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2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2018 5:56 pm    Post subject: 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) Reply with quote



Fans of the original 2001 tend NOT to be fans of this sequel. But then I'm not sure there are many folks who are NOT fans of the original who ARE fans of 2010! Shocked

2010 is kind of the bastard child who isn't acknowledge by a prim and proper family.

I suspect the problem with those who dislike 2010 is the way it tried to tell a solid "hard science fiction" story, even though it was a misguided attempt to make a sequel to a beloved movie that dealt with concepts which were almost religious in nature.

Please note that I said "almost religious". Wink

In other words, 2001: A Space Odyssey told a story that presented lofty and nebulous concepts about the origins of man and the possibility that we could "evolve" into almost god-like beings. And it made us nervous about the possibility that A.I. computers might decide we were a nuisance and just get rid of us!

2001: A Space Odyssey gleefully left us pondering unanswered questions about the nature of the aliens who planted the monoliths and then helped us leap-frog ahead of evolution and become super-babies who traveled the galaxy inside comfortable bubbles.






Okay, so what was 2010 about?

It proudly cleared up all that confusion by explaining that poor HAL's murderous actions were our fault, and the mysterious aliens were nice guys who just wanted peace on Earth and good will toward men. Very Happy






Unlike 2001 — which ended with a long list of intriguing questions — 2010 ended with a rosy message about how all mankind would suddenly stop waging war on each other just because friendly aliens turned Jupiter into the ultimate "night light", thereby proving that we were not alone in the universe!





Gee, somebody should tell the government that if they released all their secret data which proves UFOs are actually alien space ships, those crazy bastards in the Middle East would stop slaughtering each other and start singing Kumbayah in Arabic! Cool

I gotta admit, listening to that song actually does make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Maybe we should be beaming it out into space to let the aliens know we're not ALL crazy bastards. Very Happy


_____________________________ Kumbayah


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~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 12:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I found 2010 to be a satisfactory sci-fi yarn on its own merits. I wouldn't expect any sequel to live up to 2001 without Kubrick at the helm. 2010 was simply tying up loose ends that 2001 left for us to speculate over, so any sequel wouldn't be of the same caliber unless it left additional tantalizing mysteries.
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PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

orzel-w wrote:
2010 was simply tying up loose ends that 2001 left for us to speculate over, so any sequel wouldn't be of the same caliber unless it left additional tantalizing mysteries.

I'm puzzled by your comment. I think the "loose ends" in 2001 are supposed to be unanswered and unanswerable, Kubrick's way of challenging the viewer to explore the questions poised by the movie.

Conversely, 2010 elected to provide practical answers to philosophical questions. I enjoyed it too, but mostly because I prefer hard science fiction to the kind Kubrick did.

I think it would have been a mistake to make a sequel that "left additional tantalizing mysteries". The original presented plenty of those, and just giving us more of the same would have been frustrating — as if the filmmakers couldn't think of a solid story, so they just imitated the first one.

We do agree, however, on this statement.

"I found 2010 to be a satisfactory sci-fi yarn on its own merits."

If 2001 had never been made, and 2010 came out as an original movie instead of a sequel (with a few changes to explain events which preceded the story), I think it would have done pretty well. But as a sequel it was a bit like making Gone With the Wind II.

Hell, we don't WANT to know whether or not Scarlet got Rhett back! Wondering about is the fun part. Cool

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~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
I'm puzzled by your comment. I think the "loose ends" in 2001 are supposed to be unanswered and unanswerable, Kubrick's way of challenging the viewer to explore the questions poised by the movie.

That's why I said a sequel wouldn't be the same caliber unless it left more questions unanswered. It's those unanswered philosophical questions that placed 2001 in a different category than 2010.

It's what prompted 2001 fans to exclaim, "Ooh... deep!"

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PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey guys, you do know that this was made from Clark's sequel novel, right? It was a pretty faithful adaption, too.

My problem with the movie is that the designs didn't even look to be up to the technology levels of 2001, much less nine years of advancement.

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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2018 12:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
Hey guys, you do know that this was made from Clark's sequel novel, right? It was a pretty faithful adaption too.

Yes, but Kubrick wasn't so faithful to the original novel. I had to read the book after seeing 2001 to understand what was going on, because Clarke went into detailed explanations.

Krel wrote:
My problem with the movie, is that the designs didn't even look up to be up to the technology levels of 2001, much less nine years of advancement.

Thus, the Ruskie cover story. Very Happy
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PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2018 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

orzel-w wrote:
Krel wrote:
Hey guys, you do know that this was made from Clark's sequel novel, right? It was a pretty faithful adaption too.

Yes, but Kubrick wasn't so faithful to the original novel. I had to read the book after seeing 2001 to understand what was going on, because Clarke went into detailed explanations.

The source for the movie was Clarke's short story, "The Sentinel". The novel 2001 ASO, was written while the movie was in production. In the movie, they changed the destination from Saturn to Jupiter after they couldn't figure a way to do Saturn's rings convincingly. Laughing Clarke decided to keep the destination as Saturn. This caused a bit of a continuity problem when he wrote 2010.

orzel-w wrote:
Krel wrote:
My problem with the movie, is that the designs didn't even look up to be up to the technology levels of 2001, much less nine years of advancement.

Thus, the Ruskie cover story. Very Happy

That may explain the Russian technology, but it doesn't explain the 40 year retrogression in the American's space suit technology.

David.
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2018 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

orzel-w wrote:
Krel wrote:
Hey guys, you do know that this was made from Clark's sequel novel, right? It was a pretty faithful adaption too.

Yes, but Kubrick wasn't so faithful to the original novel. I had to read the book after seeing 2001 to understand what was going on, because Clarke went into detailed explanations.

With 2001, it wasn't a case of the movie being based on the book or vice versa. Although they began with the same story outline (inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel"), Kubrick's film and Clarke's novel were separate projects.

Krel wrote:
That may explain the Russian technology, but it doesn't explain the 40 year retrogression in the American's space suit technology.

Weren't the space suits in 2010 supposed to be Russian-made as well? The Leonov spacecraft and all the space hardware was of Russian manufacture.

Of course, the Cold War subplot (which wasn't in Clarke's novel) about increasing tensions between the United States and the U.S.S.R. made the movie hopelessly dated barely seven years after it was released.


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PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2018 12:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Krel wrote:
That may explain the Russian technology, but it doesn't explain the 40 year retrogression in the American's space suit technology.

Weren't the space suits in 2010 supposed to be Russian-made as well? The Leonov spacecraft and all the space hardware was of Russian manufacture.

As I recall the suits the Americans wore had American emblems and patches, something I don't think the Russians would put on their suits. Also, weren't the Russians suits different then the American ones? It has been over a decade since I have seen the movie, so I don't really remember.

I'll have to go take a look over at the "Say Hello Spaceman" site.

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PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2018 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Hello, Spaceman member Steve posted this. If he's correct, the spacesuits where not all Russian.


Steve wrote:
Here we have the Russian suit with the lights on the sides of the helmets, and then we have the American suit with the single light at the top.


____________ ___

Although I don't believe it's been stated specifically, I gather that the criticism of the 2010 suits compared to the 2001 suits is that they are much bulkier.

I agree that more advanced spacesuits would be much trimmer than those being used today, and the suits in 2010 look pretty much like the current versions used by NASA. What we should have seen in 2010 would be the same suits shown in 2001, or noticeably improved versions which were even trimmer.

Something like those which were designed for Prometheus perhaps?



After all, the technology shown in 2001 was meant to be a prediction of a future far more advanced than what we actually had in the year 2001 — or even NOW in 2018! So, making any of the technology in 2010 resemble our current technology is seriously missing the point.

As for the idea that the U.S. and Russia would be butting heads in the "future" which 2010 presented, the optimistic climax of the movie was all about how mankind is brought together by the highly visible "gift" the aliens gave us. The serious global conflict which illustrated how badly mankind needed to work together was included in the story to support that plot point.

Hello, Spaceman member John Nowak posted this.

"After a couple of decades of co-operative space missions between Russia and the United States, it's very hard to take some scenes seriously."

Yes, that was true when the movie came out, but there's a new global threat now — a crazy dictator who has cowed his own people completely, mastered the most destructive weapon in history, threatened to reduce America to ashes, and is now making demands to our own rather egotistical president.

In view of current world events, the conflict in 2010 doesn't seem like such a dated notion. However, we should remember that 2001 and 2010 are about a future in which mankind is supposed to be a bit wiser than we are here in the real world.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2018 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
With 2001, it wasn't a case of the movie being based on the book or vice versa. Although they began with the same story outline (inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel"), Kubrick's film and Clarke's novel were separate projects.

Be that as it may, I came away with a better understanding of the movie after reading the book. (Either that or I was completely led astray by the book.)
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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Yes, it's 2010. May as well take a look at the film of that name, also known as 2010 Odyssey Two and 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the supposed sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Only, it rarely comes across as a sequel, seemingly far removed from the Kubrick film of 16 years earlier. The main character is scientist Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider), who had been played by William Sylvester in 2001 and who was the 3rd biggest character in the earlier film.



Other prominent characters are engineer Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), Floyd's buddy, and Chandra (Bob Balaban), the genius who created the HAL-9000 computer.

These are the Americans; most of the other cast play Russian cosmonauts, headed by pilot Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren, the only British actor in the group). A little unusual, the half-dozen other Russian characters are portrayed by Russian actors (all having emigrated to the U.S. from the then-Soviet Union). And this is what really dates the film now — in this version of 2010, the Soviet Union is in full swing, a miscalculation by writer/director Peter Hyams, I feel.



The other clear indication of the difference in style from Kubrick's film is how Floyd is portrayed. Hyams was lauded for usually presenting characters that had some depth to them (an article in Twilight Zone Magazine, Feb.1985 issue, even compares Hyams favorably to directors Spielberg, Lucas, Dante & Carpenter, "who can't tell a human from a prop stick."). There may be something to this, as Scheider does present a very human Floyd here, very different from the unemotional Floyd of 2001 fame (though he was, since Jaws, the by-now-standard bemused Scheider character).



At the same time, Floyd and the other characters do not suggest some future time frame here, unlike the almost alien, far future atmosphere created by Kubrick for 2001. We really felt like we were in an alien time frame in 2001; in 2010, the characters merely suggest 1984 (the real year, not the novel/film) or 1985.

Likewise, Hyams chose to show many scenes on Earth in this 'future' before the trip to Jupiter. Kubrick avoided this in 2001, sticking to the moon and outer space; again, he was able to suggest a futuristic regime in this manner. 2001 engendered awe; 2010 just drags us back to ho-hum reality.



There are some impressive moments for the time, during this new mission to the now-empty Discovery One spacecraft. Most of the scenes in outer space and the spacewalks are extremely well done. And, the moment when Bowman (Keir Dullea) arrives, appearing behind Floyd, is very well done (I still remember how the audience reacted in the theater when I first saw this "turn around" — Oooo, oh-oh).

But, it's kind of slow overall and the revelations in the last act concerning why HAL went crazy in 2001 have a very mundane tone to them. This undermines the entire HAL character (voiced again by Douglas Rain).



Here is the problem: in recreating the whole Cold War situation here, including an escalation of USA-Soviet tensions in the last act, Hyams has grounded this film in eighties sensibilities — permanently. I feel like I'm watching scenes from 1986 or 1987 when I watch this film.

Then he presents a morality theme, a cosmic event that teaches us short-sighted humans some lessons about peace and civilized behavior. It may have been done better in the Star Trek episode, Errand of Mercy, in 1967. Not to mention, the later Watchmen graphic novel & film. It wasn't very original, I have to say, and a bit simplistic - almost grade-school style moralizing.



The final moment does touch on a cosmic aspect, leaping perhaps millions of years ahead into the future; but, that's only the last 20 seconds of the film.

A final note of trivia: Chandra uses another computer on Earth, this one with a female voice; this is voiced by famous actress Candice Bergen.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 5:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

IMDB has a butt-load of interesting trivia items for this production. Buckle up, this will take a while to get through. Very Happy
________________________________

~ The one part of the Discovery which the audience never sees in this movie is the rotating centrifuge where Dave Bowman and Frank Poole lived during 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). This is since the producers of this movie found the original set too expensive to reproduce (the original from the first movie had been destroyed), thus Dr. Heywood Floyd and his companions never seem to need to enter this area of the ship.

Note from me: I've read that a revolving ring the size of the one on Discovery would have to spin significantly faster to produce the artificial gravity shown in 2001. But we got the point, so I don't consider it a flaw.

~ The voice of the S.A.L. 9000 computer was performed by Candice Bergen, though the role was credited to "Olga Mallsnerd", a pseudonym combining the surname of Bergen's spouse (director Louis Malle) and that of Mortimer Snerd, one of her father's (ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's) famous puppet characters.

Note from me: They should have named the computer the M.B. 9000 — for Murphy Brown. Very Happy

~ The movie's first score, which was dropped, was composed by Tony Banks of Genesis. David Shire did the final score for this movie. Tony Banks used parts of his score for this movie Lorca and the Outlaws (1984), which were released on his "Soundtracks" album.

Note from me: Ironically, the original score for 2001: A Space Odyssey was composed by Alex North (the composer who composed the truly awful music for Dragonslayer (1981).

Kubrick had been using Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss as a "temporary score" during filming, but when North's version of that classical piece didn't satisfy Kubrick, he decided to just stick with the Strauss piece.

Here's what North's version sounds like. Frankly, it's a formless mess that sounds like pots and pans being dropped on the kitchen floor while a high school band is tuning up in the living room!
Shocked

_______ 2001 - A Space Odyssey - Alex North title


__________



~ Movie critic Roger Ebert wrote in his review of this film, "I felt that the poetry of 2001 was precisely in its mystery, and that to explain everything was to ruin everything — like the little boy who cut open his drum to see what made it bang." In spite of strongly disliking the idea of a sequel to Kubrick's masterpiece, Ebert considered 2010 a good movie in itself and gave it three stars out of four.

Note from me: That pretty much agrees with the comments on this thread by various members above.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Note from me: I've read that a revolving ring the size of the one on Discovery would have to spin significantly faster to produce the artificial gravity shown in 2001. But we got the point, so I don't consider it a flaw.

The Discovery's centrifuge was not suppose to be producing a full gee, but a fraction of one. I read an article once on the subject, but don't remember much, it was several decades ago. Kubrick decided that he didn't want the actors to do slow motion in the low gee scenes, which is why the actors moved normally in the Moon scenes, and on the Discovery.

One thing that was noticed when 2010 came out, is that the supposed velcro patches in the Discovery sets were just black panels, some of which were not fully glued down. Laughing

David.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 10:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
The Discovery's centrifuge was not suppose to be producing a full gee, but a fraction of one.

That's interesting, David. Thanks! Very Happy

It's true that even a small amount of gravity would be a good thing to have (in at least one part of a spaceship) for several reasons — like to keep food and drinks in place, prevent objects from floating away, and to slow the deterioration of bones and muscle tissue. '

But there is, of course, no way Dave Bowman could jog along in a normal manner the way we see him doing in the movie.

The low "gravity" wouldn't pull him back down to the deck as quickly as normal gravity would, so he would indeed move in slow motion while bouncing up into the air with each stride — which (as you said, David) Mr. Kubrick simply didn't want.

I suppose the Discovery's centrifuge could have been designed to spin faster whenever it was necessary to increase the artificial and allow the crew to spend a few hours each day in nearly earth-normal gravity for the health reasons I mentioned.

The rest of the time it would spin at a lower rate — or perhaps stop altogether just to minimize wear-and-tear on the machinery.

After all, the only way to have the centrifuge spin and not cause the rest of the ship to spin in the opposite direction would be to have counterweights within the structure of the spherical section which did spin in the opposite direction, and thus allow the rest of the ship remain stable.

At least I think that's how it would be done. Can anybody confirm that theory? Confused


___________________ 2001: A Space Odyssey


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~ The Space Children (1958)
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