Sorry, it's bad

Rating: Null/10 (17 September 2000)

Warning -- this review has a few SPOILERS . . .
What makes this a bad movie is its assumption that no one will be interested in exactly what it is that happened in the "black hole" (or wherever it went -- that was not entirely clear). I hate to agree with Leonard Maltin, but he's right -- it starts out kind of interesting, but then disintegrates as most Hollywood movies do toward the end as more and more studio execs and market-research people come to influence the plot. Gotta have a big fight at the end between the hero and the villain. At least the hero was allowed to sacrifice himself (probably because Laurence Fishburn realized they were going want to do a sequel and wanted nothing to do with it. Smart boy). And heaven forbid that we bother explaining anything, audiences will swallow whatever we feed them if it's gory enough. And plot holes, schmlot holes -- wouldn't _you_ stick your hand in a shimmering vertical pool of what looks like mercury in the middle of what is essentially a nuclear power plant?! Sure, that's believable . . . because everyone in horror/sci-fi movies automatically lose about 50 IQ points or something.
It would be one thing if the "infinite terror" in the movie was never shown, or didn't acquire a face -- then you could get away without explaining anything. But once Dr. Weir (Neill) becomes the bogey man, we need to know why it was him and not someone else, for example. There's no particular reason why the ship picked him, except that he designed it.
"Somebody to listen to" asks in another comment if the crew on the escape pod died -- no, I assumed they all live happily ever after . . . until the sequel. BIG SPOILER -- why else have Weir's face show up, except to tell the audience that -- surprise (!) -- Evil's not dead yet. Well, of course -- they escaped in the front part of the ship (not an escape pod). The _entire ship_ was supposedly alive, not just the engine room with the black hole drive. Cripes, the more I think about it, the more disappointing this film was. Could have been really interesting. Sad.