Review of 2010 (1984) by Niles K — 20 Jun 2009

Finally I watched it. Well I wasn't disappointed as much as I was when saw 2001 : A Space Odyssey simply because this never spoiled the story by removing the effort of most important characters. In 2001 Dave Bowman's effort in regaining Discovery's operations after HAL's abnormal behaviour was completely ignored.

Thankfully no such irritating mistakes were found here but details about the Chinese spaceship Shian has been omitted. In the novel, crew aboard Leonov get to know about life on Europa via the ill-fated Chinese spaceship. But in this film they just happen to know about the organisms with the use of a probe of Leonov. Such probes are not described in the book although this slight change hardly does any damage to the quality of overall storyline. Maxim Brailovsky dies in the film but in the book, the one who dies is Dr.Chandra (Well, it is revealed only in the next novel 2061).

Details given to interior of the spaceships is not of high quality as in the first film, but they've done a good job. Kubrick's film had more appealing and realistic spaceship interior, specially the LCD screens which have somehow turned into CRTs within 9 years. The slingshot of Leonov was pretty cool because after reading the novel ages ago for the first time I had no idea as to how this could be done. But now I have a clear idea ( :-) ).

2010 is undoubtedly a better story, same applies to the novels 2001 and 2010 in my opinion. I so much wish I could join such an expedition ( SERIOUSLY!!!! ).