![]() The Palomino crew discovers Reinhardt plans on taking the Cygnus into the black hole, unraveling the secrets of the universe, and he doesn’t care who gets in his way…ĭespite being a tale set in the distant future, much of The Black Hole seems old fashioned, from the use of an in-house stable of technicians to its use of a musical overture at the beginning of the film (it and Star Trek: The Motion Picture were among the last films to employ an overture, usually reserved for Golden Age Hollywood epics and musicals). Hans Reinhardt, the Cygnus’ sole survivor, a platoon of robot sentries, and Maximilian, a menacing, anti-grav robo t ( and Reinhardt’s main hench man). ![]() The USS Palomino, a space exploration vessel, encounters the seemingly-abandoned USS Cygnus, an Earth ship classified as lost decades ago. The blatant theft from Star Wars is obvious, but if one is looking for an entertaining, old-fashioned sci-fi film that’s high on spectacle and low on coherent narrative or scientific accuracy, The Black Hole will do nicely (it won’t put you to sleep like Tron). the Extra Terrestrial video-game cartridge) and constant cable broadcasts, passing it down to their unsuspecting, malleable children. Shockingly, The Black Hole was Disney’s first “PG” film (its fellow December 1979 box-office competitor, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, was rated “G”), but though it was neither a box-office success nor a critical darling, the film has managed to build a loyal following of fans, many of whom grew up with the plethora of unsold merchandise (I imagine a mountain of Ernest Borgnine action figures sharing the same landfill as Atari’s notorious E.T. ![]() By 1979, most of the studios had their own outer-space flicks and the Walt Disney Company hoped its entry, The Black Hole, would reverse its longstanding misfortunes, a decade of forgettable animated films and uninspired live-action family fare. Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind proved that George Lucas’ space epic was no fluke, sating mainstream filmgoers with visual splendor, relatable characters, and sophisticated science-fiction themes. By the late ‘70s, Star Wars mania was so infectious, it jolted awake the slumbering, science-fiction-loathing Hollywood studios, as they scrambled to put together their own space-fantasy knockoffs or dust off dormant sci-fi IPs.
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