2010 - Odyssey Two

 
To HAL And Back

2010 - Odyssey Two
(aka 2010 - The Year We Make Contact)
USA 1984 Directed by Peter Hyams
MGM  Blu Ray Zone B

2010 - Odyssey Two is the movie adaptation based on Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of the same name... being a sequel to both the first full length novel (originally a short story) and, of course, Stanley Kubrick’s amazing masterpiece of the cinema, 2001 - A Space Odyssey (reviewed by me here). I remember seeing this when it finally came to the UK in cinemas in 1985 and, even though it’s very different in atmosphere to Kubrick’s milestone, I remember enjoying it a lot.

This one follows character Dr. Heywood Floyd who, with two other American specialists... Dr. Chandra (played here by Bob Balaban) who invented the HAL 9000 computer (voiced again by Douglas Rain) and Dr. Walter Curnow (played by John Lithgow)... accompanies a Russian expedition to the original Discovery, still stranded in orbit above Jupiter by the monolith but with that orbit decaying, which kind of forces the collaboration between the USA and USSR. So the film has a couple of objectives... find out why the HAL 9000 computer malfunctioned and killed all those people; find out what the heck happened to David Bowman (played once again here by Kier Dullea); find out what is going on with the monolith... all the while keeping up good relations with the Russians (led by a young Helen Mirren) who are particularly icy due to the downward spiral with relations between their two respective governments back on Earth.

Floyd is played here by Roy Scheider, who was played by William Sylvester in the original movie and I’m not sure why Sylvester didn’t reprise his role here. Perhaps because of the 16 year time difference between the first film and the sequel but, even so, Roy Scheider is actually 10 years younger than Sylvester in real life... playing a version of Floyd who is obviously supposed to be ten years older than the character as depicted in Kubrick’s odyssey. However, the casting was certainly a good choice because Scheider does wonders with the role, managing to deliver an electrifying performance where not a lot of physical action is required... just talk.

The director makes great use of a variety of shots to give us some great staging and although there is some camera movement, I noticed very early on that the film is primarily made from cutting around static shots but Hyams still manages to get a lot of movement out of it... from scenes which might be very boringly handled by other directors. The beautifully shot opening sequence, for example, where a Russian scientist goes to tell Floyd about the decaying orbit of the Discovery and proposing a joint venture is absolutely electrifying as presented here, when it really is just a bit of, admittedly well written, dialogue between two men talking science and politics.

Similarly, when there are more visually dynamic scenes in the movie such as a spacewalk, Hyams concentrates on the way the characters interact by showing the nervous American being helped through the spacewalk by the Russian, which is followed by a scene where the Russian panics onboard the Discovery. So the approach is reversed by having something visually more interesting pulled back to an emotional sequence of character interactions, which also helps build up a quick relationship with this particular Russian so that, later on in the story, when this Russian character is ‘lost’, it means more to the audience. Again, when the whole set is shaking as the crew of the Russian craft are attempting a possibly perilous way of getting to their destination, Hyams makes it about characters again as one of the young female Russians gets into Scheider’s bed/cabin area with him out of fear... again concentrating on emotion in what is, like the movie before it, a film about a very sterile set of events.

Added to this, the film has some very nice, almost casually introduced shot set ups which, like that opening sequence of the conversation, add the interest to the story where it isn’t necessarily in the main text. For instance, a meeting scene around a table in one shot has one guy with his back to us in silhouette making up a big, vertically blocked area in the centre of the screen with the opposite side of the table on either side of him... Floyd on the left of screen and two Russians on the right... which also serves as a way to keep the ‘them vs us’ international divide as a constant reminder in a visual fashion, to help maintain the underlying sense of tension within the narrative.

Actually, the idea of using static shots works a treat with one of the film’s less scientifically grounded scenes. There’s a wonderful moment where HAL9000 is delivering a message to Floyd and after a while, when HAL is unable to identify the other person relaying the messages, Floyd is asked by HAL to turn his head and look behind him. It’s a great moment as he sees Kier Dullea as David Bowman manifested before him. He follows him to the pod bay room and has a conversation with him but, as he talks to him, Bowman shifts through multiple appearances taken from his final scenes in 2001 - A Space Odyssey. All the transformations are revealed, however, via Scheider’s face reacting to something off screen and then we have a static cut back to Bowman where he’s changed appearance again. If this had been simply tracked with a camera and some computer effects work (which weren’t really available at that scale when this movie was made anyway), then it would have looked incredibly unconvincing. Here, because Hyams has been using a lot of cuts from one shot to another rather than move the camera around, he manages to sell the transformations of this sequence with the aid of the lead actor’s reactions. Well... mostly. There’s a corny bit where ‘the star child’ from the end of the first movie is manifested and... that moment has dated a bit, I think and just seems a little over the top now. But it worked at the time and it’s kinda charming now when you look back on it.

Also, the musical score is quite sparse... and also quite rare still, from what I remember. I have an old Japanese import CD of the score which I bought back in the 1980s that had somehow made its way into Tower Records but I don’t think it’s ever been properly commercially released in either the US or the UK. The score is basically a synth score by David Shire and, it’s used very sparsely and it’s not bad but I think this was ultimately the wrong kind of scoring to have for this film (the first score by another composer had already been rejected). So it’s kind of good that it’s not used that often.

The film opens with a recap following David Bowman’s final transmitted words... “My God... it’s full of stars.” which is a static reminder of the events of 2001 and this is scored with Ligeti music which, as far as I’m concerned, makes any visual accompaniment sound interesting. After this, there is no music until a good ten or more minutes into the film, as David Shire’s score kicks in when Floyd tells his wife that he’s going up into space for a few years. After that, as I say, it’s very sparsely spotted with occasional hits of Shire’s score plus one more (I think) very brief use of Ligeti and a quick nod to the famous Thus Spake Zarathustra in the film’s closing scenes.

I remember loving the ending of this when it was released but looking back on it now, although it’s still a great, if different, kind of film to 2001, I think the ending of this could now maybe have used a little more gravitas and less ‘wonder’ in its end game. It does feel a bit anticlimactic to me now but, then again, I’m much more older and jaded by these things than I used to be so... yeah, that might not be true for a vast majority of the audience.

Asides from the odd ‘things of note’ then, there’s not much more I have to add to this one. Those things to note, though, would be the appearance of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick as illustrations on an issue of time magazine a nurse is holding, Clarke’s cameo as ‘man on bench’ in front of the White House and, just maybe, the interesting fact that Kubrick destroyed all the models and blueprints of the spaceships from the first film to stop anyone ever being tempted to make a sequel (I think, ultimately, I’m with him in terms of not making a sequel but not in destroying models) and so the Discovery had to be rebuilt from looking at the original movie... which must have been a pain.

At the end of the day, if you liked the first movie and don’t mind the less clinical atmosphere of the sequel, 2010 - Odyssey Two is probably something you might quite like and, while in no way comparable to Kubrick’s masterpiece, it’s actually quite a good movie which holds the interest of the subject matter in a very different way to the previous one. Definitely one I will revisit again some day. If you, like me, live in the UK, you won’t be able to get a Blu Ray of this from the likes of Amazon. If you want one, go to either Fopp or HMV where the Blu Ray can be purchased as an HMV chain exclusive. Like a few other films which should be made more widely available in this country.