There has been a lot of analysis about where The Black Hole went wrong as a movie. There were mistakes in just about everything in the production that took away from the whole, that indicates the production was just too top heavy—too many studio suits, each of whom wanted changes just so that their hand prints would be on it.
To start with, there was the good idea of giving the movie the drama of some of Disney’s previous movies. Dr. Hans Reinhardt was clearly a Captain Nemo type, played by the superb actor Maximilian Schell. And yet, while Captain Nemo was a tortured soul with a noble cause and loyal crew, Reinhardt is just a deranged, obsessive and murderous villain.
So a lot of plot and acting was lost right there. And while having a lobotomized crew to pilot the ship was an interesting plot twist, it meant that it was just Reinhardt and a bunch of robots. And the robots were pretty useless, except for Maximillian, who was large and intimidating, but didn’t do anything useful.
They probably felt that making cutesy robots would appeal to kids, but that never works. And certainly not with “folksy” accents, which was as annoying as it had been in Starcrash, one of the all time bad movies, the year before.
The rest of the casting was also weak.
From there, they couldn’t seem to make up their mind what the movie was about. More than anything else, it was meandering.
John Barry’s soundtrack was 20,000 Leagues again, with a “the power of the sea” or “Maelstrom” feeling to it. But the black hole just seems to be a backdrop for most of the movie.
And then the very worst part was when they descended into the black hole. Hell and Heaven symbolism, especially using angels, just destroys the fantasy.
Yeah, it never made any sense why Dr. Reinhardt even made Maximillian and his evil battlebots. What the hell did he need them for?
The cutesy-poo “good robots” with Slim Pickens(?) doing the voice of one was pure kiddy-movie Disney and did not belong in an otherwise serious flick.
And since the whole fricking mission was to go through the black hole in the first place, why did Reinhardt need to lobotomize his crew in the first place?
And the LSD-tinged religious imagery also clashed with everything. Hey, if you’re going to cram that in at the end you should have brought up religious themes a few times in the script.