FADE IN:

INT. COLLEGE

Bespectacled nerd JAMES SPADER is giving a LECTURE to your standard group of CHORTLING ACADEMIC SNOBS.

JAMES SPADER

Hi everyone, as you can see I’m the standard attractive-but-with-glasses Hollywood academic of the type that generally gets drawn into adventure stories. I’ve discovered evidence that the pyramids are actually thousands of years older than previously suspected, which I’m sure you appreciate raises some very important questions-

SNOB

OH YEAH THEN WHO BUILT THEM SMART GUY

(chortles)

JAMES SPADER

Yes, that is one of the questions. There are a number of possible theories, as we are all archaeologists and theories are basically the whole job.

SNOB

PFFFFFTTT, IF YOU DON’T INSTANTLY HAVE THE NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF THE ACTUAL BUILDERS OF THE PYRAMIDS THEN YOUR DISCOVERY IS WORTHLESS, COME EVERYBODY LET’S ALL LEAVE WITHOUT LOOKING AT ANY OF HIS EVIDENCE

(scoffs)

Every single person evacuates the hall at once, except for rich old lady VIVECA LINDFORS.

VIVECA LINDFORS

I believe your crackpot theory, James! Come with me, I need your help deciphering the glyphs on an artifact we discovered in ancient Egypt. We’ve been trying to crack it for two years with no success, maybe you’ll have better luck.

JAMES SPADER

Two years? But the opening sequence showed you finding it in 1928.

VIVECA LINDFORS

I guess for the first sixty-four years we just used it as a giant drink coaster or something, I don’t know.

INT. SECRET EGYPTOLOGY LAB

VIVECA brings JAMES to meet her team, including Egyptologist RICHARD KIND.

RICHARD KIND

Hi, sorry my voice sounds pretty much normal, I haven’t really figured out my schtick yet. Anyway, here’s the big stone disk we found. I already translated the hieroglyphs on it, albeit kinda shittily. All we need you to do is decipher the wonky shapes on the rim, which don’t appear to be hieroglyphs at all.

JAMES SPADER

Why have you enlisted a hieroglyph expert to try to interpret random shapes that aren’t hieroglyphs?

RICHARD KIND

I guess we’re working under the assumption that they’re some kind of top-secret hieroglyphs that only you know about.

KURT RUSSELL

(bursting in)

Speaking of top secret, I’m a military guy and I’ve come to say that this whole operation is now classified! The top brass came to my house and yanked me out of retirement to come take over this thing.

JAMES SPADER

If this project has been running for two years now, how come today the military is suddenly freaking out over it?

KURT RUSSELL

That’s because, um...

(surreptitiously flips through script)

Becaaauuuse...

(reaches end of script)

(discreetly puts it away)

That’s need-to-know.

JAMES spends the next few weeks studying the SCRIBBLES on the ARTIFACT. Then one day he sees a security guard reading a newspaper, and it features an article entitled “HEY LOOK THE ORION CONSTELLATION, HERE IS A PICTURE OF IT, THERE IS AN ARTICLE IN THE NEWSPAPER ABOUT THE ORION CONSTELLATION FOR SOME REASON”.

JAMES SPADER

Oh I see! These symbols are constellations! Wow, a team of scientists work with this thing for two years and not one of them can recognize any constellations? They even have those stereotypical join-the-dots shapes and everything.

He goes and shows the TEAM his FINDINGS.

JAMES SPADER

So there are seven symbols. Six constellations on the rim, used to identify a destination in space. I’ve also picked a random non-constellation symbol carved elsewhere on the artifact and decided that it represents the starting location, based on no evidence whatsoever.

KURT RUSSELL

How come the destination needs six symbols so you can triangulate where it is, but the starting location only needs one?

JAMES SPADER

Look, it’s pretty much just technobabble, don’t worry about it. You might as well ask what good it’ll do us to triangulate anything using a star map that’s ten thousand years out of date.

He is taken to see the GIANT SHINY HULA HOOP in the basement.

KURT RUSSELL

We can now inform you that the disk is essentially an instruction manual for this stargate. As you can see, the stargate is covered in symbols that we can activate, six of which are those constellation symbols, but until you came along we didn’t know which seventh symbol to use!

JAMES SPADER

(peers)

There only seems to be like forty options. You could have trial-and-errored this shit in like an hour.

(spots symbol)

Aha! There’s the seventh symbol I identified!

KURT RUSSELL

That? That’s just a triangle. It doesn’t have the humanoid pictograms on either side like the image from the instruction manual.

JAMES SPADER

True, BUT it does if I literally just scribble them on there!

(doodles)

KURT RUSSELL

By God you’re right! Begin the long, laborious activation sequence!

FANS OF STARGATE SG-1

(sighs)

(takes bathroom break)

They successfully switch on the STARGATE, which turns it into a SIDEWAYS PADDLE POOL. They then send a DRONE through.

KURT RUSSELL

Hot dog, it says the air’s breathable and everything! All right then, let’s send a team through and check things out.

JAMES SPADER

Woah, hang on! Maybe we should run more than one test? Send at least a single living thing through, before a whole squadron of human beings?

KURT RUSSELL

I appreciate your concerns, but unlike the similar movie Explorers we kind of want to get through the intriguing setup phase as fast as possible, so we can get straight to the underwhelming payoff phase.

KURT, JAMES, and a bunch of GENERIC ARMY GUYS all step into the STARGATE, and then a giant SCREENSAVER transports them to ANOTHER WORLD.

EXT. ARRAKIS

The TEAM emerges from a corresponding STARGATE at a PYRAMID on a DESERT PLANET. (Or possibly just a DESERT which exists on a REGULAR PLANET, if such a thing is even possible in science fiction.)

KURT RUSSELL

Great, we made it! Now once I’ve done something not at all suspicious with this case containing never you mind what, James can activate the gate on this side.

JAMES SPADER

Sure thing! Let me just find this gate’s own instruction manual, which I just assumed was going to be right here waiting for us, and without which we’re totally fucked.

(looks)

Oh would you look at that, it’s not here! Geez, if I’d brought up this concept at all before we came through and got trapped here, I suppose we could have used the drone to find this out in advance, couldn’t we? Oh ho ho, what a silly oversight on my part!

KURT RUSSELL

I see.

(starts strangling James to death)

JAMES SPADER

(gasping out)

It’s okay, I’m sure it’s somewhere in the general area! All we have to do is scour the desert without any archaeological equipment and hope we find this thing before we all die of thirst.

They head out to start their search.

KURT RUSSELL

All right, this is an old-fashioned adventure story, so who knows what kind of exotic monsters and perils we’ll have to face as we search this savage wilderness for-

Almost immediately they run into a VILLAGE full of FRIENDLY HUMANS.

ERICK AVARI

(in space language)

Gasp! Strangers! We can’t understand anything you say, but James is wearing a random Egyptian trinket that Viveca gave him, which just so happens to bear the symbol of our god Ra, so now we worship you! Have food! Have drink! Allow us to pamper you decadently for the next half hour of the movie!

KURT RUSSELL

(getting fanned with palm leaves and fed individual grapes)

Oh. Well I guess then we’re just doing that old The Man Who Would Be King adventure trope, right? So things are going to be great until these guys realize we’re not gods, then we’ll really be in the shit.

JAMES SPADER

(in hammock, getting footrub)

Or maybe we’re setting up an Outer Limits-style twist where they’re actually fattening us up or otherwise fucking with us?

ERICK AVARI

None of that will ever happen! We love you guys now and forever! HAVE MY BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER MILI AVITAL, SHE BELONGS TO YOU NOW!

MILI AVITAL

I have absolutely no problem with this!

JAMES SPADER

Sheesh, okay. Maybe the conflict is back at the stargate? Let’s check.

EXT. PYRAMID

Back at the STARGATE, a HUGE PYRAMID-SHAPED SPACESHIP descends from the sky and parks itself on top of the PYRAMID.

SOLDIER

Aha, now we know what the true purpose of the pyramids is! They’re docking ports for pointy UFOs! It all seems so obvious in hindsight.

Then some ALIEN SOLDIERS in DOG HEAD COSTUMES are sent down from the SHIP via a TELEPORTER, making the whole act of entering the atmosphere COMPLETELY POINTLESS.

DOG-HEAD SOLDIER

Bwa ha ha, foolish human soldiers, do you really think your primitive guns can stand up to our advanced futuristic HITTING YOU ON THE HEAD WITH BIG STICKS

(knocks soldier out)

All the SOLDIERS are CAPTURED!

INT. VILLAGE

Back in the village, KURT is showing local boy ALEXIS CRUZ his LIGHTER.

ALEXIS CRUZ

Wow, what incredible god magic! I mean we just established that this place is regularly visited by interstellar spacecraft, but OMG A MORE CONVENIENT WAY OF MAKING FIRE, WHOOOAAA

He takes KURT to find JAMES, who is busy with his SEX SLAVE (learning her language, that is, calm down).

JAMES SPADER

Using this old ruin full of hieroglyphs, I’m able to get her to sound things out one word at a time, and thus become fluent in conversational Ancient Egyptian in like an hour and a half!

MILI AVITAL

It’s a lucky thing that I learned how to read somehow, despite it having been forbidden in this village for the past thousand years! Our alien rulers outlawed reading and writing, to try and stop us from rebelling.

JAMES SPADER

Fascinating, right? Now let me show you this big wall of writing they left standing in this village which explains exactly what jerks the aliens are and why they should be rebelled against.

(points to wall of scribblings)

According to this, “Ra” is actually an alien who was dying, and decided to take over a human body, which are of course renowned for their eternal undying qualities.

KURT RUSSELL

We’re talking a traditional gray Close Encounters-style alien? And it was able to possess a human body like a ghost? How the fuck does that work?

JAMES SPADER

No clue. Anyway he took the body of Jaye Davidson, which is a solid choice if you’re after maximum prettiness, then used his technological superiority to conquer Egypt. He used the stargate to ship a bunch of humans to this planet, to mine the magical MacGuffin mineral that his tech runs on-

KURT RUSSELL

Oh! So there’s actually a logical reason why this planet on the other side of the galaxy is populated by exact biological humans? It’s not just that dumb sci-fi trope?

JAMES SPADER

Nope, that’s the one way of being idiotic that this movie has managed to avoid. Anyway, Earth rebelled and kicked Jaye out, but he’s still got his claws in this place and its populace of like a thousand dudes. Kind of gives him a pathetic “Saruman bullying the shire” vibe that devalues him as a villain right out of the gate, I guess.

In amongst the HIEROGLYPHS they find the INSTRUCTION MANUAL for the STARGATE.

JAMES SPADER

Oh neat! Jaye must have wanted to keep the option open of returning to Earth one day, so he kept the codes handy! In this abandoned ruin, as opposed to, say, on his spaceship where only he can access them.

(examines manual)

Ah, and over time the seventh symbol has eroded completely away. Cause, you know, it was left to the mercy of the desert. This was a REALLY dumb data storage solution.

(sighs)

Once again: trial and error would find the seventh symbol for us in no time at all. But of course we’re instead gonna claim that we’re shit out of luck and stuck here forever.

KURT RUSSELL

Well since now I've been led to believe that there’s no way for anybody to ever activate and use the stargate, it is imperative that I immediately blow up the stargate!

He takes all his GUYS back to the PYRAMID to find the UNSUSPICIOUS CRATE from earlier, but it’s EMPTY! Then some more DOG-HEADED GUARDS teleport to attack them.

DOG-HEAD SOLDIER

Apologies if the fight choreography in this scene is a little choppy and confusing, we honestly can’t see shit out of these stupid theme-park-mascot helmets.

They capture every GOOD GUY that they hadn’t already CAPTURED.

INT. SPACESHIP

The SOLDIERS bring JAMES and KURT to an IMPORTANT DUDE dressed as a SARCOPHAGUS. Then the SOLDIERS’ HELMETS AUTOMATICALLY CGI-RETRACT AWAY in a fashion which gives a young KEVIN FEIGE some ideas.

DJIMON HOUNSOU

(de-masked)

Speaking of Marvel: hey there, fellow future MCU villains! Is there anybody else lurking around here? Is this sarcophagus guy gonna turn out to be Christopher Eccleston or somebody?

But then the SARCOPHAGUS GUY’S MASK morphs smoothly into the pretty, pretty face of JAYE DAVIDSON.

JAYE DAVIDSON

Yeah, I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work, like am I storing my helmet inside my skull or something? Look, it’s the mid-nineties, we’re still super stoked about this new CGI toy and are basically doing whatever with it.

(reveals bomb)

Anyway, Kurt, I found your nuke.

JAMES SPADER

His WHAT NOW?!

KURT RUSSELL

Okay yeah, I was sent here to see if there were any hostile aliens or whatever, and if there were, blow up the stargate on this end so they couldn’t get through. After finding out about Jaye, who has spent the past thousand years deliberately avoiding coming through the gate, I decided I had to blow the gate straight away! And speaking of psychotically hotheaded courses of action:

He grabs a GUARD’S WEAPON and OPENS FIRE, but the other GUARDS also OPEN FIRE and subdue KURT and kill JAMES.

KURT RUSSELL

I mean, I don’t know what result I was expecting there.

INT. JAYE’S MED BAY

JAMES wakes up ALIVE in a futuristic ALIVE-INATOR!

JAYE DAVIDSON

Welcome to my med bay, where I have the ability to heal human bodies to the point of resurrection. It is also the teleporter room, for reasons that I assure you are totally logical and not at all an awkward contrivance for later on.

(reveals bomb)

Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted, I was explaining my evil plan. I’ve replaced the fissile material from the nuke with my own MacGuffin mineral, turning it into a much more deadly SUPERNUKE. I’m going to send it through the stargate and blow up Egypt so you Earthlings can never bother me again!

JAMES SPADER

Couldn’t you get the same result by just chopping your own stargate in half?

JAYE DAVIDSON

Yeah but this way seemed more excessively evil. Then I’m gonna force you to execute Kurt and the others, in front of the whole village!

JAMES SPADER

So instead of killing your enemies, you’ve chosen to bring the one who died accidentally back to life and hand him futuristic weaponry?

JAYE DAVIDSON

It’s about sending a message, all right? A show of force, to warn anybody else who might think to defy me!

(pause)

Although the flying ships I sent about ten minutes ago to rain laser destruction upon the whole village might have gotten that job done by itself, now that I think about it.

EXT. PYRAMID

The MASK SOLDIERS make all the VILLAGERS gather as JAMES is ordered to kill KURT and the other SOLDIERS. But then ALEXIS and some other VILLAGE KIDS pull out some MACHINE GUNS!

ALEXIS CRUZ

Check it out, Kurt, we found your guns, which we’ve never seen in operation and can only broadly guess are weapons in the first place! Good thing you guys keep these things laying around fully loaded and with the safeties off, I guess.

They OPEN FIRE on the MASK SOLDIERS and all the GOOD GUYS FLEE!

INT. RUINS

All our heroes hide out and try to come up with a new plan.

KURT RUSSELL

We have to stop them from sending the supernuke through the stargate! That’s even hoping that they haven’t done it already. I mean it’d take five minutes and there’s literally no reason for them to delay. Maybe we’ve gotten lucky and they’ve decided to take a four-hour nap first.

ALEXIS CRUZ

Aw, I’m sure we’ll win. Let me draw a picture of our victory, in which we’ll be tiny scribbles and the pyramid will take up ninety percent of the drawing. It’d be weird if my random doodle wound up looking exactly like some important unrelated thing, wouldn’t it?

JAMES SPADER

Wait a minute! A picture of a pyramid with three moons over it? The seventh symbol for the Earth stargate was a pyramid with ONE moon over it! What you’re drawing must coincidentally be the seventh symbol for this planet’s stargate! Okay, WOW.

(eyes roll so hard they come right back around to facing forward again)

Seriously, there’s lazy writing and then there’s whatever the hell this is. We didn’t even need to resort to anything this hacky, Jaye plans on using the stargate which means that he must have a complete copy of the code, we could have solved the plot using that information without breaking a sweat.

KURT RUSSELL

Plus the fact that the home destination symbol is almost identical to the one back on Earth means that you presumably could have figured it out just by giving this planet’s stargate a thirty-second visual check, so it was never really a problem in the first place.

JAMES SPADER

Oh well, whatever! We’ve solved it, gang! LET’S GO!

(starts to charge out of hiding)

KURT RUSSELL

(yanks him back)

Solved what? We weren’t stuck trying to figure out a way through the stargate, we were stuck figuring out how to stop the supernuke, remember?

JAMES SPADER

Oh right. Well, uh, now that we’ve solved an entirely separate problem, we can now automatically do the other thing too I guess! LET’S GO!

EXT. PYRAMID

JAMES, KURT, MILI, the SOLDIERS, and the HASTILY-DEPUTIZED CHILD SOLDIERS all go and try to infiltrate the PYRAMID. JAMES, KURT, and MILI get inside, while the OTHERS stay outside to fight off THE ENTIRE ALIEN ARMY including the FLYING LASER SHIPS!

SOLDIER

Oh my, our machine guns aren’t very effective against those laser ships! But I have a cunning plan: let’s panic and scramble under a few meager scraps of cover!

(half of them die)

Dangit! But wait, I have a backup plan: let’s give up! UNCLE, WE SURRENDER, PLEASE DON’T HURT US!!

ALEXIS CRUZ

Geez, what was the point of even bringing any of us?

Some MASK SOLDIERS approach the surrendering GOOD GUYS, weapons drawn. But then over the duneside pours the ENTIRE REST OF THE VILLAGERS!

ERICK AVARI

Pfft, you mask soldiers may have space-age weapons and armor, but that’s no match for us HITTING YOU ON THE HEAD WITH BIG STICKS

(knocks them out)

Bizarrely, that does seem to be the ultimate strategy in this movie.

ALEXIS CRUZ

What about the laser ships, though?

ERICK AVARI

(scans sky)

Uh, they’re all gone somehow! I guess we must have hit them all with big sticks while you weren’t looking.

Meanwhile, inside the pyramid, KURT and JAMES and MILI manage to stop JAYE’S GOONS from sending the SUPERNUKE through the STARGATE.

KURT RUSSELL

All right, James, go grab the others and head back to Earth. I’ll stay here and make sure the supernuke goes off and takes out this stargate. Plus all the innocent villagers outside, I guess.

But then a not-properly-defeated MASK SOLDIER attacks, killing MILI!

JAMES SPADER

FUCK! Oh but look, the teleporter is firing up, about to send down Jaye’s main henchman Carlos Lauchu! If I grab Mili and jump into the beam, it’ll also send us up to the spaceship, because it’s some kind of weird switchy-swappy teleporter!

He DOES THIS and then shoves MILI into the ALIVE-INATOR, which apparently only needs like THIRTY SECONDS to UN-DEADINATE somebody. Back down in the PYRAMID, KURT fights CARLOS, managing to keep him at bay with several RINGING PUNCHES TO THE FACE.

CARLOS LAUCHU

OOF. BLAGH. Hmm, maybe next time I’m in a bareknuckle brawl to the death, I’ll think to un-retract my helmet.

KURT wrestles CARLOS’S UPPER BODY into the TELEPORTER, which ACTIVATES! Meanwhile up in the SPACESHIP, JAYE has caught JAMES and is ELECTRO-ZAPPING HIS BRAIN.

JAMES SPADER

Y-Y-Y-YOWWWW!! Oh but look, the teleporter is firing up, about to send up part of Jaye’s main henchman Carlos Lauchu! If I grab Mili and jump into - well you get the idea! Sure is convenient to be able to use this ploy twice in two minutes.

He hauls the re-alived MILI into the BEAM, and the teleporter SWITCHY-SWAPS them with CARLOS’S HEAD.

JAYE DAVIDSON

Ew. Maybe if I stick it in the alive-inator I could - no, fuck it, I’m outtie.

(takes off into space)

KURT RUSSELL

But crap, now there’s no time to get anybody through the stargate, and the supernuke’s been rigged so the countdown can’t be stopped. I’m out of ideas, unless we... I mean we don’t want to go with “exploit the teleporter” literally three times in a row, surely...

JAMES SPADER

Hey, this movie has had exactly one kinda-clever idea, might as well get the most out of it.

The teleport the SUPERNUKE up to the SPACESHIP when it has SECONDS TO GO.

JAYE DAVIDSON

Ah. See, this is why you don’t remove the off switch from your supernuke.

(braces self)

Welp, I had a good run. After cheating death for so many millennia, now I finally know all there is to know... about the dying ga-

(atomized)

INT. PYRAMID

Later, KURT and the SOLDIERS are about to return through the STARGATE.

KURT RUSSELL

Okay, this has been something all right. I was originally fine to be the one who stays on this side of the gate to get nuked because I had a whole dead-son lost-hope character arc going on, but now I’m returning home with a renewed sense of purpose.

JAMES SPADER

Because your relationship with Alexis had a surrogate father-son undercurrent that helped you heal?

KURT RUSSELL

(pauses, thinks)

Oh wow, that’s probably what we were going for with that, isn’t it? Geez, that didn’t come across at all. Anyway, are you absolutely sure you want to stay behind with Mili?

JAMES SPADER

I mean, yes, but what do you mean “stay behind”? It’s not like this is my last chance to ever take a trip back to Earth. Mankind now has a gate to a whole second planet full of magic minerals that can be used to make teleporters and resurrection booths, people will be going back and forth through here all the time.

KURT RUSSELL

You’re right, there’ll probably be a Starbucks in that village inside of a month, what the hell was I talking about.

JAMES SPADER

But yes, mostly I’ll stay here and live happily ever after with Mili and-

(is handed pilot script for SG-1)

Oh FUCK. How canon is this, exactly?

END.