Stargate (Extended Cut) [Blu-ray]
Stargate (Extended Cut) [Blu-ray]
Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 01/08/2008 Run time: 21 minutes Rating: RBefore they unleashed the idiotic mayhem of Independence Day and Godzilla, the idea-stealing team of director Roland Emmerich and producer-screenwriter Dean Devlin concocted this hokey hit about the discovery of an ancient portal capable of zipping travelers to “the other side of the known universe.” James Spader plays the Egyptologist who successfully translates the Stargate’s hieroglyphic code, and then joins a hawkish military unit (led by Kurt Russell) on a reconnaissance mission to see what’s on the other side. They arrive on a desert world with cultural (and apparently supernatural) ties to Earth’s ancient Egypt, where the sun god Ra (played by Jaye Davidson from The Crying Game) rules a population of slaves with armored minions and startlingly advanced technology. After being warmly welcomed into the slave camp, the earthlings encourage and support a rebellion, and while Russell threatens to blow up the Stargate to prevent its use by enemy forces, the movie collapses into a senseless series of action scenes and grandiose explosions. It’s all pretty ridiculous, but Stargate found a large and appreciative audience, spawned a cable-TV series, and continues to attract science fiction fans who are more than willing to forgive its considerable faults. –Jeff Shannon
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Great
This movie is awesome, a great story with action and comedy, without the unnecessary bad language and sex scenes.
4 Stars Decent and Original Sci-Fi Movie
I much prefer this movie over any of the “stargate” TV series spin-offs. I like the originality of the story, the special effects, and some of the character interaction.
I give it 4 stars because, as is often the case, Sci-Fi movies suffer from having excellent plots and acting.
Neverthless, if you’re a Sci-Fi fan, this movie should be in your collection.
Recommended!
5 Stars A under-appreciated science fiction classic
What a treat it was to introduce my wife to the original Stargate movie after we had already begun buying and watching the boxed sets from the television series. We enjoyed it immensely. I’d always wondered why this movie didn’t get the same appreciation as other classics such as Star Wars, Terminator, and maybe even Dune (mini-series). It is interesting to see how the original characters brought to the screen by Kurt Russell and James Spader were carried forward by Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks.
Amazon’s review calls this ‘hokey’ and that’s a shame. It’s just a lot of fun and shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than Star Trek or any of the other films in its genre. In fact, I appreciated that they didn’t try to caption the other world denizens when they spoke their language; their faces were expressive enough to convey meaning. I always liked James Spader’s passionate sincerity.
The Blu-ray re-production is nicely done, retaining its film grain and theater feeling. I would have liked some extra features but I’m appreciative that it has been released in this format.Stargate (Extended Cut) [Blu-ray]
5 Stars A Great Sci-Fi Movie That Launched a Great Series! Highly Recommended
“Stargate” is one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies and this release is well worth having. The picture quality is not quite as good as hoped, but it is certainy more than acceptalbe.
No plot spoiers from me. The story centers around Daniel Jackson (James Spader), an Egyptologist who’s “crackpot” ideas have issolated him from his academic peers, and Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell), a very troubled Special Forces Colonel, as they unravel the mystery of the Stargate and deal with hostile aliens (later known as the Gould). Ironically, several of the of the actors who appear in the movie also show up in the SG-1 series, but not Spader or Russell.
This is very good Sci-Fi and should be watched if you are planning on seeing Stargate SG-1 - The Complete Series Collection or the spin-off Stargate Atlantis Seasons 1-4.
Highly Recommended!
3 Stars Extended cut, and that’s about it
This is one of my favorite movies. When it first came out in theaters, I saw it multiple times, and I’ve owned it on VHS, laserdisc, multiple DVD versions, and now this Blu-ray edition. I was excited to see this movie get the Blu-ray treatment, too, until I watched it. While the menus are nice and very well done (other than the same 7 measures of music repeating every 20 seconds), it’s quickly obvious the studio just slapped this release together without giving much thought to it.
The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t a very good remastering. The cover says, “1080p / Beyond High Definition”, but the movie is anything but that. While it is slightly better than the various DVD releases I have, the picture isn’t as good as on the laserdisc version. The film was not cleaned up much (if at all), and often had a very grainy look to it, though the blacks (often a problem on DVD releases) were better, with much less anti-aliasing and pixelation going on.
My biggest beef with this release, though, is the lack of any special features other than an audio commentary track and Spanish subtitles. Since they obviously didn’t use up all the space for the movie, they should have at least included the special features found on the DVD releases. This kind of movie begs to have “how we did this” special features, and it would have been easy to include them as they were already released on the various DVDs.
The movie is a 4 1/2 to 5 star film, but this release just doesn’t do it justice. I suggest waiting for a Blu-ray release which has a little more effort put into it.
Filed under: Blue Ray Movie Reviews