2010: The Year We Make Contact

2010: The Year We Make Contact is truly more accessible than 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Much of the accessibility of 2010 comes from writer/director Peter Hyams’ script that spends a lot of time telling the audience things through exposition and voiceovers; whereas 2001 spends its time showing the audience visually and letting the audience work out the meaning of what is being shown. Where 2001 is high art, 2010 is pop art.

The line “My God, it’s full of stars" is spoken by David Bowman as 2010 opens. Interestingly enough, this line is often attributed to the movie 2001, but it’s not spoken in that film – it is in the book though.

The sets and ship seem to take heavy inspiration from Ridley Scott’s Alien. The overall visuals of 2010 are a step down from 2001. I found that the visuals of 2001 (which was released in 1968) actually hold up pretty well more than 50 years later. The visual craftsmanship of 2010 does not come anywhere near what Stanley Kubrick put on screen with 2001. This is not to say that 2010 is not visually appealing, it’s just not up to the same bar that was set by Kubrick with 2001.

Dr. Chandra in 2010 is what we, in 2024, call a Prompt Engineer. 1984’s vision of 2010 technology is hilarious – especially the low resolution screens and big glowing buttons.

This movie was enjoyable and different than the first. This is still hard sci-fi, but it’s clearly aimed squarely at the masses and it achieves that. It is thrilling adventure with a very memorable ending and a redemption story.

Watched on Blu-ray.