The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

[The Old Mixer]

What?? Rock was already a genre when The Weavers were performing. When--exactly--do you think rock started?

As we're obviously never going to have a consensus regarding genre nomenclature or chronologies, I see no point in continuing this discussion.

Considering the film 2001 by itself, I don't think it's of the utmost importance, in technical computer science terms, why HAL malfunctioned.

What's far more significant is how HAL reacts. His malfunction, as it were, leads HAL to murder, which parallels the act of the protohuman tribe that was contacted by the Monolith against the neighboring tribe at the critical resource of the waterhole. In my view, this does not imply that HAL was directly influenced by the Monolith or by a Monolith or by whatever creatures might be behind the Monoliths, as I know that some have speculated. Rather, its significance is that HAL's murder of almost the whole crew duplicates, in the terms of the film, perhaps the most essential action responsible for mankind's survival and success. In stark terms, the choice is to eliminate the competing variables by brute force and leave oneself in control. This is reflected in the dilemma expressed by HAL, when he says that the mission is too important to allow the astronauts to jeopardize it, and it parallels position of the apes at the waterhole. What makes HAL's choice a malfunction is that HAL is obviously not functioning at all as intended. But aside from that, in a kind of irony in its coincidence as malfunction, HAL represents a perfect and perfected reflection of human nature.

The resemblance of the Discovery exterior to a human skeleton is well-known, but I'd suggest that symbolically HAL's actions might well be intended to represent the full legacy of the discovery of weapons in the prehistoric boneyard; murder is a pivotal event in the story of the film, and the ultimate technical achievement is literally shown to be something that threatens people with perhaps even greater effectiveness than people threaten each other (cf HAL creaming Frank in the game of chess).

In my view, the literal explanation, that 2010 so to speak can't seem to help itself from providing, undermines this wonderful metaphor.

I really like this analysis. So HAL is, in effect, the Moon-Watcher of his own emerging species. This works very well with my own theory that the Monolith didn't directly communicate with Moon-Watcher, but sparked an epiphany with its very presence. If HAL did know the reason for the mission, perhaps it sparked a similar epiphany in him.

The movie has just grown a little more for me.

The two time captions they did use were understandably necessary to set the scenes and avoid confusion. All that wordless footage of a bunch of ape-men gadding about would've been confusing to the audience without some sort of explanation; without the caption, some people might've thought it was supposed to be an alien planet or something. And I think the "Eighteen Months Later" caption for the Discovery part is useful to show that the mission is a consequence of the TMA-1 discovery at Clavius, rather than something that's happening simultaneously.

After all, Kubrick's whole approach to the movie was to explain as little as possible. Maybe he would've left those two captions out given his druthers, but he might've compromised to studio notes and put them in for the sake of clarity.

That doesn't really explain the need for the last subtitle, though, "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite". While there was a bit of a time jump, the subtitle wasn't strictly necessary to convey anything. We were still with the Jupiter Mission, and we could plainly see that the ship had arrived at Jupiter.

As we would see in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, a ship of the same capabilities already existed, and (we assume) was put into service earlier than expected when contact was lost with Taylor's crew.

Which makes no damn sense when Taylor's ship was supposed to be on a long-term sublight mission in the range of 2000-3000 years. Assuming that they didn't have FTL communications, Earth could expect to hear increasingly less from the ship even if it sent regular status reports along the way. Why would they muster another ship to look for Taylor's ship so soon after it left? And what sort of update could they expect to hear from the second ship, if it did find Taylor in a few thousand years?

 

[Christopher]

Which makes no damn sense when Taylor's ship was supposed to be on a long-term sublight mission in the range of 2000-3000 years. Assuming that they didn't have FTL communications, Earth could expect to hear increasingly less from the ship even if it sent regular status reports along the way. Why would they muster another ship to look for Taylor's ship so soon after it left? And what sort of update could they expect to hear from the second ship, if it did find Taylor in a few thousand years?

The second ship was a retcon. None of the original Planet of the Apes films really fit together continuity-wise, because none of the first four films were made to allow for a sequel, so each sequel had to fudge the details of the previous films to justify its existence. The first film very clearly portrayed the spaceflight as lasting thousands of years with the crew in cryogenic sleep. The second film, in order to make a followup story possible, totally threw that out and pretended the ship had fallen through a time warp instead. So the two versions contradict each other and cannot be truly reconciled. (Just as there's no real way to reconcile how Cornelius, Zira, and Milo were able to launch the salvaged space capsule into orbit before the world blew up despite lacking the time or technology to build the multistage rocket, gantry, launch facility, etc. that would be required. And no way to reconcile how the evolution of apes that was said in one movie to take centuries was shown in the next to have taken a single generation. And no way to reconcile how Caesar was the only ape who could speak at the time of the uprising, yet they could all speak just a few years later.)

 

[scotpens]

I read the book maybe a dozen times before I ever saw the movie -- and I don't really care for the movie. My prior knowledge of the book was the only way I had any clue what the hell was going on.

I had the opposite experience. I saw the movie before I read the book. For me, Arthur Clarke's literalness and detailed exposition took away some of the mystery and grandeur of the film.

I mean, I don't think it's really that hard to follow what's happening in the movie (except, perhaps, for the ending with Dave Bowman reborn as Space God-Fetus).

 

[RJDiogenes]

What makes HAL's choice a malfunction is that HAL is obviously not functioning at all as intended. But aside from that, in a kind of irony in its coincidence as malfunction, HAL represents a perfect and perfected reflection of human nature.

There is definitely a parallel, except that HAL ends up dead and Bowman becomes the Star-Child. Of course, looking ahead to Clarke's sequels, things evolve a bit more.

Perhaps they were going to send information back to earth just to prove they had discovered an earth-like world, which would be the go-ahead for other missions.

Yes, I suppose we could assume that the colony was intended to be cumulative.

Arbitrary? How so? That title (Jupiter Mission - 18 Months Later) logically follows the effects of the monolith on the investigative team on the moon--not the Dawn of Man.

I didn't say it was inaccurate. "The Dawn of Man" is poetic establishment of not just a vague point in time but a vague point in evolution. "18 Months Later" is just a time stamp-- following the scenes on the space station and Moon that had no time stamps. Neither was the "Dawn of Man" sequence broken up into the Monolith and watering hole scenes. It feels very random.

So HAL is, in effect, the Moon-Watcher of his own emerging species.

Well, he didn't do much emerging in this movie, though.

That doesn't really explain the need for the last subtitle, though, "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite".

I forgot about that one, too. That's also stylistically inconsistent with the first two, making the whole subtitles thing even more arbitrary.

Which makes no damn sense when Taylor's ship was supposed to be on a long-term sublight mission in the range of 2000-3000 years. Assuming that they didn't have FTL communications, Earth could expect to hear increasingly less from the ship even if it sent regular status reports along the way. Why would they muster another ship to look for Taylor's ship so soon after it left? And what sort of update could they expect to hear from the second ship, if it did find Taylor in a few thousand years?

Yup, basically they needed a "generic space mission" to get the characters to the mysterious place where the story happens. They didn't really think through the details, so they ended up with what looks like a space shuttle but is talked about as both a colony ship and a scientific expedition, yet one that will never be able to communicate with the world that sent it, except perhaps over thousands of years.

I had the opposite experience. I saw the movie before I read the book. For me, Arthur Clarke's literalness and detailed exposition took away some of the mystery and grandeur of the film.

I read the book a couple of years or so before I got to see the movie, and Arthur C Clarke immediately became my favorite writer. In the long term, though, 2001 was my least favorite of his books. After reading The Lost Worlds of 2001, I wish we had seen the novel it could have been, unrestrained by the need to be consistent with the movie.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Of course, looking ahead to Clarke's sequels, things evolve a bit more.

Clarke's sequels are sequels of his version of the story, which is really a different entity from the film.

I didn't say it was inaccurate. "The Dawn of Man" is poetic establishment of not just a vague point in time but a vague point in evolution. "18 Months Later" is just a time stamp-- following the scenes on the space station and Moon that had no time stamps. Neither was the "Dawn of Man" sequence broken up into the Monolith and watering hole scenes. It feels very random.

Random if you're taking them literally. I think their symbolic value is more important to the film...hence it not being an accident that we don't get a subtitle at the millions-of-years time jump between "The Dawn of Man" and "Jupiter Mission".

Well, he didn't do much emerging in this movie, though.

Because he was put down by the old model, his own creator. Symbolically, man and his tools were getting a divorce, and it was a messy affair.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I really like this analysis. So HAL is, in effect, the Moon-Watcher of his own emerging species. This works very well with my own theory that the Monolith didn't directly communicate with Moon-Watcher, but sparked an epiphany with its very presence. If HAL did know they reason for the mission, perhaps it sparked a similar epiphany in him.

The movie has just grown a little more for me.

I appreciate the compliment. That's not exactly what I had in mind, but it's an interesting interpretation nonetheless. By the way, according to Dr. Floyd's briefing that's triggered once HAL is deactivated, HAL does know the reason for the mission.

I was thinking more along the lines that things had come full circle since Moon-Watcher. Mankind's tools had developed to the point that man could create a tool in his own image, and it was a little too perfect a reflection, so perfect that it too killed autonomously. Not that evolution is necessarily going to continue for this new generation of machine, because a) we don't know that from this film alone, and anyway b) the next stage of evolution experienced by Dave at the end seems to be both one for which technology is discarded altogether and the beings travel naked through outer space as well as one for which death itself is transcended, at least corporeal death of the kind that could be the result of murder such as that committed by Moon-Watcher and HAL. In other words, for next stage, for the Star Child, we are given no reason to suppose that any technology, weapon, or tool of any kind, even technology as refined and advanced as HAL, has any significance or use.

In a sense, the Star Child is as naked as the protohumans in the beginning, which is another instance of the film going full circle.

There is definitely a parallel, except that HAL ends up dead and Bowman becomes the Star-Child.

True, though we learn nothing of Moon-Watcher after he tosses his bone in the air, just minutes after his kill.

 

[The Old Mixer]

In a sense, the Star Child is as naked as the protohumans in the beginning, which is another instance of the film going full circle.

I found a quote from Roger Ebert that gets into that, but was saving it for Part 2 of my review. That was another revelation for me.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Kubrick was a genius. Clarke too. They created a masterpiece.

 

[The Old Mixer]

True, though we learn nothing of Moon-Watcher after he tosses his bone in the air, just minutes after his kill.

And yet, everything we need to know, with that time jump.

 

[Christopher]

I had the opposite experience. I saw the movie before I read the book. For me, Arthur Clarke's literalness and detailed exposition took away some of the mystery and grandeur of the film.

That seems backward to me, since Clarke was the source of the film's story and concepts. Clarke's story "The Sentinel" was the seed idea of the whole thing, and Clarke came up with the plot for the novel/film in collaboration with Kubrick.

And I've always found them a very mismatched pair, since Clarke was a hard-SF writer who always did explain things clearly and in detail. To me, Kubrick's aggressive avoidance of explanation and clarity just feels pretentious.

I mean, I don't think it's really that hard to follow what's happening in the movie (except, perhaps, for the ending with Dave Bowman reborn as Space God-Fetus).

I think the Dawn of Man sequence would feel off-putting and pointless to a lot of people, since it goes on forever and there's so little coherent activity or interaction going on. I dunno, though, I wasn't watching on a very large TV when I first saw it, so maybe the interactions are clearer on the big screen. But I found the film far, far too boring to be interested in a rewatch.

Yup, basically they needed a "generic space mission" to get the characters to the mysterious place where the story happens. They didn't really think through the details, so they ended up with what looks like a space shuttle but is talked about as both a colony ship and a scientific expedition, yet one that will never be able to communicate with the world that sent it, except perhaps over thousands of years.

Not thousands. Keep in mind that the space capsule must have been traveling far slower than light, otherwise it wouldn't have needed cryogenic tubes in the first place because it could've gotten to other stars within a human lifetime. If it had been traveling at, say, 2% of lightspeed (allowing them to reach Alpha Centauri in c. 215 years), then in 2000 years it would've covered only 40 light-years, and it would take only 40 years to send a message back to their descendants on Earth.

I read the book a couple of years or so before I got to see the movie, and Arthur C Clarke immediately became my favorite writer. In the long term, though, 2001 was my least favorite of his books. After reading The Lost Worlds of 2001, I wish we had seen the novel it could have been, unrestrained by the need to be consistent with the movie.

Yeah, there were a lot of interesting ideas in Lost Worlds, far beyond what the FX technology of the time could've pulled off.

Clarke's sequels are sequels of his version of the story, which is really a different entity from the film.

That's actually not true. The novel 2010: Odyssey Two is more of a sequel to the movie than the book, because it follows the movie's version of events in which the Monolith was at Jupiter instead of Saturn (although it draws on elements from the book version as well). After all, Clarke understood that the movie version of the story was far better known than the book version, so it made sense to go with the version the bulk of his audience would be more familiar with.

For that matter, all four of Clarke's Odyssey novels were in mutually incompatible continuities -- more like four variations on a common theme than a single four-part narrative. Arthur C. Clarke was not the kind of writer who did sequels. Other writers like Asimov and LeGuin and Niven built these big, interconnected future histories, but what set Clarke's work apart is that just about everything he wrote was a complete standalone, in its own universe that was difficult or impossible to reconcile with anything else he'd written. That's why it took him so long to finally give into the pressure to write a 2001 sequel. Other than the loosely interconnected Odyssey books, the closest thing he ever did to a series as a solo writer was the Tales from the White Hart, a set of scientific tall tales that were narrated by raconteur Harry Purvis to his drinking buddies in the "White Hart" pub. But since Harry's stories were all probably untrue or at least wildly exaggerated, one can't really say there's any continuity to them beyond the framing sequences in the pub. (Clarke was a credited author on a couple of multi-book series late in life, the Rama sequels with Gentry Lee and the Time Odyssey series with Stephen Baxter, but both were written primarily by the younger writers with limited input from Clarke.)

 

[The Old Mixer]

That seems backward to me, since Clarke was the source of the film's story and concepts. Clarke's story "The Sentinel" was the seed idea of the whole thing, and Clarke came up with the plot for the novel/film in collaboration with Kubrick.

But it's well-known that after a point, the film and the book were developed separately in parallel, with Kubrick going his way with the core story and Clarke another. The film is a distinct entity that's trying to say its own thing in its own way. One is free to interpret it without going to the book for literal answers.

Not thousands. Keep in mind that the space capsule must have been traveling far slower than light, otherwise it wouldn't have needed cryogenic tubes in the first place because it could've gotten to other stars within a human lifetime. If it had been traveling at, say, 2% of lightspeed (allowing them to reach Alpha Centauri in c. 215 years), then in 2000 years it would've covered only 40 light-years, and it would take only 40 years to send a message back to their descendants on Earth.

The film was more specific...according to the ship's instruments, they'd been travelling about 2000 years from Earth's perspective, and were supposed to be 320 light years from Earth. The latter part was wrong, but was apparently consistent with the former, that nobody thought those readings were amiss. At one point, they speculated that they might be in a star system that's actually over 600 ly from Earth. So the ship had the capability to travel at least 1/6 light speed, possibly 1/3.

That's actually not true. The novel 2010: Odyssey Two is more of a sequel to the movie than the book, because it follows the movie's version of events in which the Monolith was at Jupiter instead of Saturn (although it draws on elements from the book version as well). After all, Clarke understood that the movie version of the story was far better known than the book version, so it made sense to go with the version the bulk of his audience would be more familiar with.

That Clarke changed details in his sequel to better match the details in the film doesn't mean that it's any less his vision of what happened next, rather than Kubrick's. The film was Kubrick's vision, and he wanted to leave it open for interpretation.

 

[Christopher]

But it's well-known that after a point, the film and the book were developed separately in parallel, with Kubrick going his way with the core story and Clarke another. The film is a distinct entity that's trying to say its own thing in its own way. One is free to interpret it without going to the book for literal answers.

Obviously, but I just find it odd to say that Clarke's version "took away from" the film's version, as if it were just an adaptation. Maybe I'm being too concerned with specific word choice, but as you say, they were independent of each other by that point, so it doesn't really work to say Clarke took anything away. That phrasing implies that Kubrick's version is the more fundamental one, and that is factually incorrect.

The film was more specific...according to the ship's instruments, they'd been travelling about 2000 years from Earth's perspective, and were supposed to be 320 light years from Earth. The latter part was wrong, but was apparently consistent with the former, that nobody thought those readings were amiss. At one point, they speculated that they might be in a star system that's actually over 600 ly from Earth. So the ship had the capability to travel at least 1/6 light speed, possibly 1/3.

Which is insanely fast for a 1970s spaceship, even positing the other advances in spaceflight and cryogenics in the movie. But then, lots of SF from that era had people making interstellar journeys in the '70s or '80s or '90s. It's hard for laypeople to grasp how immense interstellar distances and the speed of light truly are, and how very, very far we are from making such journeys practical. The fastest any human-made object has ever traveled was 265,000 km/h achieved by the Juno probe in 2016, which is less than 1/4000th the speed of light. And that was with the assistance of Jupiter's powerful gravity.

But even so, getting data back on a time scale of a few centuries is reasonable from the perspective of a civilization focused on long-term, generational endeavors, which is what interstellar exploration and colonization would have to be.

That Clarke changed details in his sequel to better match the details in the film doesn't mean that it's any less his vision of what happened next, rather than Kubrick's. The film was Kubrick's vision, and he wanted to leave it open for interpretation.

That's not what you said, though. Again, maybe I'm too focused on precise word choices, but you said "Clarke's sequels are sequels of his version of the story," and they aren't. I guess you could say that they're stylistic sequels, but in terms of the specific events being referred to, the novel 2010 mostly treats the film version of 2001 as the canonical one, or at least it hybridizes elements from both while favoring the movie version in the event of a conflict.

 

[scotpens]

. . . I think the Dawn of Man sequence would feel off-putting and pointless to a lot of people, since it goes on forever and there's so little coherent activity or interaction going on. I dunno, though, I wasn't watching on a very large TV when I first saw it, so maybe the interactions are clearer on the big screen. But I found the film far, far too boring to be interested in a rewatch.

I first saw 2001 in its original Cinerama presentation in 70mm. Believe me, it makes a huge difference when you see it on the big theater screen with 6-channel sound.

. . . After all, Kubrick's whole approach to the movie was to explain as little as possible. Maybe he would've left those two captions out given his druthers, but he might've compromised to studio notes and put them in for the sake of clarity.

I can't recall the source -- it may have been Jerome Agel's book The Making of Kubrick's 2001 -- but that's basically correct. The titles within the film were an afterthought, to make the timeline somewhat clearer to the audience.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Why would they muster another ship to look for Taylor's ship so soon after it left? And what sort of update could they expect to hear from the second ship, if it did find Taylor in a few thousand years?

The only reasonable explanation is that Taylor's ship was sending automatic status transmissions expected to reach 1972 ANSA up to a certain point in time, but something went wrong--possibly part of series of malfunctions that had the ship fail to come to rest on land as it was meant to. Hypothetically, if the automatic transmissions failed up to the point where ANSA still expected to receive it (and there might be support for that theory, as Taylor ordered Landon to physically send a signal to earth that they landed), the plan may have been to assume something went horribly wrong, and the crew should be rescued. Regarding updates from Brent's ship, the same standards would apply, but any decision to go after Brent's ship were stopped cold by the sudden reappearance of Taylor's ship one year later (Escape from the Planet of the Apes).

I didn't say it was inaccurate. "The Dawn of Man" is poetic establishment of not just a vague point in time but a vague point in evolution. "18 Months Later" is just a time stamp-- following the scenes on the space station and Moon that had no time stamps.

Again, the space station and moon were the flowing, next phase of the monolith's journey (see the next reply), so no titles were needed until the investigative team's jarring sensory incident with the monolith. Ending that sequence in the way seen gripped viewers with a mystery never receiving an answer--but the fact the next sequence was the Discovery One mission, audiences knew this was yet another phase of the monolith, but required the title, so no one would expect an immediate follow up to moon incident.

Neither was the "Dawn of Man" sequence broken up into the Monolith and watering hole scenes. It feels very random.

I think the "Dawn" flowed in a logical manner needing no additional titles, as its clear every event in the period, right up to the bone weaponized / toss had the the cumulative effect of showing the monolith's influence. At that point, the audience knew the monolith was the subject, so the transition from flying bone to spaceship (because the audience knew the where the monolith story was headed) was logical indeed.

Yes, I suppose we could assume that the colony was intended to be cumulative.

Yup, basically they needed a "generic space mission" to get the characters to the mysterious place where the story happens. They didn't really think through the details, so they ended up with what looks like a space shuttle but is talked about as both a colony ship and a scientific expedition, yet one that will never be able to communicate with the world that sent it, except perhaps over thousands of years.

For its purpose and capability, the POTA ship must have been a colony/exploration ship, and when one thinks about it, if the ship landed as intended, the Taylor mission could have carried out the exploration end of the mission and returned to earth (no matter the century as). At no point in POTA or BTPOTA did anyone ever say they could not return to earth, since Brent's ship was sent as a search and rescue mission, so that class of ship was able to return to its origin point.

I know some have wondered about the ship based on the exterior, but Taylor's dialogue and the fact William Creber & Holdereed Maxy only designed the "nosecone" section of what would be built in the miniature and full size mock-up led many to think she ship was some small, shuttle-type vehicle, when--as mentioned above--the ship was of a kind that was not a one-way technology, despite the production not successfully hiding the lack of an engine section after it landed in the lake.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I first saw 2001 in its original Cinerama presentation in 70mm. Believe me, it makes a huge difference when you see it on the big theater screen with 6-channel sound.

Agreed. There are only a few truly unique film experiences that take full advantage of the medium and how its presented, and 2001 is on that very short list.

 

[Kor]

I rarely watch 2001 all at once; I typically spread it out over a few evenings of viewing. Come to think of it, that's how I watch most movies these days.

Kor

 

[The Old Mixer]

Obviously, but I just find it odd to say that Clarke's version "took away from" the film's version, as if it were just an adaptation. Maybe I'm being too concerned with specific word choice, but as you say, they were independent of each other by that point, so it doesn't really work to say Clarke took anything away. That phrasing implies that Kubrick's version is the more fundamental one, and that is factually incorrect.

If you want to debate @scotpens 's choice of phrase, I guess that's between you and him; but I got his point and agree with it.

That's not what you said, though. Again, maybe I'm too focused on precise word choices, but you said "Clarke's sequels are sequels of his version of the story," and they aren't. I guess you could say that they're stylistic sequels, but in terms of the specific events being referred to, the novel 2010 mostly treats the film version of 2001 as the canonical one, or at least it hybridizes elements from both while favoring the movie version in the event of a conflict.

Perhaps this is fixed by changing my word choice from "version" to "vision". Kubrick and Clarke had very different visions of the same story premise, and it shows in how they each fleshed it out in their respective media. Clarke's sequels/follow-ups are no more representative of what Kubrick was going for in the film than Clarke's original novel was.

 

[Christopher]

Perhaps this is fixed by changing my word choice from "version" to "vision". Kubrick and Clarke had very different visions of the same story premise, and it shows in how they each fleshed it out in their respective media. Clarke's sequels/follow-ups are no more representative of what Kubrick was going for in the film than Clarke's original novel was.

Well, I don't see what your point is in regard to RJ's point about the parallel between HAL and Bowman (or was it Moon-Watcher)? I mean, since the movie doesn't follow up on HAL's future, I don't think Kubrick's approach affects that question one way or the other. For that matter, I don't see much difference between the way Clarke and Kubrick treated HAL. Clarke gave a fuller explanation of what led to his breakdown, but the depiction of his actions and the dialogue between him and Bowman was pretty much the same in both versions, IIRC. I don't see Kubrick's version as fundamentally different, just told differently so that more is left unexplained. I guess that leaves more room for people to read their own interpretations into the story, but Clarke's interpretation fits into the empty spaces as well as anybody else's.

 

[The Old Mixer]

but Clarke's interpretation fits into the empty spaces as well as anybody else's.

Well, that's it exactly. It works both ways. Kubrick very deliberately left the film open to interpretation, and one isn't beholden to Clarke's details as the definitive interpretation of what the film is doing. Clarke's book is about literal exposition. Kubrick's film is about subtext.

 

[Christopher]

And I still don't see how that refutes RJ's point, since you brought this up in response to him.