Whilst Moonbase Junior was over for half term we watched The Black Hole.
Still ecstatic from Close Encounters of the Third Kind the day before, we looked forward to Disney's peek beyond the rim.
Alas, despite decent special effects, ecstatic we were not. Personally I found the acting wooden and the storyline boring. At times I'm pretty sure the music was nabbed from Thunderball and overall a poor effort from Walt. Even the robots were clunky and wooden.
I fell asleep.
I woke up when Junior was shouting for me to turn it off as a dead ashen-faced Doctor was slowly spinning across space. I shouldn't have slept!
A read that Black Hole has become a minor cult classic.
Did you venture into it readers?
Erm... could we just agree to disagree on this one, Woodsy? One of the scifi highlights of my youth, and still is. For me it represents a bold and unique one-off in Disney portfolio at the time when the whole company at a major crossroads. Never grown tired of the movie, a space opera of Shakespearean proportions!
ReplyDeleteTo each his own!
Ha ha, yep, to each his own Arto and thank the Lord for difference. It didn't help having seen the truly wonderful Close Encounters the day before. Having said that Junior did enjoy the Black Hole up to the death scene near the end!
DeleteSorry Arto, but I'm with you Woodsy.
ReplyDeleteThere were two Sci Fi movies competing for audiences, that year.
The Black Hole and Star Trek The Motion Picture.
Star Trek was disappointing, but the Black Hole was dire !
Childish script, dreadful spacecraft design, cliche robots, wooden acting and a dirge of a soundtrack.
It was meant to be Disney's '20,000 Leagues under the Sea', in space. Instead it should have been buried there, or in it's own title.
A rubbish film.
None taken, Mish. Star Trek TMP was even bigger for me, as it continued the lore of my favourite TV show.
DeleteTeenage loves never fade away!
Guess I’m the contrarian here. Loved The Black Hole, hated Close Encounters. SFZ
ReplyDeleteSorry Woodsy and Mish, I'm with Arto and SFZ. I love the film, and it's certainly become a cult classic with a lot of sci-fi film fans.
ReplyDeleteAs a footnote, the Reaction company have only recently released action figures of the three robots which have proved extremely popular.
The Black Hole is one of those train wrecks with a good film trying to get out. That one moment when Reihardt whispers to Durant "Save me from Maximillian..." could have been a great angle if it had been developed, sadly too many bad decisions were taken.
ReplyDeleteI saw it with my life partner at Blacktown Drive-In and just like Woodsie, she fell asleep! Afterwards she asked me how it ended and when I described it, she thought I was making it up!
Black Hole will always be like marmite, I think. There are fabulous elements in it and utter rubbish ones too. I hated the comedic Vincent and Old Bob with the big cartoon eyes, but loved the fact that they were anti-gravitic and floated about. The ship itself is a bit of a mess, I bought the MPC model (twice) and tried installing lights in it, but it still looked like a building site. Ernest Borgnine fairly chews the scenery in a miscast part and the two Han Solo wannabee captain and first mate characters are limp and uninspiring. However, the mad Prof is good and his wonderfully evil nemesis Maximillian - one of the best mecha designs ive ever seen -- steals the show. The end sequence where they go over the event horizon is totally off the wall and really un-Disney. Seeing Schell inside Max's armour at the gates of Hell was brilliant. As to the score, I love it and have it on vinyl, the rolling nautical theme is really quite rousing! Not a film I would go out of my way to see - its on Disney Plus now - but one I would watch and fast forward through the crap bits. Now don't get me started on Star Trek The Motion Picture!! Bill
ReplyDeleteLoved Close Encounters, and really enjoyed Star Trek TMP, I have both in my DVD collection - and trot them out to view every so often. Not so fussed on the Black Hole, and I don't have it in my collection.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I found the film aimed at both a kids and adult audience, and succeeding to please neither IMHO.
It does have the uniqueness of being the first Disney film to be given a PG certification
ReplyDeleteHi Folks,
ReplyDeleteAs a writer, I'm a bit of an odd duck in some ways because I'm mostly interested in story and character, but as an artist I'm also interested in design and details.
Storywise, The Black Hole is... not very good. It sort of meanders all over the place. with an eye toward creating a strange spooky atmosphere rather than plot lines that are coherent or characters that are consistent and motivated.
I mean: If you've got a mindless army of human zombie robots, you really don't need another huge army of heavily armed death robots. Maybe if the zombies were capable of rising up, but they weren't. That's why we weren't to feel guilty about the heroes leaving them all to die at the end.
So, there really was no reason for the robots other than as competition for Star Wars.
Also, there was no reason for the small Palomino ship to Not have artificial gravity, when the much larger but older generation ship did have it. (You could say that the Mad Scientist invented it, but... the entire ship was designed for artificial gravity with long walkways, and big elevators. Besides, Bob, VINCENT and the older floaty robots wouldn't have had it if it was a recent addition.) The only reason for it to be the way they did it was:
A) it looked cool in the early parts of the film.
B) it would have got in the way of all the rest of the film.
Nevertheless, as an artist, I do appreciate the detailed designs of the film.
I think it was Nasa artist Robert McCall who designed the Cygnus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McCall_(artist)
I didn't care for the robots so much, but I did like the interior of the Cygnus's control room.
Obviously inspired by the Death Star. I liked the design of the laser pistols, but it makes no sense to me that a gun designed for a robot would be fireable by a human hand, when the only dangerous enemy would be a rebellious human getting ahold of one in the first place.
In short: Don't think about the film. It will give you a headache.
Just lookit all the wonderful toys!
Thanks for a lively discussion everyone, one of the best we've had about a film on MC! The Black Hole is certainly polarising! A great read and thanks for commenting. I may have to watch it again and not fall asleep this time!
ReplyDelete