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Line 8: In 1928, a [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum\|strange circular device]] is uncovered in Egypt. Cut to the present day, where it somehow ended up in possession of the United States military. With the mind of the unorthodox, [[The Worm Guy\|absent-minded archaeologist and linguist]] Daniel Jackson (James Spader), they manage to figure out how to use that ancient device. What they learn is that this "Stargate" opens a wormhole, leading to a desert planet A recon team led by Colonel Jack O'Neil ([[Kurt Russell]]), and with Jackson along to reopen the gate from the other side, finds an Egyptian-style pyramid and primitive human society. While Jackson is struggling to identify the correct symbols to get the team back to Earth, the [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] Ra (supposedly the same entity as the Egyptian god of the sun) appears on a humongous pyramid-like starship, using the alien pyramid as a landing pad. Declaring his intentions to eliminate [[Attack of the Eye Creatures\|the Eartheans]], it forces the team to cooperate with the natives to free them from Ra's tyrannical control. In the end, O'Neil destroys Ra's ship [[Deus Ex Nukina\|with a nuclear bomb]] and leaves via the Stargate with the rest of the team -- {{spoiler\|except for Daniel Jackson, who chooses to stay with his new wife Sha'uri (Mili Avital) and live}} [[Happily Ever After]].}} Well until ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' came along. Line 14: Originally, two feature film sequels were planned, but they were scrapped by director Roland Emmerich in favor of ''[[Independence Day]]''. A lot of back story was written for the movie and the supposed sequels, which was eventually released in the form of several tie-in novels. However, when the sequel series ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' was handed to Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright, the new producers threw out most of this behind-the-scenes backstory, while keeping most of the actual on-screen [[Canon]] intact. The TV series it spawned was very popular and went on for 10 seasons - it is the third-longest-running ~~scifi~~sci-fi series after ''[[Doctor Who]]'' and ''[[Star Trek]]''. The planet where this movie takes place was named "Abydos" in the series, so if you are new to this movie and haven't seen the series and you see that name listed on this page or a subpage, it means the planet in this movie. This film also has significance, in that it was the first movie to get its own website. {{tropelist}} * [[Absent-Minded Professor]]: Daniel. * [[Accidental Marriage]]: Sha'uri is given as a gift to Daniel. After he turns her down sexually, he thinks this is the end of it. Once he knows their language though, he hears Skaara refer to him as her husband and finally puts two and two together. Line 24 ⟶ 23: * [[Aliens Speaking English]]: Notably [[Averted Trope\|averted]] -- the '''only time''' in the entire Stargate franchise that this trope is not in effect -- with Ra and the local humans speaking an Ancient Egyptian dialect throughout the film. Interestingly, the language isn't subtitled until Daniel learns how to speak it. * [[All Animals Are Dogs]]: The Mastadges. * [[Always Save the Girl]]: {{spoiler\|Daniel, who is the only one who can get the others home, goes up onto Ra's ship to revive Sha'uri. Meanwhile, tons of other people are dying and the clock is ticking on a nuclear device that is going to kill them ''all''. But it's perfectly reasonable for Daniel to take the time out to get his girlfriend back.}}. ** {{spoiler\|In all fairness, he did ''ask'' Jack to stop the bomb before he left, he just didn't know the thing couldn't be shut off anymore!}}! * [[Ancient Astronauts]]: Ra. And the Pyramids were, indeed, landing platforms for spaceships. * [[And Starring]] "And Jaye Davidson" (Hehe plays Ra). * [[Applied Phlebotinum]] * [[Artistic License Astronomy]]: Line 33 ⟶ 32: * They're also all in alignment (all on the same side of the planet at once) - the tidal forces on that planet would be ''insane''. You can't - or at least shouldn't - use constellations for coordinates for a transportation system that can exist for thousands of years. Stars ''move'' - not much during our own lifetimes, over the course of thousands of years. * The TV series uses this as a [[Hand Wave]] to explain why they never found any other gates until they thought to make the dialing computer take stellar drift into account. Apparently, the DHD network as shown in the series does this automatically, so the symbols wind up being more like a phone number than coordinates. Most galaxies don't have names - and certainly not ones "on the other side of the known universe"." ** The clear "map" they have the tracker move across when they open the Stargate makes no sense at all - the first issue of all being that it is [[2-D Space\|2-dimensional]]. * [[Artistic License Military]]: At one point, O'Neil calls Kawalski, his second in command, "Lieutenant". Not only that, he's credited as "Lieutenant Kawalski" in the credits. The problem? He's wearing silver oak leaves throughout the entire movie, making him a Lieutenant Colonel. While the film's treatment of the military is far from accurate or flattering, that's actually a pretty easy mistake to make. After all, he's a "lieutenant colonel.". It can be presumed that filmmakers Emmerich and Devlin were simply unaware that the appropriate abbreviation of the rank "lieutenant colonel" is not "lieutenant", but rather "colonel.". * [[Background Halo]]: Ra invokes this trope with a classical Sun Disk. * [[Badass Bookworm]]: Daniel Jackson. Line 44 ⟶ 43: * [[Berserk Button]]: To O'Neil, untrained kids handling firearms. ''Understandably''. * [[Brand X]]: In the film, the gate is located inside a Cheyenne Mountain analogue. ''SG-1'' ironically [[Retcon\|Ret Conned]] it to actually be Cheyenne Mountain. * [[Chekhov's Gift]]: The lighter. {{spoiler\|There is a reflection when he gets it, and later they reflect the sunlight to let Daniel know they have a plan.}}. * [[Chekhov's Gun]]: Two of them -- the pendant and the bomb. ** The pyramid with the three moons over it,... {{spoiler\|turns out to be exactly the symbol Daniel is looking for.}}. * [[Collapsible Helmet]]: One of the most iconic examples, with the scene where the Horus Guards, [[The Dragon\|Anubis]] and Ra reveals their faces. * [[Conspiracy Theorist]]: Daniel Jackson. * [[Conveniently -Close Planet]]: Averted -- the ~~earthlike~~earth-like planet is in a completely different galaxy. ** Played straight in the TV series -- the location was [[Ret Conned]] to within our galaxy, and the closest planet to Earth with a Stargate. * [[Conveniently Precise Translation]]: The term "Stargate". Line 58 ⟶ 57: * [[Death Seeker]]: Jack O'Neil. * [[Deus Ex Nukina]] * [[Didn't Think This Through]]: Daniel just assumed the cover stone with the symbols needed to dial the Stargate back to earth would be nearby when they came through. He also didn't know what the seventh chevron (the point of origin) was going to be. (see also [[Idiot Ball]] below). ** The fact that he didn't tell anyone this ''really'' pisses off the guys he came with. * [[Distant Prologue]] Line 65 ⟶ 64: * [[Empty Quiver]]: Ra plans to send the nuke back through the Stargate. * [[Energy Weapons]] : The [[Boom Stick\|staff weapons]] of Ra's personal guard. * [[Engaging Chevrons]]: The [[Trope Namers\|Trope Namer]]. * [[Enhance Button]] * [[Eureka Moment]]: Daniel finally figures out that the symbols aren't hieroglyphs, but star constellations when he sees a picture of Orion on a guard's newspaper and recognizes the shape as one of the symbols. Line 71 ⟶ 69: * [[Floating Head Syndrome]]: See the poster on this page. * [[Get On With It Already]]: Ra and his buddies only show up about an hour into the movie. * [[God-Emperor]] / [[God Guise]]: Ra uses alien technologies to pose as one. * [[Grand Theft Me]]: Ra, as a dying alien, stole a human's body to achieve immortality via his technology. * [[The Greys]]: Ra's original form. ** This was explained in the [[Expanded Universe]] as Ra's former host being an Asgard. Because their physiology is able to reject Goa'uld symbiotes, this was why he was dying when he came to Earth. * [[I Choose to Stay]]: {{spoiler\|Daniel.}}. * [[Idiot Ball]]: As Siskel & Ebert point out in their review, the leaders of the Stargate program take Daniel at his word that he can bring them back...''[[You Didn't Ask\|without asking him how.]]''. So, of course, once on the other side, when they ask Daniel to take them back, he says he can't because they don't have the coordinate symbols and that he just assumed they'd be there. * [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]]: The Stargate. * [[Inferred Holocaust]]: So all those children on Ra's ship got nuked? Sure, the bomb was rigged to go off anyway, so the choice was between letting innocent people die or killing the [[Big Bad]] and presumably fewer innocent people. Thus, nuking Ra and the kids is arguably the lesser of two evils, but the [[Fridge Logic]] still pushes the act straight into [[Black and Gray Morality]]. The morality of that still doesn't seem too gray to me. We only saw a handful of kids on the ship, versus a colony of thousands of men, women and children on the planet's surface. The good guys had no way to disarm the bomb, nor any other way to stop Ra. It was a decision made in the heat of battle. All things considered, the morality of the ending was as close to black-and-white as it could get without the good guys using some kind of phlebotinum of their own. If there's any [[Inferred Holocaust]] in the movie, it's simply from blowing up the ship in relatively low orbit. The [[Novelization]] has the children [[No Endor Holocaust\|escape the ship at the last moment]] though. * [[I Was Just Joking]]: Meta-example: Jaye Davidson did not want to act again after ''[[The Crying Game]]'', so he demanded a million dollar salary, thinking it would be unreasonable. He got it. * [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Jack O'Neil is a right ass for most of the movie, but [[Freudian Excuse\|it's only because his son died]]. Line 95 ⟶ 90: * [[Prepare to Die]]: Ra is no longer amused...! * [[Protected by a Child]]: Ra has a whole group of children trained to do this. * [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]] --: Jack is sent specifically {{spoiler\|to stay behind and detonate the bomb}} if something goes wrong. They know he has [[There Are No Therapists\|suffered tragedy]] and has [[Death Seeker\|nothing to live for]].▼ * [[Recycled: the Series]]: ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' * [[Shown Their Work]]: Kurt ~~Russel~~Russell gets a detail of military etiquette right that some people who actually were in the military often forget (or choose to ignore): you don't salute civilians. When the young rebels salute him, he clearly appreciates the gesture and wants to return it, but doesn't until his own men salute him so that he can salute ''them'' in return.▼ ▲* [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]] -- Jack is sent specifically {{spoiler\|to stay behind and detonate the bomb}} if something goes wrong. They know he has [[There Are No Therapists\|suffered tragedy]] and has [[Death Seeker\|nothing to live for]]. ▲* [[Shown Their Work]]: Kurt Russel gets a detail of military etiquette right that some people who actually were in the military often forget (or choose to ignore): you don't salute civilians. When the young rebels salute him, he clearly appreciates the gesture and wants to return it, but doesn't until his own men salute him so that he can salute ''them'' in return. * [[Sickly Neurotic Geek]]: Daniel. His allergies act up when ''traveling''. He's apparently allergic to ''sand'', considering the lack of vegetation on Abydos for there to be pollen from. * Could just have sensitive sinuses in general. Thus, not only are they getting sand in them, they're drying out. ''Ow''. * [[The Smart Guy]]: Daniel. * [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]: Ra. Did anyone say "Goa'uld"? Hmm... Line 106 ⟶ 100: * [[Tastes Like Chicken]]: The desert lizard thing the locals eat, according to Daniel. And you should see him trying to convey this to a group of people whose language he doesn't speak and who have never seen a chicken. * [[Tastes Like Friendship]]: Daniel, basically when meeting ''anything''. * [[Tele Frag]]: The movie's [[Stargate Verse/Awesome\|Crowning Moment Of Awesome]]. See [[Pre -Mortem One -Liner,]] above. * [[Teleporters and Transporters]]: The Stargate and the not-quite-''[[Star Trek]]'' ring transporter. * [[Tempting Fate]]: "It's OK, it has a harness! It's domesticated!" Line 115 ⟶ 109: * [[The Worm Guy]]: Daniel Jackson embodies this trope. * [[You Didn't Ask]]: The team are ''[[Understatement\|not]]'' happy when they find out that Daniel admits he can't get them home, meekly explaining that he'd been under the assumption that the tablets with the address to dial home would be located near the Gate. {{quote\| '''Kawalsky''': ''"Find it?"'' What do you mean ''"find it?"'' You didn't say about ''finding'' anything?!~~<br />~~ '''Daniel''': Well, I assumed the tablet would be here, right here?~~<br />~~ '''O'Neil''': You ''assumed?!''~~<br />~~ '''Kawalsky''': You're a lying son of a bitch! ''knocks Daniel over'' You didn't say a word about '''FINDING ANYTHING!''' }} * [[You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!]] {{reflist}} {{Stargate Franchise}} [[Category:~~Stargate~~{{PAGENAME}}]]▼ [[Category:Science Fiction Films]] [[Category:Films of the 1990s]] [[Category:Hugo Award]] ▲[[Category:Stargate]] [[Category:Film]] [[Category:Stargate Verse]]