Floyd Becomes Functional

Last time, I discussed how this movie was destined to fail, despite not being all that bad. The plot is well structured. There are few, if any, plot holes. The only issue is the dramatic difference in tone and pacing between the first film and the sequel, but if one was not a fan of the first film, they would consider this an improvement. However, I believe fans of 2001 were bound to reject this sequel, and that really is a shame.

The movie begins with Floyd Heywood. In the previous film, Floyd was basically a useless character the audience was forced to follow simply to introduce the monolith on the moon. He was the brief second act’s protagonist, and in my opinion, following him for so long was one of the many things that made 2001 a confusing movie. But now, Floyd has been given his own story, and here is where I’ll take a moment to point out something that I think is important.

Floyd is much more interesting because he’s been given a clear character arc, which also serves as one of the movie’s main story questions. He is a disgraced bureaucrat who was treated as the scapegoat for the failed discovery mission. Floyd doesn’t necessarily want redemption, but he does wish to know what happened, and finding the answer would give him some closure. The story question becomes: Will he get his closure? He does and gets an act of redemption as well. The movie does a good job establishing this through a conversation Floyd had with a Russian bureaucrat, and this makes the film easy to follow.

Making a story easy to follow isn’t just a matter of artistic preference. It’s tied to the suspension of disbelief and an audience member’s investment. Audiences have a story sense, which is built by the media they consume over the years. Typically, an audience won’t be thrown off by a prologue. In the first film, the movie opens up by following a character called Moonwatcher, who is a human-like ancestor. This ape-man learns how to use weapons after encountering the monolith. He reclaims a watering hole using his weapon, and at this point, the audience will be asking, “Okay, what’s next?” Will Moonwatcher take over all the watering holes, or will he be killed by another ape-man who copies his use of weaponry? Now, this story question doesn’t get answered, but it’s forgivable because the best way to offset an audience member’s story sense is by signaling or foreshadowing that something else is going to happen. In 2001’s case, this is done by showing space and the planets right before the opening act. Therefore, when Moonwatcher’s story ends abruptly, the audience thinks, “Okay, that was a prologue. Now here’s the real story.” But Kubrick subverts this by introducing a second act where the main character has no discernible traits and is basically a prop being moved around the setting. So, when Floyd’s story ends and Bowman’s begins, the audience’s story sense is thrown off because they’ve just been treated to two prologues. They’re now likely expecting the story’s POV to shift again at any moment, making them less invested in Bowman, who is 2001’s real protagonist. One prologue is fine. Two was confusing, and both prologues wound up turning into the first and second acts of the entire film.

Kubrick may have been a master filmmaker, but I still consider what he did in 2001 a mistake, and thankfully, 2010 doesn’t replicate his error. We’re introduced to Floyd. His desires are well established, and the audience knows exactly what’s going on.

Floyd speaks with the Russian bureaucrat, and the man asks Floyd to join a mission meant to find out more about the large monolith found near Jupiter and the fate of the Discovery One. Floyd agrees, and another man named Chandra is brought on to fix HAL, Discovery’s AI, if possible. This movie takes place during the Cold War, and Floyd, Chandra, and one other scientist named Curnow will be traveling with the Russians, who have a ship ready but little understanding of America’s technology. So, tensions are high. Floyd and the other two scientists are brought to the ship and put into hibernation. Floyd is then woken up early when the Russian crew encounters something unexpected. At first, the captain of the Russian crew wants to discuss the political situation back on Earth, but Floyd quickly shuts this down and convinces the crew to focus on the mission.

They tell him that they’ve found something unexpected on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. They go to investigate the anomaly, but as they are scanning Europa’s surface, something shoots a ball of energy at them. This ball also acts as an EMP, frying the records they’d so far collected of Europa’s surface, and Floyd concludes that this was a warning shot of some kind. The question is from whom.

The obvious guess is that whatever it is has to be connected to the giant monolith, so they continue their mission as planned. There is a neat scene where the Russian ship slingshots around Jupiter to get to the next moon, and during this scene, Floyd comforts a scared Russian girl. Arthur C. Clarke tried to build a sort of romantic tension between Floyd and the Russian girl after Floyd’s wife decides to divorce him during the mission, but mercifully, the movie stayed away from all this, and Floyd comforting the girl remained a simple act of kindness. I preferred this personally because I get tired of seeing every single interaction between the two sexes turned into a romantic subplot. I appreciated that the scene remained a simple act of humanity.

After the slingshot maneuver, the other two scientists are woken up, and the next task becomes repairing the Discovery. Curnow is responsible for this part of the mission. When they reach the now derelict Discovery, he and another Russian crewmember cross from the Russian ship to the ruined vessel using a handheld device that shoots out bursts of gas to propel them.

This scene was very well done. John Lithgow and Elya Baskin do a marvelous job during this sequence. They reach the ship, and it turns out that Discovery is in good enough shape to return to Earth. The next task will be fixing HAL, and I’ll cover what happens then in the next review.