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krpalmerA while back, I picked up a bargain-bin DVD of the movie 2010. As it sat around for all the time since then, the thought began building up in me that I ought to watch the movie before the calendar rolled over to the actual year, and I've opened it at last. This was with the thought, though, that the "sequel to 2001" doesn't seem remembered much these days, dismissed when it is with the casual comment that unlike the original, it's a "conventional" movie. It may be that the reason I bought the movie in the first place (beyond that it was cheap) was just that I was at a young and impressionable age when it came out, as with many other movies of the 1980s my first impressions of it arriving "second-hand"... and yet, I'm not sure how many other movies from the 1980s I would pick up.
A part of that "second-hand" experience, though, was reading an "official movie magazine" (published by the people of "Starlog" magazine) which included interviews with the cast... and most of them kept commenting about how they had been impressed by 2001 the first time they saw it, but after that it just became "very dull." Keir Dullea was the only person who seemed more favourable, and he, of course, was in it. That seems somehow unfortunate now, leading to a thought or two about "missing the point"... although I suppose a counter-argument is to ask who knows the "real" point, anyway.
On the other hand, I do find myself wondering if 2001 "needed explanations at last": Arthur C. Clarke's novel seemed to set those out and years before, and I've heard that Stanley Kubrick pulled narration that would have echoed the novel from the movie. It might be said, though, that with humanity less banal than in 2001, Dave Bowman seems less the needed "next step" than just an assistant to the monolith.
If science fiction ends up being a bit about the time it was created in, then 2010, with the United States and the Soviet Union confronting each other in Central America even as Americans ride a Soviet spaceship out to Jupiter, is an example of that. That somehow seems to split the difference between a lot of SF from that time, in which either "peaceful coexistence" set in or the free world had to stand more on its guard than ever. On a lighter note, the displays in the movie are obviously cathode ray tubes, displaying very typical computer graphics from the time, rough and with big capital letters. Too, in an early scene where Heywood Floyd has a portable computer set up on the beach (reminding me just a little of how Roy Scheider was also in Jaws), I can imagine the scene having been meant to be "futuristic," but nowadays the portable seems absurdly large.
I had been interested in seeing how the special effects held up, as I've heard that 2010 used something different from the bluescreens of the period (if not the same as the meticulous and expensive hand-done work of 2001), so as to look more "realistic": indeed, things didn't seem obviously "composited," but perhaps many of the models looked just that. I also suppose that the music seemed droning and somehow "New Age," and less interesting than 2001's, which may remind some of a summing up. I don't seem to begrudge the experience, though.
A part of that "second-hand" experience, though, was reading an "official movie magazine" (published by the people of "Starlog" magazine) which included interviews with the cast... and most of them kept commenting about how they had been impressed by 2001 the first time they saw it, but after that it just became "very dull." Keir Dullea was the only person who seemed more favourable, and he, of course, was in it. That seems somehow unfortunate now, leading to a thought or two about "missing the point"... although I suppose a counter-argument is to ask who knows the "real" point, anyway.
On the other hand, I do find myself wondering if 2001 "needed explanations at last": Arthur C. Clarke's novel seemed to set those out and years before, and I've heard that Stanley Kubrick pulled narration that would have echoed the novel from the movie. It might be said, though, that with humanity less banal than in 2001, Dave Bowman seems less the needed "next step" than just an assistant to the monolith.
If science fiction ends up being a bit about the time it was created in, then 2010, with the United States and the Soviet Union confronting each other in Central America even as Americans ride a Soviet spaceship out to Jupiter, is an example of that. That somehow seems to split the difference between a lot of SF from that time, in which either "peaceful coexistence" set in or the free world had to stand more on its guard than ever. On a lighter note, the displays in the movie are obviously cathode ray tubes, displaying very typical computer graphics from the time, rough and with big capital letters. Too, in an early scene where Heywood Floyd has a portable computer set up on the beach (reminding me just a little of how Roy Scheider was also in Jaws), I can imagine the scene having been meant to be "futuristic," but nowadays the portable seems absurdly large.
I had been interested in seeing how the special effects held up, as I've heard that 2010 used something different from the bluescreens of the period (if not the same as the meticulous and expensive hand-done work of 2001), so as to look more "realistic": indeed, things didn't seem obviously "composited," but perhaps many of the models looked just that. I also suppose that the music seemed droning and somehow "New Age," and less interesting than 2001's, which may remind some of a summing up. I don't seem to begrudge the experience, though.