes. The film
builds a sense of pace and immediacy through cross-cutting, first between two opposing scenes, and then,
finally, between three. The approach
generates a strong sense of momentum leading into the climax, and it’s
carefully-wrought. It helps too, no
doubt, to have the muscular, steely-eyed Russell fronting an action scene. No one in the film is made out to be a
superhero, and there’s something refreshingly human and tenacious about the way
Colonel O’Neil just dukes it out, punch-after-punch, with Ra’s muscle-bound
minion. I admire this scene because it
doesn’t rely on special effects (except for the macabre punctuation…) or even
wild (but improbable) stunts. Instead, it’s
just an old-fashioned slug-fest.
I
would like to comment again -- as I have
in the past – about at what an absolutely great leading man Russell
is. His O’Neil is distinctly different
from his Snake Plissken, Jack Burton, or MacReady in The Thing. There’s a kind of retro, non-showy grittiness
in Russell’s performance here. The film
features a number of scenes during which he stands back in the corner of a
frame and just silently smokes a cigarette, an act which is pretty unusual in
mid-1990s cinema but which reminds one of Humphrey Bogart or some other leading
man of yesteryear.
In
these moments, Russell quietly dominates, and all eyes reflexively turn to
him. Even if the script doesn’t exactly
give the actor emotional layers to explore, Russell’s taciturn approach
suggests a contemplative mind at work, a man silently watching and reacting to
everything happening around him.
Perhaps
Stargate
seems less-than-impressive mainly in several canned, off-the-shelf
moments. O’Neil’s subplot about losing a
son is all-too-familiar in this genre, for example, but Russell’s sincerity in
vetting it makes it less-than groan-worthy.
His expressive, guilt-ridden eyes go a long way towards making the
commonly-seen trope seem powerful and new again.
Not
so strong, however, is the moment -- rendered
in over-the-top slow motion photography -- when one of the rebellious slave
youngsters goes down in a blaze of glory, and the last we see of him is a
tumbling army helmet. It feels like a
moment that would be right at home in Team America: World Police (2004).
Another
moment – a trade of salutes between the
former slaves and O’Neil – also plays as eminently cheesy and way over-the-top. You’ve got to wonder why a film that can foster
a sense of wonder (in the first twenty-minutes), transmit a strong sense of
menace (at the hour point), and convey strong action (at the climax), feels the
need to go schmaltzy and sentimental in conclusion. I suppose it’s just Hollywood: a land where
implication isn’t enough and you must be spoon-fed “emotions” so you know
EXACTLY how to feel all the time. It’s
insulting.
Despite
such missteps, Stargate is nimble in its special effects (especially the depiction
of the stargate itself) and boasts a nice through-line about technology. Technology
doesn’t necessarily make one superior, at least in the long run, the film
seems to state. Here, the slave
community comes together to stop Ra (just as slaves did on Earth, in
antiquity), and the idea that gets conveyed is that we succeed when we work
together.
Although
I have distinct memories of the late Gene Roddenberry complaining about the
ancient astronaut theory because it failed to take into account human
intelligence and human ingenuity, Stargate actually possesses a
commendably optimistic streak too.
Humankind here is ready to confront its former gods. Primitive superstition is behind us.
Of
course, on the other hand, both Ra and the military men of Earth still attempt
to dominate situations through violent means: with bombs, guns and other
weapons of destruction. We may not
literally be slaves anymore, but even as advanced as we are, we’re still slaves
to our destructive (and self-destructive) impulses.
Stargate is never quite smart enough to
square that circle.
Still,
this is one of those “big” sci-fi movies where it helps if you allow yourself
to get swept up by the bigness of it all.
The bigness of the soundtrack. Of
the performances. Of the (high) concept. Of the desert vistas. And of the
special effects.
If
you do let yourself succumb to all of that impressive eye candy, Stargate
is a film of wonder, humor, imagination, and not a small degree of charm.
