Good morning everyone! How are you all doing today? I'm good. It's really hot out this week, so I've been going outside right after breakfast. I know I said I was going to review the 1979 Disney movie, The Black Hole today, but I started watching it last night and something weird happened. I got halfway through and I had to turn it off. So instead of reviewing the movie, I'm going to just talk about my experience watching it last night. So let's get into it.
The 1970s was a weird time for Science Fiction on TV and at the movies. While Star Wars lit up the box office with how fun and exciting it was, while also being visually stunning, nobody else managed to pull it off. You had movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, THX 1138 (George Lucas's first film), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture that had great ideas and were visually beautiful films to watch but the characters weren't all that interesting (even the classic Star Trek characters) and not a whole lot happens in them. Then you had shows like Space: 1999, and Battlestar Galactica (among others) that were fun to watch and had lots of action, excitement and interesting characters, but visually looked bland and uninteresting.
Unfortunately, The Black Hole fits into the category of visually stunning, with great ideas, but had bland characters and a boring story. My buddy Aaron, who I've talked about alot on this blog, loves it and recommended it to me. I'd heard of the movie of course, and was interested in seeing it, as it was Disney's first PG Science Fiction film (also it's first ever PG movie), and it's first Sci-Fi film since 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea came out in 1954. I was also prepared for it to be a "boring" movie because I'd heard that there wasn't much action in it. However, what I wasn't prepared for was how boring it was. I wasn't invested in any of the characters, and of course nothing happened for pretty much the entire first half of the film, which is how far in I got before I turned it off. Normally I don't turn a movie off. Ever. Even if it's not good, or it's not my cup of tea as they say. I still sit through it, hoping to find something I liked about it, even if it's not my thing. But with The Black Hole I was so thoroughly bored that halfway through I had to turn it off.
That's not to say that The Black Hole is a bad movie. The dialogue was good, and so were the visual effects. But the philosophy of it all bogged the story down and because of the bland characters and slow story, it turned out to be a movie that was not made for me in mind (I mean I wasn't even born yet when it came out). And that is totally fine with me. I don't have to like every movie I watch. I also don't have to watch every movie that gets made. That's the beauty of film. There's something out there for everyone, no matter what your tastes are.
The movie was first released on VHS on March 4th, 1980, the same day as Pete's Dragon, making it the second Disney movie to ever be released on home video. Disney would re-release it on VHS in 1983 and 1985, but then it wouldn't get released on VHS again until 1999 when Anchor Bay released it. They also released it on DVD at the same time. Disney released it on DVD in 2004 and again in 2010. It did get a Blu-ray release in 2019, only three months before it was included on Disney+ upon the streaming service's launch.
Normally this is where I'd either recommend the movie or recommend against the movie. But I can't do that for a movie I haven't seen all the way through. However, if you want to watch it and see if you like it, great. Who knows, maybe it'll be a movie that's right up your alley. I just know, that it definitely is not for me.
Alright that's it for me for today. However, I will be back on Saturday for my review of the first season of The Orville. My sister and I have only two more episodes left in the season and she's off tomorrow, so we're going to spend the afternoon finishing off the season. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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