Highly Overrated But Still Good

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The Black Hole is more than just the first Disney movie to be rated PG and to feature swearing (as well as one of the most expensive they'd produced at that point). It's also a dark film, one closer to Event Horizon than Escape from Witch Mountain.For years, I believed that The Black Hole was a slow-moving effort, much like Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But after watching it again, I was taken with how quickly it moves and how gorgeous the visuals are, thanks to solid direction by Gary Nelson(who also was in the chair for the original Freaky Friday). The film is big and brash and bold, the way only late 70's movies can be - the movie starts with an overture, one of the last films to do so! It certainly is no ripoff of Star Wars, but obviously got made because of that films success.

Well it seems that over the years Disney has tried to distance itself from 'The Black Hole' in fact it is still one of the few back catalog films that Disney has as yet refused to release on Bluray Format and to be honest I cant figure out their reasoning for doing so. Following the impact of Star Wars in 1977 every major movie studio jumped on the band wagon and began investing huge amounts of money into what they hoped would be a rival to Star Wars and remember in only a short period of 3 years we were given Star Trek The Motion Picture,Battlestar Galactica,Alien but to mention a few and then Disneys 'The Black Hole" As a young child I remember well the hype and promotion that went with the releasing of The Black Hole,The trailer was amazing,the advertising on T.V,the posters,Disney were really hoping to knock Sar Wars of its pedestal. Unfortunately this did not happen,mainly due to film critic's panning the movie even before it was released but Disney took us on a trip unlike anything we had ever been on before with some very mind bending suggestions,a lot of movie goers just didn't get it,the ending I mean and for that reason and word of mouth the movie became an incredible failure both at the box office and with Disneys credibility as a movie maker. Yet through it all and over the years as so many movies that failed at the box office The Black Hole has become a real classic in its own and justly so,it has everything you could want in such a movie...its got the good guys...its got the bad guys who are led by an even badder guy who just so happens to have at his side one hell of a sycopathic robot..sure Star Wars had Darth Vader but The Black Hole had Maximillion and his creator Dr Carl Rendhart played to perfection by the late great Maximillion Schell,we also got two quirky little robots,one voiced by none other than Roddy Mcdowell and finally a cast of just about who's who in Hollywood at the time. All in all The Black Hole has its flaws but its still a movie that deserves a place in the great science fiction films of the 20th Century

The Black Hole is a film that actually has a relatively good and interesting premise and it's a shame really that this 'good' premise is very rarely taken advantage of. The idea of an eccentric, disillusioned lonely megalomaniac effectively turning his own crew into humanoid robots who obey his every command coupled with the idea of said lunatic then trapping the innocent crew members of a research ship on board his vessel has all the hallmarks of a film that could have been both insightful and thrilling, but as mentioned it rarely achieves these basic objectives...For a start, the narrative is a little threadbare and doesn't reveal much about what had happened on board Reinhardt's ship? What sent him mad? How did he create his army of robots? How did he survive there for 20 years? These are just a few things I could think of 'off the cuff', but I'm sure there are more weaknesses in the writing.Another failure with this film is in its complete failure to make the main antagonist interesting; Maximilian Schell's performance has all the trappings of a Bond villain (I couldn't help shake off the notion that I was basically watching Hugo Drax from Moonraker), but he's given no real depth meaning I ultimately didn't end up caring for him or his deluded cause. I also didn't find him a particularly menacing villain - although to his credit Schell is still the best thing about this film by a mile.The idea of a man going insane and turning his own crew into a humanoid robot crew is quite unique and interesting, but as mentioned the filmmakers only really scratch the surface here and never really develop this aspect of the story - the main focus of the story seemed to be about Reinhardt trying to enter The Black Hole which just never really held my interest to be honest.More notable problems lie with the utterly horrendous visuals; I was honestly gobsmacked how awful the whole thing looked - the whole thing looked like it was made on a budget of 75p. In fairness the poor visuals are complemented well by generally poor performances from everyone (I was especially surprised by Borgnine who is usually excellent). The robot helper Vincent (or Dusty Bin as I prefer to call him) was presumably intended as 'comic relief' but he really isn't that funny and when he meets his 'mate' on Reinhardt's ship their whole shtick can be likened to the lamest double act you're ever likely to see.The fact that this film has an intriguing premise, a creepy isolated setting and the potential for some interesting humanoid/robot insights AND yet still manages to be boring, uninteresting and not exactly enlightening is rather shocking in all honesty. With seemingly so much working for it this could and should have been so much better.

I call "The Black Hole" Disney's best sci-fi movie so far, and it's rather sad for Disney, since the movie was made back in 1979. The movie has a good story, and some really good special effects, considering when it was made.The only thing I didn't really care for was The Black Hole's more friendly robot from the original ship. You could really tell that the robot had Disney's sweet effect.I also have to ask, since the group got through a black hole, had the black hole really been a wormhole the crew had experienced going through? Oh well, I can still watch this movie today and see it listed somewhere up in the classic sci-fi movies (like the original Star Wars trilogy).