Directed by: Peter Hyams
Starring: Helen Mirren, John Lithgow, Roy Scheider, Bob Balaban
Revealing mistake: When the Russian pod is launched, a wide shot shows the Monolith at top/right with Jupiter in the background and both the Leonov and Discovery at bottom/right with the pod nearby. Just before this shot ends, all three spacecraft vanish, leaving only Jupiter and the Monolith for a very short but obvious moment. (01:04:35)
Factual error: In the scene where the crew members are doing a simultaneous countdown in Russian and in English, the Russian crewmember skips the number four (chetiri). She goes straight from 5 (pyat) to three (tree). (01:44:14)
Walter Curnow: I feel so stupid. How do you say, 'stupid'?
Maxim Brajlovsky: Durak.
Walter Curnow: That's me.
Maxim Brajlovsky: You shouldn't feel like that. The same thing happened to me the first time I did this.
Walter Curnow: When have you ever done this before?
Maxim Brajlovsky: Never.
Trivia: An interesting scene to watch is when Heywood Floyd is talking to his associate on the bench in front of the White House, there is a long shot when you can see a person feeding pigeons. It is none other than Arthur C. Clarke in a cameo appearance. (00:10:59)
Question: One thing that always confused me is why was it necessary to jettison Discovery after it was used as a booster rocket? Why couldn't they just keep it attached to the Leonov as they made their escape?
Answer: They needed to lighten their load, to make it go faster. In Back to the Future Part III, after hijacking the train, the Doc and Marty unhooked the passenger cars to lighten the load.
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Answer: If they didn't, any further manoeuvring would require much more fuel. They would be moving the mass of two ships.