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2010 The Year We Made Contact (1984)

After leaving many unanswered queries in the '2001 Space Odyssey ', this film tries to pick up the pieces.
The spaceship Discovery is due to crash into Planet Jupiter, hence there is urgency to retrieve the hidden data in HAL9000 to know what actually happened in the 2001 ill-fated space mission. Dr Delloyd (Roy Scheider), the disgraced former head of mission, in recruited in Soviet-US joint mission to Jupiter despite their country's differences and the ongoing world calamities as time was of essence.The trip takes ground literally and finally reached their destination. Enroute, they discover that there may be evidence of chlorophyll on Jupiter's moon Europa! After some scary feats, the US engineer who invented HAL manages to bring the computer to live. All the while, their probe into the mysterious monolith drew blank. The monolith later gets sucked into Jupiter and created a nuclear fusion!
Meanwhile, Bowman, the presumed dead astronaut makes contact with people on Earth (wife and mother via TV) and crew (via computer).
Knowing that a explosion is eminent, the crew made a dash home with the help of HAL who was sacrificed in the endeavor. Before the explosion, a message flashes on all monitors -
ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE.
Europa is shown as a tropical paradise at the end of the movie with 2 suns and a monolith sitting pretty in thick of things waiting for things to happen there. Probably, evolution or another Adam and Eve story!
Unlike its distant cousin, the Kubrik classic, which has attained unachievable cult status, this sequel is a pale comparison to its predecessor. 
A sage told long ago that the parrot and cuckoo bird are caged due to fault of their mouth (voice). The cranes however are not caged, silence achieves all purpose. This may be appropriate in the case of 2001 when the absence of unnecessary commentary made our minds wonder away....
Otherwise, it just becomes another action space movie with no physical action but merely black screen, monitors and pyrotechnic display! 
Hole in Jupiter?
Watching this movie (and 2001) reminded me of a sermon by a renowned man of God of the Shaiviate sect. He decreed that Hindus should have only one representation of God in their altar, i.e. Shivalingam. The original Shivalingam fell from the sky and had protected mankind all this while. (I wonder how much of a Space Odyssey fan was he?) To him the other representations were just hearsay and myths.  On the other hand, a follower of ISKCON professed that there is only God, Krishna, period.
To a mere mortal like me, this is all too overwhelming. If I were to dwell too much into this never-ending 'my God is better than yours' saga, I would see myself doing my chores in the comfort of a psychiatric ward with my cerebrospinal fluids and glial cells immersed in major tranquillizers!

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