2001: A Space Odyssey 2010: The Year We Make Contact (Blu-Ray)1968-1984

2001: A Space Odyssey 148 min. PG 1968
In the year 2001 a strange object has been discovered near the planet of Jupiter and a crew is sent from Earth to investigate. Before that happens though we see a prehistoric scene of a group of man apes going about their life when a strange monolith is discovered. Following their discovery they learn to use tools and begin their ascent to modern man. Flash forward and the same or a similar monolith is discovered on the moon to the same awe that was exhibited by prehistoric man. In 2001 a mission of five men (including Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood) and one super computer, HAL 9000 (voice of Douglas Rain) who is perfect and mimics human emotions, have been sent to the area of Jupiter to investigate something seemingly unknown. The journey to Jupiter becomes one where the lines between man and machine, artificial and natural intelligence and evolution are blurred.

2010: The Year We Make Contact 116 min. PG 1984
Nine years after the failure of the original Discovery mission to Jupiter in "2001," Dr. Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) finds out from the USSR that the abandoned ship is falling towards Jupiter's moon Io and the critical data from the mission will be lost. He convinces the U. S. government that despite a diplomatic crisis brewing between the two countries, he must get to the ship and recover the data. The Soviets allow him to go, along with Dr. Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), the chief designer of Discovery, and Dr. R. Chandra, who was the chief designer of HAL 9000. Onboard a USSR spacecraft led by Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) heading to the still-orbiting giant Monolith where Discovery still remains, they all struggle to find out what the Monolith's purpose is, and what happened to the final crewmember of the US vessel, David Bowman (Kier Duella), whose cryptic message was the last transmission recieved from Discovery.