ecl@ahuta.UUCP (ecl) (12/09/84)
2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Peter Hyams is one of the last people whom I would have expected would
make a sequel to 2001. It was the a point of pride with Clarke and Kubrick
that their 1968 film be as faithful to scientific fact as was possible.
Hyams has played fast and loose with scientific accuracy in his two previous
science fiction films, CAPRICORN ONE and OUTLAND. Hyams was to write,
produce, and direct 2010 by himself. Clarke had retired to Sri Lanka and
apparently could not oversee the scientific accuracy of the production.
So how do the two films compare? Hyams's film by itself is a
remarkable film. As an adaptation of the book, it is a real rarity. It is
a pure science fiction film. That does not mean science fantasy, it does
not mean science horror. It means that this is a film that takes scientific
ideas and plays with them. It does so not to scare us with monsters, not to
give us a western set in space, not to show us a love story that happens to
take place in space. It is an extrapolation of theory and idea. The story
concerns men and women making scientific discoveries, but it is primarily
about the discoveries, not the people making them. By following a team of
scientists as they attack scientific problems it is closer in spirit to
Clarke's RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA than it is to 2001.
2010 stands head and shoulders above anything that we could have
expected from Hyams based on his previous work. But that is no surprise
since Hyams merely had to be accurate to a pure science fiction book. Word
has it that it is a fairly accurate representation, with a few minor
liberties. As far as pacing, the second film is a considerable improvement.
Hyams has made a slightly less visual film, still very visual, and picked up
the pace considerably. 2001 was intended to be a showcase of the future and
that means in may places the plot stops dead to show a visual effect. The
new film's science is a little less accurate. As in OUTLAND, Hyams does not
understand gravity, artificial and natural.
With the exception of scientific errors, the worst faults of 2010
probably lie with Clarke and the novel. The film teasingly promises to give
new insights into the questions raised in the first film. It then reneges
on that promise. When it is over, the alien race is as much a mystery as it
was in 1968. There are more theories as to what the monolith actually is,
but they remain theories. Clarke's "see the movie, read the book, see the
movie, read the book..." does not seem to be a sufficient answer to the
questions. Now it probably is true that that is a realistic touch. The
aliens probably would be unfathomable to the human mind. But to fall back
on that does not make for good cinema and even makes unsatisfying science
fiction. The trailers and script promise that at the end of the film
"something wonderful" will happen. In fact, what happens is wondrous, but
the film is very unsuccessful in conveying why it is wonderful. Most of the
effect of the something wonderful appears to be that it temporarily averts a
war on Earth and that there are somewhat superficial celestial events that
can be seen from Earth. The full implications of the something wonderful
are never explained. The impact of the something wonderful on the audience
is considerably undercut by an almost identical something wonderful that
happened in another popular science fiction film of the past few years.
That makes the big surprise at the end something of a letdown.
Production credits are all very good. Visually the film shows a number
of remarkable sights without making them the static set pieces that the
first film made of them. There are still a fair number of scenes of stark
beauty, such as the view of the churning surface of Jupiter. I was a little
sorry to see the part of Heywood Floyd went to Roy Scheider instead of the
underrated William Sylvester, who played the part in the original and is a
familiar face from a number of good British genre films. John Lithgow is
along in large part for comic relief. Helen Mirren, familiar from THE LONG
GOOD FRIDAY and EXCALIBUR, plays one of the few Russian characters not
played by a member of the cast of MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON. Bob Balaban at
first seems miscast as Dr. Chandra, since he has no Indian accent, but by
2010 he could be a second or third generation American. In a less than
stellar year for science fiction films this is the best so far. Give it a 2
on the -4 to +4 scale.
(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!lznv!mrl