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The Big Picture

• Ra's original human character concept changed due to Jaye Davidson's performance.
• The decision to make Ra an alien improved the film's premise.
• The change in Ra's character opened the door for the Goa'uld, a race of aliens connected to ancient gods, expanding the Stargate universe.

In 1994, a brand-new "star"-themed science-fiction franchise hit theaters for the very first time, blowing audiences away. With impressive box-office returns and a bright future ahead, Stargate was the brainchild of director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin, who co-wrote the original script together. The film starred Kurt Russell as Col. Jack O'Neil and James Spader as Dr. Daniel Jackson, taking these characters on a journey through the cosmos as the myths of Ancient Egypt came to life in tangible, extra-terrestrial ways. One such way was by making the Egyptian sun god Ra (played by Jaye Davidson) into an alien life form rather than a cosmic deity, one who hoped to return to Earth to reclaim his throne. But did you know that Ra wasn't always meant to be an alien? In fact, the original plan for the character was much different than what ended up on screen.

Stargate

An interstellar teleportation device, found in Egypt, leads to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship the god Ra.

Jaye Davidson's Performance Changed Ra's Entire Backstory

According to producer Dean Devlin, the initial plan for Ra was that he would be a human being just like Mili Avital's Sha'uri and all the other humans found on Abydos. Though Ra was in charge of the human element on Abydos, he wasn't in charge of the entire planet. "In the version of Stargate that we shot, he wasn't an alien — he was an ancient Egyptian who worked for the aliens," the co-writer explained to Yahoo! News in 2023. It's crazy to think about how drastically this would've shifted the entire premise of the film. It also would've introduced (or at least alluded to) a much larger enemy that may have contributed to the writer's initial plans for a proposed film trilogy. But the problem wasn't that the story wouldn't have made sense (this was Emmerich and Devlin's original plan, after all), but rather that Jaye Davidson's performance was too sporadic to explain Ra's behavior any other way.

"He was having a drug and alcohol problem," recalled Devlin to Variety in 2019 while celebrating the film's 25th anniversary. "He was having a hard time remembering his lines. We had these giant cue cards, but he couldn’t read them." Prior to his performance in Stargate, Davidson was primarily a model and had only appeared in the motion picture, The Crying Game, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Because of his sudden rise in popularity, the actor demanded Devlin pay him $1 million for his role in Stargate, a bill which the independent production footed despite the problems he caused on set. In addition to struggling with his lines, the way he performed the role wasn't to Emmerich or Devlin's satisfaction. "Jaye was not really what we saw in our heads when we wrote it," the producer admitted.

Because of the troubles during production, the director and producer were forced to make some major changes in the editing room, especially after the initial test screenings weren't terribly well received. "Because he had been so inebriated, his performance was weird," Devlin explained years later. "In test screenings, audiences were like, 'Can't Kurt Russell just beat the crap out of that person?'" When it came down to it, Davidson's performance was more alien in nature than human, and that's when Emmerich and Devlin came up with the idea to make Ra an alien being rather than the servant of one. It was a novel concept, and one that not only saved the film's plot, but allowed it to be taken seriously given Davidson's part in the film. Had Ra just been a man like any other, the whole premise of Stargate would've come across as overtly campy and possibly self-destructive. Thankfully, there was a way to fix that.

'Stargate' Is Better With Ra as an Alien

Having decided that Ra should be an alien, the duo went back to the editing room and worked on modulating the villain's voice and adding a fiery, glowing effect to his eyes in certain scenes that appeared otherworldly. More than that, they inserted an alien into Ra's skull that took over control of his human vessel. It was a smart move, and not unlike a sci-fi form of demonic possession. "It worked spectacularly, and our test scores went way up!" the producer explained. Of course, there are other factors that helped, too. David Arnold's excellently triumphant score adds to the threatening nature of Ra's harrowing cadence, and the way the other characters interact with him (as if he is truly a god) aids in the effect as well. In many ways, all the pieces were there from the beginning, the writers just needed to find the right way to put them together and make Stargate work.

We Were Robbed of a Stargate Trilogy, and We're Still Mad About It

Who wouldn't want more Kurt Russell and James Spader adventures?

The truth is that Ra being an extraterrestrial just makes sense. The way the Egyptian pantheon is structured, Ra is one of the most important of the gods. For him to live as long as he had, he would have to be more than human. By making him a human-possessed alien who body hops to stay alive for thousands of years, Stargate crafted a modern take on Egyptian mythology that was entirely unique to the franchise. Little did Devlin and Emmerich know, it was this very idea that would serve as the basis for so much more to come. But Jaye Davidson didn't see that way. In his mind, he had completely ruined the movie, and he was worried, if anything, that they would find a way to cut him out of it entirely. So, before Stargate hit theaters on October 28, 1994, Dean Devlin took the time to meet up with the young actor to inform him of the changes made in post-production.

"He was so grateful that we had not cut him out of the movie," Devlin told Variety. "At that point, he [had been] sober for a little bit. He was really trying to put his life together." By the time Davidson actually saw the film, he was so grateful he went to the producer in tears. "You saved me,'" he exclaimed to the producer, believing that he had single-handedly ruined the movie. Though it might've been easy for Davidson (who quit acting after Stargate), or any actor, to be frustrated with a change as big as this, he took it particularly well, and ended up loving Ra's new alien heritage. Given that Stargate is still a cult classic all these years later, we'd say it worked out for the best in the end.

Ra's Character Change Gave 'Stargate' a Stronger Foundation

It might be easy to think that this small change was no big deal. Since Stargate never got a traditional theatrical sequel, it's not like this would affect much in the long run, right? Wrong. Following the success of Stargate, MGM opted to follow the Star Trek model of simultaneous films and television productions. Though there weren't any more theatrical Stargate pictures, there were a few made-for-television ones that followed the film's first official sequel, Stargate SG-1. By making Ra an alien life form, the franchise opened the door for the Goa'uld, a race of aliens who happen to correspond with other ancient gods. In fact, Ra's death in the 1994 film left a power vacuum among the Goa'uld, which resulted in more adventures that kicked off with SG-1's pilot episode, "Children of the Gods," which was effectively the closest thing to a direct Stargate sequel we ever got, albeit with a new cast and crew leading the charge.

It's hard to imagine what the Stargate television franchise — which also included Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Stargate Origins, the last of which features a younger Ra — might have looked like had Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin not had to "fix" Jaye Davidson's performance. The extraterrestrial forces that the SG-1 team — with Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanksnow playing Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson, respectively — would face would be a direct result of an alien Ra's defeat. The System Lord's own brother, Apophis (Peter Williams), became one of Stargate Command's most notable enemies, and that's in part thanks to this small change in the film. It makes Stargate a better movie, and we can all be thankful for that. Plus, now we can confirm that aliens did in fact build the pyramids... at least in the colorful world of Stargate.

Stargate is available to watch on Tubi in the U.S.

Watch on Tubi

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