It’s always interesting to go back and look at a piece of speculative fiction. Even the widely-lauded “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) carried the Pan-Am corporation ten years past the company’s expiration. It’s not the only thing it got wrong, of course. The belated sequel, “2010: The Year We Make Contact” (1984), doubles-down on the Pan-Am attachment (the company was still in existence at the time of the film’s making); but what’s more resonant in these movies is not what they got wrong, but rather what they got right.
Hindsight will be 20/10 on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, as we kick off the new year with a conversation about Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of a redemptive future.
“2010” connects best when it addresses what, for better or worse, never changes – human nature. If anything, its message of peace and the necessity of cooperation between the world’s nations is more timely than ever. Also, it makes us care more about its characters than Stanley Kubrick ever did in the comparatively aloof original.
Where the sequel is conspicuously less successful is in addressing the great, unknowable mysteries of the beyond. Peter Hyams is no Kubrick, nor does he attempt to emulate his style, but he puts together a surprisingly competent follow-up, with a knock-out cast, including Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, John Lithgow, and the always fine Bob Balaban, in the days before Jeff Goldblum gobbled up all the quirky scientist roles.
The special effects are spectacular, of course – by 1984, they had it down – but they could never be as special as in 1968, when technicians had to invent everything from the ground up. Much as space travel was portrayed as commonplace in “2001,” believable depictions of planets and space ships, by 1984, had become a matter of course. It pains me now to look back and be reminded of how good we still had it at the movies, before everything really did become mundane with the rise of CGI.
Some of “2010” is a little too literalist for my taste, but fans of the original will have fun with the meticulously reconstructed sets and the return of Keir Dullea, the Discovery, and Hal-9000 – the latter given an unexpected twist in its character arc.
Roy and I will be joined by filmmaker Jeffrey Morris (who, if I understand correctly, had some experience with Hyams), for a reassessment of perhaps three-quarters of an underrated movie. “2010” is sci-fi for adults, so it’s good that Jeffrey will be on hand to keep us on point. But there will be plenty of “Contact” sport in the comments section, I’m sure, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EST!
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“2001” franchise-creator Arthur C. Clarke predicts our modern world with, in some respects, remarkable accuracy in this astonishing video. Still waiting for the blessing/curse of his replicator, though, even as I detest his vision of animal “servitude.”
“The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.”
