[net.movies] Merits of 2010

brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (12/10/84)

I am certainly a 2001 fan.  I think it the greatest piece of moviemaking
in history, and have seen it over a dozen times.  And so to read previous
reviews it should be implied that I hated 2010.

Not so.  I had already abandoned any chance that the movie could compare
to 2001, and so I went in attempting to judge it as what it is,
a movie based on the book 2010.   In this respect it did well.  Sure
it got overdramatic, and had no understanding of gravity, and sure there
the various other minor errors, but in a world where we are almost ready
to accept whooshing spaceships and laser blasts you can see as the norm,
this film was a breath of fresh air.
---------------


SPOILER


---------------
Are we sure that the character at the end of 2001 who reads the taped message
is in fact Dr. Floyd?  I was never certain of this.

All this aside, in 2010 the book it is stated that Floyd knew of how HAL
was programmed, and that he had voted against it, but had been overruled.

This contrasts with the movie version, where he denies all knowledge.  Of
course in the movie, the character of Floyd was changed slightly from the
high-in-government schemer to a tough good-guy.  While I am not sure I
like this change, they had to have him innocent in the deaths to strengthen
this.   It's where Hyams deviated from the book that he fails.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473