HOW TO MAKE A "STARGATE 3D" THEATRICAL MOVIE!

 

Its 2013 and MGM is bombarding us with promos and trailers for their new big budget summer blockbuster movie. You can see posters for it on the subway, with a “Coming Soon” subtitle and you find a billboard of it in Times Square. You go see the Justice League movie in the theaters but before that a special teaser shows up, an unexpected one and the audience suddenly gasps at the visuals being projected on the big screen. After the explosive opening filled with never before seen visuals and electrifying music, the teaser finishes elegantly and with faint drum beats; slowly revealing the words, “STARGATE” AND “REVOLUTION 3D”.

This is the dream Stargate fans have been wishing for ever since they got hooked on the subsequent TV shows; TV shows that proved what Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich came up with wasn’t supposed to be told in a single movie. In a time when the cinemaplexes are filled with sequels, remakes, reboots; its hard not to believe that had the original Stargate movie been released in this decade instead of 1994, we would have been on our 4th Stargate cinematic movie by now. Don’t get me wrong the TV shows have been great and I wouldn’t have it any other way, in fact, if there would be a sequel I would like it to build on what the TV shows have created for the past 15 years and counting. Its very possible for such a movie to happen and be received well by mainstream audiences as long as it emphasizes on simple themes and make it relevant to people.

1. First, it should follow a “fantasy movie” formula rather than a sci-fi one. That way it would be more about characters having adventure without bogging down the movie with talks of advanced technology and science. Of course it still would be a sci-fi movie but more in the vain of the recent JJ Abrams Star Trek and Star Wars. There will also have to be a balance between military and adventure aspects.

2. The characters have to be relate-able and reflect society’s ideologies which you would think is easy for a show set in present day but you will be surprised at how many people will end up finding the characters to be mere stereotypes and nothing else. It would be great if the characters were three dimensional without the petty drama.

3. Avoid the overly “dark” theme that plagues many movies today. Unless its horror, it just doesn’t work well with mainstream audiences. We all want our sci-fi to be like Blade Runner but there is a reason why Blade Runner flopped at the box office. So no film noir or “grim” atmosphere; instead it should be light and almost as family-friendly as an action movie can be. SGU, with its dark theme can never be a theatrical movie that does well. Clearly, the whole light theme is a compromise to attract newcomers to the franchise. In a sense, you can compare it to The Mummy movies.

4. Stargate the original movie ran a simple premise of a group of people who became lost and unable to “gate” back to earth. Now that the TV show has done that plenty of time, well, we can’t have that again. There has to be an equally simple one that takes its place. How about in an effort to help an alien planet get rid of its dictator, one earth soldier gets recruited into the SGC and after being deployed into combat, he becomes one of the few survivors. Picture military men on horses with M16s. Anyway, those few survivors get captured by a goauld-like villain who prisons them in a desolate planet as slaves. There the team hatches a plan to escape and warn earth of the new threat while being hunted down. Along the way they discover the villain’s plan to collect like 7 “special” stargates on planets in the galaxy to form a new superweapon out of them. The surviving team try to stop them by themselves and somewhere in the end the cavalry arrives to finish the villain off. Thats what I call crappy storytelling but its the only thing I can think of right now. The story will have to focus on defending earth by using the stargates, not depend on ships as much.

5. Make it 3D. And thats why it will have to be visual-heavy as well as be action-oriented. All in all, it got to be a fun movie to watch in 3D, like a roller-coaster ride with an added story to it.

 

Lets hope another Stargate movie happens in the future, a movie that gets to have its own poster displayed in the subway station.