Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is one of my favorite movies of all time. This film, more than any other sci-fi movie, truly immerses the viewer into the feel of space exploration and the range of emotions that comes with it, from the exhilarating sense of discovery and wonderment to the cold, lost, impersonal ennui of the deep black void. The almost complete lack of dialogue allows the viewer to meditate on the spectacular visuals and focus on their possible hidden meanings. It polarized audiences at its release and it continues to polarize viewers today, but 2001 is arguably the finest work in Kubrick’s illustrious career and one of the greatest and most influential sci-fi films ever made.
There’s no doubt that Kubrick was very good at making films, but unfortunately, he was also just as good at pissing off authors. Anthony Burgess resented Kubrick after the release of A Clockwork Orange due to the director’s supposed ego and the mishandling of the negative reactions to the film. Stephen King initial disapproved of Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel, The Shining, and later supervised a television adaptation that was more similar to his own book. I’m guessing that the same type of falling out occurred between Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, who collaborated with Kubrick during 2001 and wrote a novel of the story during the development of the film. It is reported that Clarke left the theatre in tears during the intermission of the film at the world premiere.
This could be a very good explanation for the production of this review’s film, 2010: The Year We Make Contact. This 1984 sequel to 2001 wasn’t directed by Kubrick, but by Peter Hyams, a mediocre director whose only somewhat successful film before 2010 was Outland. 2010 was an adaptation of Clarke’s second novel in his Space Odyssey series. As such, the themes and the direction of the film more closely resembles Clarke’s work than Kubrick’s film, by placing a greater emphasis on dialogue. However, Hyams does retain some elements of the film 2001 by using some parts of the original score, recasting Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain in their iconic roles, and fantastically recreating the set and models that were destroyed after 2001’s production.
2010 takes place, conveniently enough, 9 years after the events of 2001. It follows Heywood Floyd as he and an American crew reluctantly team up with Soviet cosmonauts to explore the deserted Discovery, the spaceship in 2001, which has been orbiting around the planet Jupiter all that time. Their objective is to figure out what exactly happened during the first mission to Jupiter that caused the death of 4 astronauts and the disappearance of Dr. David Bowman. Along the way, the Americans and the Soviets share a tension and distrust of each other that mirrors the international conflict occurring on Earth.
The new cast for 2010 isn’t particularly memorable, but they do a good enough job. Heywood Floyd returns to the story, this time played by Roy Scheider. Scheider does a great job in this role, but I still ended up making Jaws jokes during this film (“We’re gonna need a bigger pod.”). It was also kind of fun to see a young John Lithgow and a young Helen Mirren in this movie. By the way, a fun little fact, Mary Jo Deschanel, mother of Zooey and Emily Deschanel, plays Heywood’s wife in this film.
My biggest complaint with this movie is that there was too much explanation of what happened in the first movie, and it took away from the time this film could’ve used to establish its own style. The main difference between 2001 and 2010 is that 2001 showed the viewer what was going on, while 2010 told the viewer. Lengthy explanations are almost required in novels, since every element of the story has to be communicated through written word. But film is a visual medium, and that additional dimension can be used effectively to reduce the verbal load of the dialogue and make the message of the film more impactful on a visceral level. 2001 masterfully visualized the awe-inspiring effects of space exploration and scientific achievement so well that dialogue was hardly needed. 2010 deviates from this style by declaring every conflict and situation through the dialogue of the characters, with barely any attention given to the intergalactic surroundings. All sense of wonder for space is gone in 2010.
Even if I could separate 2010 from its predecessor, it still wouldn’t hold up. There are many moments in this movie in which suspense is kind of building up, but immediately farts out to nothing. In one scene, when crew members first board the Discovery and test the oxygen levels, there is a momentary panic that the air they are breathing is poisonous, due to a strong odor. One of the astronauts then immediately concludes that the odor is actually coming from spoiled food. There are so many of these false moments of suspense, and they are all pointless.
Also, the Cold War theme in this film, which was not present in the novel, seems very tacked on and not well-developed. Near the end of the movie, the crew on the spaceship finds out that a war has broken out on Earth between the United States and the Soviet Union. Therefore, the American astronauts are forced to reside in the American-owned Discovery, while the Russians are prohibited from boarding the vessel. At first, you would think that this would lead to an interesting moral dilemma, in which the characters have to choose between their national allegiance and their humanity towards those outside of their own kind. This plot point only lasts for about ten minutes as they all agree to break the boundary, thus eliminating any sort of ethical conflicts that the situation could have spawned. And on that note, the resolution of the war on Earth is one of the most unrealistic, bullshit endings to a war that I have ever seen in fiction, and that’s as far as I would like to talk about it.
2010 is not a bad movie; it has quite a bit of interesting scenes within it. However, I find this sequel to 2001 to be completely unnecessary. After all is said and done, it is a generic, somewhat boring space flick that spoils some of the mystery that 2001 effectively embodied. If you would like some explanation and closure to the 2001 story, I suppose you could watch this film. But even so, I think I’d still recommend the Arthur C. Clarke books over it. They explain more the details of the original cinematic masterpiece, yet still manage to become a separate, incomparable entity to 2001’s narrative.
Rating: 2 Stars
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Running time: 116 minutes
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