Stargate - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[bryan]

Roger Til's final film.

[tamara]

Jaye Davidson read his lines off cue cards as he struggled to remember his lines.

[harry]

French Stewart's film debut.

[carl]

David Arnold was working as a clerk at a record store in England when he was recommended to compose the score for this film. On the DVD's commentary track, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich admit that they were a bit nervous after hiring him, since his scoring experience at the time was limited to a few short films and only one full-length movie. However, their doubts were gone as soon as they heard what Arnold had composed, and they continued their cooperation with him on Independence Day (1996) and Godzilla (1998). Emmerich and Devlin also state that the quality of Arnold's score for the movie is best exemplified by the countless times it was re-used in trailers, TV spots and programs.

[tom]

The stargate is a system designed to open a wormhole. A wormhole is a hypothetical way of space travel called an "Einstein-Rosen bridge", named after scientists Nathan Rosen and Albert Einstein. According to them, the wormhole should be capable to unite two distant points in the universe, altering space-time laws to cross from a point to another in a brief period of time. The name "wormhole" compares the universe to an apple, with a worm boring through it to reach a point on the other side instead of crawling the long way around on the outside. The same concept was used in Contact (1997) and Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

[sylvia]

According to the DVD commentary, the group of scantily-clad youths surrounding Ra were intentionally included to create unease in the audience.

[sylvia]

Ra's former host's race was never identified throughout the movie. While the television series Stargate SG-1 (1997) would later identify the entity of Ra as a Goa'uld, his former host was still never identified, but it does bear a strong resemblance to the Aesir (Thor's race)--so much so, that the Stargate SG-1 Roleplaying Game would even go on to identify Ra's former host as an Áss known as "Famrir".

[frederick]

Although he had played a few bit parts before, this film has the first substantial supporting role for Djimon Hounsou (credited as Djimon). On the DVD commentary track, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich proudly mention that although Steven Spielberg gave Hounsou his big breakthrough in Amistad (1997), they 'discovered' him before that.

[maureen]

Stargate's ring has 39 glyphs and 9 chrevrons. In the television series Stargate SG-1 (1997), Stargate: Atlantis (2004), and Stargate Universe (2009), it is explained that the number of glyphs in a stargate, depends on the galaxy in which the stargate belongs.