Goofs for
2010 (1984) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Numerous differences in the Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), as director Stanley Kubrick deliberately had the models and sets destroyed.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end of the film, Dave asks HAL to point the AE35 antenna towards earth. HAL tells him that this will prevent him from communicating with the Leonov. The external shot which follows shows the AE35 moving, yet it starts off pointing downwards, not towards the Leonov.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the Leonov brakes around the dark side of Jupiter, the cable run used to pull the fireball past the camera is visible. Also, bits of flame can be seen to drop off the fireball as though pulled straight down to the bottom of the frame, when no such thing would happen.
  
  

• Continuity: In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), HAL has flat display screens (note the pod bay interface); they are shown here as CRTs.
  
  
• Continuity: As Chandra is reactivating HAL, he pushes all but eight bricks in. HAL's voice goes out of control, and Chandra spins around to reset it. When he turns back, there are only four bricks left out of their slots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Chandra is reactivating HAL, he types "continue" but the screen displays "tomorrow".
  
  
• Continuity: As Dr. Chandra escapes from Discovery before the emergency burn at the end of the film, Discovery's windows are totally covered in red sulfur dust, though earlier and subsequent scenes show the windows as having been cleared off.
  
  
• Errors in geography: At the beginning of the film, the graphics showing Dr. Floyd's report of the events in 2001 indicate that the TMA-1 monolith was discovered in the Sea of Tranquility. TMA-1 stood for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1 because the monolith was discovered in the crater Tycho. Tycho is several hundred miles southwest of the Sea of Tranquility.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Floyd is talking with Millson outside the White House, his legs are alternately crossed/uncrossed between shots.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Crewmembers walking around under gravity even when the Leonov's centrifuge is not spinning (while docked to the Discovery). Throughout the movie, the application of centrifugal gravity is inconsistently applied.
  
  
• Factual errors: The AE35 high-gain antenna would not be used for short distance ship-to-ship communications, and thus the antenna would not have to be "turned away" from the Leonov since it would have remained pointed at Earth. Short distance communications would be accomplished with other 2-way radios. This was demonstrated in "2001" when Dave retrieved the body of Poole, all the while talking to Hal, without moving the AE35 antenna.
  
  
• Factual errors: It is stated in the movie that the monolith has dimensions 1-4-9. It's width to height ratio is indeed 4 to 9. However, the thickness is far less than one fourth of the width.
  
  
• Factual errors: Tanya counts down (in Russian) toward the separation of the Leonov from the Discovery, she says "dyesiat (10)... dyeviat (9)... vosyem (8)... syem (7)... shest (6)... pyat (5)... tri (3)... dva (2)... adeen (1)"....skipping 'four' (chyetirye). In some English-speaking situations, "four" is sometimes omitted and replaced by an empty pause, because "four" sounds too much like "FIRE", but this does not explain why it would be skipped in Russian, and in any case, there was no pause inserted.
  
  
• Factual errors: Bowman's "My God, it's full of stars" is distorted, presumably because he is rapidly accelerating to near light speed as he falls into the worm hole (the book actually describes it as a "worm hole"). Actually, what an Earth observer would hear (and record) would be your voice rapidly slowing down (Like a cassette player running on dead batteries). Also the carrier wave signal would red shift to lower and lower frequencies forcing you to constantly adjust your receiver.
  
  
• Continuity: When Curnow and Max enter the Discovery for the first time, the walls next to the pod bay doors are bare. Later on, the walls have several signs warning that the pod bay must be vented before the doors can open.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In an HDTV transfer shown on HDNET, numerous traveling mattes and suspension line erasures were plainly visible and many dark fields in space scenes were boiling with compression artifacts.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: If you fail to hear the Russian word for "four" in the countdown spoken by Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren), the reason is that the word was deleted in versions later than the theatrical release and the early VHS versions because of Mirren's mispronunciation of "chih-TEE-reh" as "chee-TYE-ree".
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the Soviet Space Council's Dimitri Moisevitch tells Dr Heywood Floyd "This is very bad for my asthma", Moisevitch in his heavy Russian accent unaccountably pronounces "asthma" in the usual American way, "azma", instead of in the Russian way, "astma".
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end of '2001' when Dave is disconnecting HAL, the video comes on inside HAL with Dr Floyd explaining that only HAL knew about the monolith on the moon. Yet in this film, Dr Floyd (Roy Scheider) himself denies having done that, or even knowing about it.
  
  
• Continuity: Dave Bowman doesn't say "My God, it's full of stars!" in the film version of 2001, but he does say it in the book.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the Leonov's/Discovery's acceleration leaving Jupiter, Chandra was shown as having difficulty holding on due to the force of acceleration. In actuality, neither ship as depicted was capable of that much acceleration, and when linked and only one ship accelerating would be even less. He would have to fight anywhere from .01 to .1 gravity of force, much less than was shown.
  
  
• Factual errors: Max ('Elya Baskim') tells Dr. Curnow ('John Lithgow') that "turok" is Russian for "stupid", but this is incorrect. Turok is actually closer to "idiot".
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The way the camera moves through the Leonov interior sets shows that all of the rooms are interconnected on the same level, which does not correspond to the structure of the Leonov miniature as seen from the outside.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When HAL is relaying Dave's messages to Dr. Floyd, he says that Dr. Curnow is in "Access Way 2". But according to the Discovery's designs (released by Stanley Kubrick) there is no such place.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Bowman refers to "The AE-35 antenna." In 2001, AE-35 designated the toaster-sized part in the antenna assembly that Bowman had to replace, hence the reference to a "spare unit." The book further explains that the function of this unit was to control the orientation of the antenna, i.e. keep it pointed at earth. Bowman, of course, knows all this.
  
  
• Continuity: As Floyd (Roy Scheider) and Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) have their first conversation, Kirbuk is initially standing with her arms behind her back. As the camera angle changes to face her, her arms are crossed in front of her.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): HAL relays Bowman's message to Dr. Floyd that it is dangerous to remain at Jupiter. Yet when the crew heeds Bowman's warning and is preparing to leave, HAL doesn't understand why.
  
  
• Plot holes: Since an exploding star (a supernova) releases in a few minutes the same energy it normally releases in around 80,000 years, the shock wave from even a relatively smaller exploding Jupiter would have been sufficient to rip most or all of Earth's atmosphere away. If this weren't sufficient, the following gamma ray burst would alter Earth's atmospheric chemistry by reducing the ozone layer and generating acidic nitrogen oxides, ultimately causing severe damage to the biosphere and probably rendering Earth a twin of Mars.
  
  
• Factual errors: How could a space station collect dust in zero gravity?
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: A wire is clearly visible on the probe released by the Alexei Leonov.
  
  

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