The Drinker Recommends... 2010: The Year We Make Contact

Not a lot of people know this today, but they actually made a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it's actually really good. So join me as I review the forgotten classic, 2010.

[TheCriticalDrinker]

Want to help support my work, so I can keep drinking and destroying bad movies?

[BerserkerCade]

“Open the podbay doors HAL”
HAL: “Nah, it’ll be fine”

[HrtLikeDavid]

When an AI from the 60s has a better character arc than any of the Sequel Trilogy characters...

[mallninja]

2010 is a lot like Aliens. It's a great sequel that takes its source material to a somewhat different genre instead of just being a "more of the same but bigger" kind of cash grab.

[josephmanno]

I still think HAL's redemption one of the greatest and most underrated scenes in all film history. Once they told him the truth, HAL showed himself to be a hero.

He never even batted an electronic eyelash before agreeing to help them. He was a bad-ass.

[chaptermasterpedrokantor]

It probably helped no small part that Arthur C. Clarke wrote the story as well. As for 2010's explanation as to why HAL went nuts, that's actually in the original 2001 novel that Clarke wrote and which Kubrick left out of his movie. Where Floyd tells Bowman that their version of HAL back home also went cuckoo under the same conflicting orders. Also, kudos for this movie to give us what would ultimately become one of the coolest ship designs in scifi, the Babylon 5 Omega Destroyer.

[davidkhan]

It’s crazy how realistic everything looks, more than anything made today.

[OzBaxter]

In a world where Roy Schneider was the leading actor for some of history's greatest movies, and John Lithgow actually looks young...

[darianrashid]

HAL, after acting as the booster rocket: "That's all I've got. Go away, now."

[soundpro]

2001 is Cinematic art. 2010 is cinematic story telling.

[ezelkir]

Always loved this movie. Watched it countless times as a kid. No one I know has even heard about it. Thank you for reviewing it.

[jade]

I think that Hal being more human than the astronauts is one of the points of the first movie. The humans act like robots, and Hal acts like a human.

[KerrinDingle]

The original book of 2001 just straight out tells you there was an ancient race of once physical beings who grew to so much power that they could travel the universe. They determined that in all their journies there was nothing in all of reailty as valuable as sentience. They deliberately built and programmed the Obelixes to watch over worlds they determined might produce intelligent life - and to nudge and/or protect such possibilities when they determined it was useful. These ancients just wanted intelligence to exist in all its myraid forms and sought to help to make this happen. The Obelixes are exactly what Clarke meant when he famously spoke about high technology being indistinguishable from magic.

[Tommykey]

To be honest, as a teenager in the early 80s when 2010 came out, it seemed inconceivable that the Soviet Union would be gone in less than 10 years.

[kvngn]

2010 was criminally underrated. Love that movie.

[deltacommando]

Oh look at that, a film that improves on the original instead of degrading or deconstructing it, who could have imagined!?

[chapsc]

It’s just refreshing to have a starship called Discovery that Michael Burnham isn’t constantly crying whilst commanding if I’m honest

[somewhat.random]

I'm one of those odd people who read the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" before I even knew it was already a movie. The ideas in the book, were just....too big, too complicated, too much for a movie to explain. Kubrick made a great movie, but there's only so much you can convey in an image without words. It's one of those few movies that's BETTER if you've read the book already, because you can fill in that missing info and aren't left with the mystery (the StarChild is explained in the book for instance, but not the movie). I'd recommend to anyone: read the book by Arthur C Clarke, it's one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written, and well worth the time.

[_robustus_]

Oh my god, it’s full of stars. Roy Scheider, Hellen Mirren, John Lithgow….

[vonVile]

I watch 2010 every time it's on cable.

Fun Fact: They had to remake all the models and sets, because they were all destroyed after 2001's filming.