Reply To: Scores Which You Simply Cannot Fathom
Take John Barry’s “Laser” cue in The Black Hole. Climactic action, tension rising, robots fighting, the whole thing teetering on the edge of cosmic doom… and suddenly the score decides it wants to be somewhere else entirely. The music isn’t bad per se, and most certainly fitting for a British Coronation Ceremony or something, but not for people and robots fighting it out in outer space! I cannot fathom why they did that. The music calls attention to itself in every way you don’t want music to do in a scene like that. It’s like someone interrupting a heavyweight championship boxing match to read poetry. No matter how nice the poem… it just doesn’t fit!
The issue I have with The Black Hole is that you have on the one hand that dark moody and disturbing captain Nemo story, which was the original idea of the movie. And you have, to Pop it up for younger audiences this what I would call starwarsation of it by adding the funny robots and the laser fights.
The whole laser scene is a nod to Star Wars fans including the music, which makes little sense when you see it today. But watching it as a little boy it gave me my dose of Star Wars, that I was so hungry for.
But this came at a cost. Because of that, the movie didn’t grow old well and appears like Battlestar Galactica like a cheap Star Wars copy. Without these concessions to Star Wars the Black Hole could be a cult hit today, I think.