In the computer world, everything starts at 0. I suspect it's more along those lines.

Centuries and millennia start at 1 and end at 0, but I don't know that it was ever applied to decades officially. Technically it would be correct, but NO ONE calls 1990 the last year of the 80s.


The eyes were Reinhardt's, eternally locked inside his creation. It was very weird for a Disney film to have a villain and his monster end up merged in hell like that.
Perkins' death by the blades to the heart was extremely graphic as well, even if there was no blood, because you didn't need to see it when you could hear it and see his face.


The Jedi Master

I can't think of a single thing in Disney's black Hole
that wasn't both wrong and stupid.

Geez, I hate to know what you guys think of Forbidden Planet, IMO one of the best scifi movies ever made.
"The saucer is silly, and naturally the cook is comic relief."
"A robot making booze? Please. And not even seat belts in his car attachment, but no one flies out!"
"The innocent girl with animals...right."
"Huge fuses and crap running around self maintaining? GET REAL!"

Forbidden Planet is a classic

I'm off to watch The Black Hole to see how it stands up today. I thought it was a good film,watched it a few times back in the day.

*edit* Not too bad once you see past the poor special effects and the wires holding everyone up. I forgot about the ending. Did that signify Heaven and Hell?

It's been so long since I've seen Forbidden Planet all the way through that I'm not sure I remember all of those references, but I don't see a problem with a saucer nor the cook being comic relief - it's only what's done, but how it's done. Same with the robot making booze - it is just synthesizing a chemical, so there's no real problem with that.

The Black Hole, on the other hand, had all kinds of things added in that didn't fit with the rest of the film, or were blatantly stupid.

Like flying outside the spaceship without a suit, and having no ill effects. Gun-slinging robots. Robots that literally looked like clowns. A robot with a southern accent. A large asteroid that's hot for no apparent reason (no atmosphere for friction), and bursts through the top of the spacecraft but then rolls along inside, and ends up...where?

I thought the dynamic with Anthony Perkins' and Maximilian Schell's characters was interesting, and I thought for a no-nonsense spacecraft the Palomino looked about like you'd expect, and they did show them in zero-g on board, so that was a nice technical touch.

Looking at the overall darkness of the story, a lot of the other stuff just seemed out of place, like they were just throwing things in to make it more Disney-like. On one hand, you'd have clown robots having a shooting competition with the sentry robots, and a goofy consistent cowboy theme going through it, while on the other hand there were the crew basically being lobotomized, Anthony Perkins' character getting his chest ground up, etc. It just didn't flow.

Who doesn't like Slim Pickens?
Why is it ok for a robot to have an English accent, but not Southern? Robots can't sling guns, but laser swords (in an age of planet shattering guns) and just cotton fiber to protect against them is ok? Robots with googly eyes is bad, but a teddy bear co-pilot, that doesn't speak English but understands it, moans and only one guy can tell what he's saying is good? If you're going to worry too much about the old atmosphere or sound in space issue, that's going to cut out 95% of the space based movies out there. Tie fighters can't scream in space when they pull in behind someone.
Of course, I love Star Wars too, despite having unrealistic factors.

And transporters? They murder you and clone you elsewhere. But that's ok! It's scifi! Some are just heavier on the "fi" part.

Well damn, because of this thread I just watched Dark Star again...

"I think, therefore I am."

"This is fun!"

Hahahaha. Wonderfully Carpenter.

The answers to your questions :


He's great, just not a good voice for a robot.


Because one is clear and properly pronounced, and the other is causal and full of slang, and there would be no advantage to making one speak like that.


A lot of it is about how it's handled. The robots were goofy, made to look like clowns, be silly and even cheat. Laser swords are used by skilled practitioners who use them with their skill to protect themselves, without being overtly offensive.


This one is just inaccurate. He wasn't a teddy bear, he was a large, ferocious animal that more than one person could understand. And yes, robots with googly eyes are bad, especially when some of them have southern accents and engage in goofy gun-slinging contests.


But the sound is just for the viewer, it doesn't factor into the story. I can't think of a situation where someone heard a spacecraft coming in space and reacted to it, it's just to give the audience a feel for the vehicles. Floating around in space without a space suit is part of the story, and the person should have died, but didn't even notice they were outside the space ship.



Well, the most understandable approach we currently have of a transporter works that way, but since they don't exist at all, there's still some wiggle room.

I get what you're saying, and in a way, we're two sides of the same coin. I'm saying that all movies have flaws, but how far they go and how they're handled determine how acceptable they are. My guess is that if you were to show a bunch of people, scientists even, a scene with a spaceship flying by making a sound, or someone floating around outside of a spaceship with out any sort of space suit, and asked them which bothered them the most, the vast majority would pick the non-space suit scene.

We accept some guy leaping into the sky and flying and deflecting bullets in a Superman movie, but it wouldn't work in a James Bond movie, because the context is wrong for that. It's all about setting the proper context and handling it a way that works. The Black Hole didn't manage that very well, and also seemed to have added a lot of the goofy stuff as an afterthought, like they were trying to mimic the humor of R2-D2, and force a Disney feel into certain aspects of the movie, when it didn't really work in that context.

Okey doke.
And I'm not saying it's on the level of SW by any means, just that some will go with the flow for the enjoyment. We do all have our limits.

Actually, the most unrealistic aspect of the film can be summed up in two words:
Ernest Borgnine.




The Jedi Master

The 80s run from 80 through 89. The 8th decade, which isn't the same thing as the 80s, starts in 81 and ends in 90 since there was never a year 0 between BC and AD.

Somehow I missed it but then again that Rolling Stone website kept choking on my iPhone so it was a pain to browse through all the entries.

And that's pretty much what I'm trying to convey. Most people seemed OK with Chewbacca, but when Lucas really did go to teddy bears with the Ewaks, the reaction was largely negative. it's just a matter of not going too far for the context of a given story.

I've been wanting to see "Logan's Run" again and not just to see a very young and hot Jenny Agutter!

Obviously the costume design was very representative of the era in which the film was released but I think the story still resonates.

I remember seeing Buck Rogers in the 25th century in the cinema before it was released on the TV as a series. In the adverts at that showing was a film starring Richard Kiel (Jaws of 007 fame) called The Humanoid (IMDb ) , the trailer for it looked ok but missed it when it came to our little cinema which closed around that time, it came on TV about 10 years or so later and the GF at the time had other plans so I never got to see it then either, still not seen it! Looking at it on IMDb maybe I lucked out

Cool! I think I must have checked out about 80% of those films from the library!

I never heard of Futureworld or Stalker. I will have to put these on my list.

Futureworld was the far less popular sequel to Westworld, wasn't it?



The Jedi Master

Looks like it Jedi. I've never seen it but after reading the reviews on RT I don't think I'll bother either.

I've added "Time after Time" to my Netflix queue. I haven't seen it in ages but it's an excellent film and it's also the directorial debut of Nicholas Meyer who went on to direct two Star Trek films. It's also nice seeing Malcolm McDowell play a good guy for once!