2010 (film)


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2010
Directed by Peter Hyams
Produced by Peter Hyams
Written by Arthur C. Clarke (novel)
Peter Hyams (screenplay)
Starring Roy Scheider
John Lithgow
Helen Mirren
Bob Balaban
Keir Dullea
Douglas Rain
Music by David Shire
Cinematography Peter Hyams
Distributed by MGM
Release date(s) December 7, 1984 (USA)
Running time 116 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Preceded by 2001: A Space Odyssey

2010 is a 1984 science fiction film released by MGM and directed by Peter Hyams. Its full title is given on posters and DVD releases as 2010: The Year We Make Contact, although the subtitle does not appear in the film itself. It is based on the novel 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke. The film, like the novel, is a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Contents

Plot

The film is set nine years after the mysterious failure of the Discovery mission to Jupiter. The then-director of the National Council on Astronautics, Dr. Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) was made to be the scapegoat for the original mission, and has since left the NCA to become chancellor of an unspecified university.

Amid increased military and political friction between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, both nations are preparing to send missions back to Jupiter to determine what happened. The Soviet ship will be ready one year ahead of the American ship, but the Soviets don't know enough about the HAL 9000's American-made computer systems. The U.S. government is reluctant to allow American scientists to go on the Soviet-led mission due to the current political issues in Central America, but they find there is little other choice as the recent data shows Discovery is slated to crash into Jupiter in two and a half years because of its previously stable orbit becoming erratic.

Floyd recruits three Americans for their part of the mission: The first two are Dr. Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), an engineer and the original designer of Discovery, and Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban), creator of HAL 9000 computer (voiced by Douglas Rain). The third is Floyd himself; taking responsibility for the loss of the men he sent on the original mission, Floyd feels compelled to go. Their mission is threefold: to find the reason for the Discovery mission's failure, to investigate the Monolith in orbit around the planet, and to find answers for David Bowman's disappearance. They hypothesize that much of this information is locked away on the now-abandoned Discovery craft.

Dr. Floyd is awakened en route by the Russian crew and is told that the U.S. authorized his reanimation from cryosleep. The crew then shows Floyd new information on their approach to one of Jupiter's moons, Europa; the detection of carbon, hydrogen and even chlorophyll, which Floyd can't yet bring himself to believe. The Leonov crew send an unmanned probe to explore the surface of the icy moon; the probe confirms their information. The probe then glimpses what appears to be foliage beneath the ice, but before it can be photographed, the probe is inexplicably destroyed in a burst of light. While the Russians speculate that it was merely electrostatic build-up, Dr. Floyd is convinced that it was something more: a warning from someone—or something—to stay away from Europa.

By aerobraking, or "slingshotting" around Jupiter using drag from Jupiter's atmosphere to slow the spacecraft, they plan to rendezvous with the Discovery. The ship is found abandoned but undamaged in a decaying orbit around Jupiter's moon Io, whose constant volcanic activity has covered the spaceship in sulphur dust. The Leonov reaches the Discovery, and after Curnow reactivates its on-board systems, the two spacecraft rendezvous with the monolith.

Dr. Chandra then restarts the HAL 9000 computer to determine whether it has any information about the incidents of 2001. They later discover that HAL had been deactivated before the monolith was found. The huge black monolith is discovered in the Lagrange point between Jupiter and Io. Remote observations fail to answer their questions, so Commander Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) sends cosmonaut Maxim "Max" Brailovsky (Elya Baskin), in for a closer look via space pod. But as Max approaches the monolith, a huge burst of energy erupts from it and destroys the pod with Max still on board. The energy burst heads towards Earth.

A sequence of scenes follows the explorations of David Bowman, who has been transformed into an incorporeal entity. The avatar of Bowman travels to Earth, making contact with significant individuals from his human past: he brushes his ailing mother's hair, and he appears on his widow's television screen and has a conversation with her.

After re-activating the HAL-9000, Dr. Chandra reveals to Dr. Floyd why HAL malfunctioned: The Discovery mission to Jupiter was already in advanced planning stages when the first monolith was found on the moon. Without Dr. Floyd's knowledge, the National Security Council decided that Bowman and Poole were not to be informed of the true objective behind the Jupiter mission (the three scientists killed were separately trained). Furthermore, because HAL could run the Discovery without human help, the NSC decided to tell HAL the mission's true objective and ordered HAL not to reveal any information to either Bowman or Poole. The order to keep quiet about the actual mission was in direct conflict with HAL's basic design: accurate processing of information without concealment or distortion. The conflict caused HAL to, in essence, become paranoid. Chandra blames Floyd for HAL's malfunction, but Floyd is utterly disgusted with what the NSC did and vehemently denies any knowledge of their secret directive.

Meanwhile, political tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union escalate into what is described as "technically a state of war", after Soviet and Western forces challenge one another directly. Consequently Floyd, Curnow and Chandra are all ordered to leave the Leonov, as it is Soviet territory, and move to the Discovery, which still belongs to the U.S.

On the Discovery, an apparition of Bowman appears to Floyd, warning him that they must leave Jupiter within two days. When Floyd asks what's going to happen, Bowman just answers, "Something wonderful." Floyd has difficulty convincing Commander Kirbuk, but then the huge black monolith suddenly disappears. A black spot soon shows up on Jupiter's surface and starts growing. HAL's telescope observations reveal that the Great Black Spot is in fact a vast population of black monoliths, increasing in number at an exponential rate, shrinking Jupiter's volume and increasing its density slowly with each passing minute.

Neither ship by itself is capable of reaching Earth if an early departure is factored in, so both the Discovery and Leonov crews work together to devise a plan by Floyd to use the Discovery as a booster rocket. But Chandra is worried that HAL might redevelop the same neuroses on discovering that he will be abandoned yet again; using Discovery as a booster will totally deplete Discovery's fuel supply leaving it and HAL permanently stranded and defenseless. Eventually during the countdown Dr. Chandra tells HAL the whole truth about what's going on, and much to everyone's collective relief, HAL understands that he must sacrifice himself for the good of the mission.

The Leonov makes a hasty retreat from Jupiter's orbit just in time to witness the swarm of monoliths fully engulf Jupiter. The monoliths eventually increase Jupiter's density to the point that the planet achieves the high temperatures and pressures necessary for nuclear fusion, becoming a small star, destroying the Discovery.

As the Leonov leaves Jupiter's orbit, HAL is commanded by Bowman to repeatedly broadcast the message:

"ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE"

The film concludes with images of famous landmarks on Earth (the Tower Bridge, the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, Moscow's Kremlin, the Great Pyramids of Giza) with two suns in the sky, and Floyd, in voice-over to a letter to his son Christopher, explains that this miraculous occurrence inspired both the U.S. and Soviet leaders to end their standoff.

On Europa, the satellite gradually transforms from an icy wasteland to a humid jungle crawling with plant life (and likely animal life as well, given the primeval sounds emanating from the trees). As the camera pans across the jungle, it settles upon a lagoon... and a Monolith standing upright, implicitly waiting for intelligent life forms to evolve.

Cast

The film stars Roy Scheider as Heywood Floyd. Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain reprise their roles from the original film as David Bowman and the voice of HAL 9000, respectively. The film also stars John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, and Bob Balaban, along with several Russian actors who play cosmonauts. Credited under the name "Olga Mallsnerd", Candice Bergen provided the voice of the SAL 9000 computer at Dr. Chandra's laboratory in the film.[1] Arthur C. Clarke himself makes a cameo appearance in the film as a man on a park bench outside the White House (out of frame in the pan-and-scan version, but visible in the letterboxed version). Pictures of Clarke (as the U.S. President) and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick (as the Soviet Premier) also appear on a Time magazine cover seen in the film.

Cast

Production notes

  • Clarke's email correspondence with Peter Hyams, director of 2010, was published in 1984 .[2][3]. Entitled The Odyssey File: The Making of 2010, it illustrates Clarke's fascination with the then-pioneering medium of e-mail and his use of it to communicate with Hyams on an almost daily basis during the planning and production of the film. (Clarke was living in Sri Lanka as production was taking place in California.) The book also includes Clarke's list of the top science fiction films ever made. Unfortunately, in order to give the publishers enough lead time to have it available for the release of the movie, the book terminates while the movie is still in preproduction. At the point of the last mail, Clarke had not yet read the script, and Roy Scheider was the only actor who had been cast.
  • Several things have become anachronisms in the years following the film's release. The Soviet Union ceased to exist after 1991. Pan American World Airways folded in 1991. The Houston Astrodome's last pro sports tenant, the Houston Astros, moved to their new home (Enron Field, later renamed Minute Maid Park) after the 1999 season. The closing sequence of the film briefly depicts the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. as seen from a small installation of fountains subsequently replaced by the National World War II Memorial. In Milson's address to the American crew regarding the beginning of the war, he mentions a United States warship called the USS Cunningham. While no ship bearing that name was in service with the U.S. Navy during the film's 1984 release, it has been speculated that given the production's proximity to the end of the Vietnam War, the name anticipated a vessel honoring U.S. Navy Commander Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a highly decorated Vietnam War fighter pilot. If this is correct, that too is an anachronism: in the real 2010, Cunningham will be better known to the public as a disgraced United States Congressman.
  • Early in the production, Hyams discovered that the original 50-foot model of the Discovery built for 2001 had been destroyed by Stanley Kubrick, as had the plans for building another one. The model makers at Richard Edlund's EEG were forced to use frame blow-ups from a 70 mm copy of the original film to recreate the ship.
  • In order to maintain the realism of lighting in outer space, in which light would come from a single light source (in this case, the Sun), Edlund and Hyams decided that blue-screen photography would not be used for filming space scenes. Instead, a process known as front-light/back-light was used. The models were filmed as they would appear in space, then a white background would be placed behind the model, in order to isolate the model's shapes so that proper traveling mattes could be created. This doubled the time it took to film these sequences, due to the second motion control pass needed to generate the matte. It also eliminated the problem of "blue spill," the main disadvantage of blue-screen photoography, in which models would often have a blue outline surrounding them because a crisp matte was not always possible.

Blue screen photography was used in the scene where Floyd demonstrates his plan to use the two ships to achieve the necessary thrust to leave Jupiter's orbit ahead of the launch window. In the scene, Floyd uses two fountain pens to demonstrate. Roy Scheider performed the scene without the pens being present, and the pens were filmed against a blue screen while mounted on an Oxberry animation stand programmed to match Scheider.

Awards

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards:[4]

While it won none of these awards, 2010 did, however, win the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1985.

Music

At one time, Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks was commissioned to do the soundtrack.[5] Ultimately the soundtrack was composed by David Shire, and produced by David Shire and Craig Huxley. It was released on A&M Records.

Police guitarist Andy Summers was featured on the track "2010".

Unlike many soundtracks of the day, the soundtrack for 2010 was composed mainly using digital synthesizers—specifically New England Digital's Synclavier, a Yamaha DX1, and a Roland Jupiter-8. Only two tracks on the album feature a live orchestra. Shire and Huxley were so impressed by the realism of the Synclavier that the album carries a disclaimer in the liner notes: "No resynthesis or sampling was employed on the Synclavier."

Kubrick and 2010

When Arthur C. Clarke published 2010: Odyssey Two in 1982, he phoned Stanley Kubrick, and jokingly said, "Your job is to stop anybody making it so I won't be bothered."[6] MGM made a deal to make the film, but Kubrick had no interest in directing it. Peter Hyams, however, was interested in making 2010 and he approached both Clarke and Kubrick for their blessing:

"I had a long conversation with Stanley and told him what was going on. If it met with his approval, I would do the film; and if it didn't, I wouldn't. I certainly would not have thought of doing the film if I had not gotten the blessing of Kubrick. He's one of my idols; simply one of the greatest talents that's ever walked the earth. He more or less said, 'Sure. Go do it. I don't care.' And another time he said, 'Don't be afraid. Just go do your own movie.'"[6]

Differences from the novel

  • The film omits the landing of a Chinese spacecraft, Tsien, on Europa before the Leonov's arrival, and its destruction by the life there, and Dave Bowman's exploration of the Jupiter system, where he encounters life forms in Europa's oceans and in Jupiter's atmosphere.
  • The film also removes all the romantic/physical relationships between the astronauts (the novel's version of Tanya Kirbuk is married to navigator Vasili Orlov and is surnamed Orlova; in the novel Walter Curnow is bisexual and has a relationship with Maxim Brailovsky, breaking it off when he learns that Zenia Marchenko is in love with Maxim. At the end of the book we learn that Maxim marries Zenia and Curnow marries Katerina Rudenko). Also omitted is the dissolution of Floyd's marriage while he is on the Leonov mission, due to his wife's resentment of his placing the mission before his family. The voice-recorded "letters" to his family featured in the film replace moments in the novel where Floyd instead corresponds with an old friend.
  • The film adds subplots not present in the novel. A manned expedition to the monolith is inserted in which Maxim is killed (he does not die in the novel). The film also adds political tension between the USA and the USSR that results in the American astronauts being expelled from Leonov and forced to inhabit Discovery (in the novel, the Cold War is a thing of the past).
  • Some characters are altered. In the novel, Dr. Chandra is of Indian heritage: his full name is Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai. In the film, the character is referred to only as "Dr. Chandra", and he is played by Bob Balaban, whose ancestry is Russian Jewish. In the novel, Dr. Rudenko is a woman named Katerina; in the film, a man named Vladimir. In the novel, a crew member called Irina Yakunina suffers an injury prior to launch and is replaced by Zenia Marchenko; in the film, there is a crew member called Irina Yakunina who has Zenia's character traits. In the novel, the idea of using Discovery as a booster is Curnow's idea, not Floyd's, and Curnow's character is much more expansive and ebullient than in the film.
  • The film simplifies some of the novel's scientific details: Discovery's tumbling motion and its drift toward Io are left unexplained (in the novel these are caused by the inertia of its centrifuge being transferred over time to the ship's superstructure, and by the Jupiter-Io flux tube).
  • In the novel, Bowman's warning indicated that the Leonov and its crew had to leave Jupiter space within fifteen days. The film shortened the deadline to only two days.
  • In the novel, HAL is commanded to repeatedly broadcast the message "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE." The movie adds the words "USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE."
  • The novel includes a brief epilogue titled "20,001", which details the evolution of the Europans. The film simplifies this to a single scene of Europa gradually being transformed into a jungle planet.
  • In the novel, Chandra never reveals to HAL the real reason behind their hurried departure from Jupiter. In the film version, Chandra finally breaks down and tells HAL the truth, knowing that there is a possibility that he might defy orders. HAL, however, follows the orders exactly and thanks Chandra for telling him the truth, to which he replies, "You deserve it."

Discontinuities between 2001 and 2010

  • The novel of 2001 locates the climax at Saturn, but the film altered this to Jupiter. Both the novel and the film of 2010 follow the film of 2001 and use the Jupiter setting. In his preface to the novel, Clarke explains that his decision was prompted by discoveries from the Voyager probe flybys, specifically the intense volcanic activity of Io, and the possible presence of liquid water under the ice of Europa, both unknown when 2001 was written.
  • In the 2010 film, the blue spacesuit on the Discovery is missing its helmet, even though the blue suit was never used at all in 2001. (In 2001, when Dave enters the Discovery to disable HAL, he is actually wearing a green helmet - part of a green spacesuit stowed in the emergency airlock.) However, it is possible that Bowman changed helmets in between his disconnection of HAL and his voyage to the monolith.
  • In the film of 2010, Dr. Floyd protests that he never authorized anyone to inform HAL of the TMA-1 monolith prior to the Discovery's launch to Jupiter. However, in the film version of 2001, the recorded message of Dr. Floyd played after HAL's disconnection clearly states that only HAL had full knowledge of the TMA-1 monolith.
  • In one respect, the film and book follow the original novel of 2001 instead of the film. In the book, HAL identifies his teacher as Dr. Chandra. Kubrick's film changes the name to Mr. Langley. Both versions of 2010 use Dr. Chandra, without noting that Chandra and Langley are meant to be the same character.
  • The line "My God... it's full of stars!", quoted at the beginning of the film 2010, was not spoken in the film 2001. It only appears in the novel.
  • In 2001 Kubrick had taken the unusual step of rendering explosions in space as silent, as they would be in a vacuum. In 2010, they are rendered inaccurately as producing noise.
  • In 2001 the informational displays on Discovery are flat panels (realised by the set designers by using rear-projection). In 2010 the displays are CRTs (actual CRTs were used in the set design) with a slightly curved face characteristic of most CRTs.
  • In 2001, Floyd states the monolith found on the Moon was located "near the crater Tycho", hence the designation TMA-1. TMA stood for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly. In his text report at the beginning of 2010, Floyd states that the monolith was discovered at the Moon's Sea of Tranquillity. The two lunar features are hundreds of miles apart.
  • In 2001, the label above every 'eye' of HAL's has the HAL on a red background. In 2010, that background is blue.

DVD release

  • 2010 was released on DVD on September 19, 2000. It was presented in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with the soundtrack remastered in Dolby 5.1 surround sound. A packaging error appears on Warner Home Video's release of the DVD, claiming that the film is presented in anamorphic widescreen when, in reality, it is simply letterboxed, not anamorphic (the MGM version of the DVD makes no such claim).
  • The film was released on Blu-ray Disc on April 7, 2009. The Blu-Ray disc features a BD-25 single-layer presentation with 1080p/VC-1 video and English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround audio. The disc also includes the film's original "making of" promotional featurette and theatrical trailer as extras.
Features (Region 1)
  • Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
  • Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Unknown Format)
  • "Making Of" featurette
Features (Region 2)
  • Available Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Romanian, Bulgarian
  • Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1)

The 2006 Warner Bros. re-release includes the following subtitles: Finnish, English, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Polish, Greek, Czech, Turkish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Croatian, French, Italian, English for hearing-impaired and German for hearing-impaired. The audio tracks are English (Dolby Digital 5.1), German (Dolby Digital 5.1) and Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1).

Features (Region 4)
  • Available Subtitles: English, French, Italian
  • Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1)

References

  1. ^ Candice Bergen IMDb.com
  2. ^ Arthur C. Clarke and Peter Hyams. The Odyssey File. Ballantine Books, 1984.
  3. ^ Excerpt from The Odyssey File.
  4. ^ "NY Times: 2010". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/152844/2010/awards. Retrieved on 2009-01-01. 
  5. ^ Tony Banks interview, WorldOfGenesis.com
  6. ^ a b LoBrutto 1997, p. 456.

Bibliography

  • LoBrutto, Vincent. Stanley Kubrick. London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1997.

External links

Sister project Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: 2010: The Year We Make Contact
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The Space Odyssey series
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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) · 2010 (1984)
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"The Sentinel" (written 1948, first published 1951 as "Sentinel of Eternity") · "Encounter in the Dawn" (first published 1953)
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