The advertisements for Stargate declared ominously, Sealed and buried for all time is the key to mankinds future. Well, mankind didnt fare too well, but director/writer Roland Emmerich and co-writer Dean Devlin did pretty well with this highly derivative science-fiction success that paved the way for Emmerich and Devlins mega-hit Independence Day. The story begins in Giza, Egypt, in 1928, where an archaeological expedition unearths an ancient ring with cryptic hieroglyphs. The film then moves to the present day, where Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) is busily trying to convince a group of skeptics that the pyramids were not built by man, but by an extraterrestrial force. After the lecture, a military man approaches him and offers him a job translating ancient tiles housed in an Egyptian archaeological site. The tiles turn out to be the key that turns a lock in a stargate which leads to an Earth-like world on the other side of the universe. The army sends over resident crackpot colonel Jack ONeill (Kurt Russell) to travel through the stargate and see whats on the other side. ONeill and his troops enter the stargate and end up in a place that resembles the Arabia from Lawrence of Arabia. The only difference is the three moons in the sky. It turns out that ONeill has stumbled upon the land of Ra (Jaye Davidson), a sexually indeterminate Egyptian sun god. Ra was the intelligence behind the creation of humankind on Earth and this world as well, and is perturbed with the ancient Egyptians for sealing off their portion of the space and time portal, trapping Ra on the planet. Ra wants to get back to Earth and has decided the use these obtuse earthlings to do it. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide