Not a Disaster but a Disaster Movie

Rating: Null/10 (2 January 2001)

Irwin Allen has nothing like this.
In spite of the inevitable comparisons, Pitch Black is to Alien as The Towering Inferno is to Die Hard. This isn't your typical sci-fi action adventure, but something along the lines of The Poseidon Adventure, Lifeboat or Flight of the Phoenix: throw a bunch of diverse people together and discover their secrets while they struggle to stay alive. Who lives? Who dies? If someone has to die, who chooses whom? The difference here is that Pitch Black just happens to be set in space, rather than being about space.
Aside (minor spoiler): The device that demonstrates the eclipse is NOT a true model of the solar system. It works like those stylised subway/train route maps with the straight lines and stations spaced evenly apart. Instead of being drawn to show true distances and geography, it simply provides spatial relationships for convenience. Likewise, the device just tracks the apparent motion of the suns and planets against each other in the sky, relative to the desert planet (which is why it's in the centre). It looks wrong, but you would actually build it that way, especially in a system with such complex celestial mechanics.