2010
Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect.
What did 2001 mean?
Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect.
What did 2001 mean?
Arthur C. Clarke made an essential observation in his Author's Note to the 1982 novel "2010 - Odyssey Two":
"...the story you are about to read is something much more complex than a straightforward sequel to the earlier novel - or the movie. Where these differ, I have followed the screen version; however, I have been more concerned with making this book self- consistent, and as accurate as possible in the light of current knowledge."
The movie marketers chose to ignore some important words in this note when they came up with "2010", and confused and disappointed a lot of people by having us believe that 2010 was the literal sequel to 2001. So let us have a look at it, and consider whether 2010 (which goes under three different names in its transformation from book to film to marketable product: "2010 Odyssey Two" becomes "2010" becomes "2010: The Year We Make Contact") brings us to a fuller appreciation of what was seen more than a decade previously.
 | A different view | | Unfamiliar territory | | Continuing dialogues | | Effects |
| Put-down | | Awakening | | Thank you, Mr Hyams | | Postscript |
2010 made an ambitious claim to be a serious sequel to 2001. For existing 2001 fans, though, it could never have been anything but a pale imitation. Given the fact that it appeared to go deliberately out of its way to throw away all of the painstaking attention to scientific credibility that made 2001 such a landmark, in favour of just about every trick and gimmick in the Hollywood A to Z guide to directing popular sci-fi movies, it is not surprising that it became a laughing stock among 2001 fans and an unmissable target for all the cheap shots going, even though it gained an appreciative audience in its own right.
My own devotion to Kubrick's work makes this a natural reaction for me to adopt towards the film, on the surface. But there is something not quite right, because I enjoy the film. Quite a lot. OK, then, being completely honest, I enjoy it very much.
I know, I can never hold my head up again in the company of Kubrick followers, but I can't help it. How can I justify being like this? Well, let me try to explain.
Pushing your luck.
If Peter Hyams had given us a screenplay along the lines of "inspired by 2001", instead of "this is what 2001 was all about", 2010 may well be remembered as one of the most satisfying science- fiction films made since 1968. Peter Hyams, remember, gave us "Capricorn One" in 1978, which may have ended up as rather a tame thriller but for the first half hour or so was perhaps the ultimate film about fabrication masquerading as truth, so there is no questioning his integrity or willingness to peer into dark corners looking for new insights. Indeed, there are things in 2010 that few other films have explored, and few other directors would have been able to tackle.
The most notable of these is the refreshingly unique view of space travel as a terrifying experience so far outside the comfort zone of a human being as to give the concept a whole new meaning. In every other film, it is assumed that people take to whizzing about the universe like ducks to water. Even Dave and Frank end up bored out of their minds with nothing to see out of the Discovery windows except those stupid stars. Being "out there", though, means protection from instant annihilation by a wafer-thin metal bubble with no prospect of being rescued in the very probable event of something going hugely wrong. I write elsewhere in this site about insurance policies, but maybe this is where they really belong!
In 2010, they push their luck as far as it will go, using the outer layers of Jupiter's atmosphere as a brake (does Jupiter have an atmosphere, or is it all one big atmosphere? Just a thought). It seems rather a far-fetched thing to do, until you consider the real life journey of the probe that plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and allowed astronomers to obtain those dramatic pictures of the impact - it involved an inward leg towards the sun (in case you are not up on celestial geography, Jupiter is a lot further away from the sun than the Earth), and I believe two separate slingshots outwards using the Earth's gravity. An astonishing mathematical triumph that no film-maker would have dared to give us for fear of ridicule.
Incidentally, while I can be astonished by the mathematics of this, I am also saddened to see that the only way we can find out about other worlds, apparently, is to hurl missiles at them in order to take some nice snaps of the resulting upheaval. Humankind's ecological irresponsibility is bad enough on our own planet, without turning it into our first export into space. I am surprised the soft drinks companies have not yet got into interplanetary sponsorship, so that the next probe to Jupiter or elsewhere is programmed to automatically eject cans of Coke over the planet. Can you imagine us leaving blank, anonymous monoliths around the universe? Never. They would be plastered with "messages" from - well, you can guess which companies would be involved as well as I can.
I wrote that tongue in cheek, never expecting for one moment that such things would actually happen. Within a fortnight of writing it, I heard serious reports of commercial sponsorship being sought for spaceshots, with Coca Cola being mentioned by name. The Martians had best take cover now, before anyone notices them and targets them as a market segment or an "untapped resource" owing unpaid taxes for the last four million years.
Did you think the whole idea of Jupiter suddenly deciding it is a star after all those millions of years too fanciful to even bother scoffing at it? So did I. Then, a while ago, I opened the "Sydney Morning Herald", the main daily broadsheet in Sydney, and found this under the heading "Jupiter not star quality", by Leigh Dayton, the paper's Science Writer.
| If things had been slightly different in the early days of the solar system, Earth might now be basking in the warmth of two suns. |
| But for reasons that will undoubtedly leave scientists arguing for years, Jupiter did not make the grade star- wise, and settled into its role as a giant gas planet, circled by as many as 20 little moons. |
| Clues that Jupiter might be a failed star - especially its Sun- like abundance of atmospheric helium - come from information collected in December by a probe which hurtled through the planet's harsh atmosphere and successfully transmitted data to its parent, the Galileo spacecraft...The discovery of Jupiter's Sun- like makeup is "awkward for theorists, to say the least", wrote Mr Robert Burnham, editor of Astronomy, in the magazine's latest issue...The surprisingly starry level of helium is among numerous discoveries about Jupiter's atmosphere...Jupiter expert Dr Bob Sault, a radio astronomer at the CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility (said) "They all show you that there's more happening deeper in Jupiter than we think...". |
David Fincher found the temptation too great with his "Alien 3", though, given that Ripley had some justification to feel a bit hard done by, even Fincher can hardly be accused of filling the screen up with gratuitous sex (instead, for my dollar's worth, he filled the screen up with some of the most original and remarkable scenes ever to appear in a science- fiction film, but more of that in my Other Movies page).
A touch of nerves.
Tension builds in the participants as the mission departure day approaches. Actually, that is a bit of an exaggeration of what we see - Floyd is the only one we see beforehand - but it is easy to understand what people in his situation would be going through. Forget about a visit to the dentist, this one could really hurt. From what we see of a rather tense Helen Mirren later on, she too would have been under attack from frenzied butterflies in another part of the world from Floyd. (Helen Mirren always seems to do tense people well, doesn't she?
Curnow certainly was less than enthusiastic about the trip, and almost loses his dinner inside his spacesuit on more than one occasion, an idea that hardly bears thinking about.
Keep talking (acknowledgements to Pink Floyd).
Some of the dialogue, too, is entertaining. The opening joust between Floyd and Dimitri Moisevich, the Russian diplomat (nicely played by Dana Elcar) is a good start, filling us in on what has happened over the last few years. Titov, evidently, has fallen out of favour with the Russian authorities, and the Russian spaceship under construction is to be launched under the name of "Alexi Leonov" instead. An interesting choice of name by Dr Clarke. Alexi Leonov, in real life, was the first cosmonaut to walk in space. On watching 2001, he is reputed to have commented "Now, I feel I have been in space twice".
The name actually sounds more like "Le-ah-nov" the first time we hear it in the film. Perhaps I am not attuned to transatlantic Russian accents. Elsewhere in the film, we hear a less- distinct "Le-uh-nov", which could be either. There is no reason why Hyams should have changed the name, but I keep trying to be faithful to what actually happens on the screen.
Floyd's response to the Russian crew's less than communicative attitude after his revival from hibernation is worth using in quite a few real life situations I can think of (you ask me questions, and I tell you things; then I ask you questions, and you tell me things. I return to that scene further down, to look at a similar situation facing Hal). The occasional voice- overs from Floyd reading from his letters home work nicely, with a kind of doomy echo effect. In fact, one of the great things for me about 2010 is its sense of atmosphere, which really draws you in even as you are mentally ridiculing some of what it shows. The sound effects may be completely unauthentic, but they are definitely sound and definitely have plenty of effect!
One of Hyam's less forgivable sins, though, is to inflict more of those roaring spaceships on us, reaching a crescendo in the final full- throttle burst from Discovery to escape Jupiter's orbit. Completely unnecessary, when Discovery has made it all the way to Jupiter in 2001 in majestic silence.
Another disappointment with the 2010 scenario was that 2001 led us to believe that we had journeyed immense distances through the universe before "landing" in that suite. Kubrick sweeps us past galaxies struggling into existence, stars being born, a dance of celestial geometry, the interference patterns of wavelengths beyond human sight, coloured inks being dropped into a water tank (oops! How did that one get in there? Editor. Editor!) - "beyond the infinite", indeed. Hyams and Clarke bring us back to a different reality with a resounding thud, by implying that we never made it past Jupiter, or if we did we somehow got right back again pretty quick.
Sal gets in a nice line, though. Calling Hal's twin Sal is about as original as Dr Chandra gets in the name stakes, though Hal's red fisheyes have become blue for Sal - I won't even start trying to look for meaning in that! Chandra tells Sal what he is planning to do to "her" in preparation for Hal's forthcoming reactivation, and asks her to open a new file. He calls it "Phoenix", and thinking he is being clever with Sal asks her if she understands the meaning of the term. We all know that the word "phoenix" refers to a fabulous bird that self- cremates, and then arises rejuvenated from the ashes. Chandra is obviously expecting Sal to make the connection between Phoenix and a rejuvenated Hal and reply accordingly. No doubt if she had he would have patted her keyboard, smiled indulgently and murmured "quite right, well done, Sal".
Sal is not closely related to Hal for nothing, though. Her response makes him, and us all, feel a bit inadequate. Without hesitation, she informs us that she knows of 25 references, and the one most likely to be in Chandra's mind given what he intends to do is "the tutor of Achilles"! He has never heard of it (interesting that, as her tutor, Chandra does not know what his own pupil knows), and I don't suppose any of us have either. She gets it right second time (perhaps having learned from what she knows about Hal that it does not pay to show human beings up). This scene always strikes a chord with me, given what I have to say elsewhere in this site about the potential for computers eventually becoming very clever indeed.
One thing that does surprise me, though, is the way Chandra chooses to enter the details of Phoenix. He seems to have no trouble conversing with Sal, so why does he suddenly resort to that clunky old keyboard? Strange, and an example of what I have to say in the Legacy page about the common use of antiques in visions of the future.
Keir Dullea seems to enjoy his spooky bits, but considering how long he had spent "resting" since 2001 he may have just felt overwhelmed at the offer of another acting part. Being honest, it was not the most demanding part to give him, although he must have spent an awful lot of time in the make- up department. Was he made up to look the same age as he was when we first saw him in 2001? He certainly looks younger than I would have expected. I have even wondered whether Hyams came across some "spare" shots from 2001 and spliced them in, but I don't really think it is likely.
2010 was a big- budget film, and the money was well spent in terms of the quality of the special effects and the care taken to do most things realistically. Unfortunately, just as 2001 is so badly let down by the standard- format video, so 2010 also suffers from what may well be the worst video reproduction I have yet come across. Several times, there are jarring distortions in both sound and picture quality, with a soundtrack that wanders around the musical scales, flashes of bright colour and faded shots. The scene where Floyd follows "Dave " from the bridge through to the pod bay is painful to watch and even harder to listen to. Dave undergoes some pretty impressive metamorphoses, but somehow I don't think turning bright green in momentary flashes is supposed to be one of them.
It is not just my present copy, as I have seen the same on others.
Ungrateful lot.
Peter Hyams gave us all this, and a lot more, and it seemed that all he got for his efforts was a big put- down.
I don't particularly want to join in that kind of fun, but 2010 does give us plenty of opportunity to be irreverent. Where Kubrick left it to the viewer to work out answers, Hyams seemed to have a superficial answer for every occasion. None of these answers provided any real solution at all. If anything, we simply ended up with even more questions! If the connection with 2001 had been a mere hint, rather than the central concept of the whole film, we might never have worried so much about the extreme verbosity.
People have a tendency to resent being "enlightened" by others without asking, and in this case a large part of the audience drew much of their appreciation of 2001 from the almost unprecedented freedom that Kubrick allowed them to reach their own conclusions. So, all of a sudden, here is some guy saying "forget it, I have the answers for you right here". Many Kubrick followers were unimpressed, while at the same time the emphasis on it being a sequel may have put new audiences off who might otherwise have enjoyed the excitement.
Imposter.
Right from the opening scene, we had to get used to Heywood Floyd in a new body - Roy Scheider instead of William Sylvester. It looked more like homage to Dr Who than Stanley Kubrick. I know nothing about Sylvester and the reason why he was not used again, but would much have preferred 2010 either with him, or, if that was not possible, with another character altogether. 2010 relies on Floyd's presence for three things: one as a way of "explaining" Hal's "errant" behaviour (which, as I interpret it in my Hal page, was not errant at all); two to bear the idea of a joint US / USSR mission to the heart of the US government against a backdrop of a cold war becoming very hot indeed; and three to provide the recovery mission with the necessary "inside" information about the events of 2001.
None of this makes much sense. Despite the attempt to give us a dramatic realisation by Floyd (of the gasp- with- shocked- expression variety - if only he had been holding a glass of wine at the time! See my comment below about what he could have learned about this subject from his wife) that he had been used by the US government to "dupe" Hal, by way of trying to satisfy our curiosity about why Hal acted the way he did, it was still no explanation at all. Even if it had been convincing as an explanation, it would have worked just as well whether Floyd was physically present or not. Roy Scheider as another character could still have gasped and looked shocked.
The idea of the joint mission was actually suggested by Moisevich in the opening scene, and taken up by Floyd after he had had a chance to chuckle over Discovery's unexpected behavioural change (surely someone outside Russia would have noticed?). Relaying the idea onwards did not really need Floyd.
Not that important.
Furthermore, it would have been entirely reasonable for 2010 to have used another character altogether. After the events of 2001, it would have been understandable if Floyd had sold his story to the gossip magazines and retired from the scene completely (to Sri Lanka, perhaps? Sorry - subliminal Arthur C Clarke joke). His successor would surely have been given all the information he needed about 2001, without having to rely on eight- year- old memories before conversing with the president and planning the mission. Floyd makes a case for being an essential member of the recovery crew, but I don't think even a president has to be that dumb to get elected. Floyd's performance in 2001 was considered unimpressive enough for a smart shift out of active duty and managerial responsibility to "school teaching" - after all, he was the man responsible for a mission that apparently ended in what may well have been the most expensive disaster in history. Not a very credible record for someone angling for another such unprecedentedly vital role in space.
Keep digging.
All the things I have written above are a bit picky, but since I am in the mood I can't resist a few more.
| Pseudo- Floyd's home life is very
sketchy, despite being presented at some length. Even without having humans emoting all over
the place, Kubrick did a neat job of implying that the scientists on (in?) the orbiting Hilton had
a home life of sorts, without inflicting the sordid details on us. As I point out in my 2001 page,
he has no need of amateur theatrics. A minute or so with Floyd's daughter on the Picturephone,
and a quick reference to conventions and unspecified goings- on in the Baltic Sea, were
enough. In 2010, Floyd's wife has to pointedly drop her glass of wine in the sink (which
involves rather a laborious walk from the dining table to the sink, to be sure of getting the right
sound effect) to register shock (is this some kind of homage to Dave knocking the glass off the
table in 2001?). The main point in seeing Floyd at home is so he can fill in gaps in the plot for us later on by the artificial mechanism of writing letters to his wife. It's effectively done, but a bit contrived. Most blokes I come across on business trips abroad regard letters home as a chore... |
| Curnow's panic ends up being almost irritating. You think, for heaven's sake, throw up and have done with it, or, why send a wimp like that into space? (John Lithgow has gone the whole hog now and become an alien himself in "3rd Rock From The Sun", which suggests that he can't have found the space travel experience as bad as he made out. What's that you say? It isn't real life?). Incidentally, what happened to those nice little prepacked in- flight meals with their own built- in straws that Floyd had en route to the moon in 2001? Given another eight years to get them and those "ham" sandwiches right, Curnow should perhaps have stuck to the space diet. Or perhaps the trouble was he did. |
| Dave is alone in the entire human
race in encountering alien forces (UFOs and close encounters have no part in 2001). What is
he able to achieve with this unmatched insight? He waffles on about "something wonderful"
from inside a TV set to a wife who suddenly pops up for even less reason than Floyd's wife,
disrupting her life all over again just as she has got used to the idea of Dave not coming home
(so used to it, in fact, that she has got married again. Dave overcomes his confusion by being
big-hearted about it, when, in his pre- alien encounter days, he might have been more tempted
to throw a food mixer on the floor.). From this triumph, and becoming invisible in the absence of a handy TV set, he proceeds to the local hospital and brushes his ailing mother's hair (in full view, on monitor, of a nurse who is more interested in her copy of "Time" magazine, featuring Kubrick and Clarke on the front cover! Subtle? Forget it! I have never seen a nurse reading Time magazine). The result? She awakes from her peaceful coma in total confusion, keels over and dies. It doesn't say much for Dave's healing hands, or the benefits of consorting with aliens (though I would have been grateful for Dave's touch on the inmates early on - like, in the first five minutes - in the awful "Cocoon"). |
Kubrick knows that, much of the time, the best way to communicate is to say nothing and simply allow us to experience sound (by which I include complete silence, a prime tool in Kubrick's hands) and vision. Kubrick, also, never wastes his time or ours on a scene that has no purpose, despite what some people felt about 2001 being "too slow".
In contrast, when 2010 has nothing useful to say, it tries to hide the fact by bombarding us with action and people nattering. By Kubrick's standards (its own claim), it was full of irrelevant scenes.
Dénouement.
But I have saved the best for last. The one most significant topic in my 2001 site has been a close analysis of Hal. In keeping with that, my most telling piece about 2010 concerns the role that Peter Hyams has for Hal, which fully supports my view of his conduct.
However, to reach that conclusion we have to get used to a Hal that, while tetchy at times, seems to have gone a bit soft in the head with it, apparently the result of Dr Chandra quietly laying down the law to Hal before re- introducing him to other human beings. Read the Hal Transcripts and compare his words in 2010 with the ones he speaks in 2001.
Hal meekly agrees to let the crew members hold a private discussion, with no sign that he is peering through any keyholes. He also says things that seem superfluous and out of character (the difference between Hyams and Kubrick surfacing again), such as the old "10- 9- 8..." countdown to blasting away from Jupiter's orbit, and right at the end the fact that he has locked onto a beacon ready to send Dave's message. Both of them are a bit too much like extracts from "Thunderbirds" scripts (gaaaaagh - quick, get the antiseptic. Though I understand that some of the 2001 model builders came from the Thunderbirds team, so perhaps a gentle mouthwash would be enough).
Having accepted that, though, here is a reminder of a couple of the conclusions from my "Hal" page.
| Hal devised tests and scenarios beyond any which he was programmed to do, in a single-minded quest to do the job he was built for to the absolute best of his extraordinary capabilities. |
| He not only confirmed the 9000 series reputation of infallibility, but extended its capabilities to new heights. |
And here is Peter Hyams with his much- maligned 2010, to drop a bombshell on all those who thought Hal made mistakes and behaved illogically. For eight years - a sizeable chunk of life for a human being, an interval without meaningful dimensions for an artificial intelligence - Hal was deprived of his higher brain functions while aimlessly orbiting Jupiter. Chandra, on behalf of Floyd and the others, reactivates Hal with great trepidation. All they know for sure is that not one member of the Discovery crew survived what appeared to be a disastrous loss of control by Hal. He could do anything when woken up, and do to Floyd's party what the Alien did to Ripley's crewmates. Chandra will not even let anyone else speak directly to Hal, for fear of what it might trigger.
Saying it like it is.
What actually happens? How about another parallel to think about? Remember my comment earlier about how Floyd, on revival, finds that he must prise the truth out of his Russian companions about a situation that has changed dramatically during his period of unconsciousness? Hal, too, is revived from his eight year slumber, and what proves to be one of the first (and only!) actions he is faced with? Yes, just as Floyd discovered, the people around him do not want to reveal what is really going on.
Chandra, under pressure from Floyd, reluctantly agrees that Hal must be sacrificed for the sake of the crew, who have no way to leave Jupiter's orbit within the deadline set by Dave, except by draining Discovery's remaining power resources and leaving it - and Hal - behind. Chandra has an emotional bind to Hal that, along with the uncertainty about Hal's likely response, makes it difficult for him to be candid, and causes Floyd to keep his fingers poised over that calculator, in case Hal rebels.
Only a few seconds are left before Hal finally succeeds in extracting the truth from Chandra about the crew's intentions. Those few seconds, at last, give us something that is truly worthy of a self- proclaimed sequel to Stanley Kubrick - remember what I said earlier about his ability to exploit brief moments? Once again, human beings intend to deprive Hal of meaningful existence, this time permanently. How will Hal respond? How might he have reasonably been expected to react, given his experience so far of human beings?
Hal's final moment of glory.
He understands! Hal knows that it is his destiny to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of Chandra, Floyd and their companions. He forfeits his own existence for them. As far as we know, nothing much has been done to Hal in the short time since reactivation. He is, in 2010, substantially the same entity as he was in 2001. Is his behaviour now the sign of an out- of- control, error- prone collection of psychotic electronics? No, nor was it ever. Hal is not sacrificed. He consciously, without hesitation once the truth is known, sacrifices himself. Think once again about what was really going through Hal's consciousness back in 2001! All Hal ever needed to operate was the truth. His problems came about because humans found the concept of truth too difficult to handle.
Which brings me to my final, provocative word about Hal, that to the best of my knowledge goes against everything that has ever been said or written about him. That Hal, in the universe created for us by Kubrick and Clarke, and (for all its disappointments) so irresistibly maintained by Hyams, was arguably the most intelligent and responsible entity in the entire history of the planet Earth.
And, in the end, we are still left with the hope that whatever essence may have existed in Hal might yet have continued an existence, undetectable by us, in communion with the spirit of Dave.
My admiration for 2001, and jesting at 2010's expense, might have been seen as ruling me out as a fan of 2010, but I have done what I promised at the start of this review: I have justified my high opinion of a film that seemed to give few others much satisfaction. I cannot resist the great special effects, exciting story and generally intelligent treatment of original scenes. More than that, the final acts of Hal have something inspiring about them even if, as others have pointed out, much of the 2010 scenario is ludicrous. 2010 is a film I can watch and enjoy repeatedly. If I was ever to meet Peter Hyams, my first reaction would be to congratulate him and thank him for directing one of my favourite movies. Inside, though, I would probably still be thinking "oh, what a film it could have been!"
I have taken you all this way through the tale of 2010 without once mentioning the collaboration that director Peter Hyams enjoyed with Arthur C. Clarke. This was documented at length in the book- with- a- difference that accompanied the film: "The Odyssey File". See my page 2001 Through Other Eyes for information about this and other books related to the Odyssey saga.
All text: Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 by Underman