There’s really only one thing I want to know about director Joseph Kosinski’s remake of The Black Hole and it’s this: How are they going to fix the ending? As a concept, the 1979 original is kind of brilliant and, while the execution isn’t always perfect for most of its running time the movie is a lot of fun. Until the end that is, when the whole thing turns into a ridiculous, intergalactic acid trip. Remember that horrible scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where they slingshot around the sun and suddenly everyone’s head turns into a papier-mâché bust? Yeah, it’s exactly like that, except in The Black Hole it’s not just this weird, easily ignorable aside wedged in the middle of the film, it’s the goddamn resolution. It’s the whole reason the rest of the movie you’ve just watched exists. Unforgivable.
So while remaking The Black Hole seems like kind of a good idea, it only works if you toss out that horrible ending and come up with something better. Kosinski recently spoke to MTV about his remake and apparently no one at MTV has actually seen The Black Hole because they didn’t bother to ask him about the ending. I’m sure they were busy thinking of a way to get him to cast Taylor Lautner or something. But, unbeknownst to them he did address it, in a roundabout way.
In the interview Kosinski talks a bit about black holes as a scientific phenomenon. And it sounds like one of the goals for him in doing a Black Hole remake is to use a little actual science, instead of the vague, mumbo jumbo which passed for it in the first film and eventually lead to the aforementioned ending in which black holes are portrayed as some sort of wild, hippie, drug-coma. Kosinski says, "From a conceptual point of view, we know so much more about black holes now, the crazy things that go on as you approach them due to the intense gravitational pull and the effects on time and space. All that could provide us with some really cool film if we embrace it in a hard science way.”
There’s more good news too, for anyone who’s actually seen the original. He’s as in love with some of the movie’s more iconic imagery as you, and he plans to keep some of it. Kosinski says, “What sticks out most is the robot Maximilian. The blades and the vicious killing of Anthony Perkins. That freaked me out and that's definitely going to be an element that will be preserved. The design of the Cygnus ship is one of the most iconic spaceships ever put to film.” Good decisions. The Cygnus was an amazing ship design, one which if kept intact, will only look even more amazing and cinematic with a bigger budget. As long as they fix the ending. Just say away from the drugs man. Stay away from the drugs.
