2010 - The Movie

Cafe Society
1

As it is in fact Two Thousand And Ten I thought it would be a good time to discuss this movie.

Personally its one of my favourites and believe it is vastly underrated. I saw it before I saw 2001 and I had no real trouble following the story, the special effects are still impressive and it achieves something too few science-fiction films manage, awe at the spectacle and ideas presented along with emotional engagement with the human characters in the story.

I’ll own up and admit it that the ending with Hal’s noble sacrifice makes me a little teary-eyed sniff

After subsequently seeing 2001 I thought the director made a good decision in not trying to emulate the previous film and made 2010 much more of an ‘action’ movie but not without the aforementioned interesting ideas.

Any other opinions?

2

In my opinion 2001 is the better “cinematic experience”, but 2010 is a better movie but not the classic 2001 is (if that makes any sense)
Brian
“All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.”

3

I still don’t trust the Soviets…

4

Sorry, but I thought 2010 was an insult to 2001 and should have never been produced.

5

Here’s a link to a very positive Roger Ebert review.

I was thrilled to see this movie as a ten year old but unfortunately haven’t seen it much since. My memory of the effects are that they were amazing, especially scenes as they initially transfer between the Leonov and Discovery above Io.

Rob Scheider, John Lithgow, and Bob Balaban…a great set of actors and the Russians, as best as I can tell from the cast list on imdb, were actual real Russians. :slight_smile:

And damn…a house with a dolphin swim up pool, is that not the greatest thing ever?

ETA: The Ebert review addresses fairly the problem of 2010 standing up to 2001 as a film, I think…

6

“Easy as cake.”

7

That makes perfect sense to me. It was certainly more of a fun, exciting, straightforward piece of entertainment by which to munch popcorn than its predecessor.

Clarke’s book is excellent; it was the first book which I ever stayed up all night to finish.

Helen Mirren and Roy Scheider are both very good. Bob Balaban and John Lithgow do a decent job, too, as does the Russian cast. Good to see Keir Dullea again, too: “Something wonderful!”

One of my favorite scenes is when Dr. Chandra (an Indian in the book) reawakens and reeducates HAL. It’s actually very touching.

I also always loved the rueful line from the NCA director’s update for Floyd about the President going before Congress during the Central American crisis: “He invoked Lincoln. Whenever a President is gonna get us into trouble, he always invokes Lincoln.” :wink: Fortunately, it seems very unlikely that Obama and Medvedev will go to war over Honduras this year.

8

Well, I never bought Roy Schedier as a scientist, and his conception of the charater of Heywood Floyd is so far removed from the Kubrick film that any other effort (of which there are many) to create continuity between the two films is doomed for me.

Also, I find the ending kinda dumb in its feel-good hokey-hippie literalism. The beauty of 2001 is that it ends with a sense of hope, but also one of mystery. Transformation, renewal, and a progression of man into something more powerful and wonderous is clearly intended, but the details matter less than the emotional catharsis of the Starchild.

But in 2010, we get an alien telegram to all hold hands and be good little citizens of the universe. And would a second sun inspire me to altrusim, or murder because I’d never be able to get any sleep? It’s also so dependant on the cold war politics of the time, which now date quite badly. Would Al Quaida be equally inspired to drop their grudges, or just say it’s all one big American plot to control the sky?

The fact that I’m thinking of all these things instead of being enraptured by the beauty of the moment means that, for me, the ending is a dud. HAL’s talk with Bob Balaban (and later Keir Dullea) is a nice moment, though.

Amazingly, 2010 was nominated for more Oscars than 2001, including…Best Costumes? :confused:

9

Has anybody else noticed that the Leonov looks a lot like the Omega class Destroyer from Babylon 5?

10

Somebody better tell the Queen! :slight_smile:

I too saw this recently, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, removed from the (who could possibly argue otherwise) far superior 2001. On its own merits, it was quite good.

Did anyone who saw it recently notice the exchange about hot dogs? (Paraphrasing)

“The Astrodome has good hot dogs.”
“Astrodome? You can’t grow hot dogs inside. Yankee Stadium - now there’s a good hot dog!”

Maybe they were reminiscing about the old days…

11

“Mirren was born Helen Vasilievna Mironov”

12

Dammit.

13

I own both 2001 and 2010, and I agree that while the former is a simply awe-inspiring masterful film, the latter is a very good movie.

14

2010 was a very good movie, but 2001 was a great movie. 2001 was the collaboration of two geniuses, while 2010 was Hyams more or less filming what Clarke write. (See The Odyssey Files for some of the email they exchanged.

Floyd in 2010 is much more like Clarke’s Floyd than Floyd in 2001; the guy who slept through a trip to orbit and who followed up news of the first evidence of extraterrestrial life with a ham sandwich. In Agel’s book there is a picture of the Clavius briefing room with a picture of Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove pasted in. Security oaths. Brilliant comment!

Clarke is my favorite sf writer, and is the person who made me a computer scientist, but Kubrick brought out the almost mystical spark in Clarke (see Childhood’s End) in a way that Clarke is unable to do by himself. Hyams just isn’t that good.

15

2010 just showed me that Clarke just didn’t get it. Kubrick made one of the all time great cinematic experiences and brilliantly understood that the next step in evolution would be ineffable to us. That’s what 2001 ultimately is about, the growth of Man and his transcendence. Clarke helped him understand the idiom of Science Fiction, but the genius is all Kubrick. Clarke, however, took the whole thing literally and missed the whole point. Self-replicating machines? Jupiter transformed into a sun? Man the animal becoming Man by learning to use tools (Moonwatcher and the bone bludgeon), then transcending that (by defeating HAL-the ultimate tool: a thinking machine) to go on to the next level (which is beyond our understanding becomes, “Oh, HAL was crazy. Let’s fix him.” It might have made an interesting SF film on its own, but its association with 2001 makes it one of the most Tone Deaf movies EVER made.

16

“Do you want me to stay with you”?

snuffle.

17

Obama and his Homeland Security director are far more likely to get us nuked by some “religion of peace man-made disaster” (Muslim terrorist) bringing in a nuclear bomb with a government approved visa. And wasn’t it just a year ago we were hearing all kinds of Obama comparisons with Lincoln???
“2001” is visually stunning but I’ve always found it as exciting as watching paint dry.

18

There was some discussion about this film on the thread I started about there being no 2010 calendar. I didn’t set down my opinions there, though I have on this Board in the past.

I really do like the film. It’s not up to the standards of 2001, but I think that if it didn’t have that Monument of Cinema standing behind it, like a Big Black Monolith, this film would be seen as one of the better Science Fiction Films.

1.) It’s an interesting film, building on the first and going in interesting directions. I really don’t think it adds much to the situation of the first book/film (or even to Clarke’s original short story, The Sentinel), but, if you had to do a sequel, this wasn’t a bad one. Given the aliens’ very advanced science (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, to quote Clarke himself), I don’t think it’s right to accuse him of Bad Science in this.

2.) The film is one of the very few (like 2001 itself) to depict the dynamics of spacecraft properly – for the most part. Things move properly in space, and that’s used to good dramatic effect. They even show zero-G correctly in the ships, and even use it to punctuate a dramatic scene when Floyd talks about joining the ships together. The way they show the Discovery originally turning end over end (and coated with Sulfur) was a very cute touch, and just what I’d expect.

3.) They should have cut a lot out of the sound – the film would be immensely helped if they’d simply removed Roy Scheider’s voice-overs. It seems a cheap trick, and the small amounts of useful info you get from them doesn’t make up for the cheesiness of the device. Let the audience work for the insight! Also, space should be either silent (as in the original film), or the sound ought to be that of the astronaut’s breathing (as in both films). It doesn’t help for us to hear the atmospheric braking, or the Discovery’s engines turning on. (Besides, the Discovery was supposed to be an Orion-style nuke bomb-powered ship, at least originally)

4.) This film didn’t have the detachment from the human characters that 2001 had, but it didn’t need that. This was more of a character-driven story, and this is one thing the film did very well – the dialogue and interaction and touches of humor were very well executed.

5.) I do wish they’d stuck with Kubrick’s use of classical music, rather than using an original score. it would have fit the mood better, and it has precedence.

19

I believe that is by design, I remember reading that JMS was tipping his hat to Clarke/2001.

20

I think my problem with this movie is that I’d first read the book 2010 and liked it. The movie felt dumbed down. Consider for instance the difference in the final message from whatever alien intelligence transformed Jupiter. In the book: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

In the movie? ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE. Um, what? Why those last seven words?

Chandra’s line about “HAL was told to lie… by people who find it easy to lie” was just plain clumsy.

The relationships between the crew members were also quite different in the movie than in the book. The Soviet crew are all pretty much model citizens of the USSR, and only Max and the captain get any personality at all. (And who decided to kill off Max?!?)

In short, a decent science fiction story got turned into a Cold War melodrama in space. Meh. It has its moments, but I’m not surprised it isn’t remembered as well as 2001.

And just because I have to get it off my chest, “Tanya Kirbuk”, clever though it may be, doesn’t work as a Russian name. It should have been Kirbuka, since she’s clearly a woman. In the book her surname was Orlova, and she was married to another crew member, whose surname was properly given as Orlov.

Also, if anyone tries to film 2061, for god’s sake stop them by any means necessary.