1984: 2010

What’s it about?

Years after the disappearance of a space mission sent to investigate monolith transmissions to Jupiter, disgraced astrocrat Roy Scheider is approached by Soviets to help with a joint mission to figure out what happened. [If you don’t know what that means, go read the entry on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968). -- ed.] The joint mission launches amid growing political tensions between east and west back home, but the crew ultimately arrive at their destination in Jupiter -- though only after encountering an unexplained phenomenon on Europa’s surface that was either a static discharge or evidence of an intelligent being.

The team (including engineer John Lithgow, computer scientist Bob Balaban, and Soviet commander Helen Mirren) investigates the derelict ship and reactivates the computer HAL-9000. In studying HAL’s orders, they identify (and attempt to correct) the problem that caused the computer to become homicidal on its last mission. Things get strange, however, when they turn their attention to the monolith orbiting Jupiter, and soon they find themselves relying on HAL to save them all from possible destruction.

Is it any good?

I didn’t have a lot of kind words for director Peter Hyams when I wrote about OUTLAND (1981) a little while ago -- though I should reiterate that I thought that movie was perfectly serviceable. 2010, however, is more than serviceable. In fact, I would say that it’s downright good, and I’m willing to confer on it the “lost gem” status that I pointedly withheld from OUTLAND. So long as it actually qualifies for the “lost” part, that is, which is not an easy thing to figure out.

I’ve always been aware of the existence of 2010 (or, as it’s sometimes called, 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT). Or at least I’ve been aware of it for almost as long as I’ve been aware of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968). They occupied consecutive spots on the few shelves devoted to science fiction movies in the video store of my youth. (I trust we are still some years away form having to explain what a video store is.) But although I eventually succumbed to the sense of cinematic obligation and rented 2001, I never bothered to watch 2010. Looking back, it’s amazing to me how many science fiction movies I left unwatched on that video store shelf.

Of course, in those days, my video rentals were often selected based on how likely they were to contain female nudity while (just as importantly) still providing some veneer of respectability. A story set in outer space certainly provided the necessary respectability, but it didn’t seem to offer a lot of opportunities for a glimpse under the spacesuits. And so, 2010 never made the cut.

But back to the movie at hand. 2010 makes absolutely no attempt to copy the structure or pacing or overall feeling of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. This is an excellent decision, in my opinion. For one thing, 2001 had already been copied and mimicked to death in the intervening sixteen years -- often with not much success. With a sequel, any comparisons would only be scrutinized all the more closely, and Peter Hyams is no Stanley Kubrick. I am not a big fan of Kubrick, to be honest, but at least Kubrick comes by his schtick honestly.

For another thing, 1984 was not the same year as 1968. When 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was released, its only real competition for sci-fi spectacle came from FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966), BARBARELLA (1968), and PLANET OF THE APES (1968). By the time 2010 was released, science fiction spectaculars had proliferated exponentially. This was a post-SOYLENT GREEN (1973), post-LOGAN’S RUN (1976), post-STAR WARS (1977), post-SUPERMAN (1978), post-ALIEN (1979), post-THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981), post-BLADE RUNNER (1982) world. (Not to mention the many also-rans, imitators, and sequels.) Space stations cartwheeling to the strains of “The Blue Danube” would seem quaint instead of revolutionary. Just ask Robert Wise, the director of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979) -- a movie which did in fact attempt to duplicate Kubrick’s methodical pacing, detailed spaceship miniatures, and tripped-out light-show ending. Much as I enjoyed that movie, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen it all before.

So 2010 sidesteps this problem by not trying to copy Kubrick and also by not trying to be revolutionary in its own way. Where Kubrick’s movie starts with a wordless, nearly incomprehensible twenty minutes of ape-men cavorting about in the desert, Hyams instead begins with a very detailed summary of the main points of the last movie in the form of an official report. And where Kubrick cut from one seemingly unconnected vignette to another with no explanation whatsoever, Hyams provides unnecessary narration from Roy Scheider to ease us from one perfectly traditional scene to another. And while Kubrick pointedly leaves us to puzzle about the meaning and purpose of the monoliths in his movie, Hyams’s exists almost entirely to explain them.

Now I have no idea how much of either movie comes from Arthur C. Clarke’s novels. It may be that the books are as different as the movies are in style and structure and clarity. But as far as the movies go, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY strikes me a bit like Frank Stockton’s short story “The Lady or the Tiger?” -- not only are the ambiguity and lack of resolution (in this case around the monolith) important to the story, they are in fact the entire point of the story. I suppose this may not be true of everybody, but practically all of my thoughts about 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY are framed in the context of trying to figure out what the monoliths mean. So in one way, 2010 is a bit like the sequel to the story that guilelessly blurts out, “Oh it was the tiger all along.”

But I’m going to suggest thinking about 2010 in a different way -- that is, not as a sequel to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY but instead as a possible interpretation of it. For me, the certainty of the second movie doesn’t detract from the ambiguity of the first -- the explanation it puts forth is just one possible theory as far as I’m concerned. And, in fact, by giving a specific function to the monoliths, 2010 makes it impossible to just think of them as symbols anymore. Instead, they become tools of some sort, and this reality raises a whole host of seemingly insurmountable logistical questions. (First on the list: Who is using these tools?)

Don’t forget -- I really liked 2010. Once I decided that it wasn’t necessarily a canonical continuation of Kubrick’s movie, I started to appreciate the way it revived certain elements from the first movie. There’s the derelict spaceship with the homicidal computer on board, the giant and mysterious monolith floating in space, and Keir Dullea’s missing astronaut. All of these things get deployed in fairly interesting ways. Some moments of real tension come out of it too -- for instance, one scene when the investigators scan the craters of Europa for the source of a strange reading as they fly by is especially suspenseful. There’s also a moment-of-truth showdown between HAL-9000 and the man who designed him towards the end of the movie that’s very exciting, but in a different way from the man vs. computer sparring of the first movie. In 2010, HAL-9000 is just as much a victim of violence as it is a perpetrator. And though I didn’t like everything about the ultimate “explanation” for HAL’s freak-out in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, I did like how it brought HAL back into the story in a different capacity than homicidal computer protecting the mission.

One of the elements of 2010 that possibly helped exile it to the dusty back drawers of sci-fi movie history is the central position that the Cold War takes in the story. The movie opens with a Soviet scientist pitching the idea of a joint mission to a very skeptical Roy Scheider. The idea only wins out because there is really no other alternative. The Soviets will get there first because their salvage ship is closer to launch -- but they don’t have the data or know-how to make any sense of what may have happened unless they take some American experts along. And so most of the movie is actually set on a Soviet spaceship under Soviet command -- but with three American passengers in the forms of Scheider, John Lithgow, and Bob Balaban.

The Cold War also heats up into a hot war while the mission is in progress, which results in absurd orders from Washington and Moscow that the astronauts and cosmonauts must segregate themselves on the salvaged American ship and the Soviet rescue ship, respectively. There’s never really any sense that the scientists are going to start a space war. But they do obey the orders to split up, and so all of their research into the monolith is brought to a halt at a critical moment. It’s kind of a neat way to illustrate some of the less obvious casualties of east-west hostilities, but it’s also an anachronism. It’s 2010 today, and somehow even though I’m not bothered by the fact that we are not actually making manned expeditions to Jupiter these days, it still strikes me as quaint that anybody thought that the Soviet Union would still be around.

On the other hand, it’s refreshing and prescient how nobody regards Helen Mirren’s female mission commander as anything unusual or even worthy of comment. Sally Ride had only just become the first American woman in space in 1983 -- though of course the Soviets had already sent up two women cosmonauts in 1963 and 1982. But female commanders are not very common in sci-fi movies. The only earlier example I can think of appears in the East German IN THE DUST OF THE STARS (1976). So in film -- just as in real life -- the Soviet bloc led the way in equal opportunities for women. Well, unless you count BARBARELLA (1968), I suppose.