So, we're fully in the age of the "legasequel," media that functions as both as a sequel and as a reboot/remake to a beloved classic. These films are often made many years after the original source material, and lean heavily on the audience's nostalgia. This term can be applied to far too many recent properties to list, but include the likes of the recent "Star Wars'' sequels, the "Ghostbusters" reboots, and "Doctor Sleep." Some are better than others. However, the legasequel template isn't new, nor is it born of any radical new impulse. I noticed that the '80s had a good number of films that fall into this category too - the "Psycho" sequels, the "Absent-Minded Professor" and "Parent Trap'' TV movies, and the film we're going to talk about today: "2010: The Year We Made Contact," released in 1984, sixteen years after "2001: A Space Odyssey."
I found "2010" fascinating, not because it was particularly good, but because it was such a time capsule of its era and presents such a great example of all the pitfalls that legasequel films often fall into.
Arthur C. Clarke got the ball rolling with the publication of "2010: Odyssey Two" in 1982, and the film version follows the novel pretty closely. We follow a Soviet spacecraft, the Leonov, that travels to Jupiter with American and Soviet astronauts to investigate what happened to the Discovery One. They encounter more monoliths, reboot HAL 9000, and even find David Bowman (Keir Dullea). "2010" recreates and reuses much of the imagery and audio that made "2001" so iconic, often to great effect. It opens with the last line of the previous film - "My god, it's full of stars!"
However, its weaknesses are also very evident. The film does boast a lot of good practical effects work, but also uses rudimentary CGI that has aged very poorly. Instead of Kubrick's ultra-clean, coldly precise aesthetics, the world of "2010" is much grungier and more industrial-looking, in the same vein as "Alien" and other science-fiction films of the time. The film is also very much a product of the '80s in its preoccupations. The Soviet/American rivalry gets a lot of screen time and emphasis, and Roy Scheider plays the lead character, an almost stereotypically brash, overconfident American astronaut named Heywood Floyd. We get a few scenes with his cute nuclear family to get the audience invested in his safety, a device that Kubrick's film neatly subverted.
I might have passed over "2010" completely if it weren't for the cast, including Scheider, John Lithgow, and Bob Balaban as the three American astronauts, and Helen Mirren as the leader of the Soviet crew. Director and screenwriter Peter Hyams, however, is not someone with a great track record. In fact, I chiefly remember him as the director that Harlan Ellison memorably lambasted for taking too many liberties with scientific accuracy in making "Outland." His approach to "2010" is very earnest, but also very conservative and safe. He puts his characters at the forefront where Kubrick was more interested in the ideas. He leaves less to interpretation, providing clear explanations for all the phenomena we see generated by the monoliths.
Still, there are several sequences in "2010" I found impressive, chiefly a spacewalk sequence where John Lithgow's character hyperventilates, and a tense countdown with HAL 9000 and Bob Balaban's Dr. Chandra. Possibly the most important casting decision of the film was to bring back Douglas Rain for HAL, which helps immeasurably in summoning all the menace and strangeness of the AI character. And Hyams is able to pull off some strong scenes of science-fiction spectacle. The encounter with Bowman is suitably strange and alarming.
On its own, "2010" is a mildly interesting space adventure film. However, as a sequel to "2001," it's far too beholden to the first film, and stumbles every time it tries to evoke any of the mystery and grandeur that Kubrick achieved. To be fair, it doesn't try very often, only briefly incorporating the more experimental elements of "2001" in more conventional forms. I have trouble thinking of it as a proper sequel, however, and more as Peter Hyamns' love letter to a film he greatly admired, and wanted to play with the elements of. It is nice to see HAL and Dullea again, and hear that glorious score.
Then again, a film can't be based on nostalgia alone, and "2010" isn't substantive enough to stand on its own two feet. And I'm not surprised at all that it's been largely left to obscurity.
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