2001: A Space Odyssey

[Oddish]

Fun fact: Not only were all four of the Beatles huge fans of this movie, but John Lennon even suggested that it be shown in a temple, on a continuous loop, 24/7.

He was also a fan of the original midnight movie, a super bizarre western called El Topo.

Regarding Hal, he should have just been instructed to tell Dave and Frank "I'm sorry, that information is classified." A completely truthful statement, that should not have triggered the Hoffsteader-Mobius loop that drove him mad.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

3001 was my favorite of the lot. Get rid of the BrainCap stuff.

Fixed that for ya

Regarding Hal, he should have just been instructed to tell Dave and Frank "I'm sorry, that information is classified." A completely truthful statement

Then again, when did HAL ever actually lie to Dave and Frank?

He didn't say "there is no monolith". He neglected to tell them there WAS a monolith. That is not a lie.

And in the end, it's simply not important that Dave and Frank know about the monolith. It's not their JOB to know. Their only function is to get Discovery to Jupiter. Why do they need to know about something that doesn't affect that journey? HAL should have realized all this.

 

[Ovation]

If they were to do another cinematic sequel, who would be a good director? And what approach should such a movie take?

Kor

Denis Villeneuve.
I would have to read the 2061/3001 material to properly answer your second question but Villeneuve has shown he can work in just about any genre and has successfully followed up an iconic sci-fi production.

 

[JD]

He was my first thought too. He's the one director I would most trust to do an intelligent sci-fi movie that doesn't rely on spectacle.
The only other person who pops into my mind as a possibility is Alex Garland, who wrote and directed Ex Machina and the Annihilation movie.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Having just watched 'Doctor Sleep', I would put Mike Flanagan in the mix. He had the difficult task of adopting Stephen King's novel as well as reconciling it with Stanley Kubrick's cinematic version of 'The Shining' and he more than was up to the task.

 

[Nightowl1701]

If they were to do another cinematic sequel, who would be a good director? And what approach should such a movie take?

Kor

Addressing the latter question: Use the 3001 novel as the starting point, fold in the Mount Zeus plot line from 2061 with Frank in Floyd’s place. Forget the Independence Day cribbed ending - Frank is echoed/transfigured and joins Dave ‘HALman’ in defying the Monolith’s attempt to wipe Man off the map in favor of the endangered Europans, and act to save/protect both races.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I have been watching 2001 a lot lately and I noticed a couple of things:

- Apparently the internal layout of the Discovery is slightly different in 2001 vs. 2010. Meaning: The way to get from the bridge to the podbay, in the original, is to go through the arched doorway at the back of the bridge, then descend a ladder into the podbay. When Frank is killed, that's how Dave gets down to the podbay - we don't see him going through the door, but we do see him coming down the ladder (the same ladder he would later ascend, on his way to HAL's control room).

But in 2010, after 'ghost Dave' appears to Dr. Floyd, they go from the bridge directly into the access corridor, then into the podbay.

- People keep saying that there shouldn't be any pods left in 2010 because 1) Frank's pod was lost when he was killed, 2) when Dave re-enters the Discovery, his pod should have been lost when he blew the hatch, and 3) the final pod was of course lost when Dave went into the monolith.

But when Dave blows the hatch, the pod is still there. Agreed that it SHOULDN'T have been there, but obviously Dave must had some way of securing it to the ship, because when he goes flying into the emergency airlock the pod is clearly still outside.

(I'm sure they did that because actually filming the loss of the pod would have surely been rather difficult. I mean, we don't even see the hatch go flying off, it just disappears)

 

[David cgc]

Indeed, in 2010 you can see the Pod that's left is missing its door (since they'd been stored with the hatches closed), so it's the one HAL tried to maroon Dave in. As for why it didn't tumble off because of the explosive decompression, it could've been set to station-keeping and automatically fire its thrusters to keep from being pushed out of control.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

^ It’s been years since I read the book, but I seem/want to recall a whole chapter or so where Bowman, after lobotomizing HAL, etc., is basically “running on autopilot”, taking care of various mundane chores, as he deals with the grief of Pool’s death and being alone in space. It mentions him maneuvering the remaining pod into the bay, IIRC.

In light of the whole “man/machine” theme, the passage takes on some more nuances/aspect.

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Timo]

Hmm. I guess I assumed that the Leonov's control room was inside the rotating section. My bad.

Very late to the game, but...

Yes, the control room was in the rotating section, as shot.

Not as intended - it's no doubt intended to be at the non-rotating bow which has the appropriate window slits - but the indoors set is continuous, and even features at least one continuous camera run from the bunks to the bridge.

Which only makes sense, because what would be the logic of placing the bridge anywhere else? For delicate manual dockings, there could be a separate room with a view and without rotation, but the CIC really should be where the bunks are.

But also yes, the rotating section did not rotate at that time. Apparently, starting and stopping was no big deal, and it's just confusing rather than contradictory how they later explicitly show the section being stopped. Presumably it was more comfortable to ponder Floyd's idea while in gravity...

If you look closely, both Soviet and American crew ARE wearing grip shoes. They're bright orange.

Indeed. So instead of Velcro, we presumably have magnets or suction cups. The former work well also with carpeting (which might have been ripped out and dumped in-universe - remember the smell?), the latter only without...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Indeed, in 2010 you can see the Pod that's left is missing its door

Really? Huh. I didn't know that. I'll have to check it again!

Another thing: In 2010, the blue spacesuit is missing its helmet. I'm guessing Peter Hyams must have thought that Dave used that helmet when disabling HAL in the original film. But Dave actually used a green helmet, part of the green suit which was stowed inside the emergency airlock (and which, interestingly, doesn't appear at all in 2010).

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Just had another thought:

When Dave and Frank are in the pod, planning to disable HAL, why doesn't HAL just blow the pod into space right then and there? Even if actually launching the pod might require human intervention, HAL could certainly still open a bay door, which would depressurize the bay and leave Dave and Frank stranded in the pod.

 

[Oddish]

Maybe Hal had not yet made the decision to kill the crew. It was, after all, detrimental to the mission that the human crew perish, and Hal's dedication to the mission was absolute.

Remember that the three in hibernation were still alive at the time. Hal could have offed them anytime.

 

[David cgc]

It could be that the balance of factors was weighed right for HAL to resort to murder at the time. Dave and Frank say that, if they restore the original part to let it fail and then figure out what was wrong with it, but it turns out there really wasn't anything wrong with it, then they'd have to disconnect HAL. HAL isn't truly in danger of being deactivated until the old AE-35 is plugged back in, but the moment that that happens, then it's a foregone conclusion he's eventually going to be found out and shut down. So he attacks Frank as he's installing the new unit, but that's also ensured he'll be shut down, so he lets Dave leave the ship, where he can be locked out safely (since Dave is mostly suited up, so he'll be hard to kill if he depressurizes the ship with Dave still inside (which is what happens in the novel, where Dave never leaves to try and rescue Frank, and HAL tries to asphyxiate him), but outside, he can't do much damage without also killing himself), and then once Dave is out, HAL kills the three mission specialists, because they'll also deactivate HAL once they wake up and find out they're out of contact with Earth and their flight crew has been missing for months and put two and two together.

It's a little Asimov-y that HAL needed to wait until his reason to kill passed some mathematical threshold (I'm thinking of the story of the robot that ended up circling around a dangerous radiation source indefinitely, because that was the exact point where the danger to itself from approaching and the intensity of the order given to approach it balanced, and to advance was to put it into unacceptable danger, but to retreat was to defy orders for an unjustifiable reason), but, well, they were contemporaries.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And I realize how stupid this sounds, but...when Dave goes out to rescue Frank, why doesn't he take his helmet? It was right there, woulda taken like two seconds to get!

 

[DonIago]

I guess there's also the question of why the pods don't have helmets included.

 

[David cgc]

And I realize how stupid this sounds, but...when Dave goes out to rescue Frank, why doesn't he take his helmet? It was right there, woulda taken like two seconds to get!

Dave is a falliable human, even surrounded by all this technology, and while it lets him make a stupid mistake, it also gives him the ingenuity to get out of it, since HAL never considered he'd do something as stupid as going for an unsuited spacewalk.

 

[Oddish]

That's the problem with thinking in 1's and 0's, like a computer. They might be less fallible than us, but they're also less flexible. That's why self-driving cars aren't a thing.

 

[DonIago]

My theory was that Dave simply forgot the helmet in the midst of worrying about his friend.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm also a bit confused as to why Dave and Frank are wearing their spacesuits while stilll inside the ship (during the thing with the AE-35).

Meaning, when Dave goes out to swap units, Frank is in the cockpit with his suit on; same goes for Dave when Frank goes out to put the original back.

And about the AE-35: If they're so concerned about the unit failing, why not simply leave the backup installed (the one that Dave put in)? Presumably THIS one wouldn't fail, only the original that Dave removed.