Stargate: The Ark of Truth (2008) (V)

Réalisateur:

Robert C. Cooper

Writers:

Brad Wright (developer) &
Jonathan Glassner (developer) ...

Release Date:

11 mars 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Aventure | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

Plot:

SG-1 search for an Ancient Artifact to finally defeat the Ori. But the Artifact is in the Ori Galaxy.

Plot Keywords:

Alternate Timeline | Wormhole | Evil God | Intragalactic Travel

Avis des utilisateurs:

Deus Ex Machina concludes the Ori plot arc without finesse

Ensemble

Ben Browder	...	Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell
Amanda Tapping	...	Lt. Col. Samantha Carter
Christopher Judge	...	Teal'c
Michael Shanks	...	Dr. Daniel Jackson
Beau Bridges	...	Major General Hank Landry
Claudia Black	...	Vala Mal Doran
Currie Graham	...	Marrick
Morena Baccarin	...	Adria
Tim Guinee	...	Tomin
Julian Sands	...	Doci
Sarah Strange	...	Morgan Le Fay
Michael Beach	...	Abe Ellis
Gary Jones	...	Chief Mst Sgt. Walter Harriman
Martin Christopher	...	Major Marks
Chris Gauthier	...	Hertis (as Christopher Gauthier)

Autre(s) titre(s) :

The Ark of Truth (USA) (short title)

Durée:

102 min

Pays:

USA | Canada

Langue:

Anglais

Couleur:

Couleur

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Anecdotes:

This film was shot in only 16 days.

Goofs:

Continuity: At the end of the film, when Sam is walking down the hall into the gate room, she is holding the P-90 in her right hand and cap in her left. In the next shot from inside the gate room, her left hand holds the gun, while the right has the cap.

Guillemet:

Teal'c: Nothing I have done since turning against the goa'uld will make up for the atrocities I once committed in their name. Somewhere deep inside you you knew it was wrong, a voice you did not recognize screamed for you to stop. You saw no way out, it was the way things were, they could not be changed. You're trying to convince yourself the people you're hurting deserved it. You became numb to their pain and suffering, you learned to shut out the voice speaking against it.
Tomin: There's always a choice.
Teal'c: Indeed there is.
[...]

Connexions De Film:

Follows "Stargate SG-1" (1997)

Deus Ex Machina concludes the Ori plot arc without finesse

'Stargate: The Ark of Truth' closes the story left open after the series 'Stargate SG-1' was cancelled. What we must bear in mind however is that the story it closes only began in SG-1's ninth season, and only lasted 40 episodes. The main storyline of 'Stargate SG-1' was already closed at the end of Season 8, after 174 episodes; and I personally would have preferred if the show had ended there. The last two seasons of SG-1 suffered a severe dip in quality that runs straight through into 'The Ark of Truth'.

The film makes absolutely no compromise for new viewers, so I will provide a brief backdrop (although even this will be insufficient to understand the film fully). The Ori are beings living on a higher plane of reality posing as Gods, and the more people who worship them as such, the more powerful they become. A set of similar beings, known as the Alterans (or Ancients) are the only defence against the Ori taking over the Milky Way. However, neither beings are able to directly interfere with physical reality, and hence the Ori use their religion, "Origin", to have their bidding done by humans. A huge army of followers has created a "Supergate", a teleportation device, that they will use to send a fleet of starships and troops to Earth - where they will convert its inhabitants to "Origin" by force. SG-1 is the primary five-strong team taking orders from the U.S. Government to counter these inter-galactic threats.

There was a lot that could have been done with a Stargate film - something that hasn't been seen since 1994 - and the fans of the TV show were certainly expecting a lot. This is perhaps why the film begins so badly – it's like they couldn't think of anything good enough to match the anticipation, so for safety they picked something completely nondescript. That is, a full 2 minutes of mountains; and literally nothing to go with the mountains other than music. I do not exaggerate - there aren't even titles or credits. It's like it's trying to be the epic introduction to 'The Two Towers' (Peter Jackson, 2002) - which begins by gliding through the snowy peaks of a fantasy land - but lacking the brevity, grace, grandeur and beauty. The only thing epic about 'Ark's beginning is the anticlimax.

The ultimate downfall of the film is encapsulated in these first 2 minutes: the production team behind 'Stargate SG-1' had spent ten years making 42-minute episodes - they just didn't know how to handle the scale of something feature-length. The whole film feels like an early Season 10 episode with 60 minutes of padding, as exemplified by these opening fly-bys. Why mountains? As the plot reveals, the mountains have nothing to do with anything. I can easily imagine a brainstorming session the creative team went through, where someone suddenly shouted, "Mountains! Mountains are epic! Just look at the start of The Two Towers!". Any entertainment production needs to grab you from the outset, and 'Ark' crucially fails to do this.

What is perhaps most annoying about the introduction, besides its sheer tedium, is that Joel Goldsmith did indeed provide the film with a grandiose score, and it completely fails to make use of it. In the overture, a subtle, multi-instrumental build-up leads to the familiar but deeper and richer Stargate theme tune which, as anyone who has heard it will know, has a very clear "moment of climax". Indeed, in every Stargate production made to date, except one or two early episodes, this climactic musical note signalled the moment for the display of the title. 'Ark' ignores this and continues flying past its unimpressive selection of mountains.

Immediately following the introduction we have a short discussion between some Alterans, set millions of years ago when they were human in form. They decide that they cannot use the eponymous 'Ark' as a weapon against the Ori as it is too unethical. Immediately we skip to the present, and SG-1 is searching for the Ark to use as a weapon against the Ori. Have I missed something, or has Stargate quite simply thrown away the very thing that made it stand out from the crowd of sci-fi productions; i.e. philosophically and ethically troubled protagonists? This notion is dealt with very lightly; the main character throws some lines at the screen a few times about how the use of the Ark is the better of two evils, or that they are in desperate times, but this pales in comparison to the Season 5 episode where he literally gave his life to save a civilisation. Why the change? The answer is simple: the writers couldn't think of a better solution to the Ori threat, and so they needed their characters to be okay with it.

Because ultimately, what could the solution have been? The show had spent 2 years reiterating that the Ori were a force impossible to reckon with, that their technology was superior to Earth's by light-years, and that if Earth ever came into any kind of combat with them they'd be frazzled before they could don their uniforms: this overbearing power was a necessity both to create tension and also to make the Ori an even more potent foe than the mega-enemies that had just been defeated at the end of Season 8. So when Season 10 concluded, and the Ori were on the brink of invading Earth, what could the solution have been? War would have been out of the question, 40 episodes had demonstrated that negotiation or reason was impossible – we were doomed. Enter the Ark. It is a Deus Ex Machina solution of dizzying proportions, and a McGuffin that sends SG-1 on a padded hunt for 90 minutes, interrupted with improbable enemies. I would have appreciated more creativity than what is effectively looking for a device that has a button reading 'Click Here to Beat the Ori'.