Fans of the Stargate Sg-1 TV Series who havent seen this movie will instantly notice that all of the characters with the exception of Skarra are all played by different actors and that Tealc, Samantha Carter, and General Hammond arent even in the movie. But after about ten minuets you dont even notice the difference.
Giza, 1928 an archaeological dig discovers a huge ring covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics and some undecipherable inscriptions.
Scientists have been unable to decipher what the ring is for or what the inscriptions say.
So the owner of the ring enlists Daniel Jackson (James Spader) a well-known linguist who has recently been fired from his job for his out there theories on who actually built the Egyptian pyramids.
After correcting a fellow linguists translation of the hieroglyphics Jackson discovers the ring is called a Stargate. He then spends weeks trying to decipher the unreadable markings that were on the cover stones. Purely by luck he discovers they are star constellations and that the markings create an address that can be dialled out.
When he tells the owner and the military (who have conveyed the Stargate as classified) about the address they dial it out and the Stargate explodes into life with a wall of water.
So a team is sent through the gate to see who and what is on the other side. The team is lead by colonel Jack ONeal (Kurt Russell).
When they emerge on the other side of the gate they discover a civilisation very close to Earths Ancient Egypt, but not only that Jackson realises he cant get them back because the symbols on the Abydos gate are completely different to those on the gate back home.
After spending a slightly different night with the locals, a huge pyramid shaped spaceship lands on Abydos and its soldiers have an all out fire fight with the rest of the t eam who stayed behind whilst ONeal and Jackson explore.
Finding out there is a threat on this side of the Stargate ONeal puts his secondary orders into practice to find any hostiles and deal with them.
After setting up the nuclear device Ra takes it and decides to send it back to earth with a shipment of the mineral the Stargate is made from making it a hundred times more powerful. So its now up to Jackson and ONeal to get the bomb back and decipher the dial out sequence to get back home and seal Earths Stargate before Earth is destroyed.
Being a special edition the movie is the Directors cut containing over thirty minuets of unseen footage. (Total running time 124 min)
The special features arent anything to shout about you get the obligatory Trailer and subtitles, the promo reel is basically a best bits of the movie backed with classical music. The audio commentary is by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, which give you an insightful look at how the movie was made.
The picture quality is anything you would expect from a DVD but what is cool is that you get a choice of 5.1 and DTS, which sound amazing.
If you are more bothered about special features then this may not be for you but if like me you see them as a bonus on top of a great film then Stargate: Directors Cut is one for you.
4/5