2010: A Space Epilogue:

[MCP]

I was very intrigued by this edit. Whilst I agree with subjectzero in that 2010 is not in the same league as Kubrick's 2001, I've always enjoyed it as a solid follow up. There's no doubt that with Peter Hyams at the helm, it's a more conventional movie. Hyams is a more than competent director, having made such fare as Outland, Capricorn One, not to mention the extremely entertaining Van Damme vehicles, Timecop and Sudden Death. Of course, he's no Kubrick though, and there's no doubt that for as well made as 2010 is, it lacks the majesty and style of its ground breaking predecessor and in some ways gets bogged down by trying to over explain everything, particularly with Roy Scheider's voice over. So, the prospect of an edit which attempts to strip some of this down and make it more like 2001 in feel, certainly spiked my interest. On the whole, subjectzero succeeds in the attempts to bring this more in line with 2001. There are large amounts of dialogue removed, particularly during some of the space walk scenes, and thankfully all of Scheider's voice over is gone. To be honest, I didn't miss any of these scenes, so kudos to the work done on this. The only criticism I would make, is that during some space walk scenes where some of the crew are in trouble, or at least in precarious positions, their breathing remains the same (i.e. very calm and controlled), which does lessen the impact and excitement somewhat. It's not a deal breaker, but I feel more work could have been done on this in terms of audio editing. The "no sound in space" idea is on the whole well executed, and the additional/alternate music cues work nicely and certainly hark back to Kubrick's style from 2001. However, I do question the execution of tiny sections of the choral music from 2001 which literally pop up for what can be 2 or 3 seconds and will then just cut out. To me this feels jarring and is the sole reason why I have downmarked the audio editing. It happens on 5 occasions and it did impact the overall enjoyment of the edit for me. Some may say I'm being fussy, and perhaps I am, but it's a real shame as otherwise all the musical choices and audio editing work well. There's nothing wrong with the choral music being used, it's just the execution unfortunately. Otherwise, I fully enjoyed this edit. The extra scenes used from other sci-fi movies such as Interstellar, AD Astra etc, are expertly implemented, and considering the very small file size of the MP4 the picture quality looks impressive. Personally I would have prefered a larger file size so that it could have rivalled the blu-ray quality of the film, but I was nevertheless impressed. Naturally with the film being cut down to just over 90 minutes, it does feel a little on the slim side for such a space epic, but full kudos to subjectzero for managing to make a streamlined version that feels more in the world of 2001 and doesn't feel the need to over explain everything to the viewer. Recommended.

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