Stargate: Director's Cut

Written by:

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin

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Directed by:

Roland Emmerich

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Release Date:

1994

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Welcome to Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Adventures, review number, uh, 70 I think. Wow, that's a lot higher than I thought it'd be, seeing as I took the last 6 weeks off. I should apologise for that by the way... but I won't. Because vanishing for months after a season finale is the most sci-fi thing in the world.

It's April 1st by the way, unless you're reading this in the future, which means that my little science fiction blog is a year old today! So this is basically the start of Sci-Fi Adventures Season Two, where the writing gets more confident, the ideas get less dumb, and the protagonist (me) grows a beard. Or maybe the production values will go to shit, the gimmicks will get more desperate, it'll end on clip show and then get cancelled.

I was trying to think of something special to watch for my season premiere, but then I remembered that I already announced my next review back in February, so instead I'm stuck watching the original 1994 Stargate movie! I'm saying it's the 'original' movie because it kicked the franchise off, and because I'm worried that someday Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are finally going to get their sequel off the ground and we shall all bear witness to what the Stargate equivalent of Independence Day: Resurgence looks like. I'm not hyped.

I've only seen this film the once, back when it existed on its own without even a single spin-off series, and I don't remember being impressed. I don't remember disliking it either though. In fact I barely remember it at all, so I'm curious to rediscover what actually happens in this movie. Unfortunately I don't have the Blu-ray version, so I can't offer you the greatest of screencaps to go along with my commentary, but on the plus side I do have a cardboard DVD box that folds out into a pyramid! I'd show you a photo, but that means bending the flaps to slot it together and I don't really want to.

The following text will contain epic SPOILERS for the entirety of this movie, but I'm considering the TV series to be off-limits. Well I might mention some characters and drop terms like 'Jaffa' but nothing worse than that.

Star Trek

Written by:

Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman

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Directed by:

J.J. Abrams

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Release Date:

2009

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September 8th was the day that Star Trek: The Original Series first aired on US television back in 1966 (Canada got it two days earlier, but don't tell anyone), so today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm celebrating its 50th birthday by sharing my thoughts on the movie Star Trek! Or 'J.J. Trek' or 'Star Trek 2009' or whatever you want to call it (the DVD volume label says it's Star Trek XI). The first Trek movie is called Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so they technically haven't given two films the same title here, but it's still unnecessarily confusing and I don't like it. What was so wrong with calling it Star Trek: The Force Awakens or something?

I love that they brought the old school font back though, as it looks great with that blinding J.J. Abrams lens flare. Some people aren't so keen on the lens flares though, or the fact that this is a prequel, or that it's a semi-reboot, or that it's an action movie... in fact a lot of things about it have aggravated certain fans. Critics on the other hand seem quite fond of the film, with Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 95% of movie reviewers recommended it, which means it's beating Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (88%), Star Trek: First Contact (92%) and The One with the Whales in it (85%)! That makes this the second most acclaimed movie on my site so far, after Aliens (98%).

Right, as usual I'm going to be taking screencaps from the DVD release and writing a bunch of SPOILERS underneath them for this film and maybe even those that came before it. I'll even throw in a couple of spoilers for Star Wars as well, because this movie's begging for comparison. Into Darkness and Beyond are 100% safe though.

Aliens: Special Edition

Written by:

James Cameron

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Directed by:

James Cameron

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Release Date:

1986

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to go through James Cameron's legendary sci-fi action thriller sequel Aliens! Because 20th Century Fox have decided that the 26th of April is now 'Alien Day', and that's enough of an excuse for me to give it a rewatch. I suppose it would've made more sense to watch Alien today and save Aliens for its 30th anniversary in July, but that idea occurred to me a little too late unfortunately. Maybe I'll watch Alien later and sneakily swap the post dates around... no one will ever notice.

I already watched the movie last April as research for my 'Aliens: Colonial Marines' review on Super Adventures, so I was thinking I'd put the theatrical cut on instead this time and save myself some work. But that doesn't seem right when the Special Edition is considered the definitive version by basically everyone, especially James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver who weren't that happy when 14 minutes of their movie got sliced out. Sometimes a 'director's cut' is just a re-edit purely for the sake of selling the same movie twice, but Fox had the theatrical version of Aliens cut down so that cinemas could fit more screening in each day, so this is a restoration of its true form. All two and a half hours of it.

Like always I'll be going through the whole damn movie, writing my thoughts underneath DVD screencaps and throwing out massive SPOILERS all over the place, for this film and the original Alien. I won't spoil a thing about Alien³ onwards though, no matter how tempted I am to go into a rant.