2010 The Year We Make Contact

[KLAXXON]

A multi-national team of astronauts travel in search of the sapce-craft Discovery, to ascertain the reason for its being abandoned. A superb sequel to '2001 - A Space Odyssey'.


A sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey where a joint Soviet and US mission is launched to discover what happened to the Discovery. As the two nations cleave ever closer to war back on Earth, the crew make some startling discoveries of their own.




As foolish exercises go, trying to hitch a lift on Kubrick’s sublime stellar mysteries must count as one of the daftest ever. Still, author and Kubrick cohort Arthur C. Clarke (whose own explicatory tendencies were frustrated by the elusive director) had already penned the follow-up novel, so Hyams, at least, was equipped with a degree of credibility. And, if you manage to evade that looming shadow from the past, and take 2010 on its own sturdy merits, it turns out a half-decent, semi-considered sci-fi adventure.
 



Hyams was well aware what he was stepping into, citing it as an act of respect for Kubrick’s genius, but this a film on a quest to explain whereas the original emanated a vague science of possibility. The mission for the crew of the Leonov — Scheider, Mirren (in typically icy form) and computer geek Balaban — must rewire the recently unplugged HAL to discover what happened to Bowman and Poole. And while tensions rise between the political factions (a thematically consistent note of man’s tendency to war), wouldn’t you know a certain black monolith rears its ugly, well, shape. And, without you knowing it, the film has become pretty exciting. The effects have a canny realism, the actors wear dark frowns and spout suitable jargon in good accents, while their boss, Hyams, bottles up the sci-fi rather than spinning it across the starfields in awe-inspiring dances of technology, granting the film a taut claustrophobia
 



Only at the close do the wheels come flying off. Why did it need to conclude with a morass of mock-Kubrickian vagaries (the aliens behind the monolith are as elusive as ever)? It’s just a stark reminder of what this film is not. 2001 is a lustrous, dreamy work of mystery, 2010 a rusty but entertaining thriller. They’re not really from the same universe.
 


Not a masterpiece, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pleasing to see a sequel strive so hard to reach the same heights. That it fails is through no fault of its own - the original simply raised the bar too high.







To attempt to make a sequel to a Stanley Kubrick film that's widely acknowledged to be a classic might seem like total folly. Yet that's what Peter Hyams did, and by writing, producing and directing a follow-up to "2001" he was really putting his head on the block if he screwed it up. Thankfully for him he didn't.

Based on the Arthur C Clarke novel, Hyams wisely opted for a more narrative-based approach rather than trying to emulate Kubrick's haunting visuals in "2001". Ultimately here was a chance to offer an explanation for the first film, which was always going to prove irresistible to the fans.

The tale picks up nine years on with the Soviets having built a spaceship capable of getting to the old "Discovery" which is now in a lifeless orbit around Jupiter. But while they can get there they have no answers over HAL's failure or what happened to the crew. Reluctantly, they approach Roy Scheider, who was involved with the original mission, for help. Despite the growing military tension between the US and Soviet Union, he agrees to assist if he can go along with two colleagues.

Once on board, both sides are wary of one another's motives but their docking with the old "Discovery" soon overshadows their mutual suspicion. The build-up to this and the initial moments on board are racked with a tension that's superbly handled by Hyams. He maintains the forbidding atmosphere well and his skills as a cinematographer are evident with fine visual effects throughout. To try and end this slick exercise in audience-pleasing sci-fi is not easy and some will ultimately find it too cheesy. But it no doubt fitted better in 1984 and you can hardly argue against the sentiments expressed. Ultimately this film's strongest tool is its element of mystery that makes it compelling viewing.



 Roy Scheider ...  Dr. Heywood Floyd
John Lithgow ...  Dr. Walter Curnow
 Helen Mirren ...  Tanya Kirbuk
 Bob Balaban ...  Dr. R. Chandra
 Keir Dullea ...  Dave Bowman
 Douglas Rain ...  HAL 9000 (voice)
 Madolyn Smith Osborne ...  Caroline Floyd (as Madolyn Smith)
 Dana Elcar ...  Dimitri Moisevitch
 Taliesin Jaffe ...  Christopher Floyd
 James McEachin ...  Victor Milson
 Mary Jo Deschanel ...  Betty Fernandez, Bowman's Wife
 Elya Baskin ...  Maxim Brajlovsky
 Saveli Kramarov ...  Dr. Vladimir Rudenko (as Savely Kramarov)
 Oleg Rudnik ...  Dr. Vasili Orlov
 Natasha Shneider ...  Irina Yakunina



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/


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