The Black Hole Remake

[Solariabsg25]

I am rather surprised at the love shown for this - I saw the film when it came out and disliked it - especially my 'pet hate', cute and/or funny robots (also children and animals). I wrote it off as another of the plentiful dodgy cash in sci-fi films that came out in the wake of Star Wars.

My memories of it are that it was pretty much cringeworthy...

It's from 1970s DISNEY.

And this film was pretty bold for Disney at the time. Not the usual kiddie fare we were used to.

However I think this is probably one of those movies that you have an attachment to if you saw it as a kid.....which I didn't.

It was up against TMP and as such I had zero interest in seeing Black Hole. I did see it years later when I had grown up and there are elements that I do like about it. I have a fondness for "finding ships that mysteriously disappeared long ago" type stuff, and I liked some of the interiors as well as the reveal about the crew.

Didn't care for BOB (which probably had more to do with Slim Pickens taking me out of the moment), nor did I care for the whole "black hole leads to heaven and hell" business. I want to say I read the novelization had a sort of different ending, but it's been about thirty years since I read it.

Yeah the Alan Dean Foster novelisation had a more metaphysical ending, where Holland, Pizer, Kate and VINCENT were combined into this galactic consciousness. Don't know how that could be filmed though!

The heaven/hell thing I just saw as Kate's mind "making up" something it just couldn't comprehend. A bit like the Q continuum in Deathwish, it doesn't literally look like that.

Of course then there's Doctor Reinhart!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I have heard it said that Frank McCrae (Kate's father) was used for the A.I. in Maximilian. Meaning: After Frank unsuccessfully led a revolt against Reinhardt, Frank was 'punished' by having his mind trapped within the robot. And the angel who flies through 'Heaven' at the end is Frank's soul escaping the confines of the 'bot. Is this in the novelization? There's nothing in the film about it...

 

[Mr. Adventure]

That being said, I find it hilarious - and almost certainly planned - that an actor named Maximilan Schell plays a character who, at the end, ends up...in Maximilian's shell.

Not to mention Maximilian's Hell.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ That too!

Wonder who they'd get to play Dr. Reinhardt in the remake. Mr. Cumberbatch?

 

[Solariabsg25]

I have heard it said that Frank McCrae (Kate's father) was used for the A.I. in Maximilian. Meaning: After Frank unsuccessfully led a revolt against Reinhardt, Frank was 'punished' by having his mind trapped within the robot. And the angel who flies through 'Heaven' at the end is Frank's soul escaping the confines of the 'bot. Is this in the novelization? There's nothing in the film about it...

No mention of the full details of Frank McCrae's fate in the movie or novel, apart from the fact he was killed leading the mutiny. And the heaven/hell sequence doesn't exist in the novel, so would be no mention of a soul escaping.

Having McCrae corrupted to be Maximilian's AI in the remake would add a bit more horror to the situation, I like that idea.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

What I want to know is, how did Reinhardt manage to overpower the entire crew? I'm guessing the Cygnus had dozens of crew, hundreds even - more so than even S.T.A.R. and his troops could have managed against. The crew should have been able to beat Reinhardt on sheer numbers.

 

[Solariabsg25]

We don't know how many sentry robots may have been destroyed during the mutiny, it could have been a close run thing. Old BOB was the last survivor of his kind on the Cygnus, itseems to me he and his type would have also been on the side of the crew. Unless of course, Reinhart suspected the jig was up, and did some reprogramming of them to support him, from BOB's and VINCENTS combat prowess, having them on his side would have been a considerable asset.

The existence of the humanoids make me suspect that maybe Reinhart used some kind of disabling gas? A flashback to the mutiny would have been nice, but really would not have served the plot much.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Reinhardt flooding the ship with knockout gas would be the only way I could think of that he could take down the whole crew. If he relied on S.T.A.R. and the sentry robots, that wouldn't work - the crew could get ahold of weapons and fire back. And there's no evidence of a sustained firefight on the Cygnus.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Had been many years since the mutiny, so I guess any damage may have been repaired.

His story about repairing meteor damage appeared to be plausible to the Palomino crew - I think Holland distrusted the man rather than his cover story. So if they believe disabling damage may be repaired in that amount of time, fixing laser holes in the walls should be a doddle.

For all we know though, the reason that Reinhart was so insistant on no "unescorted excursions" is there may have been some areas of the ship that still showed such evidence. Perhaps some crew managed to seal themselves off, and Reinhart just let them starve to death, or decompressed the area. If it was an area not vital to the operation of the ship or his experiments, I doubt he'd have given a second thought to regaining access to it or fixing it up.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

A remake of this film - done well - really has some potential

Remakes always have potential. But I know not a single one that was ever done well.

John Carpenter's The Thing was an excellent remake.

 

[Silvercrest]

The heaven/hell thing I just saw as Kate's mind "making up" something it just couldn't comprehend. A bit like the Q continuum in Deathwish, it doesn't literally look like that.

I watched it again recently and spotted something that convinced me the Hell scene was dreamed by one of the crew... and now I can't remember what it was.

since right before we see them, there's a closeup on her eye (and as we see Dr. Reinhardt in hell, we hear Kate say "Murderer!").

Maybe that was it. Now I need to go back and look.

As for the remake: Obviously they're going to have to change the name, because we now know that it's not possible to fall into a black hole and live.

We knew that at the time, but they were going by "movie science." Anyway, the characters did assume it would be a death sentence. The only thing that was supposed to make it possible was the Cygnus' anti-gravity whozit. And in the end, there was no explanation as to why the characters did survive.

A remake of this film - done well - really has some potential

Remakes always have potential. But I know not a single one that was ever done well.

John Carpenter's The Thing was an excellent remake.

The Wizard of Oz. The Ten Commandments.

 

[The Lensman]

A remake of this film - done well - really has some potential

Remakes always have potential. But I know not a single one that was ever done well.

The Maltese Falcon. The third version is the one considered the classic. Most people have forgotten the first two.

 

[Harvey]

Nah, Satan Met a Lady is a class--okay, even I can't finish that sentence. It's awful.

David Cronenberg's version of The Fly is superior to the original.

 

[The Lensman]

Nah, Satan Met a Lady is a class--okay, even I can't finish that sentence. It's awful.

LOL! I have the three disc special edition and I can appreciate that version from a weird alternate universe perspective. But version one and three are much better. IIRC, the first version did quite well at the theater.

 

[Christopher]

Remakes always have potential. But I know not a single one that was ever done well.

The Maltese Falcon. The third version is the one considered the classic. Most people have forgotten the first two.

Not to mention that the Judy Garland Wizard of Oz was approximately the seventh screen adaptation of that book, the Charlton Heston Ben-Hur was a remake of a silent version, etc.

And there have been a number of more recent remakes that have been considered quite well-done, like The Fly, Ocean's Eleven, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, True Grit, etc.

 

[Silvercrest]

Ouch. I wrote The Wizard of Oz up above, but I also wrote The Ten Commandments when I meant Ben-Hur.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, The Ten Commandments was a remake too. DeMille originally made it as a silent film in 1923, then remade and expanded it in '56, with many scenes recreated shot-for-shot.

 

[mos6507]

If you're going to remake something, there's merit in taking a property that was kind of botched the first time out, but had potential. The Black Hole falls into that category, something I think most people old enough to have seen it (like me) WANTED to like, but couldn't quite get into fully. If you try to remake something that was perfect to begin with, then you just open yourself up to too many unflattering comparisons.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Yeah, The Black Hole does come into this category. It was a very dark story - I mean the Cygnus crew had basically been lobotomised and turned into mindless slaves. Some found VINCENT and Old BOB to be cutesy robots, but they served a purpose, and were a contrast to the silent and intimidating Maximilian.

As a kid I was confused by the fact that near the climax they were floating in space with no ill effects - wasn't until the novelisation that I found that the Cygnus's gravity shield also held in the atmosphere - would have made more sense if a couple of lines of dialogue had mentioned that!

Another thing that bothered me was they had to use computer records to recognise the Cygnus. She was the only ship of her kind, sent on a grand mission, and Booth even covered her launch - her identity should have been fairly obvious to everyone.

 

[Silvercrest]

^Well, The Ten Commandments was a remake too. DeMille originally made it as a silent film in 1923, then remade and expanded it in '56, with many scenes recreated shot-for-shot.

It's always good to know I'm not as dumb as I really am.