• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Five Decades of 2001

2takesfrakes

2takesfrakes

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
In the 50 years since 2001: A Space Odyssey was first released, on April 2, 1968, no movie has matched its solemnly jaw-dropping techno-poetic majesty. It’s still credited with being the grandest of all science-fiction movies, one that inspired countless adventures set in the inky vastness of deep space. I, myself, continue to be impressed with the artistry of it, the up-to-the-minute technical aspects of it (by late Sixties standards) and appreciate it as a classic film. But some of it, I have to confess, has to get fast forwarded through, I can never sit down and watch the whole thing, or I'll just doze off during the AE-35 unit retrieval sequence. The inclusion of which is absurdly long and largely unnecessary. As a whole, however, I'm still quite impressed with it, but what are your thoughts on this cinematic masterpiece?

https://screenmusings.org/movie/dvd/2001-A-Space-Odyssey/pages/2001-A-Space-Odyssey-064.htm
 
Agreed! on both counts ...

But when Bowman goes to get the unit from out of the antennae, it's just watching a Man float and listening to him breath. The only real action he takes is pressing a button on his suit which makes his helmet darken in the most peculiar way. It just puts me to sleep, every time. The rest of it gives me no trouble at all, even when Bowman finds himself in the alien house and all there is ... is wandering about and breathing. I'm fine with all of it. The film is very thought-provoking. I love Frank's parents, especially the father. I have to be honest, though ... I'd never recommend it to someone new to sci-fi, because I think you have to be sort of 'available' to its presentation. Otherwise, they're not going to find it very satisfying and wonder if Reality TV is the best bet, after all. As an Artist, I can't help but find it engaging ... it's very classy. Very elegant. Very sophisticated. Not everybody's always in the mood for that. But I can't get enough of it. I love Art that transcends itself, whatever medium it's in. And movies are just about the most complicated, difficult and commercial there is ...
 
Entertainment it ain’t.

I first saw this movie on channel 4 in the small hours of some forgotten summer. I think I was fourteen. Gone to bed, couldn’t sleep in the stifling heat, windows open but no breeze, so on went the telly.

It started with monkeys fighting with bones, I endured hours of narrative free wtf, unable to sleep, unable to fathom, unable to switch it off. So the next day I tracked down a copy of the book in the school library. The first book I ever read in one sitting.

It opened my mind.
 
I saw this back in the sixties at the Cinerama theater in downtown Seattle, when I was just a kid. The ending completely flew over Little Greg's head, but I was still blown away and still remember that first time vividly, even five decades later.

To my mind, 2001 is an experience, not a story. I can't imagine seeing it on anything less than the big screen. If you're looking for a conventional narrative, with character arcs, plot twists, etc,, you may find 2001 frustrating. But if you're in the right frame of mind, it's awesome in the original sense.
 
2takesfrakes said:
But some of it, I have to confess, has to get fast forwarded through, I can never sit down and watch the whole thing, or I'll just doze off during the AE-35 unit retrieval sequence.
Click to expand...
I was all set to Like your post until you threw in that part! :p That said, I generally don't watch movies in one sitting on home video these days...and my 2001 DVD comes with a handy built-in intermission, so....

We recently had a meaty discussion about the film in The Classic/Retro TV Thread, starting about here.
 
It is my most favorite thing anyone has put to film to date. Nothing even comes close.
 
While the spacecrafts depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey suffer with some of those "banks of blinking colored lights", there is a tremendous amount of realism captured. Especially the banks of status screens. Everything was so well done to the point of making you feel like you were watching the future. Of course, today we have advanced CGI and there can be such a visceral creation of realism, but it's also highly exaggerated. Too much grit, actually. And while interiors of shuttles, capsules, and space stations still have a great deal of clutter, I think that in time they'll eventually streamline as more tasks are abstracted out with simpler interfaces (less demand on the human, more demand on the intelligent computer).

I'm impatient with the opening monkey scene and usually skip it. The moon phase is where I start. Regarding the slowness of the Jupiter mission, I agree that too much time was spent on on the AE35 unit replacement. I would've preferred to see more footage of living aboard ship and interactions with HAL.

One part that always bugs me--could never understand the reason for the longest time--is why Bowman commands HAL to "rotate the pod" with him and Frank inside. I don't see the sense of it. I guess the only feasible thing to conclude is that Bowman didn't really think it all out very thoroughly, like when he quickly got into the space pod and didn't grab a helmet (doh!) as he went to go retrieve Frank's floating body. So when inside the pod with Frank, the first command that comes to Dave's mind to check on HAL's response is to "rotate the pod." And then he tries it again after cutting off the communications. Another idiot move on his part is to use the manual switches in the pod to turn off communications. He should have just detached a corresponding circuit board. Because I'll bet anything that HAL can read the pod's systems and would know if communications were manually shut off versus "faulty." Once the switches were thrown to the off position and not moved back, HAL would wonder why they did that and begin analyzing the video feed. Lips are moving. What are they saying? ;)
 
It's the best done boring movie ever made.
It also might be the most over hyped.

But damn the special effects are so well doe for 50 years ago. I actually really enjoy the middle parts. Can't stand the apes or the ending but the middle is breath taking.

Every time I watch The Expanse I feel like it's 2001, but instead of monoliths they have the proto-whatever.
 
Gary7 said:
One part that always bugs me--could never understand the reason for the longest time--is why Bowman commands HAL to "rotate the pod" with him and Frank inside. I don't see the sense of it. I guess the only feasible thing to conclude is that Bowman didn't really think it all out very thoroughly, like when he quickly got into the space pod and didn't grab a helmet (doh!) as he went to go retrieve Frank's floating body. So when inside the pod with Frank, the first command that comes to Dave's mind to check on HAL's response is to "rotate the pod." And then he tries it again after cutting off the communications. Another idiot move on his part is to use the manual switches in the pod to turn off communications. He should have just detached a corresponding circuit board. Because I'll bet anything that HAL can read the pod's systems and would know if communications were manually shut off versus "faulty." Once the switches were thrown to the off position and not moved back, HAL would wonder why they did that and begin analyzing the video feed. Lips are moving. What are they saying? ;)
Click to expand...

Simple - the astronauts were a little too clever for their own good. They knew HAL had lip-reading ability, and Dave was testing the range of it by saying 'rotate the pod please, HAL' while HAL could see him and Frank. If HAL couldn't hear him, but could still read their lips, it would presumably obey Dave's instruction and rotate the pod. When it didn't, Dave and Frank assumed they were too far away for HAL to read their lips, hence they could talk in private. It never occurred to them that HAL wouldn't automatically obey their orders, audible or not.

Which is exactly what HAL wanted them to think.
 
2001 is a member of the lost art mix of spectacle with thinking science fiction that has not been attempted with any regularity since the early 1970s in film. Today's sci-fi / fantasy (including most superhero films) are--more often than not--loud, pop-junk (a criticism that was already gaining ground after the Star Wars and its rip-offs explosion post-1977) that has to hit beats for short attention spans more than tell a story with pacing.

On a related note, I found it amusing that Star Trek - The Motion Picture had been accused of trying to be another 2001 with the oft-used "quest for meaning" needle, but that was an insult to 2001's unambiguous, logically progressive story and intent, which was not to be found in Roddenberry's increasingly ridiculous, pretentious off-course flights of pseudo-philosophy (which he tried to sell as the Star Trek model) heard on many of his speaking tours of the pre-TMP period in the 70's, and were the plotting force of TMP. The films were nothing alike, with Kubrick's following a straight, occasionally eerie path of cause and effect on human destiny/identity ...the opposite of a film that spent most of its time trying to avoid its own well established identity, only to run into one creatively challenged wall after another.

All of 2001's visual achievements aside, it's a near perfect example of a film knowing confident enough in its ability to take the audience on a journey with patience, knowing that there would be a powerful if not enlightening conclusion.

Throughout it all...the other sci-fi film events great and small, before and since, 2001 has not lost its appeal or value as a sci-fi movie, and as a great film...one that (through the impact of its tale) did not allow the audience member to just leave it all in theatre as disposable entertainment.
 
Nightowl1701 said:
Simple - the astronauts were a little too clever for their own good. They knew HAL had lip-reading ability, and Dave was testing the range of it by saying 'rotate the pod please, HAL' while HAL could see him and Frank. If HAL couldn't hear him, but could still read their lips, it would presumably obey Dave's instruction and rotate the pod. When it didn't, Dave and Frank assumed they were too far away for HAL to read their lips, hence they could talk in private. It never occurred to them that HAL wouldn't automatically obey their orders, audible or not.

Which is exactly what HAL wanted them to think.
Click to expand...
Well, if they didn't have the pod window facing the HAL console, they wouldn't have to worry about lip reading then, would they? ;) I don't think Dave was even considering the idea of HAL lip reading, as he didn't even face the forward window when he said it [LINK]. It was only Frank who actually looked at the HAL console when he said "rotate the pod please, HAL." Also, after that they'd just said to each other "I don't think he can hear us." Nothing added like "presuming we have faulty comm, he didn't try to read our lips either."
 
TREK_GOD_1 said:
I found it amusing that Star Trek - The Motion Picture had been accused of trying to be another 2001 with the oft-used "quest for meaning" needle, but that was an insult to 2001's unambiguous, logically progressive story and intent, which was not to be found in Roddenberry's increasingly ridiculous, pretentious off-course flights of pseudo-philosophy (which he tried to sell as the Star Trek model) heard on many of his speaking tours of the pre-TMP period in the 70's, and were the plotting force of TMP. The films were nothing alike, with Kubrick's following a straight, occasionally eerie path of cause and effect on human destiny/identity ...the opposite of a film that spent most of its time trying to avoid its own well established identity, only to run into one creatively challenged wall after another.
Click to expand...
Roddenberry was also an opportunist and prone to reinvention. He shifted his stories a number of times in an attempt to add "greater glory" to the value of Star Trek TMP. There was of course no deep seated intellectual premise to the movie--it was simply an accentuated fabrication of a previous story, namely "The Changeling."

All of 2001's visual achievements aside, it's a near perfect example of a film knowing confident enough in its ability to take the audience on a journey with patience, knowing that there would be a powerful if not enlightening conclusion.
Click to expand...
I think Kubrick's main charter was to create a masterful illusion, encouraging the audience to feel like they were actually there. And it evolved while he was creating it. Kubrick had said “I wanted to make a non-verbal statement, one that would affect people on the visceral, emotional and psychological levels.” A deep seated intellectual premise was more what Clarke was after, which he had greater flexibility to achieve in writing the book.

Throughout it all...the other sci-fi film events great and small, before and since, 2001 has not lost its appeal or value as a sci-fi movie, and as a great film...one that (through the impact of its tale) did not allow the audience member to just leave it all in theatre as disposable entertainment.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I saw it as a small boy and while I didn't really understand what the movie was truly trying to say, it put me "in space." I felt like I was there, that this is what space travel would eventually be like. Of course, I couldn't stand the ending because I didn't understand it. But I would have dreams of being aboard the Discovery. I'd eventually read the book and finally understand it. I still does amaze me how so many millions are pumped into creating sci-fi movies these days and they're so pedestrian in their plots and too "roller coaster" in pace setting. There's little visceral feeling of reality, what Kubrick achieved.
 
Ithekro said:
My problem with this movie is....we aren't there yet. It is 2018. Let's go people, Jupiter won't go explore itself.
Click to expand...
To be fair, our PC and Mainframe computer displays are about were they were depicted in the film. ;)

(I first saw it at a Drive in with my parents at the age of 5, and yeah, I definitely didn't get it and slept through a third of it then. ;) I do remember seeing the ending at the Drive In and wondering at the time if it made sense to my parents because I just didn't get it then. Years later I have to say I didn't get any epiphany about it. I guess the Monolith Aliens can willfully move backward and forwards in time as well as space during the course of their existence; and their memories persist as they do so :eek: <--- Either that or Kubrick said - "Hey guys - represent an acid trip someone in he group had, on film for the last 20 minutes of the master cut. ;))
 
Last edited:
I was just remembering after reading some of these posts that I read the novel prior to seeing the movie the first time. I am sure the ending wouldn't have made any sense to me if I had seen the movie first.
 
theenglish said:
I was just remembering after reading some of these posts that I read the novel prior to seeing the movie the first time. I am sure the ending wouldn't have made any sense to me if I had seen the movie first.
Click to expand...
And actually, the book helps explain the movie by "filling in" details that weren't conveyed in the movie. Essential to have both together--one to really give you the gist of what's happening "behind the visual", and of course the amazing visuals of the movie to accentuate the whole story. Movies are essentially video, and even here, Kubrick rested very little upon audio. Some have described it as a pseudo-silent movie. So going into the movie with the book already in mind was a serious advantage. :techman:
 
Last edited:
Gary7 said:
And actually, the book helps explain the movie by "filling in" details that weren't conveyed in the movie. Essential to have both together--one to really give you the gist of what's happening "behind the visual", and of course the amazing visuals of the movie to accentuate the whole story. Movies are essentially video, and even here, Kubrick rested very little upon audio. Some have described it as a pseudo-silent movie. So going into the movie with the book already in mind was a serious advantage. :techman:
Click to expand...

Though there are some differences between the book and movie - one has the Discovery going to Jupiter, the other Saturn, when the AE-35 fails and the decision to disconnect HAL.

And the famous line "My God - it's full of stars" - in the book, not the film.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top