There’s something so refreshing about the simplicity of a great ’90s adventure movie. Some of my personal favorites are the ones that don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re the films that don’t have to build an interconnected universe, explain every piece of mythology, or spend half the runtime teasing a future installment. The best kinds of ‘90s adventure films have a cool idea, a charismatic hero, some weird ancient mysteries, and a sense that the characters are entering a world totally unrecognizable.
Enter Roland Emmerich’s Stargate. The 1994 action-adventure movie with a sci-fi twist drops Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) and Special Forces Colonel Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell) into an otherworldly Egypt after unlocking a portal that allows access across the universe. The basic setup makes the story feel like a lost-civilization adventure before it becomes a traditional alien-invasion story. There are ancient gods, mysterious hieroglyphics, buried secrets, enormous temples, and an entire civilization living under the thumb of a supposed god.
Emmerich’s execution of Stargate stands out precisely because it predates the destructive spectacle that later defined his career. Coming just two years after Universal Soldier, Stargate catches Emmerich in a more patient directing style. Instead of relying on the apocalyptic set pieces of Independence Day or The Day After Tomorrow, his direction prioritizes world-building, atmospheric tension, and the quiet awe of sci-fi exploration. The result is a sharper film that lets a high-concept premise breathe more naturally, like the gradual unfolding of the mystery of the Stargate before its characters even enter the desert landscape.
Emmerich makes the alien world feel enormous, partly due to the fact that the movie was shot in Yuma, Arizona, where the director recalled having as many as 1,500 extras for some scenes. James Spader later described the experience as a spectacle in itself, with enormous sets, thousands of extras and even a full-blown sandstorm captured during filming.
You can still see the seams, of course. Some of the CGI has aged poorly, particularly when compared with the practical sets and miniatures surrounding it. A few of the supporting characters are little more than military grunts, and the movie occasionally feels like it is rushing through a much larger mythology than it has time to explore. But the scale sells it all. Emmerich knows when to let the camera linger on a gigantic set or an approaching army, holding the shot just long enough to sell the scope.
Kurt Russell is another major reason Stargate feels like a proper action-adventure. Colonel O’Neil is basically Russell’s attempt to play the most emotionally repressed action hero imaginable, but there’s enough personality underneath the stoicism to keep him interesting. Russell himself said what attracted him was Emmerich’s clear vision and the filmmaker’s enthusiasm for making a genuine spectacle.
Spader’s Daniel Jackson is the perfect opposite. He’s fascinated by everything O’Neil finds threatening, and Spader gives the character a nervous energy that grounds the film’s sci-fi spectacle in genuine human curiosity. Emmerich later described their acting methods as diametrically opposed. Spader built his character intellectually, whereas Russell relied on raw emotion, and this inherent friction is exactly why their on-screen relationship just works.
David Arnold’s musical compositions also give the film an undeniable sense of gravity. Though Arnold was a relatively unknown composer when Emmerich and Dean Devlin heard his work on The Young Americans, they granted him unusual creative freedom. The result is a towering soundtrack that lends an almost mythic importance to everything on screen. The central theme alone possesses the kind of grand, instantly recognizable quality you would expect from something like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings.
Stargate SG-1 would later turn the film’s central premise into a television engine, driven by the endlessly repeatable promise of stepping onto a new world each week. The flagship series dramatically expanded the mythology, while Stargate Atlantis leaned even harder into pure exploration, cementing the show as the definitive version of the universe for some fans.
Still, Emmerich’s film deserves not just to be appreciated on its own merits but also to be recognized for its lingering influence. Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, released seven years later, shares striking DNA with the 1994 movie, from the nerdy academic leading a military expedition to the discovery of a forgotten civilization. While not a direct rip-off, Atlantis writer Tab Murphy, who visited the Stargate set and knew the filmmakers, later admitted those similarities might have seeped into his subconscious, even as both films drew from the same well of classic adventure tropes.
Sitting at that exact intersection of sci-fi, fantasy, military thriller, and historical pulp is what makes Stargate such a blast. It wears its flaws on its sleeve — dated visual effects, a few paper-thin characters, and a lingering sense that it’s simply chapter one of a cinematic franchise that never materialized. Over three decades later, those rough edges hardly matter. Sometimes a movie doesn’t have to be the best version of itself to be a great time, and Stargate is proof.
Stargate is streaming on YouTube