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Title: 2010: The Year We Make Contact
Release Year: 1984
Directed By: Peter Hyams
Screenplay By: Peter Hyams, from the novel by Arthur C. Clarke
Recommended By: God, I loved 2001, how was I supposed to NOT watch it’s sequel.
Star Rating: 4
Review
Set nine years after the events of 2001 this movie is a much more straightforward though still rewarding sci fi story.
A Russian mission to see what happened to The Discovery leads Doctor Haywood Floyd (Roy Scheider!) to a cosmic encounter with the being that was once astronaut Dave Bowman, and the birth of a new sun just past Jupiter.
There’s also a weird subplot where we learn that HAL’s psychosis was caused by a programming directive that broke his circuits, which is a bummer, because I loved the idea that HAL went nuts because contact with The Monolith gave him sentience and he couldn’t handle it. (I’m always going to prefer an existential explanation to a practical one, it’s simply my nature)
This movie is really interesting. If it were completely divorced from the masterpiece it’s sequelizing it would probably be remembered as a classic. Scheider is absolutely fantastic, the idea of a the gift of a new sun is a really cool, “we are not alone” detail.
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