After finally getting around to watching this on DVD I gotta say - THE most over-rated movie I have ever seen.

It was fluro-technic crap and so SO SO boring.

What the hell is all the fuss about???? Some giant embryo floating around in space and the whole world goes wild.

WHy?

QFF

I saw it the other day on TV (in Italian, admittedly, so my comprehension was a little fuzzy). What is the point of the giant black stone pillar and the monkeys ? And the embryo ? WTF ???

You´ve got to read the book by Arthur C.Clarke to understand the whole thing. Best thing is book and movie combined.

Jan

"Fluro-technic crap"; GOOD one, QQF! I've been looking for the correct term since I saw the movie when it was first relased (1968?) and you have hit on it.

I must admit, however, that I am still impressed with much of the industrial design and special effects relative to the spacecraft, machinery, etc. I believe that movie probably set a new standard for the genre.

Story and screenwriting leave me underwhelmed. Regards...Jack

I admit that when I first saw the film I didn't understand it, but a look at this website helped a lot. It's very intersting and explains the messages that Kubrick is putting across through things like the monolith, apes, HAL and the embryo.

http://www.kubrick2001.com

Great soundtrack, AWFUL movie.

The fuss is about the fact that Kubrick went to great technical lengths to make the movie, to shoot some of those scenes, and the fact that all this was done before man had ever set foot on the moon. Not only that, that it was a work by arguably the greatest American film director.

The quality of the movie is not in the (god forbid) special effects.
That explains why the "modern" youths won't appreciate it, since all they care about is loads and loads of computer graphics (preferably of explosions and mutilated bodies).

Yes, it's a good movie. The story and the deeper meaning behind it which you can no longer see, having been conditioned to superficiality in everything from an early age, are just lost on you apparently.

It is not an easy film, it was a landmark.
But, to a generation raised on the dumbed down, effects and little else, style of film, all I can say is that it's your loss.
I recommend reading the book, which is very accessible.
I first saw the film when I was about 12, and I think I got what Kubrick and Clarke were driving at.
If you really need everything signposted in films, everything explained in simple terms, everything neatly wrapped up, then that's sad.
Basically most of modern Hollywood treats you as idiots.

I read an Arthur C. Clarke interview in which he said that, upon entering either the US or Great Britain (can't remember which one though), he had the customs officer tell him " I won't give you your passport back until you explain me the ending of the film!"  

Jwenting wrote, in part; "The quality is not in...special efects. That explains why "modern" youths won't appreciate it,..."

I have mixed emotions with that conjecture, seeing as how I was the commo guy programming old Honest John Rockets (with Nuke warheads, forbid!) out of Giessen, Germany when I first saw the movie in 1968 on a small O-club screen. I guess I don't think I'm a "modern" youth.

I still remain underwhelmed by (not only this particular movie) many of Arthur C.'s presentations. Even in my waining years, I continue to think he is quite overated. And, I still see more importance in the technical presentation of the story rather than the "odyssey" itself. Regards...Jack

Well, one of his achievements is that he made a film where the German version is actually better than the original version.
The movie? FULL METAL JACKET

Jwenting:
Yes, it's a good movie. The story and the deeper meaning behind it which you can no longer see, having been conditioned to superficiality in everything from an early age, are just lost on you apparently.

That has got to be one of the most condascending inferences I've ever read.
What an arrogant statement. How can you establish the depth of appreciation a person has for films from a few words on a.net? huh? Just because some people don't like this film doesn't mean they have been programmed by film studios to enjoy superficiality. You have inferred that I am a superficial tool of modern film studios. And I resent that totally.

You have inferred too much, Jwenting.

QFF

In some ways, despite the real 2001 looking nothing like how it turned out, (but how many in the 60's thought it would be), it is very realistic, the lack of sound in space for example (only his breathing and radio communications would be audible to an astronaut on EVA).

Clarke is more than a sci fi author, his paper in 1945 on using an Earth satellite for communications as an example, he predicted that a rocket would hit the Moon in around 1950, but the first manned mission would take another 20 years, was 9 years out with the first, but almost spot on with the second.

For 2001, think of it as about evolution, Man's evolution, the premise that very advanced aliens in the distant past influenced it when we were still Apes, left behind devices to contact them when we were advanced enough to, then we would have the ability, if the humans making contact passed tests, to have our evolution accelerated to their level.

I'm not a believer in UFOs, but if we do ever make contact with presumably a much more advanced intelligence, it may well be like 2001, almost inexplicable for the humans involved.
2001 in this respect, is a lot more realistic than Star Trek!

You want a good space movie?

Check out Солярис (Solaris) by Andrei Tarkovsky -- made in the USSR in 1972 and one of the top 3 sci-fi films out there.

It is rumoured that Tarkovsky was not a fan of 2001 -- it is said that he thought the movie is quite bland. I have to agree with him.

http://www.underview.com/2001/solaris.html



And please steer clear of the remake of this movie with George Clooney. It is absolute rubbish and cannot compare to the classic Tarkovsky version.

2001 wasn't a complicated film, just like most of Kubrick's films.

Take Dr Strangelove for example. There's not that many hidden metaphors in it, it's a pretty obvious movie. But perhaps the funniest thing about the movie was the realism. Bear in mind that fluoridation in the water was thought to be a communist conspiracy back in 1950.

The Shining? A simple horror movie. The actual 'shine' has precious little to do with the movie, and ultimately it's shockingly scary because you never can explain where the waiter comes from, why the kid can 'shine' and why he's in the photo at the end.

2001 is simpler still. The whole story is about evolution. Apes use tools, evolve to men and ultimately the tools turn on them. The embryo symbolises the evolution of man from an Earth-born air-breathing organism into a space-born organism.

In my opinion, Shakespeare and Kubrick have a lot in common - and I don't think that's an overstatement. Shakespearean plots, just like Kubrick plots, are remarkably simply once you've got through the quite timid metaphor. While Shakespeare produced beautiful language, Kubrick produced beautiful images.

2001 is a great movie.

It is about knowlege and evolution. About technology and man's dependence on it.

The part about the monkeys is that technology is what sets man apart from other animals. The bone is the first tool.

Fast forward to 2001 and the computer HAL which is code for IBM, has total control over men's lives. (H is to I, A is to B, L is to M) The monolith could be many things, but one think it definatly is is an infinate knowlege. It sets man on his course.

2001 is a thinking man's scifi.

Kubrick made a masterpiece of cinema every time he put something out there. Hell, he made Peter Sellers the smartest and sanest man on screen for a movie. 2001 was an incredible work, even if you don't figure it was made pre-moon landing. The special effects (stolen/appropriated by British sci/fi television over the next decade re: UFO and Space:1999) were groundbreaking, and the plot forced one to think. The movie is not the Chronicles of Riddick, and thank God. I like vaccuous brain pabulum, on occasion. I need thought provocation even more.

One of my favorite Kubrick film remains Barry Lyndon. Although plodding at times...the music, the costumes, the shots, the lighting, and the scenery are unparalleled. His earlier, film-noire type films "Killer's Kiss" and "The Killing" for instance, while not earning as much attention as his later films remain great films. If I had to rank the Kubrick films I've seen in order of greatest to least greatest to me they'd be

Dr. Strangelove
Barry Lyndon
Eyes Wide Shut
Spartacus
The Killing
Paths of Glory
A Clockwork Orange
Full Metal Jacket
The Shining
Lolita
2001
Killer's Kiss

Hi

I generally agree with what QFF wrote in the first message. I was very disappointed when I saw this movie.

To all of you who say that you understand the movie: Please explain the meaning with the ending? What the heck does the dinnertable, bathroom, old man in bed and the big black stone have to with anything????? And how does he suddenly end up there?

Call me shallow and superficial if you like, but that film is a waste of time in my opinion.

Regards
Søren Augustesen

Maybe Kubrick wanted you to interpret it yourself?
Pretty clear to me, it's Bowman's encounter with some kind of very advanced intelligence, who knows how that would be, certainly not how normal Sci Fi tells it.
Read Clarke's book, '2001' pretty well pointed out in that short, accessible book.

One theme that continous through Arthur C. Clarke´s books is the encounter of humans with advanced intelligences (not just in the Space Odissey series, but also in the Rama series of books). In most cases these adavanced intelligences have shed their fragile biological bodies and transfered their conciousness into much more durable machines.
Also don´t forget that the author had a master´s degree in Physics (similar to Asimov, who was a biochemist).
the monoliths have several functions in the story. Essentialy they are machines left by a advanced intelligence, which contacted earth about a million years ago (this is the first one with the apes). The second one on the moon is simply a transmitter set to send a signal once humankind is advanced enough for space travel (humans would discover it on the moon and dig it out. Sunlight would trigger it to send a signal to Jupiter). Now humans would send and expedition to Jupiter to see what´s going on there. HAL´s weird behavious stems out of a conflict. The computer has to make sure that the expedition reaches Jupiter, but isn´t allowed to tell the astronauts the true objective. When the astronauts are thinking about aborting the mission due to technical problems, it decides to kill them to continue.
THe last monolith in the Jupiter orbit is a "wormhole" machine. When the astronaut approaches it with the space pod to investigate, he gets moved to another end of universe. The weird pictures are what the author imagines a travel close to speed of light to look like (don´t forget Clarke was a physicist).
Finaly the room: The advanced intelligence has based it´s knowledge about our civilisation exclusively on TV commercials and movies (everything we transmit on earth will eventualy reach outer space). So they knew what things look like, but they don´t know the content (the blue stuff in the boxes of food). In the end, the conciousness of the astronaut, all his experiences from the womb to this moment, get also transfered into the huge machine, he is discarding his body.

It is very well explained in the book.

Jan

One of the best movies ever!

Not easy though, if you're favorite movie was Independence Day this is not the one. Indeed, it's a slow complicated movie.

But it's great, full of signs. The way Kubrick uses the music, the colors, did you note the importance of the space alignment in some points of the movie?
HAL9000 almighty, always there. The way the white is contrasted to the black of the emptiness, the white that changes to red in the programming room.

The mankind is still a monkey discovering tools, the monolith representing what it is beyond (black, tough, unknown, but still in perfect proportion and harmony). The astronaut dying into the journey, the evolution, the mankind not alone, but influenced by what's above.

OK, Pan Am flying to the space look naive, as the little girl, very 70s, but give the guy a credit. The ship in the space has great special effects. Every image is mighty.

2010? Yes, that one is crap!
2001? Work of art