Hacker Cinema
Stargate
1994 · Film · 121 min
Directed by Roland Emmerich
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
An interstellar teleportation device, found in Egypt, leads to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship the god Ra.
16 positive3 negative3 mixed31 neutralfrom 53 commenters
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56 comments on Hacker News
> Perhaps I have gone to great lengths to prove something studio executives already know: the average viewer is not scrutinizing every frame for telltale glimpses of the Toronto skyline.
Or you know, even knows what the toronto skyline looks like.
I used to live in vancouver, tons of films are shot there. Unless they are pointing the camera at a famous landmark, i probably can't tell. If anything the forest is more of a give away then the city (if it looks like an alien planet in star trek ToS, then its LA. If it looks like an alien planet in stargate then its vancouver)
Good! Did you really need more Stargate? Just watch the classic movie, and 200+ episodes of SG-1 and then 100+ episodes of Atlantis. Let these franchises rest.
Most likely his ancient astronaut theory was the inspiration for the entire Stargate franchise. Of course to make the movie believable they had to give Jackson a more academic background than von Däniken had.
The valuable thing about the standard Egyptological pronunciation is that people can sit around a table, read a text, and understand what is being read without having to learn a strange new phonetic inventory. How close it sounds to the real thing is irrelevant for what it's used for. Anyone using phonetics to look at how Egyptian changed over time isn't using standard Egyptological pronunciation to do so. While Stuart Tyson Smith's reconstruction of an Egyptologist-approved dialect of Egyptian for the Stargate movie is pretty fun, it's not like we have any native speakers we can communicate with.
Ha! Didn't know that was a Stargate thing. I've only seen a few episodes.
It's a real-world thing, which is probably where the Stargate writers got it. Precise satellite positions used to be determined by ground stations sending up a pseudorandom stream to an analog transponder and correlating the returned signal to get a delay. Multiple stations give you accurate positions. The USAF had about a dozen stations worldwide for that, and pictures of the locations, from Arctic to tropical island, were a common wall decoration where I worked. Central control was at the now-demolished Blue Cube [1] at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley back then, and moved out to Colorado Springs decades ago.
It's like GPS in reverse. Satellites of that era were rather dumb. The satellite end used is pure analog. The clocks and compute were on the ground. Satellites were told what to do in great detail by the ground, via a labor-intensive process which looked way too much like 1960s NASA well into the 1980s.
Today, Starlink satellites are semi-autonomous. They're kicked off the booster and mostly figure out by themselves where to position and aim. Progress marches on.
[1] https://heritageparkmuseum.org/blog/what-is-the-blue-cube
Stargate is a specific franchise that riffs off "ancient aliens" idea. "Ancient aliens" by itself is a meme complex (in both senses of the term), not a specific thing. Pseudo-specialists selling books and producing documentaries are just another group of people taking a spin on those ideas, except they're making money by screwing with people's sanity instead of providing entertainment.
See also: just about anything - from basic chemistry to UFOs to quantum physics. There's plenty of crackpots selling books on those topics too, but they don't own the conceptual space around these ideas. I can have a heated debate about merits of "GIMBAL" video or the "microtubules" in the brain, without assuming the other party is a crackpot or being offended by the ideas I consider plain wrong.
Also, I'd think this through a bit more:
> Pop culture is a narrow subset of culture, not interchangeable with mythology.
Yes, it's not interchangeable. Pop culture is more important.
Culture is a living thing, not a static artifact. Today, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are even more influential on the evolution of culture and society than classical literature. Saying this out loud only seems weird and iconoclastic (fancy word for "offensive"? :)) to most, because the works of Tolkien and Rowling are contemporary, and thus mundane. But consider that, back when the foundations of Enlightenment and Western cultures were being established, the classics were contemporary works as well! 200 years from now[0], Rowling will be to people what Shakespeare is to us today.
--
[0] - Not really, unless the exponential progress of technology stops ~today.
Pop culture is a narrow subset of culture, not interchangeable with mythology.
Stargate is a work of fiction, while ancient aliens presents itself as truth (hiring pseudo-specialists, pretending to be a documentary, etc).
You need to seriously step up your game, stop trying to win arguments with cheap rethorical tricks, and actually pay attention and research things before posting.
I ran whatever version Ollama downloaded on a 3070ti (laptop version). It's reasonably fast. Generative stuff can get weird if you do prompts like "in the style of" or "a new episode of" because it doesn't seem to have much pop culture in its training data. It knows the Stargate movie, for example, and seems to have the IMDB info for the series, but goes absolutely ham trying to summarize the series.
This line in the stuff inside the <think> section suggests it's also been trained on YouTube clips:
>> "I'm not entirely sure if I got all the details right, but this is what I remember from watching clips and summaries online."
An excerpt from the generated summary:
>> "Set in the 23rd century during a Z-Corp invasion, the series features action sequences, strategic thinking, and humor. It explores themes of international espionage, space warfare, and humanity's role in the cosmos. The show incorporates musical numbers and catchy theme songs for an engaging viewing experience. The plot involves investigating alien warships and their secret base on Kessari planet while addressing personal conflicts and philosophical questions about space."
"It explores themes of international espionage, space warfare, and humanity's role in the cosmos" is the closest to correct line in the whole output.
I'm not automatically pro or anti Stargate (the movie and show were cool) BUT
Who gets the benefit of all of this investment? Are taxpayers going to fund this thing which is monetized by OpenAI?
If we pay for this shit, it better be fucking free to use.
I saw Stargate trending on Bluesky and got my hopes up about an announcement of a new show/movie/something. Disappointing.
https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&release_date=1994-01-01,1994-12-31
Pulp Fiction
Lion King
The Mask
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Dumb and Dumber
The Crow
Speed
True Lies
Interview with the Vampire
Natural Born Killers
Ace Ventura
Stargate
Clerks
The list goes on. Lot's of movies that turned out to be classics or cult classics, or the start of some great careers.
Stargate. The original movie was cool but I never could get in to the TV show, even during its heyday with Richard Dean Anderson. That said, if they ever did a reboot I'd probably check it out!
I'm working on a timed audio description script for the 1994 science-fiction / adventure film “Stargate” for blind and low-vision audiences.
There are a lot of older films that are not audio described, and so every now and again I pick a film and write a script, and another volunteer records and mixes the narration track.
It takes about 2+ hours to describe about 20 minutes, and the film itself is 2 hours.
Sample:
68 00:11:18,219 --> 00:11:33,169 They step through doors marked "Research Laboratory". The wheel shaped cover stone towers over them, mounted upright on the wall. The disc in the centre has a cartouche, a vertical panel of symbols. Jackson stares up at it open mouthed.
Also from the Wikipedia, I learned that people died of the heat and not suffocation. Which means that episode of Stargate lied to me where they claimed the opposite.
A multidisciplinary volcanological and bio-anthropological study[53] of the eruption products and victims, merged with numerical simulations and experiments, indicates that at Pompeii and surrounding towns heat was the main cause of death of people, previously believed to have died by ash suffocation.
I honestly thought someone posted an old April Fool's article and this was a cheeky reference to the movie Stargate.
I really didn't like the direction that SG-1 and Atlantis took.
There was a novel that took place after the movie that depicted Hathor coming back and trying to take over with a simultaneous plot of the US trying to extract resources from Abydos. I though it was really we done and wished that SG-1 used it as the starting point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_literature
For anyone who doesn't understand the above comment, it's a reference to the movie Stargate, where the pyramids end up being primitive landing pads created by human slave labour for parasitic aliens posing as human gods.
It sounds like a generic Hollywood knockoff of newage psuedoscience, but it ends up being an enjoyable sci-fi series centred on wormhole travel and how technologically superior civilisations can fall.
Reddit and imgur are not mainstream like say facebook and twitter.
Perfectly fine if you don't like it. I was like you though, loved the Stargate movie, didn't get SG1 after like one episode so decided I didn't like it. Much later, it was on streaming so I decided to give it another shot and I couldn't get enough of it. Being able to keep watching episodes is a different experience than one episode a week.
Stargate is well known. There's Stargate memes all over reddit and imgur.
Some of us simply don't like it. I find it too corny and superficial to watch personally. If you like it that's ok, we're allowed to like different things, but I think you may be overestimating how many people are in fact familiar with the show and do not regard it as anywhere close to the perfect sci fi show.
That said, the original Stargate movie was an adolescent favorite of mine. I just find the show unwatchable.
Of course people have heard of Stargate. It's one of the biggest sci-fi franchises there are, with 17 seasons and 3 movies.
It's one of my favorite series also, but it's hard to compare to something like B5 which is very different tonally.
One trope I often notice in some big-budget films is when the government (or some entity) needs a scientist/specialist's help to save the planet and they introduce this person by walking into the middle of a lecture they are giving. Sometimes that person is seen as a 'quack' at this lecture, sometimes people are actually listening. Gov't approaches said person after lecture ... cut to person walking into secret base type thing
Perfect example: Stargate 1994 - when we meet James Spader - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq1RPu2aaU4
I know there are more examples of this, I notice it all the time.
edit:
So James Spader's character is an example of "The Worm Guy", but I wonder if there's a name for the scene itself, something like "fetch the scientist at a lecture"
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWormGuy
"2010: The Year We Make Contact" is a much more accessible movie that holds up pretty well. It also feels like a payoff after investing so much time being confused/bored by 2001.
I was 11 when "Logan's Run" came out. Yes it's kinda loaded with 70's sex tropes for the first act, but it's also equal parts goofy and a really good film.
The original "The Day The Earth Stood Still" holds up.
"A Boy and His Dog" is a bit crude here and there, but might resonate with a 12yo.
"Quatermass and the Pit" (aka "Five Million Years to Earth") is both intense and fairly tame.
A lot of old TV series hold up - Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, UFO, Space 1999, Star Trek TOS, etc all have some excellent episodes.
I absolutely love "Dark City" and "12 Monkeys" but I'm not sure they'd have held my interest at 12.
Doctor Who, both old and new are excellent. Though I'm partial to the Tom Baker era.
The Stargate franchise is pretty good.
"Moon" (2009) is a bit cerebral but a good SF story.
These are all generally highly reviewed can lead to interesting discussions:
Gattaca - interesting take on genetics/DNA discrimination
Europa - hard science fiction, maybe a bit slow for a 12 year old
The Net - older movie but the concept of digital exile resonates today
City of Ember - post apocalyptic civilization that lives deep underground
First Man - dramatization of Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing (not realy "fiction")
Arrival - first contact situation, tastefully done
Contact - another first contact situation that explores how politics, skepticism, and fanaticism react
The Martian - easily as fun as the book
The Prestige - competing magicians in an industrial age setting
The Hunger Games - extreme class divide in a future setting
Jurassic Park - the original not the sequels
Stargate - wormhole travel to another planet (be careful with the TV shows though, SG1 on streaming has full frontal nudity and "not ok" scenes which were obviously not on the broadcast version and a total shock when we watched it as a family)
District 9 - has some graphic gore and language, so it might be 14+, but is an interesting look at aliens as refugees
Contagion - a look at how a pandemic could play out. Premiered before COVID.
The Maze Runner - interesting setting and look at group dynamics
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - fun setting
The Village - scary movie with a sci fi twist
Galaxy Quest - comedy
Short Circuit - old movie that deals with AI sentience
Innerspace - another old one, but has some fun concepts
People do need common culture. I have a friend in his mid-20s and he is always "Do you know [YouTube personality]?" or showing me memes that require extensive explanations. And we're actually very similar people in many ways.
Some of this is just me not being hip with the next generation's culture. But he also has not seen almost any of what I would call the American film canon. So we can't even discuss cheesy 80s action films. Eventually we figured out he had seen Stargate. He was surprised I had seen it.
He can't tell what's mainstream and what's highly esoteric. I do think that's a problem. I know no one will have any idea what I'm talking about if I bring up my favourite synthwave artists in conversation.
It occurs to me that the form of media often informed my awareness about that. Was it on TV? Popular book at the library? Or did I find it in the back of some weird 'zine?
It's all the same on YouTube. Though there is the view count. It's often watched alone, so no social feedback. When it comes to movie nights, for example, finding something that's acceptable to most, not just hyper-tailored to yourself and full of in-references, is an important social skill.
A nice read.
Slightly off-topic, but Stargate is one of those movies, like the 90s Mummy, like Tremors, that's really much better than it needed to be, and remains greatly entertaining today. The care they put into the Egyptology really speaks to that.
> Stargate, the movie, is a touching documentary about a young James Spader’s deep, personal relationship with a mutant yak.
Oh boy. Time for yet another reboot.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
Stargate vibes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(film)#Plot
regardless of the posthumous negative judgment on the film, when jhonny came out our brains melted: before then we had only seen "the matrix" on TRON and the Lawnmower
the flight scene in hyperreality was mindfuck on the same level as the wormhole in Stargate, absolutely a must-see for a nerdy 90s kid
Stargate the movie was not a great film? Excuse me? I mean sure it’s clunky but it’s still fun.
tl;dr Stargate 25-year anniversary
a.k.a. McGyver's second best TV series :)
Netflix should have been spending its money buying legacy studios - Paramount for example and their god-awful 1990s production mentality (region locked trailers - really?), not to mention a massive backlog. £35b, it's a lot, but Netflix is worth 5 times that at least, even after yesterday's crash, let alone what it was worth a year ago.
Disney gets the new landscape. They give early access to tons of youtubers and you can't move on yourtube without bumping into the latest breakdowns, rections etc about an episode of moon knight or a teaser trailer, shows are released globally within hours, and they have a massive back catalogue.
Amazon bought MGM, bringing in things like Stargate and Bond, but it's dabbling, if their video service stops, it doesn't really cause the company to fail. Apple doesn't seem to know where it wants to go, it's not really in the game, but it's not their core competency either.
Netflix had an opportunity to secure their catalogues a couple of years ago, but just threw money at trying to create original content but not really knowing how (and certainly not knowing how to do it efficently)
Richard Dean Anderson who portrayed Jack O'Neill ("with 2 Ls"[0]) was made an honorary Air Force brigadier general.[1][2]
[0] This was an inside joke referring to the fact that RDA's character in SG-1 and following series was called Jack O'Neill while his predecessor, Kurt Russel, played Jack O'Neil in the original movie. He at least twice instructed someone to remember that his name was written "with two Ls", once adding that "The other one has no sense of humor".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dean_Anderson#Stargate
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20140826120505/http://rdanderson.com/archives/2004-10-01.htm
One show: X Files.
1990s Vancouver. Rain. Grey. Science fiction changed from the bright colors of LA (Star Trek) to Vancouver's rain forests (X Files, Stargate, Outer Limits). Why were Star Trek's colors so bright? Desi Loe Studios paid extra for the color film and wanted to use it. X files was on a tight budget and couldn't afford to brighten Vancouver enough to make it look like California. So the backgrounds become dark and grey.
Similar things happened in many film. Alien had budget problems and difficult creature effects. Net result: hide everything in darkness. The color has as much to do with budget as art.
What about something like Stargate? There was only 1 movie, yet multiple TV series.
> I kinda recommend the Stargate movie first... [...] But I will say that if you kinda dislike it, continue on to SG-1 anyhow.
Thanks for pointing this out. Watched the movie as a kid, didn’t like it, and thus never even bothered to check out the tv series.
I consider it hands down better than any Star Trek except possibly TNG. And that's giving TNG some grace due to being a bit older; take that away and I'll give SG-1 the prize. I will agree that people can reasonably disagree about Deep Space Nine vs SG-1. But that's the level of quality we're talking about, in my opinion. It's top tier, and much less well known.
Also strongly recommend binging the first season in particular; they did a very good job of conveying the feeling of humans blundering about not really knowing what they are doing in the big new universe, and it really comes across when watched relatively quickly on top of each other. It is reasonable that as the seasons rolled on and they got their bearings this toned down in favor of other plot lines, but I think this is one of the more unusual tones in sci fi that a show managed to successfully convey. Enterprise really whiffed on this, in my opinion. (They should have had a first season more like SG-1's first season and saved the "temporal cold war" plot arc for later. Or perhaps even not at all. That would have been OK too. There are a couple of episodes that convey this sense but not enough to hold the tone IMHO.)
Also, if you are starting out, I kinda recommend the Stargate movie first... it isn't strictly speaking necessary but it will contextualize some things, even though it's only sorta half in the continuity with SG-1. But I will say that if you kinda dislike it, continue on to SG-1 anyhow. In my opinion it's a big step up in a lot of ways.
This sounds like an awesome idea for the beginning of a sci-fi story: a test for a team the government wants to reverse engineer an alien spaceship or something.
I also just remembered this is the beginning of the original Stargate movie...
Stargate had a set of episodes that was roughly near this topic too. It was one of my faves.
> Star Wars: A New Hope?
What is this? ;)
Star Wars, and the later Empire Strikes Back were good films, well worth seeing. I still have the "making of" souvenir from the 1977 UK premiere. Then he started the endless pissing about reinventing everything. Last time I tried to watch one, some asshole had ruined it, and my memory of it, and that dog eared magazine souvenir looks quaintly inaccurate.
Now I essentially hate the whole franchise, and actively avoid anything George Lucas. I think I've seen 5 of the 7. Or is it 8 now? Don't care or notice any more. :)
Stargate, Star Trek and those 50's B movie sci-fi and countless others like "classic" low budget Dr Who have managed to last the decades far better... I actually still like those, and still watch new productions!
As for cats, far better to accept they got entirely the worst spot on the anthropomorphising spectrum so even stills look weirdly off and the story telling failed, so it's a dud. Try again in ten years with a new approach and team...
The StarGate documentary movie and follow-up series, yes :).
I'm 100% certain Stargate isn't a documentary.
Yes, but only if you count Star Wars or other American-style production "action movie but in space" movies or series (like Stargate, Firefly, ...).
When you go into the things that don't get blockbuster movies, you end up with old-school scifi. Newer like The Expanse or Blindsight, older like The Culture or Hyperion, or proper old school stuff like
In general, piece of unwanted and unrequested advice - whenever you make a huge sweeping statement about complex topic with many examples (like "In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves.") you are inevitably wrong.
No. The whole secret stargate agency, the one in all those bunkers, was a creation for the series. The original movie didn't involve a giant secret operation. It was a basic take on the whole 'ancient aliens' concept. They expanded everything to make room for the series long after the name. I think gate was more to do with star trek and wars, but by that same logic the government program could be named after trek and wars. The people picking names for secret government programs like to play jokes. They are all scifi geeks too. See Skynet and Reagans Starwars.
I'd be 100% behind calling the new 'space force' the Starfleet. There is no harm in making a name fun.
And here I thought the Lanteans invented it. I need to rewatch this Stargate documentary.
| The biggest deterrent, for me at least, is not the price but the need to switch platforms. I'm already annoyed when I have to go from Netflix to Amazon to find a movie/show I want to see but can't remember where it is. No chance I'll add a third, forth, or fifth platform to the mix.
That's my biggest pain point as well. I already have to switch between Netflix / Hulu / Amazon to figure out who has the content I want. I've always been a huge Stargate fan; Netflix and Amazon used to have it, now only Hulu has it. Amazon is the only one that has the latest episodes for shows that I like, (although I have to pay extra, I'm willing to bite the bullet for my favorite show).
When I was a 3rd grader in South Korea I had the hardest time solving the simplest arithmetic problems. My teacher used to keep me after hours as a punishment until I was able to solve them. I think it was literally something like "2+3-3+2+2-100+39". You could say that I was pretty much in the opposite end of "exceptional" on any subject — was NEVER serious about school back then and completely ignorant of education (probably didn't even know what this meant).
To me school was a place where I went to hang out with friends for 7 to 8 hours, and yet, I don't remember my parents doing anything about it, not even a light discussion about my education. This went on for several years even during my early school years in the U.S. (my family immigrated in the middle of my 3rd grade year).
It was only when I started watching stargate and other scifi movies/tvshows that I got interested in science and technology, and thought "Hey, maybe I might try this thing called education so that I can do things that these guys are doing in the tv!", but realized that I was still extremely subpar at math and english (not to mention i even sucked at korean - got worse now, but i think i got a little bit better at english), and pretty much everything else, flunked algebra in high school and mostly Cs and rarely Bs on other subjects, and miraculously A in PE hahaha.
At the time I knew I had to do something about it, so I asked my parents for help, but sadly got close to none. They hired some tutors for me but it never worked out (you could really tell, the tutors were frustrated at how stupid I was). At some point I realized that I had to take this matter into my own hands - had to start all over from the fundamentals. At which point I actually started reading books, writing, memorizing, solving (math problems), I had to pretty much make up for what people usually learned in their primary school up to jr. high years. I eventually managed to do well in math, improved speaking/writing/reading in english a little bit, trained myself in scientific thinking, got into physics at a university and now I'm working as a software engineer. Buried in financial aid debt... :(
The thing about people though... is that we forget quite a lot of things we learned 10 years ago, but the most coolest thing nowadays is that as long as you have a way of getting information into your head, your education only ends at your last breath. Although when I was growing up I hardly saw my father, and my parents never intervened in regards to my education, they were there for moral support, life lessons, and the list goes on. I think that in the near future if I were to have children of my own, first and foremost I'd hope to see them growing up healthy, and that they'd find something they're interested in earlier in their lives, but I'm not sure if it will help to be strict with their education, we'll see.
Stargate. District 9. Inception. Equilibrium. Mad Max: Fury Road. Moon. Edge of Tomorrow.
Edit: The Man From Earth if you can dig independent cinema.
The whole series is worth watching
Right now TV is in its "golden age" but there are no good sci-fi tv shows (hell even the word "scifi" is dirty somehow now, see > SyFy-lis).
Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Outer Limits all gone replaced by Vampires and all sorts of supernatural rubbish.
Dr Who is the only interesting scifi show now worth watching, for the most part...
Why was stargate.com registered in August 5, 1986, and what was that for? The movie and show didn't come out for another 9-10 years.
I find it even less satisfying than plugging knowledge gaps with "god" stuffing. Unexplained phenomenon from the past? Aliens did it, and you know, they work in mysterious ways.
At least with a god, you get a complete origin(1). With aliens, you just punt the "how did life originate?" question to a galaxy far, far away.
Its hella good fun for a few episodes of Stargate, but somewhat lacking as a cosmology.
(1) As long as you are prepared to deal with the "where/how did your god originate?" part.
And coming in at number 25: 08/05/1986 STARGATE.COM
Stargate must have been the first movie ever to get it's own .com domain? I guess it reflects the crowd they were aiming for.
Stargate.com is a peculiar one to be on the list.
Apparently this refers to Stargate Information Systems: http://www.decuslib.com/decus/vax88b3/vmsnet/suppinfo/services/stargate.txt
You've got to wonder whether the term somehow inspired the movie.
I worked as a reviewer, games and movies, for a few years and my personal opinion is that the quality of good games has remained the same, the problem is that there are so many games being released that for the average person it is very difficult to tell what is good and bad.
I got out of reviewing when I felt there was too much pressure to rate certain companies high. I got to play some genuinely great games, but some were flat out awful to the point that it was painful to play. When I felt like I couldn't tell people not to buy certain games (hello EA) and when it got to the point that review material was being embargoed to give certain companies the advantage (I presume for giving high reviews) I couldn't take it anymore.
I believe it may take major layoffs and some companies going bust before we see some improvement. I doubt it would get as bad as the '83 crash, but then perhaps it should. This does seem to cycle in that so many games come out and then companies start trying to sell the chaff as grain and people stop buying.
Like you said, this happens in the movie industry. No movie has hit quite as high as Titanic, however the fan following for Star Trek could help it along, not to mention that I know a lot of people (including my wife) want to go see this despite my doubting they'd ever want to go see it. My wife can be particularly annoying to convince to watch a DVD or TV series, so the fact that she actually told me she wants to go see it (seconds after the trailer finishing in the cinema) gives me the impression it could do huge. My wife is literally a fan waiting to happen, so if Abrams can pull it off I might have a free ride for the rest of the franchise's life. Then there's just Stargate left to get her fully converted on and I'll have the three Stars (Wars, Trek and -gate).
I would find it quite ironic if the release of Star Trek saved the economy by getting sales well beyond the $2 billion mark.
still a few more (some are in the works)
* Stargate
* "startup.com" - about the formation of 'govworks.com' i wonder what these guys think about Obama.
* Takedown - 'Kevin Mitnick's story'
* Serenity
* Star Trek: the Voyage Home
* The Last Starfighter
* Johnny Mnemonic
* Short Circuit 1 & 2
* Crest of the Stars (anime)
* Fahrenheit 451
* Equilibrium
* Batman (begins, dark night, the tim burten one)
* Edward Scissor Hands
* Space Balls
* Avalon ( http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/movie/decade/2000-current/avalon/#comments)
* LAIN: The Serial Experiments (anime)
* Cherry 2000
* Dune
* Ender's Shadow (in the works)
* Ender's Game (in the works)
* Diamond Age (in the works for sci-fi, 'a young girls illustrated primer')
* The Arrival
* The Terminator 1,2,3
* The Sarah Conner Chronicles
* D.A.R.Y.L
* Flight of the Navigator
* Explorers
* AI
* Batteries Not Included
* Blade Runner
* IRobot
* Appleseed (anime)
* Bubble Gum Crisis (anime)
* Ergo Proxy (anime)
* Virtuosity
* Metropolis (all of them are good)
* The Last Exile (anime)
* Cherry 2000
* Robocop (this so hold up)
* Primmer
* Probe ( the TV series, it took me 3 months to find the copies of this Issac Asimov based TV series on ABC ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probe_(TV_series)
* Infest Wisely
* Logan's Run
* Planet of the Apes
* Star Trek: First Contact
* CQ ( if you get it, you'll get why this is a hacker movie , 'la resistance')
* Amelie
* 2046
* Trigun (anime)
* Escaflone (anime)
* Tank Girl
* Twelve Monkeys
* THX 1138
* Bicentennial Man
* The Philadelphia Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philadelphia_Experiment_(film)
* Seaquest ( some episodes )
* Strange Days ( new yeas hacker style )
* Freejack
Swordfish; if nothing for the totally cool monitor setup he had at Gabriel's place.
Alien; the original- the next couple of movies in the series were okay but the first I think is a classic in form of technology and all that good stuff. If you watch it, it may seem a bit old-school for our time, but for their time that was pretty cool! Finding a solution to space travel at light-year speed? Come-on- that's awesome.
Stargate; another one for space travel, but overall it was kind of corny- I just liked how the Egyptians, or whoever, discovered a way to transport across galaxies.
Enemy of the State; cool NSA tech stuff.
Deja Vu; the ability to go back in time only four days earlier or less... I like their setup and how they explained the plausibility of the technology actually coming to fruition.