A (Not-So-Sober) Review of 2010 (The Film)

I was watching the 1984 film 2010 the other night. By the way, whatever happened to Roy Scheider?

Never mind. I guess he died in February of 2008. Way to start off, Deirdre.

Anyway, I was watching 2010 the other night and getting into it a bit, especially with Helen Mirren's screen time. The premise was interesting (well, the premise of both 2001 and 2010), but then about half way through, it got kind of silly. What follows is the story of one woman's struggle to piece together the events that transpired in the film, through a slight haze of Cabernet Sauvignon.

2010 starts off 9 years after 2001, (as you might imagine) and the Americans are considering building a new ship to go check out what happened to the first ship, Discovery One and it's crew. As it turns out the Soviets already have a ship rarin' to go, and they too want to check out Discovery, as well as the giant monolith, but don't know how to fix HAL. A deal is eventually worked out and the Americans are allowed to hitch a ride with the Soviets's aboard the Alexei Leonov, killing two birds with one giant ship.


Shortly after they reach Discovery One and switch everything back on, they head over to the monolith and decide to send the cosmonaut Max over to check it out. This is where things begin to get a little funky. The end of 2001 had it's own funkiness -- which was bordering on psychedelia, but I was willing to except it in the name of cinema and Stanley Kubrik. But here, in 2010, the film starts to lose gravity *snicker* at about the time that Max get's blown off the monolith when a bizarre energy bolt erupts forth, heading for Earth like a comet who is seriously late for dinner.

Apparently, the energy bolt contains the soul of David Bowman, the first film's main character, the one who originally shuts down HAL and then goes missing ("I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that"). I guess the reason he pops on over to Earth is so he can say good-bye to his wife -- 9 FREAKING YEARS LATER. What the fuck took him 9 years to get around to that!?

In all fairness, it wasn't quite her husband. He was now part of something else -- a god-like consciousness, and has been integrated into whatever the source of the monolith is, if not the monolith itself.

Ok, so then we cut to this old woman in a hospital and a floating silver brush. I mean, why not, right? Floating brushes always make millions at the box office.

It's at this point that I have temporarily lost all sense of what the Hell is going on. But I could also have been a bit drunk.

We then return to the two ships which are still hanging in orbit around Jupiter. War is breaking out between the Soviet Union and the United States back on Earth. This causes a conflict between the Russian flight crew and the American flight crew. They decide to obey a set of orders sent to them by their governments and then head to their respective ships (and I assume play backgammon for the rest of their time there).

I still haven't figured out how this whole Soviet / U.S. conflict really figures into the plot. I mean, sure. Fine. Ok. War and stuff. I get it. But it had like no real influence on any of the other story. Perhaps in the book it was more relevant - but not so much in the film.

But just wait! Something is going to happen -- something wonderful!

Apparently that some kind of wonderful is that the planet Jupiter is going to go through a crazy metamorphosis, spewing forth millions of monoliths at an exponential rate. Our heroes (or whatever they are) have decided to disregard their orders and begin to work with each other to get the fuck out of Dodge before the Jupiter anomaly destroys them all.

Using a technique in which Discovery One piggy-backs on top of the Alexei Leonov, The Discovery's launch rockets are fired giving them a much needed boost, before the old vessel is altogether jettisoned when it's fuel runs out. Meanwhile, HAL is privately contacted by the voice of David Bowman, and instructed to send a message back to Earth, repeating it as many times as possible.

Both crews, now aboard the Leonov, manage to make it just far enough away before gravity (or something) pulls Jupiter into itself, triggering nuclear fusion, thus transforming the once giant planet into a star.

Yes. A star.

A message comes across one of their monitors - the very message HAL was isntructed to send to Earth. It reads:

"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE."

At this point, everyone is smiling like they just saw a unicorn. I smile too because I don't want to look like I have no idea what in Christ's name is going on. Shortly after, we cut to Earth and are shown a montage of images in which there are two suns visible in the Terran sky. Roy Schedier's voice is heard as he narrates the end of the film, explaining how the children of the future will never know a sky without 2 suns, and how they'll never know a night of darkness, and Blah. Blah. Blah.

More shots of 2 suns in the sky. Weeee!

The film ends with a single monolith standing upright on the moon (which is now a planet, I guess) Europa, signifying the point of creation -- the beginning of sentient life.

I sat there for a few moments, trying to absorb everything that was just forcibly crunched into the last 15 minutes, and then thought to myself: Jesus, I'd be Hella pissed if there were two suns in the sky. One is already too much. Now there's TWO!? Screw that!

I'd fly my ass toward the new sun (wearing a very large, obnoxious pair of Holly Golightly sunglasses) and land on Europa just to instigate a catastrophe that would hopefully plunge the whole entire solar system into darkness.

And then I'd have a Coke.

Cue "Sprach Zarathustra"


*Note: For those of you who think this is all blasphemy and that I "didn't get it" -- I did. *wink*