Inspired by the Tron thread, I went out and rented “The Black Hole”. Cool movie, I like the antique-look of the Cygnus and Maximillian is one of the coolest movie robots.
I saw it when I was little, but I swear I don’t remember it ending that way! What was up with all the Maximillian/Dr Reinhardt hell imagery?
Dude, when someone has an answer for this, let me know.
Does ‘The Black Hole’ Still Suck?
Here’s the problem: you’re trying to do a remake of a Jules Verne novel, set around this bitchin’ special effect. Then, your Creative Consultant mentions that nobody is going to live once they’ve slid inside the event horizon of a black hole. “Bullshit!” yells a Disney executive, “good guys don’t die in Disney films, except of course the one sacrificial good guy who always dies! We got Slim Pickens and a garbage can to play that part already!”
Disney got a lot of crap for that ending, which sort of plays off like a Mickey Mouse version of 2001. If I remember rightly, this film was one of the reasons why Touchstone was created, specifically because Disney didn’t like having to answer to angry parents who were asked, “how did the movie end?”
(As far as I know, Disney never did answer how the film ended.)
Useless fact: Black Hole was Disney’s first PG film.
The Black Hole is what happens when you have people writing a science fiction movie who don’t know a.) how to write science fiction; and b.) how to write a movie. They also managed to screw up "Escape from Witch Mountain at he same time, for he same reasons. They had some gorgeous effects, and occasionally good cracters, but they had neither plot nor motivations. They had a wonderful cast (Yvette Mimieux! Ernest Borgnine! Maxmilian Schell! Anthony Perkins! Roddy MacDowell!) bu they had no idea what to do with them. You didn’t understand he end? Heck, I didn’t understand th middle! Why the heck did anyone do anything they did?
V.I.N.C.E.N.T. coulda been goos, too. The pre-production sketches riginally showed a pretty neat and believable robot – not the Goofy-eyed red thing he became. Ol’ Bob shoulda been croaked.
It seems to me they threw the heaven/hell imagery in out of frustration. What the heck else could they do?
I remember seeing it the day it opened. A high school friend of mine had camped out all day and was three places in line ahead of me when I got there four hours later. If this sounds like Jason Fox from the comic strip Foxtrot, well, there is a reason, that friend was the author of Foxtrot, Bill Amend. Hi Bill!
Bill was a big Disney freak at the time and had been talking up the movie for ages, so natch I had to the there on opening day. I enjoyed all of it except the ending, which I considered a cop out. On the other hand, what was Disney going to do? 2001?, just kill them off? Nope. They had written themselves into a corner and that was the only way out.
All right, everyone. Here’s what happened. Reinhardt’s plan was to fly through the black hole into a parallel universe, which, by the way, is theoretically possible in general relativity. (He believed it would make him immortal, or God, or something like that, but he was also crazy.) Near the end, he had completed his studies of the black hole and programmed his automated probe ship to make the trip to the other universe. When the Cygnus is destroyed, the good guys escape in the probe ship, which, of course, goes through the black hole and ends up in the parallel universe. Simple as that. All that Heaven / Hell imagery was just there because it looks cool. 
I stand in awe of you.
Esprix