The Black Hole is a 1979 science fiction movie directed by Gary Nelson for Walt Disney Productions. The film stars Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, and Ernest Borgnine, while the voices of the main robot characters are provided by Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens. The music for the movie was composed by John Barry. The plot was inspired by Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, filmed by Disney in 1954. Alan Dean Foster novelized the screenplay.
Overview
At $20 million (plus another $6 million for its advertising budget[1]) it was at the time the most expensive picture ever produced by the company. The movie earned $36 million at the US box office, making it the 13th highest grossing film of the year. It was generally not well-received by critics, although some of the special effects -- notably, the main characters fleeing a rolling meteor -- were highly praised.[2]
The film was nominated for cinematography and visual effects Academy Awards. Although Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope had popularized the use of computerized motion control miniature effects, The Black Hole was shot using a blend of old-fashioned camera techniques and newly developed computer controlled camera techniques. Disney had wanted to rent equipment from Industrial Light and Magic but when the price was too high and the timing of getting the equipment didn't match Disney's production schedule they had their engineering department build their own equipment, resulting in the development of Disney's A.C.E.S. (Automated Camera Effects System), as well as the Mattescan system which for the first time allowed the camera to move over a matte painting, and a computer controlled modeling stand. These developments put Disney's special effects technology ahead of that of ILM for several years. At the time of its release, the movie's opening credits sequence featured the longest computer graphics shot that had ever appeared in a film. The film's opening titles, with their vertiginous music and graphics, were inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo.[citation needed] The film also had the world's first digitally recorded soundtrack.[3]
"The Black Hole" was also notable for being the first Disney film not to have a universal rating, due to mild language (being the first Disney film to include profanity of any type) and scenes of human death never seen in a Disney production before (e.g., a character is eviscerated). This was Disney's first PG-rated production, and its second overall release with that rating. (The first was the sports drama Take Down, an outside production Disney distributed in early 1979.) The version of the film televised on The Disney Channel has been edited for language, with all uses of the words "damn" and "hell" removed from dialogue. Along with frequent subtexts, there were also metaphysical and religious themes expressed through the film. This film led the company towards experimenting with more adult-oriented films, which would eventually lead to the creation of its Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures arms to handle films considered too mature in nature to carry the Walt Disney label.[4]
The Black Hole has been released several times on VHS and DVD.
Plot
An Earth exploratory ship, the USS Palomino, is returning from a deep space exploration mission. The crew consists of: the Palomino's Captain, Dan Holland (Robert Forster); his First Officer, Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms); journalist Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine); ESP-sensitive scientist Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux); the expedition's civilian leader, Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins); and the robot V.I.N.CENT ("Vital Information Necessary CENTralized", voice of Roddy McDowall).
The ship discovers a black hole with a lost ship, the USS Cygnus, seemingly lifeless but somehow defying its gravitational pull and hovering just outside its event horizon. The Palomino moves in to investigate, and finds a mysterious gravity field surrounding the Cygnus. The Palomino is damaged when it drifts out of the null gravity bubble but manages to make it back to the Cygnus. The derelict ship suddenly comes to life, and allows the Palomino to dock.
The Palomino crew finds a crew of humanoid, faceless robots onboard the Cygnus, along with the ship's Commander, Doctor Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), a prominent scientist last seen twenty years prior, when he refused an order to return the Cygnus to Earth. Reinhardt explains that the rest of the crew left him behind, and he now commands an army of robots, including the hulking, ominous Maximilian. Reinhardt reveals that he is working on a project to fly the Cygnus into the black hole and explore beyond. While most of the crew react with incredulity and skepticism upon this announcement, Durant reacts with enthusiasm and decides to accompany Reinhardt into the black hole.
The other Palomino crew grow suspicious of the faceless drones' humanlike behavior, and Old B.O.B. (voice of Slim Pickens), a damaged earlier model robot similar to V.I.N.CENT, explains that the faceless drones are in fact the former crew, who mutinied when Reinhardt refused to return to Earth, and have since been reprogrammed, a procedure similar to a lobotomy, to serve him. With this knowledge, the crew attempt to gather back at the Palomino, but Durant is immediately killed by Maximilian, and McCrae is sent to the hospital to be reprogrammed. The rest of the crew rescue McCrae, but Booth panics and attempts to escape alone in the Palomino. Reinhardt orders the ship shot down, resulting in a collision which damages the Cygnus. The Cygnus is further damaged by a meteor storm being pulled into the black hole, and the ship's fate is sealed when the ship's power source overload and explode when Reinhardt orders maximum power. Without the null-gravity bubble the Cygnus begins to be torn apart by the black hole.
As the ship falls apart, Reinhardt and the Palomino survivors both form the same escape plan: to use the probe ship previously used by Reinhardt to scan the black hole. Reinhardt is crushed by falling equipment, however, and Maximilian appears to decline to rescue him, preferring to seek and confront the humans. Reaching them, Maximilian shoots Old B.O.B. beyond repair but is itself destroyed by V.I.N.CENT and drifts out of the ship and into the hole. Holland, Pizer, McCrae, and V.I.N.CENT make it to the probe but find that it has been programmed to fulfill Reinhardt's objective: a flight through the black hole.
In a long, dialogue-free final sequence, the travelers reach the bottom of the black hole and appear to enter Hell then Heaven.[5] Reinhardt and Maximilian embrace in space, and then appear merged as one on a high rock overlooking a barren, burning landscape populated by robed figures resembling the drones of the Cygnus. The surviving crew of the Palomino pass through a cathedral-like crystal tunnel, with their small craft eventually emerging from a white hole in the vicinity of a planet.
In Alan Dean Foster's novelization of the film, Kate's ESP links the minds of the Palomino' crew and allows them to survive (in a fashion) while the atoms of their bodies diffuse and are scattered throughout the Universe. (In one version of the book, the events depicted in the film start on Christmas Eve).
One comic book adaptation of the film (Whitman comics, published in 1980) bypasses the whole issue of what happens inside the black hole by having the crew enter the black hole on one page and emerge apparently unharmed on the next page into a parallel universe where they encounter alternate versions of Reinhardt, Old B.O.B. and Maximilian. Four issues were published. The first two issues adapted the film and the second two issues continued the story introducing a race of people called Virlights. The rare fourth issue concludes with the promise of a fifth issue which was planned but never published. Other comic adaptations released in Europe have the crew emerging into another galaxy, thus confirming Reinhardt's theories. While wondering if they will ever return to Earth, they decide to explore this new universe.
In the official Disney Read-Along recording, the crew in the probe ship emerge safely on the other side of the black hole, while the Cygnus is "crushed like an eggshell". The story ends with Captain Holland saying "We've been trained to find new worlds. Let's go find one for ourselves."
The Black Hole theatrical release history
US release dates
- December 21, 1979 (original release)
- March 6, 1982
- August 16, 1985
- December 25, 1990 (11th Anniversary edition rerelease)
- August 5, 2010 (Disney Digital 3-D Re-Released)[citation needed]
Video release history
- 1980 (VHS & laserdisc)
- May 10, 1981 (VHS (UK only))
- August 3, 1984 (VHS & laserdisc)
- April 20, 1985 (VHS & laserdisc)
- August 22, 1985 (laserdisc (Japanese version))
- 1986 (VHS and laserdisc)
- 1987 (videodisc (Chinese version)
- 1989 (VHS and laserdisc)
- 1990 (VHS and laserdisc (re-release))
- June 18, 1997 (laserdisc)
- May 27, 1999 (VHS & DVD)
- May 7, 2000 (DVD (Japanese version)
- May 17, 2000 (videodisc (Chinese/Japanese version)
- June 8, 2002 (VHS & DVD)
Cast
Soundtrack
Highlights of the score, as conducted and composed by John Barry, were released on an LP by Walt Disney Records in 1979. It was the first-ever digitally recorded score for a film, although using digital equipment different from what is used today. The score was mixed by Dan Wallin on a 3M 48 track machine[6] Because of the early low digital bit-rate used during recording, the soundtrack has never been issued on CD, although it is rumored that such a release is in the works.[citation needed] In the meantime, a CD-quality version of the soundtrack can be purchased and downloaded through iTunes.
- Track Listing[7]
- "Overture" (2:27)
- "Main Title" (1:46)
- "The Door Opens" (3:38)
- "Zero Gravity" (5:53)
- "Six Robots" (1:59)
- "Durant Is Dead" (2:31)
- "Start The Countdown" (3:51)
- "Laser" (2:15)
- "Into The Hole" (5:00)
- "End Title" (2:34)
Silva Screen Records have released compilation albums remastering some of John Barry's works, which includes some of the music from The Black Hole. Only one track is available and it apparently is The Overture.
Along with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this was one of the last few mainstream Hollywood productions to have an overture - although most broadcast-syndication prints of the film would later omit it. The overture is included during broadcasts on Turner Classic Movies since 2008 and was also included on the DVD release.
Trivia
- The robot Maximilian was already named before the filmmakers cast the coincidentally-named actor Maximilian Schell as Dr. Hans Reinhardt.
- An alternate ending was conceived but never shot.[citation needed] The final scene would have involved a slow panning out from what would be revealed to be the Sistine Chapel painting of Michelangelo's The Creation. Kate's face would be recognizable in the background of the painting, suggesting that the crew experienced the beginning of time. The scene would end showing Kate looking up at the painting, suggesting that the Palomino crew did eventually return safely to Earth.
- One of the S.T.A.R. robots was used in a short screen test of a project that would eventually become Tron.[citation needed]
- The meteor storm sequence was used as background during the science fiction portion of Dreamfinder's School of Drama at EPCOT Center's Journey Into Imagination ImageWorks entitled Acrobatic Astronauts in Galactic Getaway.[8] Children would perform behind a green screen and their performance would be shown on monitors with the meteors crashing through the ship.
References
External links
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