HAL Joins the Hive Mind

In the previous review, the Russian ship was fleeing Jupiter. It turns out this was just in the nick of time because, as they are flying away, the planet begins to implode. The crew watches Jupiter grow smaller until it explodes, sending shockwaves through the ship. When the crew is able to look back at Jupiter again, they see that it has turned into a mini sun. I have no idea how a bunch of monoliths eating the gases making up the planet is supposed to create a sun, and neither the book nor the movie explains this either, but believability aside, Jupiter is gone.

It’s hard to decide whether or not making this creative choice was a bad call. While the aliens have been explained to a certain degree—they are no longer semi-divine beings but an energy-based hive mind—the monoliths themselves remain a soft magic system.

The book states that the aliens can indwell these monoliths and basically fly them around like spacecraft, but the movie stays away from this idea, preferring to keep things as vague as possible, which is smart. As long as the aliens’ technology is advanced beyond humanity’s comprehension, then there’s no real way to pick apart how they turned the gas planet into a star. But, that being said, I suspect the audiences at the time would’ve wanted some answers.

This is a very dramatic change to something very familiar. I can see this choice becoming a jump-the-shark moment for the moviegoer, killing the suspension of disbelief. So, technically, there’s nothing wrong with this, but I can still see people not liking the choice.

As for HAL, the robot is caught up in the explosion, but before he’s destroyed, Bowman begins speaking to HAL through whatever serves as HAL’s mind. He tells HAL to send a message. The message basically says three things: everybody get along, the whole solar system is Man’s, but stay away from Europa. Europa is off limits.

Throughout the movie, there is a subplot about the Russians and the Americans being on the brink of war. This movie was made at the height of the Cold War, so this makes sense. Bowman’s message combined with the sight of a second sun in the sky is enough to deescalate the tensions between the two countries; once HAL delivers this message. The planet explodes, and the Discovery is destroyed, but HAL merges with the alien hive mind. So, HAL and Bowman set their differences aside. Really, they didn’t have a choice since they were forcibly combined inside some extraterrestrial cloud.

I’ve heard it suggested that this final scene between HAL and Bowman is a sort of allegory for transhumanism. Had the franchise stuck with its original premise of the space baby being some form of enlightenment, I would agree, but this isn’t the case.

In my review of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I talked about how I suspected a disagreement between Kubrick and Clarke over what the aliens actually were. Kubrick seemed to have this idea about the aliens being a sort of energy-based hive mind, whereas Clarke treated the aliens as both benevolent and malevolent beings.

Had they worn physical forms, they would’ve been more akin to the Greek pantheon, having some gods that were good and some gods that were bad. In their energy-based state, they merged into some extraterrestrial version of the Übermensch, and Bowman became the human equivalent of that. But 2010 retcons what the space baby meant, or rather, the writers of the film leaned into Kubrick’s interpretation, not Clarke’s.

What’s interesting is that in Clarke’s sequel novel, he defaults to Kubrick’s interpretation as well. I would say I misread Clarke’s meaning in his first book, but his ideas are so on the nose that I find this impossible. Therefore, since both Clarke and the filmmakers transitioned the space baby from an allegory for enlightenment to one of many manifestations of Bowman as he exists in the hive mind, I have to disagree with the idea that this is some analogy for Man and machine becoming one. Both HAL and Bowman exist as part of a larger entity; both have basically been absorbed by a galactic ameba, so I don’t think such an allegory holds.

After the explosion, Floyd gives a speech, then the movie cuts to another monolith standing on Europa, implying that the process kicked off during 2001 is about to begin again. With that, the movie ends.

This isn’t my favorite film, but it’s by no means bad. And I’ll go a step further: Critical acclaim aside, popularity aside, I’d say this movie is more solid than the first film by a long shot. Most, save one, of the relevant characters have complete story arcs.

The first, second, and third acts are clearly defined. Floyd is actually interesting, not just a cardboard cutout used to introduce the next set of events. Any complaints I have with 2010 are with the book, not the film. Clarke does several things that annoy me. First, he calls the new sun Lucifer. I guess he thought that was funny. The movie wasn’t stupid enough to do this.

Second, Floyd and his wife get divorced during the mission, which is a plot thread that distracts from the story and doesn’t go anywhere—because it can’t. There isn’t time.

Thirdly, he adds some odd romantic tension between Floyd and one of the Russian crewmembers that doesn’t go anywhere—again, because it can’t since there’s no time, and she doesn’t even speak his language! The book is by far the weakest part of the story, which is seldom the case.

As for the movie, though, it’s a solid piece. It focuses on what it needs to, omits unnecessary details, ties everything into the politics of the day without being too heavy-handed, and has a solid cast. There are three minor issues that I see with it. The first is no resolution to Curnow’s character arc; the second is the fact that Jupiter turning into a sun could be perceived as a jump-the-shark moment to some audience members, although there’s no narrative problem with the creative decision, and there are some tonal issues with Bowman, but even here, the reason the tones clash isn’t because of the movie itself.

The clash comes from people’s perception of Bowman in the prior film. In the first movie, Bowman has reached enlightenment. In the second, the audience doesn’t know if he’s good or bad. It turns out he’s a friend by the end, so there’s no continuity error, but Bowman’s introduction would be jarring if someone had seen the first film. And that’s really why I think many people don’t remember this movie. There’s no audience for it.

Those who might like it probably wouldn’t be much of a fan of Kubrick, so there’s a good chance they would not have seen 2001, and, therefore, would’ve become very confused once Bowman was introduced, and those who are fans of Kubrick’s are going to hate this film because it’s nothing like Kubrick. It attempts to explain almost everything, which by itself gives the movie a completely different vibe. There’s very little mystery to what’s happening. But, on the whole, I like this movie and would recommend it.