This article is particularly notable for (if accurate) a look at the original beginning of the film, and some minor deleted dialog.
All errors (typographic, spelling, and grammatical) are those of the original article. -DW
Black coal dipped in the darkest tar, wrapped in a grizzly bear's ebon hide, hidden by the stygian shadows of a lunar eclipse - that approximates the BLACKNESS of a black hole.
A black hole may be described as an ebon enigma.
A nothingness that's something else.
A funnel to infinity.
A cosmic tunnel. Or:
A dynamic
Dramatic
Dynamite
Demolishing
Multimillion $ Space Epic from -
Disney!
Since even the educated guesses of famous astronomers leave room for wild speculation concerning the properties of a black hole, as we go to press we have the spectacle of a titanic cinematic undertaking scheduled for Christmas release - which around Halloween didn't yet have an ending!
Not since 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has there been such a fantastic situation.
Arthur C. Clark & Stanley Kubrick huddled for an entire year over the script of 2001, then production was started without a climax having been contrived! Con Pederson, artist & sci-fi author, was called over to London to rescue the script by creating an ending for the picture.
We all know the result.
But as the words are written, we don't know what the finale of THE BLACK HOLE will consist of.
Some weird rumors have leaked out.
One has it that the intrepid adventurers go thru the holocaustic hole and come out the other end...over the Vatican in Italy! (From Black Hole to Holy Mass? Well, it would be different.)
Another scenario has time slow down and stop as the astronauts take a kind of Moebius trip lasting thru all eternity.
Again - this notion might be called "The Amazing 50-Mile Woman" - it has been suggested that the spaceship Cygnus, which is captured by the gravitic forces of the Black Hole, emerge from the other end of the hole to land...in the palm of a giantess of a Giant World!
You know something?
Nearly 50 years before black hole were ever heard of, when I was in my early teens, I put my tiny
brain to work speculating about what might be at the end of space.
I wrote (handwrote, I think) a story called "Beyond the End of Space". (A few years later; 1933 to be exact; a young newcomer by the name of John W. Campbell Jr. had a story by the same title published in Amazing Stories. I don't recall what the legendary Campbell postulated would be found beyond the edge of space, and my story was never published; but I do recall the denouement of my tale.)
My spaceship soared thru the Universe, galaxy beyond galaxy, clean across the Cosmos, out beyond the stars into a realm of Stygian blackness; a lightless, matterless, voidal vacuum of utter nothingness.
Until-
A wall suddenly confronted my cosmonauts!
A curving wall, as tho the interior of a hollow globe.
The Explorers into Infinity (as Ray Cummings would have named them) turned disintegrating rays on the wall, as I recall, and bore a tunnel thru it.
And when they came out on the other side, what did they find?
Their spaceship was on the shore of an alien sea.
Our entire Universe was contained in a grain of sand on a greater world!
Wouldn't it be funny if what I daydreamed up as a kid in 1929 or 1930, became the surprise
ending of this great space adventure film?
It seems as sensible an ending as any.
Not to worry, tho, Disney Studios, if your climax should happen to copy mine: I don't believe anybody ever saw my unpublished story except perhaps my grandparents or maybe one of the members of the Boy's Scientification Club...
The film opens (both literally and figuratively) the day before Xmas. That is to say, in the movie the date is December 24, and the picture itself has been scheduled for Xmas release.
We see the deepspace explorer ship U.S.S. Palomino lost among the stars as a narrator's voice
sets the scene for us:
"Man's long search for life in the last uncharted area of this galaxy is drawing to a close."
We are only a few minutes into the film when Vincent, a mentanical described as "an all-purpose personality-plus robot" announces that the holographic scanner has sighted a Black Hole - "the largest Black hole I have ever encountered," Vincent informs First Officer Pizer.
When 55-year-old scientifically trained journalist Harry Booth gets a look at Hole he lets out a whistle.
"Whew! Right out of Dante's inferno!"
Dr. Alex Durant, astrophysicist, elaborates:
"The most destructive force in the Universe, harry. Nothing can escape it - not even light."
Pizer replies: "Every time I see one of those things, I expect to spot a guy in red with horns & a pitchfork."
Dan Holland, veteran command pilot chimes in: "It's a monster, alright!"
And we're on our way to a rendezvous with spaceship Cygnus:
A ghost ship...
A flying Dutchman of deep space.
A Marie Celeste of the celestial void...
Here are a few quotes to whet your appetites:
"It's eerie. I feel like a thousand eyes are watching us - but where are they?" [The part after the hyphen isn't present in the final film. - DW]
The red light of the monster robot Maximilian burns an angry warning.
"A classic confrontation - David & Goliath, except this time David is overmatched."
"Those robots aren't any friendlier than Dr. Frankenstein's monster here!"
"Tonight we stand on the brink of a feat unparalleled in space exploration."
"He stands to accomplish the one final discovery that has eluded mankind."
"How can one not be fascinated by the deadliest force in the universe?"
"Red alert! Red alert!" [This isn't used anywhere in the film. -DW]
The truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth is that you'll see (and hear):
These & 1000 more thrills from the sense-of-wonder workers that are the hallmark of Disney Studios.
In half a century, from Mickey Mouse to Mechy Monsters!
THE BLACK HOLE promises to be sci-fi entertainment that's LIGHT-years ahead of anything
the Disney Studios have done before.
Copyright © 1980 Warren Publishing Co.
This page is exclusively maintained by Denis Warburton.