2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

After a few days of random movie choices, I returned back to my endeavour to see more classic movies. A long time ago, nearly at the beginning of the year, we watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. I decided I should watch the sequel before I ran out of days. 2010: The Year We Made Contact isn't directed by Kubrick like the first film was, instead it was directed by Peter Hyams. Most of the movies Hyams is known for directing are action movies. My main complaint with 2001 was its very slow pacing and lack of anything happening. Hopefully this new directer can inject some swiftness into the story.


The story picks up roughly 9 years after the events of the first film. We find out that due to the utter failure of the Discovery mission to Jupiter, Dr. Heywood Floyd, the mission head, played by Roy Scheider, was used as a scapegoat and lost his position with the government. Now, years later, both the Russians and the Americans are in a race to make a new ship to get back to the Discovery space ship and the giant second monolith. It turns out the Russians will be finished and already orbiting around Io before the Americans are even finished their new ship. However, it would take them far too long to decode the data and records saved in the memory banks of the HAL 9000 computer. Because of that, they'll need to invite a small crew of Americans, including Dr. Heywood Floyd, on their mission, despite the rapidly deteriorating political tensions.

Roy Scheider is the new actor to take up the role of Dr. Heywood Floyd

The first film was made in the 60s, and while the effects held up very well, there's no doubting that the outer space shots look better this time around. The funny 60s aesthetic common to sci-fi film's prediction of what the future will look like has been replaced with the more reasonable look of the 80s aesthetic. While 2010 may not look as artistic and clean, I found it seemed more believable for me personally. I also really liked the extremely detailed practical models used for the spaceships. The Russian ship in particular has a large rotating section in the middle that is very reminiscent of more modern imaginings of space ships too.

The space effects were really good

But the graphics being good aren't really something I can say this movie has over the original, since they are both good in their own way. What I could say 2010 has over 2001 is that it has a much better pacing and story in my opinion. In the first film, there are lengthy sections where simple actions take an excruciatingly long time. Also it seemed like not much ever happened. Thankfully in 2010 director Peter Hyams has been able to keep the story moving and keep it interesting. The added tension of the political atmosphere back on Earth was great because it kept the Russian/American crew at odds with each other, even though they really need to work together.

2010 has a much better, and far less trippy story than 2001

Another thing I really liked about this movie was the collection of good actors populating most of roles of the film. Roy Scheider made a good lead actor. Most will recognize him from Jaws, but I also knew him from his lengthy time spent as the lead character in a TV show called SeaQuest. The leader of the Russian crew is none other than Oscar winner Helen Mirren. Making up some of the other crew members are John Lithgow, Elya Baskin, and Bob Balaban. While you may not recognize a few of their names, I think most would recognize their faces from somewhere.

When I put this film on tonight, I really wasn't looking forward to it. Thankfully it turned out to be much better than I thought it would be. 2001 really wasn't my kind of movie, but 2010 manages to improve on all the things I didn't like in the original, while still staying true to the story and bring back several call-backs to the original film, like still having the original actor who played Dave in the first movie, and also the original sets from the first film. They even have that ever constant breathing while in the space suits, but it instead is used as a tension builder because it's often that one of the guys doing the space walk is breathing very quickly showing his fear. Overall I felt 2010 was much better than the original, and I could easily recommend it for viewing. Of course, having seen the first movie will definitely inform on what the heck is going on in some scenes in this one. It's a hard thing to watch the first film just to watch this one, but that's going to be your call. I already did the hard work!