MovieChat Forums > 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) Discussion > So why did they hire russian comics to p...

So why did they hire russian comics to play astronauts?

posted 7 years ago by vitaly-37136
5 replies | jump to latest

seriously what were they thinking with that. Kramarov was the worst one. He is mostly famous playing alcoholics and thugs in Soviet films. He doesn't even realize that he is in a serious film. the whole time he was looking into the camera as if he wanted to throw a funny one-liner))) And Helen Mirren, who couldn't pronounce simple russian words))) doesn't she have russian parents?

Also, nobody bothered to pick up dead astronauts? you know, the ones killed by HEL while in cryotubes. They are not even mentioned. And why does everyone treat HaL as real person? it's a computer))) And why is HaL a positive character now? Didn't he want to kill everyone in the first movie?

anyway, i was really disappointed. but i guess, you can never out do the great Cubrik

[–] bastasch8647 7 years ago

HAL, not "Hel".

And I don't know why no time was given to the disposal of the HAL-killed astronauts.

[–] ErgonomicSpliff 7 years ago

It's a film made by an American production company with an American director during one of the most tense periods during the Cold War. The guys you mentioned being in the film, apart from Yakov Smirnov, were just about all Hollywood had to work with at the time, as far as Russian talent goes. Helen Mirren's accent was a bit overcooked, yes.

The dead scientists in the Discovery were specifically mentioned by Dr. Heywood Floyd as having been ejected from the Discovery by Dave Bowman, prior to his leaving the vessel. I guess you must have missed that part.

[–] vitaly-37136 7 years ago

i guess i missed that part. but still, i was extremely disappointed with this movie. it just ricked of 80's crap. plus this "russian talent" really pissed me off. if they did not have serious russian actors, they should have just hired americans instead. these clowns they got have no place in a serious movie)))

also this whole thing with HAL. so he stopped being evil? why? and why is everyone saying " we can't leave HAL, he'll die" or something like that. he is a computer!!!! not a person.

[–] ErgonomicSpliff 7 years ago

also this whole thing with HAL. so he stopped being evil?

HAL was not evil. He suffered from a form of paranoia caused by conflicting instructions given to him by people with differing levels of authority over the mission he was sent to accomplish. Chandra suspected what was happening but couldn't confirm it until he went into HAL's memory and deleted everything after all the trouble started. He found that HAL was instructed by the United States intelligence community with White House approval to keep the true mission objectives from all of the human scientists aboard Discovery. This presented HAL with a fundamental contradiction of his programming, which was for full and accurate disclosure of information to his human counterparts. The resulting conflict caused HAL to become paranoid and to kill the crew when they began to suspect HAL was hiding something, which he was almost successful in doing.

and why is everyone saying " we can't leave HAL, he'll die"

The only one saying anything to that effect is Dr. Chandra. "Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference." No one else really gave a crap whether or not HAL survived the mission.

[–] JosephQCat (706) 6 months ago

Though brief in the film I thought Dana Elcar's character came off fairly well.