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movie review - Black Hole

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tonight I watched this 1979 sci-fi movie with my brother and sister-in-law. I always like a good derelict story, but this ain't that. Its crimes, in descending order of magnitude were:

1. tell, don't show: several key things are explained to us that would have had much more impact if shown.
2. impossible shit: the adversary pulls off a lot of distracting feats that are considered magical/impossible even in-world for the movie setting.
3. disobedient dragon: the adversary's heavy (the Darth Vader to his Emperor, if you will) does stuff (like killing protagonists) against the heavy's will. Who's in charge?
4. an unexplained ending: where are the surviving heroes at the end? Don't know. Somewhere symbolic perhaps, but if this was a morality story that didn't come across.
5. unlikely characterization: three significant characters do things that aren't explainable by what we know of them.
6. mixing genres to fill time: we wander into a contest of shooting skills straight of our a Western in the middle. During that, an example of #5 above happens.
7. in space, no one can breath: so, what you breathing as climb a tower toward that probe that's about to launch.
8. poor pacing: when we're not talking, we're walking. The this is appopriately huge for a derelict spaceship, and built as a sprawling construction of struts and supports, which is all gold. But with: lots and lots of oversized rooms and a lot of room wasted on personal effects.

Apparently this was Disney's first PG-13 movie. I hope the next was better. Because this just a load of characters not reacting to obvious things, then reacting in predictable ways, and then winding up in positions that we can't explain.

Not recommended. Avoid.