Stargate: The Ark of Truth (2008)

Pretty Good

Nice effects though.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A good science fiction TV show. However the ark is an easy and convenient piece technology. The Ark has never been in the series SG1. YET A Miraculous piece of technology drops into the knowledge base if SG1.I'm very happy that show got the closure it needed.

I'm disappointed that some reviewers here treated this like a Feature Film instead of what it is, one of two SG-1 "Episodes" that deal with loose ends left from the series. This one focuses on The Ori Followers and has a side-trip into Replicatorville.This was not ever intended to be Feature Film Quality. As far as Production Value, it's probably the best SG-1 Episode ever made, along with "Continuum".Like a few other's I stopped watching SG-1 for seasons 9 and 10, so I missed the whole Ori storyline. I came into this without any of the background. Even so, it was not difficult for me to follow the story: And some cleverly placed flashbacks show the history of the Ori's incursion into "our" galaxy and what had transpired in seasons 9 and 10. I had no trouble understanding the main plots, but now that I have gone back and watched seasons 9 and 10, I can really enjoy this.The Fires of Celestos have gone out - Which is the City of the Gods as shown in "Avalon pt II" - The Ori are Gone, but the Followers of the Ori are not. The Ancients had actually thought up a solution, millions of years ago: The Ark of Truth. But they were loathe to use it, as it represented the same kind of coercion which The Ori Followers use. Mainly the Ark is designed to cause followers of the Ori to question their beliefs. At least that is what it is programmed to do by The Ancients. But they built in a safeguard: The Ark can only be programmed to make people believe things which are True, which would effectively prevent the Ori from taking The Ark and using it to make people believe their propaganda.Daniel Jackson sees the Ark in his dreams, as well as a mountain blowing up. Assuming the vision came from Merlin, who helped Jackson create the weapon which killed all of the Ori, SG-1 is led to the ruins of Dakara. As expected, an Ori ship shows up and out pops Vala's "Husband" Tomin (Tim Guinee), some Ori Soldiers, and the Prior who we saw get converted in "Avalon part II" and "Origin" (Greg Anderson, who deserves note for a fine job of creeping us out).We knew that Tomin was starting to question the way his Prior was using the book of Origin to rationalize atrocities done in the Ori's name, and he had already given SG-1 safe passage. But when the Prior tries to revoke that, Tomin cracks and SG-1 skirts certain death once again by the skin of their teeth.So, SG-1 returns to Command with Tomin in tow. Homeworld Command has one advanced ship with an Asgard Core: The Odyssey. Basically the idea is to sneak in to the Ori Galaxy through the Super-Stargate, find the Ark, and turn it on. Then Bring it back to "our" galaxy, and turn it on there, too.But the IOA, the agency which was set up for Homeworld Command Oversight, has a new face to replace Woolsey (Robert Picardo) who went to Atlantis: Merrick, played by Currie Graham. The IOA had created a secondary, secret plan: Which was to release Replicators into the Ori Galaxy! Needless to say, in the Middle of SG-1's mission, Merrick releases a special replicator onto the Odyssey, one which is immune to the anti-replicator weapon Jack created in Season 7. And, he activated the Asgard Core to do it which is an Instant Ori-Magnet! So... Replicators overrun Odyssey, Ori ships chasing them, Daniel, Vala, and Tomin captured, and Teal'c has a new hole blown into his back to match his frontal Symbiote Pouch, what is not to like? The production is superb, almost feature film quality. And it's one last blast for SG-1. Well, Almost one last blast, it depends on which SG-1 Movie you watch first, Continuum or Ark. I chose to watch this one first, then Continuum. Either way, it wraps up all remaining plot lines for SG-1.

So clearly I liked the movie. I gave it an 8/10. Was it really an 8? Probably not, but being a fan of the series I felt that I could not give it any lower. Also, while it won't win any awards, I try to give things ratings for what they were trying to be. This was not trying to be an award winning movie and if you think it should be, from the onset you will probably be disappointed (and don't even think of trying to see it without watching at least seasons 7-10 of the show. You will be lost).That said, does anyone else hate Vala? Nothing against Claudia Black but Vala is the one reason I wanted to stop watching the show. She is the classic "let me be an overall impatient idiot who should be shot and save the team the trouble of her antics" character. Sure Jack O'Neill had his moments but they were offset buy humor and actual redeemable moments. Vala is just an idiot. Can they play out the stealing/treasure of her past in any more lame jokes? She is so out of place they may as well use yet another Farscape actor.Bottom Line: Fine movie, if you go in expecting a made-for-DVD movie, and Vala is annoying as ever (but less so if you make it past the first 20 min of the movie).

'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'.