Film

The feature film Stargate was released in 1994. Written by Dean Devlin and directed by Roland Emmerich, it was originally intended as the start of a film franchise, but Emmerich moved on to create Independence Day and Godzilla. Despite the film not being continued in a cinematic trilogy as intended, the story itself was later expanded by writers and developers other than Emmerich and Devlin.

Notably, they do not consider Stargate's spin-offs to be valid continuations of the original film's story, although MGM owned the rights to the franchise and they were unable to see "their" sequels made. As a result, some fans of the movie reject the series (and vice-versa). Devlin has, however, stated that he plans to write his own sequel to Stargate separately to its spin-offs, providing two versions of the continuing story.

The film cost an estimated $55,000,000 to produce, and made $196,600,000 gross worldwide, $16,600,000 of which was in the opening weekend. Critical reaction to it was varied. Although some critics were unimpressed with an action-driven plot, being carried along by special-effects, and a somewhat slow beginning or poor ending, others were impressed with the film's deviation from the clichés of science fiction, with a unique and clever background plot. Notably, although the case was settled privately, Emmerich and Devlin were sued for plagiarising the idea. The film won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film and the BMI Film Music Award for David Arnold's musical score among others.

The plot of the movie set the grounds of the Stargate mythos. A brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader) is shunned by the academic world due to his farfetched theories. However, a Dr. Catherine Langford privately hires him to decipher a set of symbols found on the cover stones of an ancient ring-shaped artifact (the Stargate) that had been found at Giza in 1928. Jackson discovers that the symbols are in fact constellations, so that if 6 are identified, a point in space can be extrapolated corresponding to a "destination"; a seventh symbol then defines the point of origin. This unlocks the secret to using the Stargate for travel.

USAF Colonel Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell), alongside Jackson, leads an expedition through the Stargate to the planet Abydos. In the plot of the film, there existed only two Stargates in the universe, connecting only Abydos and Earth; hence the purpose of the mission was to determine whether Abydos was dangerous, and if so to destroy the gate there, protecting Earth. Expansions of the film such as SG-1 explained later that there is an entire network of Stargates, meaning that this original mission would have been fruitless.

On Abydos, Jack O'Neil's team comes into conflict with an alien who is posing as the Egyptian sun god Ra. He controls vast numbers of slaves who mine for him and live in fear; the slaves are in fact the descendants of humans who were transported to this planet from Ancient Egypt in the distant past. Jack's team befriend the people, and Daniel Jackson falls in love, and is married, to a woman named Sha'uri.

Before Jack O'Neil is able to detonate a nuclear warhead, sealing the pathway to Earth, Ra steals the bomb and enhances it so that its destructive power increases a hundredfold, then intends to send the bomb back to Earth. Jack is unable to defuse the detonation timer, so instead he moves the bomb onto Ra's space-vessel, which is destroyed along with him, freeing all of his slaves.

Jack and the surviving members of his team return to Earth, but Daniel stays behind to live with his wife.