![]() It became a cultural phenomenon, of its time and beyond, billed as “the ultimate trip,” with no sarcasm about how it could be enhanced by psychedelics.Ģ010 seems dated in its politics and its technology. Maybe it was merely a series of futuristic images set to classical music. It was about the banality of human interactions, our relationship to machines and the universe, what can be known and what must be unknowable, the limits of technology, and the possibilities of faith. source: MGMĢ001 was about birth and rebirth through discovery and death. The questions of 2001 that were implicit in 2010 were rendered explicit, in a needless closing voiceover that is an attempt, final and futile, to relate the two movies. The trouble is that there are many answers to the best questions, or, alternatively, there is no single response that can bring to closure definitively those discussions about morality and mortality that are ongoing yet urgent. Its makers sought to answer questions, as we all do in life. The catastrophe of 2010 also is not unique. The Two Jakes (1990), for example, is a mess that picks up where Chinatown (1974) left off with gumshoe Jake Gittes ( Jack Nicholson), of the slashed nose and anti-Semitic faux father. What Did We Know in 2010 That We Didn’t in 2001?Ģ010 is not the only sequel to debase its source. Samuel Johnson once remarked that nobody but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Almost all movies are created by people who wish to sell tickets, and many of those motion pictures achieve as much commercially as they do critically. In considering the disappointment of 2010, it would be tempting to blame the profit motive of the studio. The failure of the producers to appreciate the challenge is itself baffling, since what they have wrought is not incompetent but is nonetheless a failure. A puzzle that is solved is no longer interesting. Since 2001 was open to interpretation, it can be viewed again and again and again. Strangelove (1964), or A Clockwork Orange (1971) – none of his works are amenable to such treatment.Ģ010 suffers from two profound problems: it spoils the subtlety of the precursor and it also has not stood the test of time. Nobody would attempt a sequel to Kubrick’s Lolita (1962), Dr. These are all at least good and arguably very good, but none of them was a sequel. After, he was responsible for Timecop (1994), a fine flick starring Jean Claude Van Damme in the title role pursuing an unethical politician manipulating history. Before 2010, he wrote and directed Capricorn One (1977), about a Mars landing hoax and Outland (1981), a Sean Connery Western set on a mining outpost of a Jupiter moon. ![]() source: MGMĭirector Hyams, credited as a producer as well, was no slouch in science fiction. ![]() They have not learned the lesson that any mission to figure out what went wrong with an earlier mission is itself doomed. The captain for the mixed crew will be the Russian Tanya Kirbuk ( Helen Mirren). The Americans have the protocols to operate the HAL 9000 computer but have no vehicle ready to launch, while the Russians have the vessel but not the codes. In 2010, Heywood Floyd (now played by Roy Scheider) has been exiled to university administration, with a side job repairing satellite dishes, when he is approached by a Russian counterpart who proposes they jointly send up astronauts to determine what happened aboard the Discovery with Dr. ![]() Was Anyone Wondering What Happened to Heywood Floyd? For his control over craft and cast, Kubrick reportedly made 2001 in a chaotic manner without a clear plan at the outset, putting it on the vastness of widescreen to uncomprehending jeers. A half century from its appearance in the revolutionary year of 1968, a fan with the ability to make it happen, director Christopher Nolan, has brought it back to the big screen, in an “unrestored” version running the road show circuit. 5 Movie Franchises Whose Sequels Are Better Than the OriginalĢ001 has been acknowledged as among the surpassing instantiations of film art from the moment it premiered.
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