Review of 2010 (1984) by Gordon C — 26 Feb 2009

It's hypothetical time: if you were a movie producer, about to make a sequel to one of the most mystifying, intriguing, and (to some, like me) engaging films ever made, would you give the job to a second-rate hack like Peter Hyams? It's as if they set out intentionally to make a bad film.

Well, thankfully, it's not really all that bad. Certainly no match for its predecessor, but stands up reasonably well alongside a lot of other sci-fi pictures.

However, there's one huge continuity error in this movie which has always bugged me: when Dr. Chandra tells the others that HAL was instructed not to reveal the true purpose of the mission to the astronauts, and blames Floyd, Dr. Floyd says, "I never authorised HAL to know about the monolith!" However, at the end of 2001, after disabling HAL, Dave Bowman is shown a taped video of Heywood Floyd in which he says, "For security purposes, the true purpose of your mission has been known only to HAL..." (or words to that effect). So he did know about it. Maybe he's just lying in this film.

The other thing that always bugged me was the soppy nature of the final message from the aliens, the "use them in peace" bit, which was not in the novel. Once again, this seems like the wishful thinking of those who feel powerless and bossed around, longing for some even higher power to come along and make the bosses behave. Behave the way the powerless want them to, that is.

Still, I suppose that does go along nicely with the religious nature of the entire theme of the story.