Following the death of Arthur C. Clarke, I decided to go back and watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was an easy sell, since it allowed me to use an HDDVD, helping me to justify owning them. Last night I watched 2010: The Year We Made Contact for the first time in a very long time. Like Roger Ebert, I find it a movie that is very hard to embrace, particularly, as Ebert points out, for its very 1980’s sensibilities. It is also very disappointing in comparison to 2001 or the novelization of 2010: Odyssey Two. I think that the movie misses the majesty, wonder, and possibility of the novel, it misses the importance of the fact that the 2010 story is a second odyssey (which is dropped from the title in a way that shows just how much the film misses the heart of the book). 2001 is a story about human evolution, change, transcendence and transformation from something lower to something higher. What makes 2010 a worthy sequel in print is that it is an Odyssey for absolution. We want answers for the mysteries in 2001, the characters responsible for the costs of the transcendence in 2001 need the answers. Both Floyd and Chandra have dealt with their loss and built new lives, but they both know that starting over is not absolution, that’s why they have to go. The Cold War angle in the story is the parallel on the grand scheme, the trip is also the story of human absolution for what we have been. Just as David Bowman and HAL are the micro story to the macro in 2001, so too are Floyd and Chandra for 2010. The film handles these themes clumsily, and the dramatic impact of the end of the film suffers in particular. Also, the excising of the Tsieng landing on Europa and sending a doomed message to the world is a very poor choice in my view. Rather than the dramatic, Alien-like reveal of the space probe on Europa, it would have been much more chilling to just have everyone sit in a room and listen to the message coming over the radio, and cheaper to film too.
However, such restraint is just not very 1980’s. For what it is, I think Ebert is right, it is certainly not a terrible film on its own. For one thing, the actors compensate for a lot of the shortcomings in the film. Roy Scheider is actually fantastic in this movie, which gets lost at times in it’s mediocre plodding. Ebert says the film is more comparable to George Lucas than Stanley Kubrick, but I think there’s a better choice than either. Many of the films shots are clearly owing to Ridley Scott’s Alien. This is not a bad thing at all, and it is hard to avoid noticing that the film is shot very well. Yet, Scott’s aesthetic helps add to the sense of isolation and desperation of being out in space–somehow, Peter Hyams copies the aesthetic without really copying the effect.
Every once and a while there is talk about someone making the other two books into films, and I have usually been of the opinion that any attempt to make a credible go at completing the series ought to include remaking 2010 as well. Remaking a mediocre film with poor box office is not likely to inspire studio investment, but then again, neither would continuing the story. Ultimately, the failing of 2010: The Year We Make Contact is its time period, it is an attempt to make a blockbuster out of a series kicked off by an art film. If anyone was to make anything out of the final two or even final three space odysseys, they need to once again be art films.
Who could do such a thing? To copy Kubrick would be insane. However, to tell a story with a basic plot through indirect, visual storytelling is something that many filmmakers and screenwriters have become very good at. I could see Drew Goddard or Brian K. Vaughan penning a brilliant screen adaptation of the Clarke novels, particularly based on their narrative experiences on projects like Lost and Cloverfield. After seeing Children of Men, I think Alfonso Cuaron could carry out a breathless vision of the novels, get great performances out of his actors, and do it on a budget. If I was a studio head, I’d be pretty excited about a project of this sort. There’s a way to say “we’re doing a different movie than Kubrick’s” that is not so independent of the spirit of the stories that it suffers, which is exactly the case with Peter Hyams’ film.
