2010

Nine years after 2001. The Discovery mission failed, the ship is abandoned in orbit around Jupiter and nobody knows why HAL 9000 behaved as it did. A joint American and Soviet crew sets out to find the answer while the two countries move to the brink of war on Earth. Peter Hyams wrote and directed, from Arthur C. Clarke's 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two. Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, John Lithgow and Bob Balaban star. Hyams consulted Kubrick before starting. In his own account: if it met with his approval, I would do the film; and if it didn't, I wouldn't. Kubrick's answer was don't be afraid, just go do your own movie. Filming began in February 1984 and ran seventy-one days, mostly on MGM's Culver City soundstages with location work in Washington and New Mexico. On a 28 million dollar budget it took 40.4 million domestically and was the seventeenth highest-grossing release of 1984. It opened at number two, behind Beverly Hills Cop. The reviews were mixed. Ebert gave three stars, calling it a good movie that could not match the original's poetry, and the general line was to praise the effects while finding it too literal in explaining the mysteries of 2001. It won the 1985 Hugo Award and received five Oscar nominations. Who it is for: viewers curious about the answers 2001 left open and anyone who likes classically told science fiction. Who it is not for: anyone who values the ambiguity of 2001. This film exists precisely to close it.