X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure *

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

This 12-episode anime was a collaboration between Marvel Entertainment and the Japanese anime studio Madhouse, part of a joint endeavor that also included serials for Wolverine, Blade, and Iron Man.  Wikipedia claims that X-MEN writer Warren Ellis "guided" most of these series, and in one of the promotional commentaries a speaker claims that they were guided by Ellis' version of the X-Men.

I confess to being completely unfamiliar with Ellis' contributions to any X-books. However, most of the plot-arcs in X-MEN are borrowed from the work of other X-writers.

The continuity, in a rare turn from most X-adaptations, begins in the wake of the death of Cyclops' beloved Phoenix, a character associated with the Claremont-Byrne run. The X-Men's first opponents in this series are the "U-Men," human fanatics who seek to gain super-powers by incorporating mutant flesh into themselves, from Grant Morrison's 2001 continuity.  They seek to help a Japanese mutant girl who joins the X-Men and takes the code-name "Armor," a character originated in ASTONISHING X-MEN by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday.  In the heroes' encounter with the U-Men they rescue another Claremont-Byrne creation, the White Queen, who in this iteration is associated not with the comic-book "Hellfire Club" but with"the Inner Circle," which is apparently a legacy from this 2009 American adaptation. One other Hellfire alumnus is also represented as having been a member of the Circle: Mastermind, adapted by Byrne and Claremont from the old 1960s Lee-Kirby character.  And finally, we see another Claremont-Byrne borrowing in that the X-Men end up fighting a super-mutant named Takeo.  This character is freely adapted from the character "Proteus," the son of the X-Men's mentor Professor X, though Takeo's mother is, in the interest of keeping the action in Japan, a Japanese woman.

I have no problem with Ellis using any or all of these materials, given that they are all the property of Marvel Comics. But it does irk me that this was represented as being in tune with the comics-work of Warren Ellis, when so little of it derives from his plot-concepts.

That said, all the usual preachments on the injustice of anti-mutant prejudice are here, neither better nor worse than the usual sociological observations in the comic book series. Cyclops, who only reluctantly leads the heroes due to grieving over his deceased love, gets a little more character-attention than he often does in animated cartoons, but other characters-- Beast, Storm, Wolverine, White Queen-- sometimes prove fairly interchangeable.  I didn't listen to the English-language version, but I rather doubt that the scripters managed to catch the comic potential of either Beast or White Queen, since most of the proceedings unfold with an apocalyptic grimness.  I rated the action-scenes of WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN as "above average," and in contrast most of the fight-scenes in this Japanese co-production unfold in a welter of bedazzling FX-powers, engendering more confusion than excitement. On the other hand, though this X-MEN mixes in a lot of plot-threads, they all come together at the climax, whereas the WOLVERINE production was all over the place in terms of unity.

It's a pleasant enough series, but by far the greatest pleasure it offers is seeing the X-Men, who are supposed to belong to a myriad of cultures, using phrases that would've fit a Toshiro Mifune samurai-film:

"You must harden your heart against adversity! That is the fate of being-- an X-Man!"

CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER (1974)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure *

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

"The name Kronos is Greek for Time,” says Clemens, “and I thought that, if the idea took off, I’d be able to move him through the centuries. A whole series of films. I even had some follow-up stories.”-- interview with Brian Clemens, reprinted in part on the blog SO IT GOES.

As most horror-film fans know, the heroic vampire hunter (Horst Janson) of this 1974 Hammer film never went on to any further cinematic adventures. In KRONOS there's no allusion to any factors that might have allowed the hero to bounce about from time to time.  The audience doesn't know a lot about Kronos' background, but he's not presented as a deep mystery: he has served as a member of an "Imperial Guard" in some unspecified European country, and his mother and sister were vampirized while he was serving in the military. When his female relatives tried to fang him, he was forced to kill them, causing him to swear vengeance on the many species of vampire.  When the film begins he's already teamed up with a vampire-savvy "Van Helsing," the hunchbacked Professor Grost (John Cater), and he acquires a temporary tag-along in Carla (Caroline Munro).  Carla doesn't get much in the way of characterization: she's meant to serve primarily as a stand-in for the audience's viewpoint, slowly initiating her, and the audience, into Kronos' world, and secondarily for some mild sex-scenes between her and the stalwart vampire-killer.

Though there's no suggestion in the film as to how Kronos might have found his way into other time-periods, Clemens does cover his bases with regard to the aforementioned "many species of vampire." Going only on Clemens' IMDB credits, KRONOS would seem to be the first time he published a work dealing with vampires, which had long been a specialty of the Hammer House of Horror.  However, though there's some good story-potential in his notion of different vampire-species, Clemens doesn't develop any ground rules for the species in this outing: one that drains youth from victims rather than blood. Both Kronos and Grost have to learn the rules of this particular species as they go, which Clemens may have intended as a method of intensifying the suspense.  For me at least, it came off more like an attempt to get away from the standard "rules of the vampire" speeches that appear in many other Hammer films.  The trouble with this omission is that without those rules, you lose a lot of the mythopoeic appeal of the vampire figure.

There are some possible myth-aspects to Clemens' youth-suckers. It will come as no surprise that the villains are aristocrats, as are most Hammer bad guys.  But we don't learn many details about the nature of the villains because for most of the narrative, Clemens is playing the "red herring" game. The only real suspects are the members of the mysterious Durward family, but which one is the culprit? The patrician older brother, Paul? The mannishly-dressed sister Sara, who drops weird comments about youth? Surely it can't be their aged and infirm mother, confined to a bed-- or can it?  Since DRACULA  vampires have often been conflated with a corrupt aristocracy, literally bleeding the oppressed lower classes, but though Clemens is working with the same trope as the Hammer DRACULA films, he doesn't get as much mileage out of it.

The "red herring" game was one Clemens frequently played in many of his television-thrillers, but where the game works well with mundane mysteries, the draggy unfolding of the Big Surprise detracts from the suspense in KRONOS. Clemens has commented that Hammer didn't support the project with the sort of money that might have given it more "oomph," but more money wouldn't have improved the poor pacing of Clemens' only directorial effort. Janson is okay as Captain Kronos, but he's given too little characterization to register.  The idea of a swashbuckling vampire hunter isn't developed either, and the script devotes more attention to the reactions of his hunchbacked sidekick.

Kronos' raison d'etre does suggest some of the violent sexuality associated with his Greek namesake.  The Greek Titan, tyrannizing over his children, is slain by his most powerful offspring, Zeus. The heroic Kronos is forced to commit not patricide but matricide and sororicide, though the only "tyrants" involved are the unknown villains who vampirized the hero's relatives.  Oddly, the only time Kronos himself recites this history, he's in the midst of having sex with Carla, and the way he talks about baring the breasts of his mother and sister before killing them should raise a few eyebrows. His slaying of the Durward vampires may be considered a recapitulation of this primal act of murder, but I would have to say that most of the Hammer vampire-films pull it off better.

Still, it would have been interesting to see what Clemens would have done with his serial concept.  Had this film succeeded, perhaps Clemens would have improved on the spotty mythopoesis. 

DAMNATION ALLEY (1977)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

I've just reviewed Roger Zelazny's 1969 book DAMNATION ALLEY in this post, prefatory to watching the 1977 adaptation. As many earlier reviewers have mentioned, one of the most interesting aspects of ALLEY is not the movie itself, but the fact that its studio 20th-Century Fox believed that it would be their big SF-hit for the year.  Instead the monster hit turned out to be Lucas' STAR WARS, the sequels to which Lucas would own outright. When ALLEY arrived in theaters in October 1977, its old-fashioned FX alone would have killed its chances at the box office.  The film's poor pace and bland characters certainly didn't help, though.

I find myself speculating as to why the Fox executives had faith in ALLEY, and my best guess is that they thought it might be a big hit not because of the source material-- which was far from a best-seller and which the final script barely evoked-- but because director Jack Smight had just finished two successful mainstream films, 1974's AIRPORT 1975 and 1976's MIDWAY.  Perhaps the executives thought that the appeal of science fiction for contemporary audiences was comparable to that of the then-popular disaster films.  There are some common overlaps between the two at times, but if Smight and his scripters were thinking in "disaster-movie" terms, this was certainly the worst possible approach for DAMNATION ALLEY.

At that time it would have been difficult for a big-budget film to have translated Zelazny's mean-ass hero Hell Tanner into cinematic reality.  So it's not that surprising that the Zelazny hero becomes a bland soldier-boy named Jake Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is a little bit of a rebel but largely defers to his commanding officer Denton (George Peppard).  But nothing excuses the vacillating plot.  The novel gives the hero an epic task: in order to deliver a needed vaccine to plague-ridden Boston, former Hell's Angel Hell Tanner must cross the perilous "Damnation Alley" in his super-car.  In place of this, the movie's heroes still must cross the Alley, shielded by a mammoth vehicle called "the Landmaster," which is one of the few elements of the film for which some viewers have expressed nostalgia. But since the nuclear cataclysm has only happened two years ago, the motive for the crossing is simply to make contact with the city of Albany, the only place from which Denton and his comrades have received radio signals. This desire to reconnect with representatives of one's lost culture can be dramatically satisfying, as it was in 1959's THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL. But Smight and his scripters evoke no pathos from Denton and Tanner's quest.  It all seems rather casual, even when they're fighting killer storms and diseased hillbillies. 

The only part of the film that I liked-- and the only place where Vincent's Jake channels a little bit of Zelazny's Hell-- is a moment where a motorcycle-riding Jake is traversing the desert sands on his way back to his installation, only to be besieged by giant scorpions. The scorpion-FX aren't overly impressive, and the sequence can be critiqued for faking out the audience-- i.e., Jake dumps a real actress off the back of his motorcycle, leaving her to the scorpions, and in a "cheat' unworthy of chapterplay-serials, it's revealed that "she" is really a mannequin. But this was the only place where Jake seems like a proper apocalypse-hero.

As the emphasis in the script is less upon the adventurous striving of the hero, and more upon the suffering of the beleaguered protagonists, I categorize ALLEY as a drama, not an adventure.

THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED (1957), THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD (1957)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*


Though Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is a good read, and it generated a better-than-average 1959 film adaptation, I don't generally like adventures involving characters blundering around beneath the earth.  In cinematic terms, most of them make for dull viewing, even when they have a superior script, as with 1956's THE MOLE PEOPLE.

That said, Fred F. Sears' rockhound-drama THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED is an appealing enough melodrama, which debuted in US theaters on a double-bill with what I deem Sears' best film, THE GIANT CLAW.  Brilliant seismologist David Conway comes up with a machine that can predict earthquakes while in collaboration with fellow scientist Doctor Morton and comely lab-assistant Laura Hutchinson-- usually called "Hutch," for short. Conway detects an earthquake-threat and tries to warn the governor, who isn't convinced by the verdict of an untested device.  Conway, Morton and Hutch, seeking out the source of the quake-tremors, ferret out the existence of a explosive new element, "Element 112," which tends to expand with such rapidity that it causes explosions. Soon Conway and company discover that unless all sources of the element are neutralized, eventually 112 will imperil the entirety of the planet Earth.

To put things bluntly, there's not a lot of exciting action as the scientists seek answers, though on occasion Element 112 keeps things lively by blowing someone up.  However, the script skillfully emulates the standard cosmological motifs of 1950s SF-cinema, noting that the places where 112 is the greatest threat are those locales where man has plundered the earth of its bounties, thus weakening the earth's crust. One might call NIGHT a mineral-oriented version of the "nature's revenge" theme usually exemplified in the 1950s by giant ants, spiders, and of course, outer-space gooney-birds.  Given that scripters Jack Natteford and Luci Ward spent most of their careers writing western films-- though Ward has a couple of minor metaphenomenal credits-- the team does a better-than-average job of evoking the 1950s "awe in the face of nature" theme.

They also do fairly well with another standard theme of 1950s SF-films: the theme of "woman's place in the brave new science-world." Early in the film Hutch, a scientist only through by virtue of associating with pedigreed researchers, is not as strong a figure as the actual female scientists seen in films like IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA.  She's principally motivated by the attractions of home and hearth, for early in the film Hutch tells Morton that she plans to quit the project and marry her boyfriend-- one never seen in the film, and clearly second choice to her real love, the oblivious Doctor Conway. Morton counsels Hutch to cool her heels and wait for the love-thunderbolt to strike Conway.  As it happens the impending doom of Earth comes along just in time to cause Hutch to table her decision.  Naturally over time Conway does realize his affection for Hutch, and even buys her perfume at one point.  However, feminists will not rate NIGHT highly, given that there's a scene in which the scientific group goes spelunking, and Hutch becomes frozen with terror on a rope-ladder.  One may argue that Conway's response is motivated by "tough love" of a sort, though it does so by humiliating Hutch for her womanly qualities:

Wouldn't you know a woman would pull a stunt like this? You're all scientists until there's the slightest bit of danger, then you fold up! Want your mommy and daddy?

That said, Hutch does "man up" and make the descent, allowing her to continue helping the project, if only in terms of moral support.  Eventually the rockhounds save the earth and turn their attentions to concerns of biology.  But though Hutch chooses motherhood over science, her will to work alongside the traditionally male science-types should not be passed over.  If NIGHT isn't as strong in this department as some 1950s SF-flicks, it beats others by a mile-- particularly THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD.

PETRIFIED actually starts out in terrain closer to Verne's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, as a four-person crew seeks to test a diving-bell in the depths of the ocean.  The cables holding the diving-bell snap, but the crew-- two oceanographers (one male, one female), a scuba-diver and a female reporter-- don't plunge to the briny bottom of the sea.  They end up on a subsea shelf, and upon exiting the diving-bell, they encounter a series of air-filled caverns.  They learn that the caverns lead to a dead volcano, but their attempt to find a way out is complicated by a big lizard-- possibly intended to be a monitor-- and a half-mad castaway who has been marooned in the caverns for fourteen years.

Director Jerry Warren later became famous for his tedious SF-outings, and PETRIFIED is definitely one of his worst.  The four actors trundle around the subterranean sets, while above-ground the designer of the bell (John Carradine) muses philosophically about the failure of his invention, never seeming particularly mournful about the supposed deaths of his collaborators.  The only attempt at drama in John W. Steiner's pokey script is that reporter Dale (Phyllis Coates) gets a "dear Jane" letter before making the descent. Thus, despite the peril to her life during their adventure, Dale spends most of her time being bitchy to the expedition's other female, Lauri.  Apparently Lauri raises Dale's hackles because Lauri has some romantic future in her life, but Lauri refuses to be baited. As if to punish Dale for her nasty feminine jabs, the bedraggled castaway takes a shine to her and proposes that they do away with the others and life together as man and wife. Dale's punishment for Not Being a Nurturing Female is interrupted by a volcanic eruption, which kills the castaway and sets the expedition-members on the road to their escape.

The only slight merit of this film-- which is technically a work of "the uncanny," since a cavern with trapped oxygen in it is hardly "marvelous" in nature-- are Dale's rants about not having a man in her life, which may say more about the film's authors than about the status of women in 1950s SF-films.

ADDENDUM: I happened to read an interview in which Warren mentioned that he had intended to put a standard under-earth monster into the cavern, which shows that the film originated as a SF-vehicle. However, the costume Warren had was so damaged that even this legendary schlock-meister would not put it on camera.

TARZAN'S REVENGE (1938)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*


TARZAN'S REVENGE-- which really doesn't center on the ape-man taking "revenge" on anyone-- is said to be "based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs." I suspect that this was producer Sol Lesser's roundabout way of adapting elements from both the first Tarzan novel and from MGM's far more successful launching of its Tarzan-franchise, 1932's TARZAN THE APE MAN.

Like the classic MGM film, a great deal of the film centers on the reactions of the heroine to the fantastic persona of Tarzan; like the Burroughs book, the heroine comes to Africa with members of her family.  Before we meet heroine Eleanor (played by swimming-medalist Eleanor Holm), we meet her nasty fiancée Nevin.  Though Eleanor's father has come to Africa to take live captive animals back to an American zoo, Nevin can't resist taking pot-shots at any animal that comes in his gunsights.  When the audience also learns that Nevin was picked-out by Eleanor's Boston-Brahmin mother, this in itself is enough to condemn Nevin as a no-good.

Eleanor has more in common with her father: both of them are curious about the exotic world of Africa.  While traveling aboard a cruise-ship, Eleanor's curiosity is aroused by another passenger: a wealthy Arabian chieftain named "Ben Ali Bey." When she presumes to look in on Bey's cabin, the Arab sees and admires her.  He pays her court by sending her jewels, proving the old adage that "when you look at the jungle, sometimes the jungle looks back at you." Bey seals his status as a villain when he thrashes a clumsy porter in Eleanor's presence; she responds by swiping his cane and whacking him with it. This seals her fate: Bey arranges with a dissolute guide to have the zoo-expedition guided toward Bey's jungle-bailiwick.

The first half of the film is more concerned, though, with showing what a rotter Nevin is: not only does he continue shooting animals, he's weak and cowardly as well. Instead of helping Eleanor when she gets trapped in a mud-hole, he runs off to get the porters to do the heavy lifting.  This of course sets things up so that Tarzan, the "real man's ape-man" is primed to come down and rescue Eleanor-- though no one in the expedition believes her story of a mysterious near-naked rescuer and his pet chimp.  Though the chimp is never called "Cheetah," this one's comic relief is no less tedious than that of the MGM ape.

Tarzan also rescues Eleanor when she falls afoul of a lioness, whom Tarzan spares because the animal was only seeking its cubs.  Finally Tarzan finally performs his "jungle seducer" function and abducts Eleanor from her group.  In contrast to the strong erotic vibe of the first couple of MGM Tarzans, this production downplays the romance angle, though the ape-man and his quasi-Jane do indulge in a little healthy swimming together.  When Eleanor's worried father and the rest of the expedition find her again, she memorably says, "At first I was frightened, but after that I really believe I began to enjoy myself!"

In the rather dull climax, Bey makes his move and abducts Eleanor for real, intending to make her part of his harem. Tarzan rescues her and hurls some of the pursuing black natives into the mouths of hungry crocodiles. Eleanor throws over Nevin for Tarzan, and the disgruntled fellow tries to pot-shot Tarzan. The ape-man roughs him up, and Eleanor remains in the jungle while her family goes back to America with their captive animals (something the MGM Tarzan probably would not countenance).

REVENGE is a good basic Tarzan film that boasts an attractive heroine and some decent commentary on Nevin's slaughter-happy tendencies.  Its biggest problem is the actor playing Tarzan. Like Eleanor Holm, Glenn Morris made his mark as a champion swimmer.  But he lacked charisma, even the rough sort of personality seen in Johnny Weismuller's initial outing, so it's not surprising that Lesser, who made many more Tarzans, never called upon Morris again.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES (1978), NO. ONE OF THE SECRET SERVICE (1977)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*


Two surprising things I gleaned from re-watching ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES were that while the film wasn't very funny, (1) it did have a few moments that made me smile, and (2) none of those moments centered on the tomatoes.

Of course it's the eminently quotable title, not any of the film's gags, that made it a cult film despite widespread critical contempt, as well as a franchise with three sequels, a TV cartoon and a pending remake. While a lot of the supposed funny business is as boring as hell, I had to admire the tenacity of filmmaker John DeBello, who assumed five separate hats: director, producer, co-writer, editor and musician.  There's also a small degree of sociological commentary, mostly in the form of post-Watergate jabs at a dopey president who tries to defeat the Killer Tomatoes with public relations campaigns.

I've only seen the first sequel and the cartoon show, which I remember being slightly better than the original work.  But on balance the most significant thing about this SF-horror parody may be its schtick of killing a monster with awful-sounding music, a trope picked up to better effect in 1996's MARS ATTACKS!

As bad as TOMATOES is, Lindsay Shonteff's NO. ONE OF THE SECRET SERVICE is far worse; a bland, predictable spoof of the superspy genre.  Shonteff is perhaps best known for directing 1967's THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU, which was at best serviceable-- which is more than one can say of SERVICE.

One unusual facet of SERVICE is that though hero "Charles Bind" (Nicky Henson) is a Bond-doppleganger in most respects-- flirting with his boss's "Moneypenny" and taking advantage of every somewhat comely female to cross his path--  the villain of the piece is not the standard evil mastermind one finds in such spoofs as SPY HARD.  Arthur Loveday (Richard Todd) is a rich gamesman who hires the assassins of the criminal group KRASH to kill other rich people.  Why?  Well, he says he hates rich people, and though he does mention off-handedly having started out in the lower classes, the script by Howard Craig (who has no other imdb credits) doesn't try to psychoanalyze Loveday.  Loveday might have been more at home in an AVENGERS episode than in a Bond spoof, in that the AVENGERS teleseries took for granted that it existed in a "carnival mirror" version of the real England, complete with arch comments on British class structure.

Shonteff and Craig don't try for "arch," though: their goal is dopey slapstick all the way. Bind and his lady-spy assistant Anna begin to investigate Loveday, but Loveday doesn't even bother trying to conceal his plans to assassinate whoever he pleases.  Instead of having Loveday arrested and charged, Bind and Anna follow him onto a cruise ship, where both of them are repeatedly targeted by largely incompetent assassins.  Some of the assassination-methods are mundane, but a couple of them rate as "bizarre crimes" in the uncanny vein. One example of this type is a female assassin who chats up Bind and tries to bite him to death with dimestore vampire-fangs. Bind's unforgivably awful jokey comeback? "Fangs for the memories."

Just as Loveday doesn't spend any of his riches on death-rays or giant octopi, Bind's superspy arsenal is so impoverished that his armorer's initial must have been "C" for cheap-ass. His home is outfitted with a bulletproof glass wall that appears just when he needs it most, and there's a detachable machine gun in his car.  Perhaps most of the funds in SERVICE's kitty went to hire an assortment of well-known Brit actors, including Geoffrey Keen, Sue Lloyd, and Jon Pertwee.

I have to add that the film even fails at the task of offering the male viewer the sort of "ogle-fest" one gets from, say, SUMURU and many other superspy flicks, both comic and serious.  Some of the female stars are fairly comely, but sometimes SERVICE seems to go out of its way to undercut this aspect, as when Bind is attacked by a tough kung-fu female, only to find out during the fight that "she" is really a convert from the other side of the gender-tracks.

Of the two films only SERVICE qualifies as a combative comedy.

STARGATE (1994)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*


I've never understood the huge appeal of STARGATE, either the original film version or the various teleseries incarnations.  I make one minor exception: the animated series STARGATE:INFINITY-- perhaps the only iteration *without* a significant fan-following. The cartoon series, while nothing special, outdid the original film in featuring characters who were reasonably consistent.

I imagine that the principal appeal of the Devlin-Emmerich film-- the team's second success after their collaboration on UNIVERSAL SOLDIER-- was the "ancient astronauts" theme, combined with some of the same military boosterism seen in SOLDIER. I noted in my review of the earlier film that its script "papered over any political undercurrents," and this is doubly so of STARGATE.

The tone of the opening scenes, though, sell the "ancient astronauts" theme in monolithic tones that recall Richard Donner's approach to SUPERMAN, though without the psychological symbolism or the adroit comedy relief.  Three establishing scenes take the viewer, in swift succession, from the founding of Egyptian civilization in 8,000 BC by an extradimensional alien, the location of the Stargate artifact in the 1920s by modern humans, and the activation of the gate in the 1990s by an American military complex.

Clearly the script, written by both men and directed by Emmerich, intends to over-awe the audience with its evocation of the monuments of the past, as well as continually repeating its blaring David Arnold score over and over throughout the narrative.  But though the character of linguistics expert Daniel Jackson is responsible for figuring out the means to open the gate, Jackson is never more than a nerdy everyman; his passion for Egypt and its language is portrayed as a given, not rooted in a character. The film's other main character is hardline air force colonel Jack O'Neil, but the audience similarly knows nothing about his character or his devotion to the military.  He receives one overly-obvious "tragic" trope: O'Neil's young son accidentally killed himself by playing with a loaded gun, possibly one owned by his father.  This kindles a suicidal urge in O'Neil.  His assignment to journey through the activated Stargate fortuitously gives him a chance to choose between dying on his sword or rejoining the legion of the living.  That O'Neil ends up forming a paternal bond with a young boy on an alien world should signal which option he finally selects.

It's never made clear why the American air force wants O'Neil, Jackson and a reconnaissance team to pass through the Stargate.  No one voices anything similar to STAR TREK's high-minded injunctions about "boldly going" out to explore the unknown, nor does anyone claim that there's any specific goal the military wishes to obtain through exploration, as we see in 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH.  A Marxist would assume that the authorities are out to expand their hierarchy into new territories, though this isn't entirely borne out.  Unknown to Jackson and O'Neil's fellow soldiers, O'Neil carries a bomb with him in case the team learns that the other world holds danger for his world, he's supposed to send the rest of his team back to Earth and destroy the gate-- and himself-- to stave off alien invasion. It's not every day one comes across a SF-expedition characterized by both expansionism and conservative xenophobia!

O'Neil's team encounters first humanoid natives, who turn out to be descendants of Earth-people.  The entity responsible for their enslavement on the alien world is an alien being worshipped under the name of Egypt's sun-god, Ra.  In the film's most interesting development of the standard "alien astronaut" scenario-- one executed many times in STAR TREK and DOCTOR WHO, as well as perhaps hundreds of SF-pulps-- the alien no longer occupies his original form, but inhabits the body of a mortal who sought Ra out back in dynastic times.  This may be a displaced science-fiction version of the trope of the devil-worshipper who invokes the devil to join with his own flesh.  But like Jackson and O'Neil, neither the alien nor the person he inhabits is more than a visual trope.  Since Ra is played by the androgynous-looking actor Jaye Davidson, who made his cinematic fame two years previous in 1992's THE CRYING GAME, Devlin and Emmerich may have been seeking to subtly stigmatize this visual androgyny to make Ra seem suitably "alien."

If the film's main appeal is its monolithic models, its second greatest asset are the action-sequences, though in comparison with the cutting-edge FX of STAR WARS they're merely adequate. But then the focus of STARGATE is never adventurous in nature, but is rather dramatic.  The narrative emphasizes the "winning of hearts and minds" as O'Neil and his cohorts eventually persuade Ra's slave-population to rebel against the tyranny of its pseudo-Egyptian ruler.  In America at least, this aspect may have validated the film for viewers, given that Judeo-Christian religion has repeatedly stressed the mythic appeal of "evil Egyptian tyrants" vs. "nobly suffering Jewish slaves."  This may be an even better explanation of the film's popularity, given that of its two major characters one is a zero and the other is a dick.

Because I see no heroic dimensions to either O'Neil and Jackson, who are caught up in an alien rebellion largely to preserve their own interests, I consider them to be demiheroes, in contrast to comparable heroes like Captain Kirk and the Doctor.