These days 2010 seems soooooooo long ago. When we had a POTUS who could speak in complete sentences, when 1/3 of Twitter accounts were not Russian trolls, and when we still had an operating space shuttle program. But in 1984, 2010 was waaaaaaaay in the future – only 25 years and change, but it seems impossible to think that far ahead now, as fast as things move these days. Who knows what 25 years from now could even be like, but it’s safe to say Mars is likely as good as it gets. Anyhow I digress.
In the 1984 film 2010m, a few Americans reprising past lives and a mix of Soviet and non-Soviet actors playing Russian cosmonauts, sojourn to Jupiter to act out the we-have-to-rendezvous-with-the-ship-we-abandoned-a-decade-ago-because-movie trope. It stands on its own okay, but operates better if you have some understanding of the monolith and the original ship/HAL. It’s not nearly as heady as the original, but still good. Throughout, many of the control panels and vector screens are amazing, definitely indicative of the times; you get a slight glimpse of those designs in these two clips below (the second one I assume is rebuilt based on the original – again, hoping you know the first film).
In this first clip, a never-before-astronaut engineer Dr. Walter Curnow (played by John Lithgow) is about to go for his first spacewalk. The Russians never appear nervous with danger, so Maxim (played by Elya Baskin) gives him the best advice possible:
What I love most about that clip is the way it is cut, so that you never actually see Maxim’s lips moving – it’s readymade for alternative voiceovers.
This second clip requires a long setup for context – floating into the chamber, with the memory banks on one side of the room and the keyboard-monitor setup are opposite. But what a great sequence:
Love the action on those memory modules, and yearn to get a closer look at that clickity-clack keyboard layout – I don’t recognize that specific keyboard.
