But like Nemo as the crew dig deeper and become more suspicious Reinhardt changes and becomes very protective of his plans. At first 'Reinhardt' is welcoming and offers them tours around his impressive ship showing his achievements and they all dine together on a lavish main deck overlooking the black hole. The way the story plans out is very similar too, the crew board the mysterious vessel unsure of what they will find. Living a solitary life on his impressive ship that no one knew what happened to, a genius inventing ways to defy a black holes gravitational pull, building his own robots etc.but also a madman with little respect for human life.
So the crazed German scientist (Hollywood loves to abuse the Germans) played by Schell could quite easily be 'Captain Nemo'.
After much speculation and pleasantries the crew realise the crazy scientist is a genius but wants to fly his ship into the black hole, what seems like a suicide mission. They board the ship and eventually find a crazed bearded scientist and his legion of self created robots. A team of scientists/very intelligent astronauts discover a black hole with a large vessel parked up near by. Whilst watching I really couldn't help but feel it was simply '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' in space.
On top of that 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' also came out in that same year which pretty much hammered the last nail in the coffin for this adventure.ĭespite Disney clearly wanting this film to achieve the same level of grandeur that both Lucas and Spielberg managed with their sci-fi films, this venture feels very dated to me. Unluckily for this Disney sci-fi the greatest space set fantasy of all time had been released two years earlier in 77.