Review: The Black Hole (DMC #71)
This week we watched The Black Hole, the 71st film in our Disnerd Movie Challenge. We had never heard of this film prior to embarking on this challenge, and chances are you haven’t either, so we’ve included the synopsis below in case you need a quick rundown of the plot. If you have seen this before, skip ahead to our review!
Synopsis
After the crew aboard the spaceship USS Palomino discover a massive black hole, they discover a spacecraft that should have been pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field, yet the ship hasn’t moved since they started observing it. Upon closer inspection, they discover it is the lost ship USS Cygnus—the same ship Dr. Kate’s father, Frank, was on. The crew decides to investigate the ship and soon realize that the area immediately surrounding the ship has zero gravity. However, once the Palomino drifts too far, it’s caught in the gravitational pull of the black hole and narrowly avoids getting sucked in before returning to the safety of the zero gravity zone, albeit with some structural damage. Just then, Cygnus lights up—someone must be aboard. The crew cautiously docks their vessel on Cygnus and boards the ship, leaving Charlie behind to keep an eye on the Palomino, much to his displeasure. Dr. Kate, Dan, Harry, Dr. Alex, and their robot V.I.N.CENT. follow a series of remotely operated doors that lead them through the maze of the ship. In the first chamber, unseen lasers fire upon them to disarm their weapons. Once they move on, four red robotic soldiers head for the Palomino. The crew finally arrives at the control tower which appears to be operated by robots and humanoids, including a rather unfriendly red robot named Maximillian who particularly irks V.I.N.CENT.. There is one human among them, however—Dr. Hans Reinhardt. He regretfully informs Dr. Kate that her father died on this ship. When the crew asks Dr. Hans why the rest of his crew did not return to Earth, Dr. Hans seems surprised. He told his crew to abandon ship after Cygnus was damaged in a meteor shower, but he and Frank stayed behind. He built these robots to help him repair and run the ship. The four red robots arrive with Charlie in tow, bringing the entire crew together. Though the crew suggests that what Hans did amounts to stealing a U.S. vessel, Hans insists that the ends will justify the means if he’s able to complete his research.
Hans tells Maximillian to help Charlie, V.I.N.CENT., and Dan obtain the necessary parts to repair their vessel while he gives Dr. Kate, Dr. Alex, and Harry a tour of the ship. Dan slips away from Maximillian, Charlie, and V.I.N.CENT. while Maximillian accesses the necessary parts and V.I.N.CENT. tries to make conversation with a rather beat-up robot look-alike named BO.B.. Meanwhile, Harry slips away while Hans shows Dr. Alex and Dr. Kate the power source that runs the ship and powers the anti-gravity field. In another part of the ship, Dan encounters a strange funeral procession of humanoid robots who launch a coffin out into the black hole. Harry, meanwhile, discovers the large greenhouse on board the ship, with a single humanoid robot at the controls who appears unable to speak, yet moves very much like a human—limp and all. When the humanoid leaves, Harry tries to follow, but quickly loses track of them. Back at the Palomino, Dan tells Charlie and V.I.N.CENT. about the funeral procession while they work on repairing the ship. Meanwhile, Dr. Alex and Dr. Kate continue to listen as Hans explains his accomplishments. Dr. Alex lavishes him with praise for what he’s achieved, and Hans invites the entire crew to join him for dinner—all except V.I.N.CENT., who is dropped off at a rec room where the other robots on the ship have gathered around a target practice game. S.T.A.R. is the sharpshooter among them, who used to be the number one robot until Maximillian was built. After S.T.A.R. challenges B.O.B. to a shooting match and cheats to ensure he wins, V.I.N.CENT. challenges STAR to a match in which one of his trick shots ricochets and strikes STAR in the chest, destroying the robot. Meanwhile, at dinner, Hans warns his dinner guests there are to be no more unescorted excursions on this vessel. He comments on the food and how the vessel’s greenhouse is sadly only enough to feed one person nowadays. However, he is nearly ready for his grand expedition—he intends to fly into the nearby black hole to discover what humankind has never discovered before, and he wants Palomino to monitor his flight from afar. Just then, one of Hans’s robots arrives to inform him that his probe ship has returned. Once Hans leaves to attend to the probe, Harry tells his crewmates about the humanoid robot he saw and the large greenhouse he discovered, which means Hans was lying. He suggests their crew could take on Hans and Maximillian and commandeer Cygnus to return it back home, but the rest of the crew isn’t so sure. Meanwhile, V.I.N.CENT. meets BO.B. in a storage room where he can finally speak plainly. He reveals to V.I.N.CENT. that this is a death ship and helps get V.I.N.CENT.’s weapons back online. He leads V.I.N.CENT. to a room where a machine keeps what’s left of the crew alive. The former crew never left the ship—they were turned into humanoid robots and are now more robot than human. Red robot soldiers discover V.I.N.CENT. and B.O.B. and fire upon them, but V.I.N.CENT. and B.O.B. quickly dispatch of the soldiers and hide the evidence.
V.I.N.CENT. uses his ESP connection with Dr. Kate to summon Dan, Charlie, and Harry back to Palomino where B.O.B. tells them all how Hans refused the order to return to Earth and then killed Frank when Frank and the rest of the crew tried to stop him. Hans turned the crew into humanoids, who can only be freed in death. Meanwhile, Dr. Alex tells Hans and Dr. Kate how he’d like to go with Hans on his journey into the black hole, but Dr. Kate tries to dissuade him. She receives a message from V.I.N.CENT. that she is to board Palomino immediately, with or without Dr. Alex. V.I.N.CENT. tells her how Hans killed her father and turned the rest of the crew into humanoids. Dr. Kate pulls Dr. Alex aside to tell him Hans is a murderer, but Hans overhears. Dr. Alex pulls the helmet off one of the humanoids which confirms the truth. As Dr. Alex and Dr. Kate try to flee, Maximillian attacks them and kills Dr. Alex. Before Dr. Kate is taken to the ship’s hospital by red robot soldiers, Hans begs Dr. Kate to protect him from Maximillian. Dr. Kate sends an ESP message to her crew. Dan and V.I.N.CENT. go to rescue her while Charlie and Harry stay behind with Palomino. Meanwhile, Hans gives the order to “liquidate our guests” and the alarm sounds as Cygnus fires its thrusters and begins heading for the black hole. In the hospital bay, Dr. Kate is about to become a humanoid when Dan and V.I.N.CENT. arrive just in time to rescue her. Once the enemy robots are eliminated, Dan and Dr. Kate don humanoid disguises to sneak past the guards, but Hans witnesses their escape on the security camera and orders his robots to fire on all humanoids in their vicinity. A laser gun battle ensues. As Palomino readies for takeoff, Hans orders his robots to give Palomino some distance before shooting it out of the sky. With Dan, Dr. Kate, and V.I.N.CENT. cornered, Dan orders Charlie to take off without them, but Charlie disobeys and drags Harry with him to save their crew. At their first enemy encounter, Harry feigns a broken leg. Charlie goes on without him while Harry runs back to the ship and begins the takeoff sequence. Charlie comes to the aid of the rest of the crew, but by the time they get back to Palomino it has already taken off. They watch in horror as Cygnus fires upon Palomino and Palomino crashes against Cygnus, destroying the smaller craft and damaging Cygnus. The crew devises a new plan: they’ll flee on the probe ship. However, a meteor shower gets pulled toward the black hole and begins destroying Cygnus. The crew flees through the greenhouse and exchanges fire with robot soldiers until a meteor destroys the greenhouse, sucking the enemy robots out into the black hole. The crew narrowly avoids being sucked out as well. Back in the command tower, the ship’s system warns that it has reached structural overload due to the black hole’s gravitational field. The ship begins to buckle and explode under the pressure. Hans changes his plans and tells Maximillian to prep the probe ship for his voyage instead. However, before Hans can leave, a large monitor falls on him, pinning him to the ground, and none of his robots come to his aid. Maximillian tries to stop the crew from reaching the probe, but V.I.N.CENT. takes him on, ultimately destroying Maximillian and sending him into the black hole. However, B.O.B.’s systems are too damaged from the encounter, and he tells V.I.N.CENT. to go on without him as his systems fail. The crew quickly boards the probe and takes off as Cygnus is sucked into the black hole, but they soon realize they can’t override the navigation system which is set on Hans’s course right into the black hole. Inside the black hole, the crew’s thoughts blur together with Hans’s last words. Hans and Maximillian are seen free-floating in the depth of the black hole before they meld into one being which stands atop a peak overlooking a flaming, hellish landscape. In the next moment, a ghostly being passes through a mirrored hallway. The crew inside the probe awaken, seemingly on the other end of the black hole, with a bluish-white light shining upon them as they travel toward a distant planet.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: In setting up the calendar post for this film, I came across an article that said Disney had hoped that The Black Hole would be its own Star Wars (you know, before they went out and bought the entire Star Wars franchise). Clearly they failed, since Kevin and I have never heard of The Black Hole before embarking on this Disnerd Movie Challenge. If the film was that easily forgotten to film history, I’m not going to get my hopes up about this one.
Kevin: Yeah, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this—I’m not looking forward to this in the least bit. I can’t remember if I said this already, but I’m a fan of astronomy and cosmology. I love stargazing and reading/hearing about new discoveries in our universe. I was awestruck when the very first image of a black hole was photographed in 2019. But The Black Hole is a movie, so I know it can’t be solely focused on just the science behind the cosmos because that would probably be boring for the average movie-goer. It doesn’t help knowing Disney missed the mark at creating something similar to Star Wars only for it to be so unmemorable. Once again, I fear Disney just did not get it when it came to why folks liked Star Wars so much.
Thoughts After Watching
This is NOT Star Wars. It’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but in outer space.
Megan: For a film that was trying to be Star Wars, I was strangely expecting more originality. Instead, this film is an outer space version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, matching that film’s plot points beat for beat. I had to go and look up the writing credits on IMDb to see if they give any credit to Jules Verne, but no, I guess they figured the contents of their film were far enough from that story to avoid giving credit. However, the story’s plot structure might say otherwise. Though the crew aboard the Palomino are not tasked with chasing down a mythical monster like the heroes in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, their original mission still leaves them unwitting captives aboard a high-tech vessel with a deranged captain set on a suicidal mission. Both sets of heroes witness a strange funeral ritual (one under water, one in outer space). Both sets of heroes discover a means of food production (the underwater garden and the spaceship greenhouse) that they then get to taste when their villainous host invites them to dinner. As the heroes from both films start to realize their respective captains intend to take the heroes down with them, the heroes plot an escape before the vessel they’re on self-destructs.
Even the characters of these films seem like carbon copies of each other. Dr. Hans Reinhardt is basically Captain Nemo. They’re both scientists who have discovered a new power source. Both refuse to rejoin humanity (though for slightly different reasons). They even look alike!
Megan: Though the number of heroes in each film is different (Ned, Conseil, and Professor Aronnax in 20,000 Leagues compared to Dr. Alex, Captain Dan, Charles, Dr. Kate, Harry, and the robot, V.I.N.CENT. in The Black Hole), the archetypes are basically the same. Dr. Alex and Captain Dan are a composite equivalent to Professor Aronnax: Dan is the leader of the expedition, much as the professor is, and Dr. Alex is the one who initially wants to stay aboard Cygnus with Hans in order to pursue scientific discoveries in the black hole, much as Professor Aronnax was willing to risk his life to save Captain Nemo’s research. Charlie and Harry are the equivalent to Ned: Harry for his self-preservation above all else, and Charlie for his general disregard for rules. Dr. Kate and V.I.N.CENT. aren’t quite a true equivalent to Conseil, but they still serve the role as the primary communicator between the two halves of the team whenever they get split up, much as Conseil at times becomes the messenger between the professor and Ned.
While 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea might have been moderately successful (it did manage to stay within general pop culture knowledge, after all), this outer space carbon copy of that film’s plot and characters ultimately fails. Because we so recently watched 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the plot not only became incredibly obvious—it became predictable. We knew Hans was bad news long before the heroes did. We also knew that most of the heroes would manage to escape (notice how it’s at least one of each archetype that survives?). What’s more, by splitting the three heroes into six characters, we have less screen time to get to know each of our heroes, and thus we end up not really caring about them. When Dr. Alex, for example, is rather abruptly murdered by the robot Maximillian, we don’t feel anything. When Harry betrays the rest of the crew to save himself, we don’t really care that he gets blown up in the process. We don’t even care when the robot V.I.N.CENT. shares B.O.B.’s final moments as B.O.B.’s systems fail (but perhaps that’s because the robots in this film are not nearly as endearing as C-3PO or R2-D2). The lesson to be learned here? Don’t try to copy someone else when you set out to make a film. Create something original that audiences have never seen before and make us care about your characters!
Another disjointed film where nothing works together
Kevin: I won’t blame any of you if you’re tired of us comparing this movie—as well as some of the recent Disney sci-fi films—to Star Wars. However, I think this film deserves the comparison, and by extension the criticism for ultimately not getting the point. While the Star Wars franchise may have spaceships, robots, and laser guns, those things are not solely what made the original movie (and the rest of the original trilogy) so good. I wasn’t around in 1977, but it’s been well documented that what appealed to audiences was the story at large. It was an epic quest where the lines of good and evil were distinctly drawn and the audience was able to connect with the events. I realize that setting Star Wars in a far-distant galaxy probably helped, but that was only because it was the age of the space race and movie-goers were crazy about science fiction. I’d be willing to bet that if you took the original Star Wars film and kept everything except the outer-space coating, it would still work. We’d still have a story to follow, music that makes us feel a certain way, and characters to connect with. All Disney had to do was accomplish those tasks.
So, where did The Black Hole go wrong? Well, basically everywhere. There’s just a total lack of excitement and engagement in almost every scene. The characters themselves are incredibly boring and we have no reason to like any of them or connect with their struggles. In terms of cinematography, most of the film looked to be shot at a completely flat angle, and dialogue wasn’t anything more interesting than characters either standing or sitting while talking to one another. Don’t get me wrong, these kinds of shots do work, but only when the story has time to slow down and relax. Scenes where the action picked up a bit could have used some faster paced cuts, and the more creepy moments of the film could have dragged a bit longer just to keep the tension and suspense going. But I swear, the film used boring shots even during the supposedly most intense moments of the film. There are some close ups of the characters during some of the tense moments which make things a bit more interesting, but the framing of the shots didn’t evoke any sense of real danger, suspense, or intrigue. Frankly, the film only really starts getting interesting in its third act, but that isn’t saying much. While some of the shots get more interesting and the tension is ramped up considerably, I was generally uninterested in anything going on because everything leading up to it was so boring and shot in such an uninspiring way.
Kevin: A particularly huge reason why many of these scenes didn’t work had a lot to do with the music. Composer John Barry was famous for composing the scores for eleven of the James Bond films so he was no stranger to scoring action films. The Black Hole’s soundtrack is actually very good; it has compositions that evoke adventure and others that evoke dread and mystery. For some weird reason though, many of musical themes were reused over and over throughout the movie that I wondered if Barry composed them that way or if the filmmakers edited the movie so that the music repeated itself. It got a little old after a while. The music often felt out of place, too. The most notable example that stuck out in my mind was the shootout scene with Dan, Dr. Kate, and V.IN.CENT. against Hans’s robots. The particular piece that plays during this scene is the film’s “Overture” from the opening of the film. Now, I’m not a musician and have no background in understanding musical compositions, but I believe this piece is a march. You know what else is a march? The Star Wars main theme. Interestingly, there’s a similarity to be noted between both Star Wars and The Black Hole here. In both films, a male character rescues a female character and the two get involved in a shootout with the enemy forces. Not only that, but the film’s main theme is playing during both scenes. The similarity is so striking I can’t help but wonder if Disney copied Lucasfilm. Anyway, I believe the shootout scene in Star Wars works because the action just moves better. The pacing is done well and the moment is built up perfectly so that we feel the tension and excitement. The music is composed such that there are crescendos in the melody at the same time there is a crescendo of action. John Williams actually looked at the footage first so that he could compose the right mood and melody for the scenes. Also, one major difference to note is that even though the scene reuses the Star Wars main theme, it is not played exactly the same way. To use George Lucas’s own famous words during the production of the movie, it’s “faster, more intense” and it fits the scene just right. The Black Hole doesn’t make any changes to its musical cue, however. Instead, it just repeats the “Overture” the exact same way it’s played at the beginning of the film. The issue is that the piece is slower and so it doesn’t match the excitement or tone a shootout needs. I told Megan when we were watching the scene that the music made me feel like we should be seeing the characters celebrating some major victory. When you realize this and also realize that so much of the music was reused throughout the film, it seems like the composer didn’t watch the footage to get an idea for what each scene needed. I suspect the filmmakers may have just given Barry a rough idea of what the scenes were like and he composed a few musical themes that could be used interchangeably. Then the filmmakers just cycled through the pieces and added what they thought fit best. Whatever the process was, it’s unfortunate because the music itself is not bad at all and can hit the right emotions if placed in the right scene. Sadly, they were not used appropriately.
Surprise, surprise…another Bechdel Test fail, another damsel in distress, and…ESP?
Megan: It became very clear a few minutes into this film that it would have no chance of passing the Bechdel test because Dr. Kate was the only female character. I had some hope, however, that as a fellow astronaut on the crew, she would somehow prove integral to the mission. Instead, she’s a glorified communication device: she has ESP (extrasensory perception) that allows her to communicate with the robot, V.I.N.CENT.. Honestly, her role feels like a bit of a writer’s crutch. The writers needed some way of sharing information between members of the crew when they weren’t together, so they threw in ESP. That will fly in this sci-fi world, right? In my opinion, not so much. To me it not only struck me as an out-of-genre element, it came off a bit sexist that the only woman on the crew was the one “sensitive” enough to have ESP. Also sexist? Dr. Kate was the damsel in distress who was dramatically (and almost romantically) rescued by one of the male crew members. That whole scene felt awkwardly forced, from the attempt at dramatic (Star Wars copycat) music to the almost-kiss-on-the-cheek at the end of the rescue. Putting the damsel-in-distress trope aside, there had been no romantic setup between Dan and Kate at any earlier point in the film, so the almost-romantic rescue failed to deliver. Yet again, we didn’t feel much of anything for these characters, no matter how great a peril they were in.
Did the actors even want to be in this movie?
Kevin: I gave Unidentified Flying Oddball some flak for having dull characters, but the actors in that film made up for their lackluster roles with some truly good performances. The same cannot be said for any of the actors in The Black Hole. Once more we were treated to a cast of some of the most well known names in the business at the time, including Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, Roddy McDowall, Slim Pickens, and Ernest Borgnine. I’d be surprised if any of them saw this script and genuinely believed they were making the next big film. It seems evident in the actors’ performances that they were just collecting a paycheck. Where are the smiles? Where are the emotions? Where are any of the deep character moments that would make us root for them? The only interesting characters are the robots V.I.N.CENT. and B.O.B., so I will give some credit to McDowall and Pickens. It’s strange when the only characters with real personalities are not even human. I presume the actors gave the performances they did at the director’s request, but it just goes to show that Disney was taking itself too seriously when making this film. Relax, Disney… not every sci-fi film needs to be so dystopian.
The science doesn’t hold up
Megan: Space exploration may have been a relatively new thing at the time The Black Hole was made, but that is no excuse for a lack of research. I’m pretty sure there was at least some science available about how uninhabitable the atmosphere beyond our planet is. I mean, NASA knew enough to send astronauts into space with their own oxygen supply and insulated space suits, right? So tell me, why is it that the characters in The Black Hole aren’t all dead? I was willing to suspend disbelief for most of the film…up until the meteor shower. Once the meteors began striking the ship, the airlock would have broken, sucking all the oxygen from the vessel and instantly freezing the exposed areas of the ship. Though the giant asteroid rolling through the large corridor of the ship like the giant boulder from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark looks cool visually, it doesn’t hold up scientifically. The crew running across the boulder’s path would have been dead before the asteroid hit them once the asteroid broke the ship’s barrier. Perhaps the asteroid scene inspired the Indiana Jones scene since the former film came out in 1981, but you’ll notice that the Indiana Jones scene is the one we all remember—not the scene from The Black Hole. I might have been able to let the rolling asteroid scene’s lack of science slide, except that just a few short scenes later we see our heroes in the greenhouse where an asteroid again breaks the ship’s barrier. In this instance, the filmmakers appear to have tried to use some science with how the heroes are nearly sucked out of the ship, however, that force of air likely would have been far too strong for the heroes to resist. Though the filmmakers do show frost forming all over the plants in the greenhouse and on the robots, the human characters seem to have little reaction to the cold, even though their hands and faces are exposed. Oh, and there’s still no mention of the lack of oxygen now that the air is being sucked out of the spaceship. This film might be science fiction, but it is very heavy on the fiction and seems to ignore the science.
What’s with that ending?
Megan: I think what the filmmakers were trying to do with the film’s ending was to create a callback to an earlier moment in the film where one of our heroes comments that they’d expect to see the devil himself standing outside the entrance of the black hole. When we see what appears to be Hans trapped inside the devilish red body of the robot Maximillian standing atop a mountain overlooking a flaming, hellish landscape, I believe we’re meant to draw the parallels between the devil and hell. However, we then see a long mirrored hallway bathed in bluish-white light where a ghostly figure (possibly a woman?) flies on ahead of us. In the next moment, we see the crew inside the probe spacecraft—seemingly alive—as they journey toward a planet backlit by this same bluish-white light. Are we meant to believe they’ve gone to heaven while Hans and Maximillian have gone to hell? Or have our heroes been spared Hans’s fate and instead been delivered on course to Earth? What is your interpretation of this ending?
A black hole of lost opportunities
Kevin: I can see why this film is lost to time. We have no characters to root for and no scenes to enjoy. The film lacks any originality and has little sense of engagement, both in how the characters react to given moments and the way the music is used. I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney prefers not to remember this one after being so ambitious about it. Still, it’s a bit fascinating to see where this film didn’t live up to expectations, even if watching it was a hard slog. As we were wrapping up this review, I noticed that this is the last Disney movie of the 1970s. There were some films we genuinely enjoyed and plenty others we didn’t. Overall, the ‘70s seem to be universally accepted as a weird time in the studio’s tenure, which isn’t surprising given Walt’s death leaving the studio lacking the creative vision it once had. Still, I’m a bit optimistic going into the 1980s, if only because it has more films I’ve actually seen before. (Although I doubt The Black Cauldron will be any better than the last time I saw it!)