Intriguingly, the ship's robot, V.I.N.Cent (Vital Information Network Centralized) detects a stationary object near the black hole: the shrouded silhouette of a vast spaceship. Durant (Anthony Perkins) notes that nothing, not even light can escape from one. Kate McCrae reminds her shipmates, black holes are such powerful forces that they may some day " devour the universe itself." Dr. On mission day 547, however, the exploratory craft commanded by Captain Dan Holland (a steady, impressive Robert Forster) discovers something else of interest: the largest black hole ever detected by man. But is there more to The Black Hole than the inescapable gravitational pull of nostalgia? Exactly what are the film's merits? And why, on its 30 year anniversary, does it remain such a polarizing and influential film?įirst off, a brief synopsis of this dark space fantasy: The Black Hole dramatizes the story of the Palomino, a small Earth space craft charged with seeking out and discovering the aforementioned "habitable life" in space. The Black Hole didn't do itself any favors by featuring a nonsensical line that should have been cut.ĭespite such problematic moments, The Black Hole has survived and endured for some three decades on the affection of fans, mostly ones like me, I suspect, who first viewed the film in childhood and never forgot it. Had Kate simply said they were in search of "habitable worlds" or new "life forms," this wouldn't have been a concern. What? Technically, the learned scientist claims to be looking for "life" that people can inhabit or live in. And then there is Kate McCrae's (Yvette Mimieux's) famously mangled line of dialogue early on insisting that the Palomino and Cygnus vessels shared the same mission: " to find habitable life" in space. The main point of contention for most science-based writers appears to be The Black Hole's flagrant ignorance about the laws of physics (at least as we understand them today.) For instance, there seemed to be a breathable atmosphere in outer space (at the mouth of the black hole.) during the film's fiery finale. Even twenty years after the film's theatrical release reviewers were still deriding the movie in articles with titles like " Does The Black Hole still suck?" "Poisonous" might be a better descriptor. The word from science-fiction magazines and writers was far less gracious. Roger Ebert gave the The Black Hole two stars out of four, found the film essentially a talky melodrama, and noticed similarities to Lucas's blockbuster of 1977. Reviews at the time were generally negative. And it faced direct competition in theaters from the likes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), the long-awaited revival of the popular sci-fi TV series. It was the first movie in Disney history to be rated PG rather than G for general audiences. In 1979, in the wake of Star Wars, Walt Disney Studios released an outer-space adventure called The Black Hole directed by Gary Nelson. from the trailer for The Black Hole (1979). A place beyond man's vision.but not his reach." The only reason you can't see the center where all this mass is because no light is reflected off it because the black hole's gravity is too great." There is an inexorable force in the cosmos where time and space converge. But the stuff that fell in adds to the mass of the black hole, which has a bigger gravitational field as a result. There are some interesting issues about "the state of matter" that comprises a black hole, and whether you can even call it matter. Because of this, I think when something gets sucked up by a black hole, it just gets crushed up with all the other mass and adds to it. This means a black hole must be a very compact sum of mass that has a lot of gravity. This is why dying stars forms black holes. The important thing is that at the event horizon the "coordinate" speed of light is zero, so light can't get out. According to Wikipedia, "The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole". I want to know where stuff goes after being sucked up by a black hole. I've heard that stuff sucked up by a black hole leads to a parallel universe, but I don't believe that. Into the black hole, increasing its mass. Where does stuff sucked up by a black hole go?
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