ViewGuide

Created Jan 22, 2009 10:42AM PST • Edited Jan 22, 2009 10:42AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   A cheesy, cliched and sometimes intelligent blockbuster, Stargate is the best Roland Emmerich film by a mile.

4. Acting

   OK 2.5

   Kurt Russel and James Spader are the outright stars, playing their roles as seriously as the film allows. Creepy Jay Davidson plays the androgynous Ra, whilst a host of totally unknown actors and actresses give the film an extra layer of cheese.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

   Kurt Russell and James Spader have to pretty much carry this movie, and they do just about enough to succeed. Russell’s hard-ass soldier with an emotional problem is a pretty naff role, but Russell makes it that much better simply being a bad-ass like he always seems to be. Spader plays the geek who saves the day and gets the girl, but again, as with Russell, a better actor than should have been chosen was chosen, and so Spader’s geek Daniel Jackson is that much more eccentric.

6. Female Stars Barely OK 2.0

   The actress that plays Sha’auri, Mili Avital, really doesn’t have much to do other than speak Egyptian and look longingly at Spader. Nice job if you can get it I guess – expressions and some ancient language, followed by a paycheck!

7. Female Costars Barely OK 2.0

   Adjusted accordingly.

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

   Jay Davidson, the bizarrely ambiguous star of The Crying Game, plays the antagonist Ra. As androgynous as you can get without feeling ill, and with a superimposed deep voice, this is the hammiest of all hammy, crappy villains – you will practically cringe every time he’s on-screen. The army grunts that make up the rest of the group act better than him, including a pre-3rd Rock from the Sun French Stewart.

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Roland Emmerich, he of Independence Day and The Day after Tomorrow, started his Hollywood career with this gem, and it’s actually the most intelligent film he has made that I’ve seen.

11. Direction Good 3.0

    Emmerich burst onto the scene with this film in the 90’s, and effectively so – the mix of sci-fi with Ancient Egypt is a film-maker’s dream, and the German director convincingly manages to convey this insane mash of genres with his trademark spectacle film-making. This is not to say that his terrible script and cliched moments throughout the film are in any way good also.

12. Play Pretty Bad 1.5

    The script for this film is so, so bad it’s good. Not withstanding the fact that half the Ancient Egyptian is not subtitled (an incredibly confusing move), the hackneyed and ridiculous dialogue between Jackson, O’Neill and the tribes is painful to watch. Emmerich obviously hadn’t learnt by Independence Day four years later, and this is a reminder to directors to get in professional scriptwriters rather than write their own damn films.

13. Music Great 4.0

    David Arnold, of James Bond soundtrack fame, wrote this amazing soundtrack in a hotel room whilst working in a video store. Listening to it, you would have thought it was composed and written in vastly different surroundings, and it’s a testament to the composer’s fantastic talent that the score is one of the best things about the film’s production.

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    The effects and vistas presented throughout the film are, as viewers would later come to associate with Emmerich, big, impressive and even jaw-dropping. Alas, time has allowed for some of the effects to date quite terribly, but the crowd scenes, desert setting and enemy ship are even today examples of fantastic visual storytelling. The journey from star system to star system again was more effective at the time, but nevertheless, the visual acumen of Emmerich’s film-making started with a bang here.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.1

    The film is what I’d consider a 12/PG-13. Just enough of everything to make it unsuitable for little kids, and a little scary in parts.

17. Sex Innocent 1.5

18. Violence Brutal 3.0

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Fantasy 5.0

    Inter-dimensional “gates” and the Egyptian empire described away as an alien God’s usurped kingdom. Fantasy all the way!

22. Circumstantial Fantasy 5.0

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0