2010 Information

2010 (also known as 2010: The Year We Make Contact) is a 1984 American science fiction film written and directed by Peter Hyams. It is a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and is based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010: Odyssey Two, a literary sequel to the film.

Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban and John Lithgow star, along with Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain of the original cast.

Plot

Nine years earlier, the American Discovery One's mission to Jupiter mysteriously failed. As depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Discovery's HAL 9000 computer"?or "Hal" (Douglas Rain)"?malfunctioned, killing four astronauts. The fifth, David Bowman, disappeared into a large, alien Monolith orbiting the planet. Bowman's last transmission before his disappearance was the cryptic line "My God! It's full of stars!"

Back on Earth, Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider), head of the National Council on Astronautics, received the blame for the failure and left the NCA. Since then he has been the Chancellor of the University of Hawaii.

While diplomatic tensions are growing between the United States and the Soviet Union, both nations prepare space missions to determine what happened to the Discovery. Although the Soviet ship, the Alexei Leonov, will be ready before the American ship, the Soviets need American astronauts to help board the Discovery and investigate Hal's malfunction. The US government agrees to a joint mission since it has been determined that Discovery will crash into Jupiter's moon Io before its ship is ready. Floyd, along with Discovery designer Walter Curnow (John Lithgow) and HAL 9000's creator Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban), join the Russian mission.

Upon Leonov's arrival at Jupiter, Captain Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) and the other Soviets wake Floyd early from his hibernation because they have detected the presence of chlorophyll and other chemical signatures of life on Jupiter's frozen moon Europa. An unmanned probe is sent from the Leonov to investigate the readings coming from Europa, but just as it finds the source, a mysterious energy burst destroys the probe as well as all telemetry data recorded by it. The "burst" then flies at great speed, past the Leonov, and toward Jupiter. Though the Soviet crew believes the burst was simply electromagnetic radiation, Floyd suspects that it was actually a warning to stay away from Europa.

After surviving a dangerous aerocapture through Jupiter's upper atmosphere, the Leonov crew find the Discovery, abandoned but undamaged, orbiting the planet close to Io. Curnow reactivates the ship and Chandra restarts Hal, which Dave Bowman had deactivated shortly before he disappeared. Also close by is the alien Monolith that was the purpose of the Discovery mission. Cosmonaut Max Brailovsky (Elya Baskin) travels to the Monolith in an EVA pod, at which point the Monolith temporarily reopens to allow Dave Bowman, now a being of pure energy, to return to Earth (as was seen at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey); Max is swept away when the Monolith opens and is never seen again. On Earth, Dave Bowman, now an incorporeal being but with all the memories of his former human self, appears on his widow's television screen and wishes her farewell. He also visits his terminally ill mother in a nursing home and brushes her hair just before she dies peacefully.

Back on the Discovery, Chandra discovers the reason for Hal's malfunction: The NSC ordered the computer to conceal from Discovery's crew the fact that the mission was about the Monolith. This conflicted with Hal's basic function of open, accurate processing of information, causing him to suffer a mental breakdown. This was done without Floyd's knowledge, even though the order bears his signature, outraging Floyd.

On Earth, tensions between the United States and Soviet Union escalate to what is "technically a state of war", and the US government orders Floyd, Curnow, and Chandra to move into Discovery. Both crews plan to leave Jupiter separately when a launch window opens in several weeks. However, Bowman reappears as an entity and tells Floyd that everybody must leave Jupiter space within two days because "something wonderful" is going to happen. Floyd, shocked to the core by Bowman's appearance, returns to the Leonov to talk to Kirbuk, but then the Monolith suddenly disappears and a growing black spot appears on Jupiter itself. The spot is actually a vast group of Monoliths that are constantly multiplying. The Monoliths begin shrinking Jupiter's volume, increasing the planet's density, and modifying the chemical properties of its atmosphere.

This convinces the two crews that they must leave soon. Since neither ship can reach Earth with an early departure, they work together to use the Discovery as a booster rocket for the Leonov. Tension arises when Hal is not told that the Discovery will be left stranded in space, and possibly destroyed, and Chandra fears that another deception may cause Hal to malfunction again. During the launch countdown, Chandra finally tells the computer the truth. Hal agrees that he must sacrifice himself for the human beings onboard Leonov to complete Discovery's mission, and thanks Chandra for telling him the truth.

As Leonov and Discovery launch away, Bowman appears once again to Hal and tells him that their mission has been a success and repeats that "something wonderful" is going to happen. Hal admits once again to Bowman that he is afraid, to which Bowman simply replies "Don't be". He commands Hal to break his communication link with the Leonov and to repeatedly broadcast a final message to Earth:

Jupiter is engulfed by monoliths, which increase its density to the point that nuclear fusion occurs, transforming the planet into a small star. Discovery is consumed in the blast, but the Leonov breaks away and begins its long journey home. The new star's miraculous appearance later inspires American and Soviet leaders to seek peace. Over the centuries that follow, Europa gradually transforms from an icy wasteland to a humid jungle covered with plant life. A Monolith stands in the primeval Europan swamp, waiting for intelligent life forms to find it.

Cast

• Roy Scheider as Heywood Floyd
• John Lithgow as Dr. Walter Curnow
• Helen Mirren as Tanya Kirbuk
• Bob Balaban as Dr. R. Chandra
• Keir Dullea as Dave Bowman
• Douglas Rain as the voice of HAL 9000
• Madolyn Smith as Caroline Floyd
• Saveliy Kramarov as Dr. Vladimir Rudenko
• Taliesin Jaffe as Christopher Floyd
• James McEachin as Victor Milson
• Mary Jo Deschanel as Betty Fernandez, Bowman's widow
• Elya Baskin as Maxim Brajlovsky
• Dana Elcar as Dimitri Moiseyevich
• Oleg Rudnik as Dr. Vasili Orlov
• Natasha Shneider as Irina Yakunina
• Vladimir Skomarovsky as Yuri Svetlanov
• Victor Steinbach as Nikolaj Ternovsky
• Candice Bergen as the voice of SAL 9000 (credited as "Olga Mallsnerd")

Cameos

Arthur C. Clarke appears as a man on a park bench outside the White House (which is out-of-frame in the pan-and-scan version, but visible in the letterboxed and widescreen versions). In addition, a Time magazine cover about the American-Soviet tensions is briefly shown, in which the President of the United States is portrayed by Clarke and the Soviet Premier by the 2001 producer, writer, and director, Stanley Kubrick.

Production

Development

When Clarke published his novel 2010: Odyssey Two in 1982, he telephoned Stanley Kubrick, and jokingly said, "Your job is to stop anybody [from] making it [into a movie] so I won't be bothered." Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) subsequently worked out a contract to make a film adaptation, but Kubrick had no interest in directing it. However, Peter Hyams was interested and contacted both Clarke and Kubrick for their blessings:

Clarke's correspondence with Hyams was published in 1984 as The Odyssey File: The Making of 2010. The book illustrates Clarke's fascination with the then-pioneering medium of e-mail and his use of it to communicate from Sri Lanka with Hyams in California on an almost-daily basis during the planning and production of the film. It includes Clarke's list of the top science fiction films ever made. In order to give the publishers enough lead-time to have it available for the release of the movie, the book terminates while the movie is still in pre-production. At the point of the last e-mail, Clarke had not yet read the script, and Roy Scheider was the only actor who had been cast.

Special effects

The special effects for 2010 were filmed on 65mm film (the live action scenes were filmed on 35mm) and, due to the differences in film size and ratio, there is a noticeable "cut off" area at the side of the picture during the space scenes when the film is viewed in widescreen. The effects were produced by the Entertainment Effects Group (EEG), the special effects house created by Douglas Trumbull. However, Trumbull himself did not work on the film, and the effects were supervised by Richard Edlund, who had just left Industrial Light & Magic. After completing 2010, EEG would become a part of Edlund's own effects company Boss Film Corporation.

Early in the production of 2010, Hyams had learned that all of the original large spacecraft models from "2001", including the original 50-foot model of the "Discovery One", had been destroyed following the filming, as ordered by Kubrick, as had all of the original model-makers' designs for building the "Discovery One". Consequently, the model-makers at EEG had to use frame-by-frame enlargements from a 70mm copy of "2001" to recreate the original large "Discovery One" model. The "Leonov" spacecraft, as well as several of its interior crew areas and other elements of the spacecraft's advanced technology, were designed by the famous conceptual artist Syd Mead.

Although computer-generated imagery (or CGI) was still in an early phase of development in 1984, the special effects team of 2010 used CGI to create the dynamic-looking cloudy atmosphere of the planet Jupiter, as well as the swarm of monoliths that engulf the planet and turn it into a Sun for the planet Europa. Digital Productions would use data supplied by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create the turbulent Jovian atmosphere. This was one of the first instances of what the studio would later refer to as "Digital Scene Simulation", a concept they would take to the next level with The Last Starfighter.

In order to maintain the realism of the lighting in outer space, in which light would usually come from a single light source (in this case, the Sun), Edlund and Hyams decided that blue-screen photography would not be used for shooting the space scenes. Instead, a process known as front-light/back-light filming was used. The models were filmed as they would appear in space, then a white background was placed behind the model and the first pass was repeated. This isolated the model's outlines so that proper traveling mattes could be made. All of this processing doubled the amount of time that it took to film these sequences, due to the additional motion-control pass that was needed to generate the matte. This process also eliminated the problem of "blue spill", which is the main disadvantage of blue-screen photography. In this, photographed models would often have blue outlines surrounding them because a crisp matte was not always possible to make.

Blue-screen photography was used in the scene in which Floyd demonstrates his plan to use the two spaceships to achieve the change in momentum needed to leave Jovian orbit before the opening of the launch window. In this scene, Floyd uses two pens to demonstrate his plans. Roy Scheider performed this scene without the pens actually being present, and the pens were filmed separately against a blue screen"?using an "Oxberry" animation stand that was programmed to match Scheider's movements. (The initial sequence of Floyd's making the pens float was carried out by simply attaching them to a piece of movable glass that was placed between him and the camera.)

Music

Initially, Tony Banks (keyboardist for the band Genesis) was commissioned to do the soundtrack for 2010. However, Banks' material was rejected and David Shire was then selected to compose the soundtrack, which he co-produced along with Craig Huxley. The soundtrack album was released by A&M Records in the United States.

Unlike many film soundtracks from the first half of the 1980s and before, the soundtrack for 2010 was composed for and played mainly using digital synthesizers. These included the Synclavier by the New England Digital company and a Yamaha DX1. Only two compositions on the soundtrack album feature a symphony orchestra. Shire and Huxley were so impressed by the realistic sound of the Synclavier that they placed a disclaimer in the album's liner notes stating "No re-synthesis or sampling was employed on the Synclavier."

Andy Summers, guitarist for the band The Police, performed a track entitled "2010", which was a modern new-wave pop version of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra (which had been the main theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey). Though Summers' recording was included on the soundtrack album and released as a single, it was not used in the film. For the B-side to the single, Summers recorded another 2010-based track entitled "To Hal and Back", though this appeared in neither the film nor the soundtrack album.

Release

Reception

Critical reaction to 2010 has been mixed to positive, with the film holding a rating of 64% of Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert gave 2010 three stars out of four, writing that it "doesn't match the poetry and the mystery of the original film" and "has an ending that is infuriating, not only in its simplicity, but in its inadequacy to fulfill the sense of anticipation, the sense of wonder we felt at the end of 2001". He concluded, however: "And yet the truth must be told: This is a good movie. Once we've drawn our lines, once we've made it absolutely clear that 2001 continues to stand absolutely alone as one of the greatest movies ever made, once we have freed 2010 of the comparisons with Kubrick's masterpiece, what we are left with is a good-looking, sharp-edged, entertaining, exciting space opera".

James Berardinelli also gave the film three stars out of four, writing that "2010 continues 2001 without ruining it. The greatest danger faced by filmmakers helming a sequel is that a bad installment will in some way sour the experience of watching the previous movie. This does not happen here. Almost paradoxically, 2010 may be unnecessary, but it is nevertheless a worthwhile effort." Vincent Canby gave 2010 a lukewarm review, calling it "a perfectly adequate though not really comparable sequel" that "is without wit, which is not to say that it is witless. A lot of care has gone into it, but it has no satirical substructure to match that of the Kubrick film, and which was eventually responsible for that film's continuing popularity."

Awards

Though it did not win, 2010 was nominated for five Academy Awards:

• Best Art Direction (Albert Brenner and Rick Simpson)
• Best Makeup (Michael Westmore)
• Best Visual Effects
• Best Costume Design (Patricia Norris)
• Best Sound Presentation (Michael J. Kohut, Aaron Rochin, Carlos Delarios and Gene Cantamessa)

2010 won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1985.

Comic book

In 1984, Marvel Comics published a 50-page comic book adaptation of the movie. It was adapted by J. M. DeMatteis, and illustrated by Joe Barney, Larry Hama and Tom Palmer. It was published both as a single volume (as Marvel Super Special #37) and as a two-issue limited series.

Home media

2010 was first released on home video and laserdisc in 1985, and on DVD (R1) in 1998 by MGM. It was re-issued (with different artwork) in September 2000 by Warner Bros. Both releases are presented with the soundtrack remastered in Dolby 5.1 surround sound and in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, though a packaging error appears on the 2000 Warner release, claiming that the film is presented in anamorphic widescreen when, in reality, it is simply 4:3 letterboxed and not anamorphic (the MGM version of the DVD makes no such claim). The R1 and R4 releases also include the film trailer and a 10-minute behind-the-scenes featurette "2010: The Odyssey Continues" (made at the time of the film's production), though this is not available in other regions.

The film was released on Blu-ray Disc on April 7, 2009. It features a BD-25 single-layer presentation, now in high definition 16:9 (2.40:1) widescreen with 1080p/VC-1 video and English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround audio. In all regions, the disc also includes the film's original "making of" promotional featurette (as above) and theatrical trailer in standard definition as extras.