2010 The Year We Make Contact

• Title:  2010 The Year We Make Contact
• Director:  Peter Hyams
• Date:  1984
• Studio:  MGM
• Genre:  SF
• Actors:  Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Keir Dullea, Dana Elcar
• Film Format:  Color, Widescreen
• DVD Format:  Dual-sided Standard/Widescreen
• DVD Formats:  R1, NTSC

"My god, it's full of  Stars!"
"What's going to happen? / Something Wonderful."

The common problem with older SF movies is often their anachronistic nature.  It's 2010 now  -- I don't see a mission to Mars, much less to Jupiter.  It's easier to ignore out-of-date fashions in a drama, than someone using a computer that looks like it came from Radio Shack 30 years ago.  However, if  the SF film is a space-fantasy like Star Wars or resembling a drama more than anything else, like 2010, sometimes little inconsistencies can be overlooked.

2010 The Year We Make Contact is a sequel to 2001 -- but with a completely different look and feel.  It's not weird, hard-to-follow, visually stunning but character poor like 2001.  The plot is straight forward, in 1984, when I originally saw it, this film had drama and tension, and seemed incredibly realistic in a futuristic way.

Watching the film again in 2010 -- things pop up that seem strange (like Schneider using a Word Processor with a lift-up 4-inch screen instead of a computer, laptop, or even an iPad.)  And the cold war plot seems really, really strange and out of place.  After all, the Soviet Union broke up, when, in the 90s?  But Russia, will always be Russia -- any country that managed to survive even a little bit under the Czars...  But it was weird to see the Soviet flag on the Russian spaceship and on the Russian uniform.  I mean, I don't think I've even seen a picture of  it in over 10 years.

However, about halfway through the film, the Cold War turns hot -- messing up the join space mission considerably.  And the answer to the survival of  both crews turns out to be cooperation.  Also, the end of  the film is fantastic and awe-inspiring!  It makes the film worth watching, even with all the technical "problems"  (more along the lines of  "oh, come on -- tech doesn't work that way").  And HAL still seems chilling, and strangely advanced, compared to any other computer in the film, or what I'm typing on right now.

Scheider and Lithgow are both wonderful, as usual.  Watch for them to team-up again (previously) in 1979's "All that Jazz".  Scheider's a magnetic actor -- simply because he never seems to be acting.  And Lithgow can do just about anything -- he melts into his characters extremely well.  Helen Mirren, doing a passable Russian accent, manages to be less annoying than usual (she must have been pretty young here).  Keir Dullea of  2001, makes a re-appearance.  Dana Elcar plays a Russian diplomat of some sort, his exact title isn't spelled out.  But his Russian accent is terrible.

The plot of 2010 is considerably less complex than 2001 (which no matter how many times you see it always leaves one scratching their head, thinking, "Huh?").  Nine years after the mission of  the Discovery went south rather spectacularly -- the man who designed the mission (Scheider), the computer engineer who designed HAL, and an engineer (John Lithgow), hitch a ride on a Russian ship to Jupiter to investigate the monolith, figure out what went wrong on Discovery, fix HAL, and pretty much find some answers.  And they do...  ultimately 2010 is satisfying as a film because it explains the loose ends left in 2001 and has it's own plot of cooperation overcoming Cold War oppression and stupidity, that works.  Some of  the other issues in the film can be overlooked.  And it also looks pretty good, so that's helpful.  (EG the special effects don't look particularly dated).

Recommendation:  See it, after seeing 2001 and boning up on your 1980s culture and history.
Rating:  3.5 out of 5 stars
Next Film:  42nd Street