This Movie's Underrated - "2010: The Year We Make Contact"

Awwww jyeah, son. Barring Outland, basically every movie I've reviewed in this column has been seen as indefensible by a number of people. But this is a whole other animal. 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't just a classic, isn't just a great movie. It's a turning point in the sci-fi genre. It's a cultural touchstone. It practically created the media trope of a computer gone mad, and its effects can be felt today, even down to its production design. Apple based the aesthetics of damn near every product it's ever released on the clean, sterile white and black of the Discovery, and even named the iPod after the globular rides of Bowman and Poole.

2001 is nebulous, dense, sparing, and does a tango over the line between style and substance. It asks the biggest questions of all: are we alone in the universe? Who made us what we are? And where the hell are we going next?

And what the HELL is a "bush baby"!?

But 2001 is an odd animal. Some people love it, and some people hate it, regardless of its undeniable influence. It's slow as a turtle smeared in molasses, it's obtuse to the point of trolling the audience, and no explanation is given for ANYTHING. Sometimes that falls under the “show, don't tell” rule, as the opening sequence does, and as the ending arguably does. But sometimes it's just infuriating, such as (arguably) the ending, and the reason for HAL's freakout.

However, given its massive cultural impact, a sequel to 2001 would seem ill-advised, especially one that tried to explain the more trippy aspects of it. That'd be like trying to explain The Shining.

Ohh....oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

But this isn't merely the product of Hollywood cannibalizing old, beloved properties for name recognition. You may remember that the late, great Arthur C. Clarke collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001, and wrote the accompanying novel. The novel itself is much clearer than the movie in terms of EVERYTHING, from what happened to David Bowman in the end, to what made HAL go crazy, to what HAL even stands for. Turns out it's "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer," which means the biggest mystery in 2001 is actually how Arthur C. Clarke thought that was an acronym.

In any case, the time came when Arthur C. Clarke decided to write a book as a sequel to 2001 to incorporate the various scientific discoveries made since the original film was produced.  2010 the book is a sequel to the MOVIE 2001 though, explicitly not the novel. It...gets complicated after that.

But nevertheless, Clarke's novel 2010: Odyssey Two was well-received, and it became a movie, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, one which had only the remotest chance of living up to its predecessor in terms of artistic merit and style. And it doesn't. Not even close. But it's still a hell of a movie.

Honestly, part of it is the fact that it DOES attempt to make sense of 2001. The plot is a nice meta parallel of this: Heywood Floyd, the guy from 2001 who went up to the Space Hilton, took the fall for whatever the hell you would call the end result of the Discovery mission. When he learns that the Soviets are going to have a ship ready to go back to Jupiter before the Americans, he connives his way onto the Alexei Leonov with the designer of the Discovery and the designer of HAL to unlock every secret trapped aboard the abandoned ship, which is slowly but surely on a crash course to Io.

It's to 2010's credit that when it does answer 2001's questions, the answers make sense. And a lot of the answers raise even more questions, but in the most epic ways.

One thing about the movie that I consider pretty much unimpeachable is 2010's approach to hard sci-fi, starting with the phenomenal production design. You can say what you will about the rest of the film, but god DAMN if this isn't a wonderfully designed movie. The responsibility lies with designer Syd Mead, who also designed every other awesome sci-fi movie you know: Blade Runner, Tron, even Turn A Gundam. And you can see threads of his style on those movies here. The harsh, blocky lines of the Russian spacecraft's interior, the grating, the lighting, the banks and banks of glowing buttons, cramped and mish-mashed but beautifully ugly: this movie practically IS hard sci-fi design, and its influence can be seen into the 90's and 2000's. 

Set phasers to "rainbow", men.

And that extends into the design of the Leonov's exterior and its pods. Where the Discovery's shape is elegantly simple and straightforward, the Leonov's is brutally so. It looks like the designer was like, “Whaddawe need on a spaceship?” and then just went down the hull shoving things onto it. “Engines...*shove*...radiators...*shove*...crew module...aaaand big honkin' radar dish. DONE! Who's up for borscht?”

Max is up for cake. Or pie. He forgets sometimes.

Now, I could gush about radiators and borscht all day. But good designs do not a good movie make. Luckily, 2010 happens to be wonderfully exciting, action-packed, badass, and refreshingly pro-science. Heywood, played by Roy Scheider, veers a bit into Mary Sue territory, constantly calling the Russians on their bad ideas and generally being a hard-boiled, two-fisted, not-terribly-scientific-seeming American sonuvagun. But he works, and is sympathetic as a figure trying to find closure and answers about his greatest failure.

The rest of the acting is uniformly good to great, with Jonathan Lithgow, Bob Balaban, and Helen Mirren rounding out the main cast. Speaking as someone who thinks that Helen Mirren is STILL one of the sexiest women in Hollywood, vintage 80's Helen Mirren I would hit like the fist of an angry god.

I would ignite her like a SWARM OF MONOLITHS--nah. Nah. Nevermind, I got nothing.

One of the highlights, though, is a particularly cool and lovable Jonathan Lithgow as the sanest and least dysfunctional of the Americans, and his major bromance with a Russian cosmonaut is adorable. It's a fun, sympathetic role that I would love to see Lithgow do more often. Balaban is also wonderfully understated and vulnerable as the designer/instructor of HAL, and his final conversation with HAL lets Balaban really bust out with the acting, and let me tell you...it gets very dusty in here when he has to say goodbye.

And speaking of HAL, this movie is remarkable for actually making me feel sympathetic for the most notorious computer murderer in cinema history. Not only does it adequately explain why HAL freaked out, but it gives his character a tear-jerking redemption while raising poignant questions about the nature of intelligence and emotion.

That redemption is part of one of the most exciting sci-fi endings I've seen, wherein the Leonov uses the Discovery as a giant fucking booster rocket to escape the Jovian system. Why do they have to escape, you ask? Because there's a giant black spot on Jupiter that's steadily growing and eating the planet. Oh yeah: and the black spot is entirely MADE UP OF MONOLITHS. It's an incredible holy shit moment, ranking right up there with anything from the first movie.

I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I've shat my pants.

But 2010 is almost nothing like its predecessor in terms of style. And that is probably one of the reasons why it's so maligned, even though it excels at doing its own thing. True, both movies are sci-fi, they deal with the same events, but to me, 2010 is the Aliens to 2001's Alien.

Let me explain.

A lot of people like to say that Aliens is an even better movie than Alien, or that it's just as good. But to me, it's a companion movie. It's unfair to say which one is better, because they belong to different genres and have different tones. Where Alien is a horror movie and a sci-fi movie first, Aliens is a war movie, an action movie, and a damn good one too, with a nice allegorical slant. A primitive foreign army using psychological warfare goes up against a vastly better-equipped and more advanced  military and sufficiently trounces them. Hmmmm, where have I heard that before?

OF COURSE!

Likewise, 2001 is as art-house and acid trippy as it can get, while maintaining a cold, sterile detachment. It ponders big questions, but it's intent on making the audience work to understand it, rather than helping its audience understand. 2010, meanwhile, is a tense Cold War thriller, an action sci-fi movie that attempts to answer some of the questions of 2001 while delving more into the human motivations of its characters. It doesn't try to be 2001, to its credit, and aims for a different feel and tone: one of optimistic exploration and daring. Where 2001 was concerned with humanity's place in the universe at large, and 2010 continues with that theme, it also explores humanity's place with regard to other humans. It's about how the quest for understanding unites humanity even in the darkest of times. It's about how the pursuit of knowledge, particularly in regards to science, brings even the most bitter of enemies together. And it's awesome to see a movie made during Reagan's presidency that shows a bunch of Americans and a bunch of Russians becoming best space friends, basically realizing that just because their governments are being dicks doesn't mean they have to be.

And while it is basically the appendix for 2001's crazier parts, it, like 2001, raises more questions than it answers. In both films, it's not necessarily the answers to questions that are important, but having the courage to go out and get them, even if they're about to crash into Io and you have to hitch a ride with dirty commies to get to them. Like the old saying goes, its not the destination, but the journey. Even for its failure to live up to the grandiosity and style of 2001, the journey in 2010 is still pretty sweet. And that's why it's underrated.