UNDERRATED - '2010: The Year We Make Contact' (1984) Review

In 1982, author Arthur C. Clarke released "2010: Odyssey Two", a sequel to his hit novel and film, "2001: A Space Odyssey". The book was a massive hit, so it was no surprise that MGM wanted to make a sequel to their original film. Stanley Kubrick had no interest in making a sequel, so the responsibilities fell to Peter Hyams to helm the picture.

Therefore, in 1984, MGM released "2010: The Year We Make Contact" and produced what is one of the most underrated films ever made. Now, of course it's understandable why the movie is underrated. It is a sequel to the best science fiction film ever made.

Before I go on, I should go ahead and admit that the movie is not as good as "2001", but that was already going to be a tall order. Instead of trying to duplicate what Kubrick did, Hyams gives us a more straightforward film with less ambiguity than featured in Kubrick's movie. Also, and this is a bit surprising considering that this movie came out 16 years later, some of the special effects just don't hold up as much as those found in Kubrick's classic.

Beyond that, though, this is a pretty stellar adaptation of Clarke's novel with most of the changes occurring due to budget concerns and consideration for the movie's runtime. In the film, Dr. Heywood Floyd, played by the always great Roy Scheider, is still feeling guilty after the failure of the Discovery mission to Jupiter nine years prior. America is preparing to send another ship to Jupiter to find out what happened, but the ship won't be completed for another two years.

Floyd is visited by his Soviets counterpart, Dimitri Moisevitch (Dana Elcar), who tells him that they have a ship that is almost ready to head that way. Unfortunately, the Soviets don't have the knowledge about the Discovery's systems or how to bring HAL 9000 back online safely. When Floyd states that America wouldn't mind the Soviets going up there and failing, Moisevitch points out that Discovery's orbit around Jupiter's moon Io is decaying for unexplained reasons.

Therefore, Floyd, engineer Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), and HAL creator R. Chandra (Bob Balaban) hop onboard the Leonov that is commanded by Captain Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren). On the way there, they make some pretty big discoveries about the Monolith, the status of Discovery, and why HAL went insane in the first place. On top of all that, relations between America and the Soviet Union are not great, causing undue tension onboard the ship.

The movie works primarily because of its performers. Scheider is fantastic as Floyd while Lithgow also adds more weight to the proceedings. Also, Mirren is fantastic in the film that is also her American film acting debut.

One standout performance for me, though, is Balaban as the somewhat emotionless Chandra. This is a character that could have come off as very bland, but Balaban gives Chandra the necessary emotions that he needs, particularly when he is interacting with HAL, the AI computer system that he created and a character that Chandra obviously relates to more than the human characters.

Speaking of HAL, it was great that they also got Douglas Rain back to provide the voice for the formerly psychotic computer. Rain always knows how to add just that little bit of possible menace to the voice, especially when one of the problems our characters might face is HAL breaking down yet again. In addition to Rain's return, Keir Dullea returns as Dave Bowman... or at least as whatever Dave Bowman turned into at the end of the original film.

I mentioned earlier that some of the special effects have aged rather poorly. However, that doesn't speak for the majority of them. You mostly run into the problems with the effects when they show the Leonov flying through space. There is that transparent box around the ship from when they put the model of the ship onto the space background and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

When they're at Jupiter, though, and you get to see the Discovery again, almost all of the effects work pretty well. Speaking of the Discovery, Kubrick had all of the original sets destroyed after he made "2001" so every set onboard the ship had to be recreated using old photos from the original movie. The set designers did an impeccable job of recreating the sets and it's like they were never destroyed in the first place.

For me, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is my favorite sci-fi film of all time. So, it means something when I say that while "2010" is not a perfect sequel, it is ultimately one hell of an adaptation of Clarke's book and a stellar follow-up to Kubrick's classic movie!