Corrected entry: The premise for Jackson going on the mission is that once on the other side someone would need to be able to re-open the gate using new symbols, but in reality it would just be a matter for earth to re-open the gate from their end at a predetermined time or times.
Corrected entry: When Jackson takes the girl into the hieroglyph chamber, she motions to the symbols and says "hieroglyph", allowing Jackson to understand her accent and talk to her. Trouble is, 'hieroglyph' is not an ancient Egyptian word. It is Greek in origin and was suggested as a name for the symbols by archeologists at a much later date.
Correction: The word that Jackson says isn't 'hieroglyph', it's 'tapareaf' (or something similar-he's reading the words out loud, in any case), which the girl recognizes and then corrects his pronunciation. At one point in this scene, Jackson motions to the writing on the walls and says 'netjer', which IS the Ancient Egyptian word for their writing system-and once again, his pronunciation is corrected.
Corrected entry: Supposedly writing was outlawed because it would prevent the people from having any recollection of history. This totally ignores the idea of oral history, the mechanism used before the development of writing and still used today by Native American and African cultures. In Africa these people are called griots and can literally recite history for days without ever repeating themselves.
Correction: Ra may not have forbidden only writing, but also retelling about the past, which means oral history would be of no help. Furthermore, I doubt even the best of oral retellings could be efficiently transmitted after 3000 years. After all, what would *we* know of ancient Egypt, weren't it for hieroglyphs?
Corrected entry: When the military sends the robot-transmitter through the stargate for a test, the mapping machine locates where in the galaxy the robot is transmitting from. One of the researchers says that the robot is 5 light years away. If something is 5 light years away and it's transmitting a signal to earth, it would take the radio signal 5 years to reach the earth! How did the robot let them know where it was so quickly? The signal couldn't go through the stargate, because a code to open the gate on the opposite side is required.
Correction: Although a code is indeed needed to open it, after you go through, it stays open for a short time - it was in that period which the robot sent the data back.
This would be a direct contradiction to what is said in the movie. The doors are 1 way only. If the doors were 2 way, there would be no need for Jackson to have to decipher the new symbols on the other side. This error stands, either there is no way they would know where it is that fast, or the gate is 2 way and they could easily get back.
It's 1 way for things with mass. Radio waves can go either way.
Corrected entry: After French Stewart throws the suitcase at James Spader, Spader goes down the hill, collecting his books that fell out. However, the suitcase is still closed.
Correction: When he is collecting the books, the suitcase is open. The bottom half is almost completely covered in and filled with sand as it is slowly sliding down the hill as the sand flows.
Corrected entry: Why does Ra need to wait until the next day to send the bomb back to Earth? If he's got the bomb, and he can turn on the Stargate then what is waiting for? In fact, he could have done that at any point without revealing to Jackson his plan then he wouldn't have been stopped.
Correction: He has to wait as he is planning to also send a shipment of minerals with it. Those minerals must be gathered which takes time.
Corrected entry: It is established in the film that Abbydos is on the other side of the known universe (something later contradicted by the TV series). If this is the case, why would one of its co-ordinates be the constellation Orion which logically is itself on the other side of the known universe from the destination; something that spoils Dr. Jackson's six points in 3D space idea.
Correction: There is no reason why one of the points for a destination could not be extremely far away. Planets are identified by the intersection of three lines formed by six points, not by the 6 nearest points.
Corrected entry: When Jackson walks through the doorway where the cover stones are, he is carrying the two bags with "everything he owns." When he gets close enough to see the cover stones, the bags are suddenly gone.
Correction: If look carefully, (part of the two bags) of Jackson can be seen on the floor.
Corrected entry: All these scientists and military personnel have opened a gateway to the other side of the known universe using a technology that is a) completely foreign to them, b) the first time they can get it to work, and c) one that can send stuff back to Earth instantly. No scientist or military personnel would ever allow a Nuclear Device to be sent through the portal, as the properties of the bomb alone travelling at the speed of light or faster could have had catastrophic results.
Correction: Perhaps very poor military judgment, but a character mistake, not a movie mistake.
Corrected entry: The same military car is used in multiple scenes. It is first seen outside the hotel after Dr. Jackson is delivers his talk. Next it is seen outside of Col. O'Neal's house. It is then shown taking Dr. Jackson to Creek Mt. And finally it is the first car bringing all of the brass to Creek Mt. The car is identified by both its license plate (G13 48260) and damaged window trim above the left rear door. (00:08:35 - 00:16:00)
Correction: I see nothing wrong with them using the same car, it's not stated any where in the film that all the stated scenes happen at the same time. If the military needs to ferry all these people; presumably it would be a good idea to use the same car and driver to keep the number of people involved in the Stargate project to a minimum.
Corrected entry: When the Stargate is locking the symbols, the sequence on the computer is just like the one in the cartouche but, on the gate itself, the symbols (apart from the Earth symbol) don't match the chevrons' sequence. Besides, the second chevron locks a symbol on the gate, but another one appears on the monitor.
Correction: When dialing, the glyph to be dialed is rotated to the seventh, or 'selector' chevron. Thus, the chevrons themselves would not lock on the symbol they are dialing. However there are mistakes in the dialing process - the order of the chevrons is jumbled, and the inner track is randomly rotated to incorrect positions when seen from a distance.
Corrected entry: When the four crew members retreat back to the pyramid during the sand storm and realize something is coming (when Ra is arriving), you hear guns being cocked about 6 or so times without hearing any shots being fired. There are only four men and four guns. (00:57:40 - 01:00:15)
Correction: There are 4 men, but they all have machine guns and pistols; some of them might be cocking their berettas, too.
Corrected entry: When O'Neil is fighting the guard near the Stargate, and the guard slashes him, you can see that the wound is on his back, yet in the scene right after Ra's spaceship explodes you see O'Neil standing with the wound on his chest.
Correction: If you watch closely, Anubis slashes his chest to. It's at a camera change so its pretty quick. You can see O'Neil stumbling back after the slash.
Corrected entry: When Daniel is about to go through the Stargate, he touches it first, then sends his hand all the way through it, then pull his hand back out. He shouldn't be able to pull his hand back, since the hand was already in the event horizon, and matter can only travel through a wormhole in one direction.
Correction: The Stargate only goes one way, but Daniel hasn't gone through the Stargate entirely. His hand won't appear out of the other Stargate until he brings his body through the event horizon of the earth Stargate. He just pulled his hand out of the event horizon before it appeared on the other side.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Jackson is looking at the hieroglyphics on the walls of the cave in the city and figuring out the language, how did the girl know what he meant as he pointed at the hieroglyphics if Ra had outlawed any of the people there learning to read.
Correction: It can mean one of two things. First, that there is a general feeling of insatisfaction and that though the slaves don't do anything about it, there's a covert movement where at least a few people still know a few symbols--kind of a peaceful and subdued way to rebel against Ra. Second, it can mean that she is simply a bright and imaginative girl who has a good sense of observation and was able to relate the drawing to her own living universe, to find the closest thing around her looking like it.
Corrected entry: When Ra prepares to send the bomb through the Stargate, Jackson and O'Neil disguised as Egyptians enter the building in front of Ra's pyramid ship along with some other Egyptians who proceed to shoot dead some of Ra's workers. During this battle the doorway to the building closes before the others can get in. Now it's a big heavy rock door so presumably it's rather difficult to break down or force open, but just after Ra and his ship get blown up at the end we see Jackson, O'Neil and Sha're standing in the doorway which is now open again. We never see how they get that door open.
Corrected entry: Surely after spending millions trying to decipher and work out the final symbol wouldn't they go for the obvious trial and error of seeing if the other symbols worked?
Correction: The series Stargate SG-1 explains this mistake. The planets are moving farther away from each other due to galactic drift. They had to alter the dialing computer to get anywhere. It was pure luck that they connected to Abydos even after finding the last symbol.
Corrected entry: Dr. Jackson states that you need six points in a 3D volume to define a unique position. He then draws six points on the faces of a cube and connects the opposed pairs of points with lines, demonstrating that they all intersect to reveal the unique location. Whether this is really a good way to identify points in space is debatable, but even so, the technique he demonstrated requires only four points, not six. Any two lines that intersect do so at a unique point.
Correction: Four points could only produce two intersecting lines that define a certain coordinate in a 2-dimensional plane (a flat surface). Six points are required to produce three intersecting lines that define a certain coordinate in a third dimension (depth).
Corrected entry: The gate appears to have about 40 symbols on it, and they already had the first 6 of the 7 needed for the sequence. After dialing the first 6, Catherine said that was as far as they had ever gotten, so we know they had dialed the first 6 before. Except they didn't need Jackson to figure out the riddle since all they had to do was try each of the remaining symbols as the seventh, one by one, until they found the one that worked. So with a maximum of about 40 tries they would have found it a long time ago, all without Jackson's help.
Correction: The project is in military hands and its quite possible the military decided not to experiment further with the device before they knew for sure they got the correct symbol, considering the shaking that already starts when the 6th symbol is locked. Its possible that dialing it is too dangerous to try 40 times because it endangers the facility or the device itself.
Corrected entry: It's the very first time they opened the Stargate (Katherine says they've never got past the 6th chevron), and though they tried to study it, they had no clue about what it really is until Daniel properly translated it 2 weeks before the mission (in the series, someone did use the Stargate by accident many years ago, but it doesn't apply for this movie). Yet, not knowing how it works, and having a vague idea about what it does, their system is designed to monitor things like molecular deconstruction that only happens when matters pass through the gate, which they had no idea it would happen. Also, they have a state of the art map of space, that tells exactly what star they dialed, still without ever opening the Stargate or knowing how it works. They did have an idea about its purpose only 2 weeks earlier, which still isn't enough time to design and create something to help monitor a device they know nothing about.
Correction: They did have an idea as to what the Stargate did before Daniel came on board - Daniel only corrected a previous translation and he didn't change the meaning of the words, only the precise details. Also, the fact that the project is in a military base with military personnel all over the place indicates that they had a good idea of what it was capable of. There was plenty of time to have come up with the monitoring equipment before Daniel came along.
Correction: The gateway is a one way trip, you can't go back through the wormhole when the gate has been opened from the other side.
lionhead
Pure assumption. We don't know exactly how the stargate works. It may actually be possible to go back through the stargate, even if you just came through and it was still open. We just don't know.
It has been well established that Stargate travel is one-way.
It was established in the TV series that two-way travel was not possible; however, many consider the movie not to be canon so information from the series is not necessarily applicable.
Noman ★
Since when?
After Jackson says he doesn't know how to dial back, when they are setting up camp, Brown says "if we're not back soon, they'll just turn on the gate from the other side", and Ferretti tells him "no, it doesn't work that way, you see, if you don't turn it on from here, we're screwed." The one way travel is also stated in the later TV series.
jimba
Since always.
lionhead