The Black Hole
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Movie Reviews of The Black Hole
Movie Review: Black hole
Summary: 4 Stars
A good Disney movie to be seen by the whole family. Good storyMovie Review: First unit vs. second unit
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie is super dumb and cheesy, but I love it. It must be that 11-year-old effect, as that's the age I was when this came out. I had ALL the illustrated storybooks and models and fold-out posters... everything that was released before the movie came out. Ooh, I even had the LP that told the story of the movie with sound effects and dialogue! It was all in anticipation, however, because once I saw it I realized, even as a small [actually somewhat portly] 11-year-old, that this movie was DUMB.
Then I reevaluated as an adult. I tell you, a great deal of fun [and some small agony] can be had by going back to those Disney movies that defined your youth. For me it was the live-action period that yielded gems such as Escape to Witch Mountain [WHERE is the remake?!?!?!?] and such burnished turds as The Cat From Outer Space. And I saw them all, and for the most part, read the "novelizations."
Anyway, back to this one. This movie has some GREAT material, and some terrible material. Curiously, it seems that all the legitimately great material was provided by people who were NOT the director. The model of the Cygnus is cool. My favorite part of the movie is the shots of the huge ship silhouetted against the bluish starfields beyond, and the languid sequence in which the smaller Palomino drifts by it with its spotlight running over the latticework of the larger ship. The design of the red evil robot is awesome. The black hole itself is fascinating to look at [day-glo paint in a whirlpool]. Oh, and I love the opening music, and I like the green grid under the credits, though that's a little less defensible. So what it seems like is that you have a bunch of peripheral people, the model makers, the special effects folks, the composer, etc., giving their all and producing great work, which stands in shocking contrast to the rest of the movie!
The movie concerns a bunch of folks in the typical "about to go home after X years exploring space" mission. They find the black hole, then see the big ship near it, and go to investigate in the aforementioned favorite sequence. Then there's a slight action sequence in which they start to tumble into the black hole.
THEN you have the most hootworthy sequence of the entire film, in which it is revealed that the woman aboard is PSYCHIC. Not only that, but so is the ROBOT [with the big dumb cartoon eyes]. My favorite part of all this is the convention that the psychic woman, to convey that she's using her abilities, stares dreamily off into space, and the robot, to show that he's receiving the psychic message, suddenly snaps his eyes to face directly into the camera! That is SO precious.
Anyway, so their ship is--of course--damaged, and they have to land. They explore the ship, make it to the bridge, where the captain, who may as well be wearing an "evil genius" badge, greets them, along with his menacing red robot. Blah, blah, blah, it all follows a "haunted house in space" theme, until it is revealed that the captain made robots [cyborgs, I guess] out of all the crew and now they're--still the crew, just a bit less uppity.
It all has that charmingly naïve dippiness of those live-action Disney movies, especially in its utter obliviousness to its own clichés. The robots with the cute eyes are obviously there to appeal to the kids [like I was at the time, but even then I could see that it was... obviously there to appeal to the kids]. There's this one sequence in which the robots play a video game... against a robot called S.T.A.R.... oh dear, it hurts. But for all that there are sequences that are kind of cool, like the asteroid shower. WHY asteroids are all glowing from within, and why one is perfectly spherical, and why they all show up JUST at the right time, is left unexplained, but it's still kind of cool in a naïve way. You accept it when you know it's a Disney movie made for 10-year-olds.
Anyway, the other reason this movie is notable is for the ending. [I guess I have to put a SPOILER WARNING in here, even though in this case... anyway.] There is a lot of IDIOTIC claptrap about the black hole possibly being a PORTAL TO HELL [oooohhh!], and at the very end, the evil captain is shown INSIDE the evil robot [trapped for eternity inside his own creation! Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!], in this representation of a literal HELL, with red background, black jagged rocks, flames, the whole deal. The thing that cracks me up is that they just arrange the model on top of a rock and let it SIT THERE, arms in the air, utterly stationary, for at least a minute. It is kind of... appalling. I guess they REALLY didn't expect anyone over the age of 10 to attend this movie.
And WHAT'S with all that hyper-Christian moralizing, anyway? I thought we were watching a dumb space story.
Anyway, it's still fun and has a lot of good elements, all of which seem to have taken place without the participation of the director. Someone needs to take this and do a remake that takes the whole thing seriously.
Movie Review: Frustrating to love or hate it!!!
Summary: 3 Stars
How can one rate this movie when it has so many beautifully blended elements with so many gratingly annoying ones?
Plus sides:
1. The Cygnus emanates a deep sense of forboding throughout the movie.
2. The Cygnus' captain, a somewhat Nemo-construct, plays off the elements of being a crazed genius wonderfully.
3. The musical element to this film is astounding. I can still remember the chills of the musical crescendo as the Cygnus first lights up.
4. Maximillian makes one hell of a scary, scary robot and it surprised me that Anthony Perkins' death in the movie still allowed a PG rating. Keep in mind, I was 9 years old when I saw this!! Watching somebody get their insides spun around by rotating claws (even if you don't actually see blood or guts) is still pretty raw.
Minuses:
1. Ok, for the most part, I liked VINCENT. Even as a youngster, though, I hated BOB. HATED HATED HATED. That "old prospector" voice was annoying.
2. The most hilarious part is when our beloved captain rescues the damsel in distress. The music is triumphant and soaring, but he still manages a rather wimpy "ow" as he gets himself barely clunked by an attacking robot.
3. The whole STARR scene. VINCENT versus STARR. Was there a point to this scene beyond showing off effects? Even as a 9 year old, I was pretty much fast-forwarding through it.
4. Yikes...we're in outer space, people!! Even when I was 9, I knew that you did not have ANY air in outer space. Still, having a meteor rip through the garden and having our crew moseying around in outer space trying to get on to an escape rocket was hard for me to swallow. It was just plain WRONG.
5. Heaven/hell scene. Theology aside, why does the crew go to hell and the Cygnus captain goes to (although somewhat half-way; see the movie and you'll catch my drift) heaven? Does this imply that even if you make zombies out of your crew and a robot out of your XO, that you are still redeemed because you "had a vision?" Sorry, write me out of that one.
It is so hard to rate this film as a result. Despite its cons, there are its pros and if there were ever a movie that had something similar to bipolar disorder, this is the one. I still think it's worth checking out.
Movie Review: Good Idea, Bad Script.
Summary: 3 Stars
*SPOILERS INCLUDED*
The Black Hole is by no means a great movie but it's not a total disaster. Bad writing in my opinion is what hurts this movie. I agree with what one review I read said "Belongs in the Nice Try Catagory". The characters weren't that great except for Dr. Reinhardt played by Maximilian Schell whom we immediately see is totally crazy and evil and in fact looks it along with his red devilish robot Maximilian. The one character that I must say irritated me the most was Anthony Perkin's character. I don't say that Perkin's didn't do a good job, I think that character must not be very smart, now I don't mean in space science but in common sense. Perkin's character was so carried away by what Reinhardt had acheived that he didn't think twice about the situation and the warnings from his colligues went in one ear and out the other. Ernest Borgnine's character Harry Booth was okay but he seemed confused on certain things. First he tries to talk Robert Forrester into capturing Reinhardt's ship along with Reinhardt for failure to acknowlage the recall of his ship and the mysterous disappearance of the crew, and then he chickens out after learning what actually happened to the crew. The rest of the characters were okay and the afore mentioned characters were okay to but could have been better. I didn't understand the ending of this movie ether.
To the things that were great about this film. The set pieces for the movie were great especially the design of U.S.S. Cygnus (Reinhardt's ship), production designer Peter Ellenshaw did a great job. I also loved the robots Vincent and Old Bob (Voiced by Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens who received no screen credit) Why they weren't credited I don't know. I think most people would agree that John Barry's music score is terrific but then I don't know of one single John Barry score that isn't. The Cinematography by Frank Phillips was good as well and in fact went on to received an Oscar nomination I believe.
All in all, this is an interesting movie to check out and I recommend you do so if you haven't. But don't expect anything like "Star Wars" or "Star Trek". This is a Disney movie and for the most part they did a nice job, it's just the writing that hurts it. Watch and judge for yourself though.
Movie Review: Well, it COULD have been great...
Summary: 3 Stars
...if but for a few things.
Before I take "The Black Hole" apart, I will say that when I was young, it was a movie I thoroughly enjoyed. It's clean, clever and has some lovable characters (i.e. Vincent). Maximillian was a great looking villan (though arguably a cylon rip-off). It is visually wonderful and obviously had a lot of work thrown into making it an epic Sci-Fi. The soundtrack was great. The premise is great and I imagine that some day, it may be re-made into a truly amazing movie. The whole mystique of the black hole is a great Sci-Fi concept.
That being said, if this movie wasn't competing with the George Lucas series of the same era, it still wouldn't have been a classic. The characters and dialogue are comically weak (how many times have we seen the crazy scientist alone in space before?). Many of the scenes and concepts are now, at least in the 21st century, laughable (i.e. when there's the hull breach in the garden and everyone simple walks through it without getting sucked into space, or even having breathing problems). The ending was simply bizarre (did the doctor and the robot combine to become Satan?) and for the last 5 mintues, I didn't have a clue whether I was watching a bad heavy metal video from the 80's or the same movie.
It's a clean enough movie for some older kids to watch (there's God's name in vain and d**n, but no blood or sexual scenes) and it will get imaginations going, but I'm glad I got it cheap. One watch and it's not getting watched again...unless I have an MST3K party. Then it's DEFINITELY coming out!