Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Peter Hyam's adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's novel "2010: Odyssey Two" is a disaster. The film takes on a completely different tone than what is in the novel. Clarke's novel brilliantly follows up where "2001: A Space Odyssey" left off. Many of the themes such as humankind's relationship to the universe were preserved. The novel tells of an emerging intelligent species on Europa and how their evolution and chances for survival were aided by an unknown extraterrestrial intelligence. The humans who were present during this happening were of no consequence and had not former human David Bowman warned them, the humans in the novel would have been destroyed. Now, for the human part of the story, Clarke emphasizes the comraderie of scientists, American and Soviet (Clarke could not have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union) and how any political differences are meaningless in outer space. Clarke deliberately avoids any mention of conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Guess what? As it turns out, he was right to do so. "2010: The Year We Make Contact" on the other hand, takes the opposite approach. Hyams could not resist the temptation that since he had Americans and Soviets together, they would be in conflict. In doing so, the film almost completely loses the real objective of going to Jupiter to begin with. The film also loses the character that was in the novel. In the novel, Dr. Chandra, the creator of HAL who originates from India is one of the most interesting characters. In the film, he is another white American who shows no interesting characteristics in his personality. Why make him totally American? Obviously, Mr Hyams wanted to further the whole "us vs. them" theme that resonated throughout the film. Doctor Katherine Rudenko is a character sorely missing in the film and the characters of Curnow and Kirbuk are very much watered down as they are too busy being tense from the all the political turmoil going on. We have plenty of better films that show tensions between people of different nationalities or cultures. In 2010, it was a distraction from what the story really is about. In the film, David Bowman keeps mentioning "something wonderful" is going to happen. This is a gross and not necessarily accurate oversimplification of what was about to occur. Bowman, first of all, was not human anymore and was almost devoid of emotion. So, it's doubtful he would refer to any event as "something wonderful". The detonation of Jupiter, while enabling a species on Europa to thrive, also would have destroyed much of the other life on this moon. Also, the novel speaks of life forms on the planet Jupiter itself. Thus, in the novel, the destruction of Jupiter involved much sacrifice, whomever made the decision to convert Jupiter into a star, had to weigh the consequences of destroying a myriad of life versus dooming an intelligent species to an eventual death beneath the ice of the moon Europa. Again, the film almost trivializes this event. "2010: The Year We Make Contact" is equally disrespectful of the preceeding film "2001: A Space Odyssey" by the late Stanley Kubrick. While it was a [good] idea for Hyams not to try to duplicate Kubrick's style, he could have at least given some attempt to preserve the feeling of realism that 2001 is so famous for. For example, what is with the shape of the Leonov? (That's the Soviet ship.) It makes no sense at all to have the "windmill" rotate around the axis of the ship. I think Hyams was perhaps trying to mimic the space station in 2001 but he forgot that the only parts of the space station that would have the centripedal force that would substitute for gravity would be the ends of the rotating piece. This makes sense in a toroid shaped space station where the entire wheel would have simulated gravity. In the Leonov, however, there would be only two small sections where one could stand up. The entire rest of the rotating section would appear to be a tall, narrow wall going upwards. The rest of the ship doesn't rotate sor presumably, there would be no gravity at all there. Yet the film shows people walking all around the Leonov except in a few instances where Hyams obviously figured it would be cool to show people or objects floating. One of these instances is particularly awful where Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) walks over to a part of the ship, holds a pen in his hand, lets go and the pen remains suspended in air. Floyd obviously encountered an unexplainable phenomenon where he and Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) are obviously affected by gravity but the pen is not. Hyams also breaks the laws of physics by having the Discovery's engines blast its way forward. This is okay for Star Wars and such, but not for anything from Arthur C. Clarke. Finally, Hyams appended the final message of David Bowman to the people of Earth. In the novel, the message was "All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there." Hyams had to add "Use them together, use them in peace." This changes the meaning of everything because it shifts focus back to the human race. 2010 is not about the human race, at least from the extraterrestrial intelligence's point of view. It's about the Europans. The human race has already had their help, if they destroy themselves, it's their failure, the ET's aren't going to save them. Floyd's final statement really kills me with his reference to the ET's as "the landlord". This is extremely inappropriate in that the ET's have no claim on us. While they are obviously intellectually superior, they are not our bosses and nothing from Clarke or Kubrick ever even hinted that this was so.