YMMV / The Black Hole

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Did Maximillian abandon Dr. Reinhardt at the end, or did he just not have the ability to send the elevator back up? Either is possible for such a cold and murderous machine.
  • Another possibility is that Reinhardt already gave him orders to stop the heroes, and he can't help Reinhardt until he completes the task he was already given. Of course, he then drops that task entirely to fight V.I.N.C.E.N.T., but then again, V.I.N.C.E.N.T. is interfering with that specific task.
  • For that matter, Reinhardt mutters "protect me from Maximillian" at one point; he may just be trying to play the sympathy card on Kate, or Max may really be the one in charge.
• Anticlimax Boss: The protagonists don't even interact with Reinhardt during the last half-hour or so; he stays on the bridge as the Cygnus approaches the black hole, gets pinned underneath a falling piece of equipment, and then Maximillian acts as the main threat for the remainder of the storyline.
• Awesome Music: Say what you like about the movie (although he's scored much worse science fiction movies), but John Barry's Bond-meets-Lovecraft score is phenomenal. It's also a perfect example of how to meld orchestral and electronic music seamlessly.
• Complete Monster: In the novelization by Alan Dean Foster, Maximillian is explicitly named as responsible for reprogramming his fellow robots aboard the Cygnus to put down the mutiny against the mad Dr. Hans Reinhardt. After quashing the revolt, Maximillian has the robots painfully mold the crew into android husks to serve Reinhardt as broken slaves. Attacking the crew of the Palomino when they discover the duo's crime, Maximillian signals for the robotic conversion of one member and even abandons the trapped Reinhardt to settle a petty grudge with the heroic robot V.I.N.CENT.
• Everybody Is Jesus in Purgatory:
  • In the finale, we see Reinhardt merge with Maximilian in Hell and then we see a spirit heading for Heaven. Someone assumed that since Reinhardt had killed Frank McCrae for his own nefarious purposes, he's condemned to Hell in McCrae's place, and the spirit is actually McCrae's being redeemed.
  • The movie clearly owes more than a little to Forbidden Planet (a space crew encounters an arrogant bearded scientist with a secret who is the last survivor of a space expedition, and is now hanging out with a hulking robot he built), but the most thematically notable parallel is that Maximilian is Reinhardt's dark alter ego, his id monster that he can barely control—the robot is named after Reinhardt's actor, for goodness's sake. At the end, Maximilian merges with Reinhardt, and Reinhardt finds himself trapped inside his evil self in Hell.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The ending may be more straightforward than we think. After all, assuming there is an afterlife, plunging into a black hole certainly will send you there, one way or another.
  • Rather coincidental that there'd be a funeral on the very day that the Palomino's crew arrived, isn't it? Maybe not: it's entirely possible that Reinhardt turned the murdered corpse of Frank McCrae into one of his automatons, then had the man's mindless shell destroyed when he realized Kate was among the new arrivals and might recognize her father's gait and posture.
  • It may have been a lucky coincidence, but... The starry background in the exterior shots contains many dim blue-green clouds. This may have been meant to represent distant stars, but it looks more like the Palomino and the Cygnus are in or near a large nebula. In fact, this is likely a far more accurate depiction of a nebula than in, say, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The brilliantly-colored glowing clouds you see in photographs are the result of timed exposures. If you look at a nebula live through a telescope, you can often see details, but it is usually colored a greenish gray... not too far from the depiction here.
• Genius Bonus: The first ever identified black hole was found in 1964. Its name? Cygnus X-1.
• Heartwarming Moments: Gary Nelson invited Maximillian Schell to his office to discuss his working on The Black Hole. Schell brought up a TV miniseries starring Jason Robards called Washington: Behind Closed Doors, and went on about how brilliant it was, then asked Nelson if he'd seen it. Nelson dryly informed him he directed all six episodes of the miniseries. Schell leapt up to his feet and kissed Nelson, and became devoted to the film wholeheartedly and often collaborated with Nelson on his character.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The fact that the film was made to ride off the coattails of films like Star Wars, in light of the fact that Disney now owns the franchise in question.
  • The line graphs in the trailer and the opening resembles the one used in the season 2 opening for The Transformers.
  • This movie was considered too dark for kids when it came out. Eighteen years later came Event Horizon, a horrifying demonic splatterfest that shares so many plot points with this film that some consider it a de facto remake that makes this one look like... well, a Disney movie.
• Moral Event Horizon: Rather fittingly for someone obsessed with black holes, Reinhardt crosses it by ordering most of the protagonists killed for stumbling on his dark secret on how he runs a smooth ship like his.
• Rooting for the Empire: A minor example; when Holland, Pizer and McCrae escape aboard the probe ship they discover it was pre-programmed by Reinhardt to plunge directly into the black hole, so they're going in whether they like it or not; it is then that McCrae hopes Reinhardt was right:
  V.I.N.CENT.: Captain! The Ship has been programmed...!
  Holland: ...to Reinhardt's course...
  Pizer: You mean we're going into the black hole?!?
  Holland: Yup...
  McCrae: Let's pray he was a genius.
• Signature Scene: The giant meteor plowing its way through the ship and the protagonists racing across its path has appeared in all promotional materials.
• Special Effect Failure: The special effects are pretty good for the era^note and at the time, better than films like A New Hope, Superman or Alien, but there are a few mistakes:
  • The strings holding up the flying robots are very visible in some scenes (like BOB's first scene in parts storage).
  • Same for the strings on the human actors during their zero-g scenes. Especially notable are the attachment points on Harry's outfit during the Palomino's fall towards the black hole, and when Charlie goes floating off into space near the end of the film. You could see them on the VHS copy of the film.
  • The static eyes that were glued onto the robots are pretty obviously off-the-shelf black buttons, which was an 11th hour change when the original eyes for them (a type of pixelated screens that would allow them a variety of expressions) failed to work on the first day of shooting.
  • In the funeral scene, the humanoid robots on the very edges of the room have the tops of their heads cut off by the matte painting of the room's walls as they walk out, which rather gives away where the set ends and the painting starts.
  • Some of the "meteors" are visibly transparent as they fly around the Cygnus. Probably the worst offender is the big one that crashes into the large open space while the crew tries to get across before it reaches them.
  • At the very end, when the probe enters into the black hole followed by the remains of the Cygnus, it's quite clear the black hole is a whirlpool in a tank of red liquid.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Of course, as stated above, most of the effects looked really good in 1979, and have aged quite well. The shots of the Cygnus powering up and getting underway are still amazing; you have little trouble believing that each of those engines is longer than a football field.
• Uncertain Audience: Arguably the film's main flaw. The dark premise and imagery along with the harder science fiction elements turned off children from it, and the goofier moments turned off older science fiction fans.
• Tear Jerker: Old B.O.B's death certainly qualifies, especially V.I.N.CENT turning his head around to look at his friend for the last time when he leaves.
  B.O.B: Carry on the tradition, we're the best...
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?:
  • This was the first Disney movie to bear a PG rating (due to violence, tone, and the use of minor swear words like damn and hell). This trope ultimately led to the creation of Touchstone Pictures, to deal with more adult fare. Further, there was no PG-13 rating until 1984, meaning that PG included everything just short of being rated R (other films that were rated PG include Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (yes with the hearts getting ripped out) and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (with the mind-controlling parasites that crawl in your ear and the murder victims hanging from the ceiling)). The notion of a PG-rated Disney film in which characters are brutally Killed Off for Real and the last few minutes consist of an idealized depiction of Hell, was extremely controversial in 1979 and was a primary reason why the film underperformed: diehard sci-fi fans ignored it because, well, it was Disney, while many parents refused to take their kids to a PG-rated Disney film.
  • Further illustrated when Disneyland Records released a condensed audio version of the film on vinyl. Although edits were needed regardless, edits made to dialogue to remove swearing are rather glaring. Ironically, the terrifying sound of Durant's gurgled scream was retained in all its glory!

---