Stargate: The Movie - 2 Disc Ultimate Edition [Blu-ray]

Finally got my hands on the original stargate movie on blu-ray, they seem hard to find off and on. Love this movie and the series. Too bad its in widescreen though.

Great movie

Stargate and the TV Shows SG1, Atlantis, Universe were the best of SciFi imo. Amazing concept, amazing execution that spawned all the lore and stories for 15 years and the best 15 years of weekly viewing from 1997-2011.Stargate the movie is well acted, well directed and has an amazing concept. Kurt Russell was terrific as was James Spader who stole the show. Along with the very lovely girl who was honestly innocent and just breathtakingly captivating in her innocence and her smarts and determination. She was the perfect woman to Dr Jackson and being a first time actress acted resolutely and well against seasoned actors.The whole concept of Stargate was not yet fully established nor details provided on the background of Ra or his uprising mentioned or where he came from, his species etc. (TV shows go in this fully) but it was so well done. Some of the lines are just iconic "Show him", "Banniwei", "It's your Stargate", "we're going home" etc.Amazing movie. For me, this is in my top 5 movies of all time.Rating: 10/10

After watching this, and then being sufficiently interested to watch the ensuing TV show Stargate SG-1, I came back to see this old Stargate movie and was pleasantly surprised to see it's better than I remember.In some ways, I like it even more than the Stargate SG-1 series as it manages to maintain a sense of wonder, mystery, and seriousness throughout the film. Stargate SG-1 did a great job of maintaining a sense of wonder and mystery, but was riddled with jokes that spoiled the mood for me, and lets be honest... some types of episodes in that show were getting pretty tiresome by the time you reach the end of the series (such as replicators episodes and the comedic episodes). But SG-1 had its good points as well (the mythological richness, exploration, and adventure I experienced as I watched the SG-1 team unravel the Goa'uld story was top-notch).And that brings me to why I love this old Stargate film so much in retrospect having watched the Stargate SG-1 TV series: it maintains that sense of mythological richness, mystery, adventure, and excitement, without the more disappointing aspects of SG-1.For those reasons, I highly recommend people watch this again if they were fans of the Stargate SG-1 television series, because I think if they are anything like me they will develop a renewed appreciation for this older Stargate film after they've finished watching Stargate SG-1. In that sense, this film got better for me when I rewatched it after having seen Stargate SG-1.That said, you might want to watch this first if you haven't seen Stargate SG-1 yet.

It is interesting to watch the 1994 "Stargate" film from the perspective of the spin-off television series, "Stargate SG-1," which is on its way to becoming the longest running science-fiction series of all-time. As was the case with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," we have an okay film that becomes a first-rate television series.Once upon a time, 1928 to be exact, archeologists discovered a strange disc buried in the sand of Egypt. The next thing we know we are in the present, and Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader), is having his colleagues walk out on him as he explains his radical theory about the ancient Egyptians and their language. But then a mysterious old woman (Viveca Lindfors) gives him an invitation to travel to a secret military base buried beneath the Rocky Mountains to do translations. Jackson has nothing else to do, so he shows up, immediately corrects all the mistakes and figures out all the mysteries, and the next thing we know he is being shown the Stargate. He then joins a military group led by Colonel Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell), who has been recalled back to active duty to find out where you go to when you step through the Stargate. The answer is you go to the other side of the known universe where you discover a desert planet where an alien who was known as Ra (Jaye Davidson) by the ancient Egyptians is lording it over the local humanoids.This movie is mostly eye candy. Being shot on a desert planet means that it has lots of scenes shot in bright sunlight, which really is unusual for a science fiction film, where they tend to be dark and murky. "Stargate" brings back the same sort of ideological tension between scientists and the military that we enjoyed during the 1950s with films like "The Thing From Another World," as Jackson is all excited to explore a brave new world and O'Neill is looking for an excuse to blow everything up with the nuke in the big suitcase.Truth about this movie is that it the ideas are a lot better than than the execution. The idea of the Stargate is a nice way of circumventing the laws of physics that scoff at warp drive and other narrative necessities to a good space yarn. It is not a far leap of logic to get from this one Stargate to the idea that there are others, and there is also the nice corrollary that this system explains why there are so many humans scattered throughout the galaxy where they all live on oxygen breathing planets.Beyond that the television series picks up on the Jackson-O'Neill dyad, reducing it to the idea that one is an academic and the other is a warrior and never the twain shall meet. Of course Richard Dean Anderson's O'Neill is even quirkier than Spader's Jackson, while Michael Shanks's Jackson starts off even more humorless than Russell's O'Neill. But it all works, so why quibble? The original "Stargate" ends up being more about style than substance, which is why it is so interesting that the television series could find something substantial upon which to build a television series.If you have yet to see "Stargate" in any version, then you are strongly urged to proceed immediately from this 1994 film to the first season of "Stargate SG-1." Even if you find this film tedious, just get through it and move on to the good stuff. You could not pass go and head directly for season one of "Stargate SG-1," but you really need to know the players and some of the rules of the game before hand.