 It's time to talk about 2010 The Odyssey 2 as Arthur C. Clarke called it and the year we make contact as the movie called it the book was published in 1982 That's what 14 years after the movie 1968 the movie came out in 1985 17 years later in those ensuing years a Decade and a half There was nothing as far as the the Odyssey verse goes on it or at least most people think there wasn't You see there was this this happened this giant comic book 1976 the one of the weirdest comic books ever published I Have a lot to say about this book I'm not gonna try to cover it in this series though I originally had planned to but there's there's gonna be so much I've got so much to say it's gonna be such a project I'm gonna make it part of my odd comic series and cover it sometime in the future And it wasn't just this this was only the springboard For a series There was a monthly 2001 series If you can believe it The weirdest comics ever published and I will talk about them, but then in 1985 Out of the blue came this movie called 2010 the year we make contact The the book had been published a few years before but I wasn't aware of the book I was reading. I was an avid science fiction reader, but I don't remember Seeing or hearing about the book. There was no real chatter about it. Honestly. It's a it's a forgettable book As I said in my introduction video, it's the the unnecessary sequel Nobody was asking for it. Nobody was expecting it Why exactly Clark wrote it? I I don't know. I suspect it's just because he had a neat idea about Something he wanted to do with Jupiter so he shoe-gorned it into the Odyssey verse. I Really think that's all it was. He just had he just wanted to do this neat thing with Jupiter back in those days Of course, there was no internet and cable TV wasn't yet in this mode where it was doing previews of And documentaries about upcoming movies when a movie came out The average person learned about it maybe the week or the week before that a movie showed up in theaters because commercials will start showing up on television and you would start seeing previews when you saw other movies and that's how 2010 the movie appeared it was just there boom We didn't know anything about it. I Saw it with my family. We all went to see it because as I said in the previous video 2001 Was a Seminole event if you want to call it in in my family I had seen it when I was three with my mother my father had seen it We had the soundtrack music In our home and in our lives playing all the time. We were all familiar with it all familiar with the characters So this movie came along and we went to see it and We had no idea what was gonna happen. No clue The events of the movie have entered popular culture to a certain extent I mean the the lines what's gonna happen something wonderful and then Jupiter exploding and turning into another star, but while we were watching the movie. We had no clue what was gonna happen the movie also for people like us served the purpose of of bringing back These characters especially how 9,000 and Dave Bowman for those of us who had seen it all these years ago and it was a part of our lives and We kind of missed it and we didn't we didn't realize that we missed it then seeing how And David Bowman on screen again was nice. It was just nice. I remember as we were leaving the movie my mother said I'm glad I saw that it made me feel good about how that made me feel good about how 9,000 see he was a part of our Personal culture part of our family So it had that effect it's It's not a great movie in a lot of ways it's not even a particularly good movie Time magazine gave it a thumbs down and called it an amiable footnote of a movie, which is About as accurate as a two-word description Of a film or a book can be amiable footnote it has an amazing cast Roy Scheider Helen Mirren John Lithgow Bob Balaban Elia Baskin and they all do a fine job It's not none of them have the greatest performances of their lives, but they You can tell that they weren't getting particularly great direction either they're basically just Walking on the set hitting their marks and reciting their lines Peter Huyms who directed the film he Also wrote the screenplay and was the producer. He had directed Outland of Shortly before that But since 2010 I'm hard-pressed to name Anything that he's done other than That bad fake karate guy. What's what's his name? I can't remember. I think time cop. I think he directed time cop. I Have a certain sympathy for Peter Huyms. He did a He did an okay job the movie is watchable you have to consider the position that he was in I mean 2001 a space odyssey was one of the greatest movies ever made period and then you have a Mediocre yet perfectly competent director Who has this Dumped on his lap to create a sequel to the greatest science fiction movie ever made it's impossible He was in an impossible situation and yet he produced a movie That didn't piss people off It wasn't destructive to the original it didn't dismantle the original It has an enjoyable cast it has a few moments in it that are actually pretty good and even a couple of lines that have entered Pop culture lexicon. I mean mystery science theater Uses that phrase something wonderful all the time The most important choice that Huyms made when he made the film was that he made He made his own movie just a straight-up Adventure drama he made no attempt at all to emulate Kubrick or to try to make another Kubrick film Which is a very smart choice and you have to admit that it's the smartest thing He could have done that would have been a complete disaster if you want to see an example of what happens when somebody tries To do Kubrick watch AI by Spielberg It's a terrible terrible movie and the reason it's so terrible is because You can see that Spielberg is trying to make a Kubrick movie and not just making his own movie You can see it and it's It's sad Huyms avoided that and I think he should be Commended for that that being said the movie suffers from too much exposition There's scene after scene after scene of people just talking and talking and talking and it's all unnecessary I think the movie could be better I think it could be much improved with just a little bit of editing mostly the removal of unnecessary scenes and I think I'm gonna do it. I think I'll do that myself And when it's done, I'll upload it somewhere. There is one scene in particular with the John Lithgow and Ilya Baskin Traversing from the Leonov to the derelict Discovery, it's a very well-made scene. It's very tense and very entertaining Both of the characters are panicking and breathing very heavy. You can hear them breathing Into their helmets and there's no musical soundtrack Now that I think about it, that's a Kubrick trick right there is the best scene of the movie Maybe Huyms should have emulated Kubrick No, he shouldn't have no, it was the right thing to do the movie is also a very clear demonstration of how science-fiction Culture and in the eyes of popular culture had changed During the 17 years the less than a generation From the time of the first movie to the second the everything in the first movie looks very 1950s retro Science-fiction fantasy Everything is very very austere very smooth Everything is spotless. It's very fantastical the Leonov in 2010 looks like the Nostromo Because one of the other things that happened During the 1970s was Star Wars and Star Wars all by itself completely changed what people expected From the look and the feel of science-fiction movies and you can see that when you go from 2001 to 2010 another experience you have when you watch 2010 is How bad the special effects are they're really bad As forgettable as the movie might be I think it's actually better than the book the book is If you're at all interested in 2001, I Recommend that you see the movie at least I don't necessarily recommend that you read the book if you've seen the movie It's the story of the book. It's there's almost nothing in the book. That's That's not in the movie the thing about Being a fan of something like 2001 or a fan of anything really when the sequels come along Even if they're truly awful and even if they're truly hateful and even if they're disrespectful and destructive Of the original which which this isn't You have the choice of just ignoring them. You have a choice of not reading them or not watching them and even if you do You you have the choice of Just disregarding them the the fact that that this sequel was written by Arthur C. Clarke Is really the only thing that gives it any real weight Clarke starts off the book with a forward in which he explains that this that the Universe in this book is different from the universe in the original book for one thing he had to make changes To accommodate the differences between the original book and in the first movie namely that The Odyssey was stranded in orbit around Jupiter not Saturn the monolith at Jupiter was in orbit around EO not standing on Iapetus And that's only the beginning he basically explains that this is not so much a sequel as it is New ideas for a new universe based on the original which just muddies things more also it's not simply the Russians and The United States they're in that are in a race to get to To EO to explore the monolith the Chinese have launched a craft and the Chinese get there first they stop on Europa They actually land on Europa For the purpose of refueling they have a ship that uses water as fuel that cracks Hydrogen and oxygen from water and uses that as fuel. That's how life is discovered on Europa The Leonov receives a ridiculously lengthy audio message from the the one survivor of the Chinese ship Which he records as he's dying that Their ship was consumed By a gigantic slime mold of some sort which was attracted to the lights of the ship But they they didn't figure that out until it was too late Anyway, that's how the book introduces the notion of life on Europa When Dave Bowman in the book when Dave Bowman First returns to human space He is in his new form the star child off somewhere in limbo or whatever And he's basically called back to earth by he feels the touch of the minds of the creators of Those who built the model is he actually feels their presence and he feels them sending him back To our solar system in the movie he emerges from the monolith in a burst of in like an explosion and One of the Russian cosmonauts is killed In that burst that doesn't happen in the book No, none of the cosmonauts die while exploring the monolith in here, but he doesn't go straight to earth He the first thing he does is he explores Jupiter. He descends down in the clouds of Jupiter And as he's going through the various layers headed down toward the center of Jupiter. He discovers vast fields of living creatures like Gigantic jellyfish and all sorts of Mindless amorphous creatures swimming through the various Fluid like layers down in the dense Areas below the clouds on Jupiter. There's trillions of life forms. They're everywhere And then he explores Europa where the monoliths have detected The beginnings of sentient life. That's that's what the monoliths were concerned with. He goes down there and he finds Fields of living creatures around these thermal vents on the seafloor just like on the bottoms of the oceans on earth and In one of these vent communities and Clark doesn't describe them in detail. There are creatures primitive creatures that have primitive minds and just the very beginnings of glimmers of sentience and That's what the monoliths want to preserve So Bowman goes back to earth and when he arrives at earth the scene from the end of the first book happens There's a nuclear missile sent at him. He explodes it so Clark has rewritten the final scene of the original book. He's retroactively changed the continuity Retroactive continuity is what it's called retcon. He retconned it. He flies around invisible on earth. He Visits his mother the scene is in the movie. It's actually a neat little scene But it's one of those examples where there's too much talking way too much Exposition he flies back out to the Leonov. He contacts. Hey wood Floyd like you see in the movie The monoliths do what they do with Jupiter. It all happens just like it does in the movie After it's all over David Bowman and Hal 9000 Hal is now a Super being like David Bowman is And Dave Bowman laments the loss of all the life on Jupiter He points out that the monoliths were willing to sacrifice all of those trillions of lives on Jupiter Just to give This one little community of possibly sentient life forms Under the Sea of Europa a chance to survive Because they couldn't the way things were going the these vents The these seafloor vents were temporary and they tended to explode and it made David Bowman wonder why the monoliths did it that way being what they are Wouldn't there be a million different ways they could have done it? It also brings up the notion that the monoliths are not simply Locating sentient life forms and giving them a boost there. They're rearranging entire solar systems To some larger goal or plan Who knows as far as the the writing of the book goes I Don't think it's particularly well written. It's not a great example of Clark's work There are chapters and chapters and chapters that could be just entirely dropped in which Clark is trying to To give the the crew of the Leonov more character and their their various social interactions are Very clumsy More than clumsy. I think they're just sad and there's really badly written Clark is not good at writing people I mentioned before how I think Clark Doesn't understand human behavior At the end of this book the the people of earth look up and they see a new star in the sky a new sun and they lay down their weapons and the war's end and They realize that they're not alone in the universe and they look forward to meeting their new Their new brothers Which is insanely naive I mean, can you imagine if If jupiter blew up and became a second son if that happened today The republicans would blame gay marriage and abortion And the christian extremists would say okay. It's time to just kill all the gays Everybody all over the world with any kind of extreme Point of view Would see it as a signal from god or Allah or whoever to just kill everybody that they're upset with You know, that's what would happen all this these ideas about to brotherly love It's it's nonsense It's just complete nonsense. I think it's a Really naive and Clark did this kind of thing over and over I pointed out when I talked about uh 2001 that the only women in the movie and in the book were space shuttle stewardesses and space station receptionists they were non-existent and part of the just part of the scenery The captain of the leon of was played by helen miran in the movie. She's obviously a woman But she's a two-dimensional character. She she does nothing important. She's just set dressing really And helen miran is as wonderful as she is. There's nothing for her to do Really in the movie And when I get to the next book That's going to get worse That particular aspect and I'll tell you about it next time The word odyssey doesn't really apply to this book Not in the sense that the original does the book ends with an afterward epilogue 20,001 In the year 2001 These new creatures on europa Are starting to reach the surface. They're starting to live on the surface. They're starting to notice the sky for the first time They're starting to notice that there are Lights traveling between the other moons of jupiter or it's called lucifer after it ignites And they're beginning to wonder are those Uh people like us out there. That's about it. Again, as I said when this started the movie is enjoyable Although unimportant the book I think is entirely unimportant But meanwhile look for part five where I talk about the book 20 61 Which is destructive to the original And it's not going to be a happy experience See them You can support 30 second sci-fi and my other projects by becoming a patron There's a link in the description below and visit the 30 second sci-fi tumblr That's my headquarters. In addition to my videos. I publish links and updates there every day