While planet Earth poises on the brink of nuclear self-destruction, a team of Russian and American scientists aboard the Leonov hurtles to a rendezvous with the still-orbiting Discovery spacecraft and its sole known survivor, the homicidal computer HAL.
Practical Effects
Zero-G wire work that still looks better than most CGI today.
Acting
Helen Mirren's Russian commander steals every scene she's in.
Score
David Shire's brassy score trying SO hard to fill Kubrick's silence.
Director
Peter Hyams
Roy Scheider
Dr. Heywood Floyd
John Lithgow
Dr. Walter Curnow
Helen Mirren
Tanya Kirbuk
Bob Balaban
Dr. R. Chandra
Keir Dullea
Dr. David Bowman
Douglas Rain
HAL 9000 (voice)
Madolyn Smith Osborne
Caroline Floyd
Savely Kramarov
Dr. Vladimir Rudenko
Taliesin Jaffe
Christopher Floyd
James McEachin
Victor Milson
Mary Jo Deschanel
Betty Fernandez
Elya Baskin
Maxim Brailovsky
Dana Elcar
Dimitri Moisevitch
Oleg Rudnik
Dr. Vasili Orlov
Natasha Shneider
Irina Yakunina
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Arthur C. Clarke wrote the novel sequel simultaneously but the film and book have different endings—Clarke preferred his version where the monolith warns humanity, not transforms Jupiter.
Released during actual Cold War tensions, the film's hopeful Soviet-American collaboration played like pure fantasy—Reagan reportedly loved it.
US
