The movie, anyway. I’m pretty sure physics still work the way I was taught. First off, let’s get the obvious out of the way. We barely even send people into space anymore, much less Roy Scheider single-handedly ending all tense relations between the USSR and us with one courageous mission to jupiter. Hell, we don’t even have a USSR or Roy Scheider anymore.
I’m having a hard time accepting that this is the guy that killed jaws AND captained the Seaquest DSV
So, yeah. There’s that. Also it was the worst sequel I’ve ever seen. Period. 2001 was a beautiful space ballet with incredibly tense moments and real-time space maneuvering and legit physics. It made up technology that was “futuristic” when it was made in 1968.
This is the first reason i don’t trust A.I.
2010 pretty much didn’t even try. First off, the movie was made in 1984, so there’s no excuse for imagining advanced technology, but there is straight up a scene where Roy Scheider is sittin on the beach with a damn suitcase-sized portable computer.
Hahaha “portable”
That picture is pretty much exactly what he was using. THIS COMPUTER ALREADY EXISTED IN 1984. In a future where a damn sentient supercomputer flies astronauts in hibernation on a half-billion mile journey to fucking Jupiter, this is what they have as everyday use electronics. Did personal use electronics grind to a halt? These people would lose their shit if you showed them an iPod. While on a giant spaceship heading to Jupiter. I mean really.
Pictured: a more believeable future
Not to mention the whole movie was just “hey let’s try to tone down this whole ‘cold war’ thing, man” and it didn’t even try to disguise it. The mission to find out what happened to the crew and salvage a homicidal computer took a back seat to this shit.
SPOILER ALERT
The thing that pissed me off the most, though, was 2010’s blatant disregard for physics. There is seriously a point where one of the dudes radios mission control to find out what kind of torque the old ship can handle because the want to pull the russian ship out of orbit with it. For those of you unfamiliar with the science of weightlessness, the ships would have a combined weight of, well, nothing. You could push a damn space station with a can of AquaNet
Just ask Whitesnake
Not to mention they talk about jettisoning the old ship once they get out of the danger zone and it uses up its fuel and use the russian ship’s fuel for the trip home. For no reason. It doesn’t take extra fuel to tow something that weighs in at a whopping ZERO POUNDS CUZ YOU ARE IN SPACE. It’s especially painful when the first movie was as accurate as possible with the physics of space.
SCIENCE
This must have happened at some point in the 9 years between storylines
There you have it folks. Pick what you would rather have. A suspenseful, somewhat tedious, accurate, beautiful space ballet; or a movie that moves at a normal pace but is really more about the US and the USSR coming together on the brink of war.
“My God, it’s full of stars!”
EDITOR’S NOTE: UPDATE 2014. I am an idiot and didn’t take into account the relationship between mass and force even in a weightless vacuum. In an article where I belittle people’s bad understanding of science, I revealed my own. I await your judgement.
Dr. T-Rex's Bullshit Cannon 
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PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT
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i understand you argument sir, but for the argument sake when you are traveling that far in space and something happens i think at that point your not going eh but they are from the USSR i’m thinking they are going our fellow earthlings are in trouble let us help them out of good faith. i think the cold war just goes out the window at the point
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that’s what i was saying. the movie was all like “oh but they’re russians” and i’m all like, “you have a homicidal computer and all the laws of physics are backward”
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