I continue not to understand claims that perceptions of TMP were ever influenced by 2001.
I was as much a fan of 2001 during its first decade as it was possible for a young person to be; I first saw it in Cinerama in spring 1968 at age 11 (months before first seeing Star Trek on NBC starting with "Spock's Brain") and two years later owning/studying the massive paperback The Making of Kubrick's 2001, playing the two LPs (yes, there was a "volume II" that featured related music not actually in the movie), buying Clarke's The Lost Worlds of 2001 upon release, etc. I saw it every chance I could, probably six or seven times before TMP was released (always in theaters, of course, or maybe a university film society showing).
It never once occurred to me, upon seeing TMP twice during its original run and then a few years later in the ABC broadcast version, to think of 2001 for even a moment. (Nor did any of the many reviews I read in December 1979 mention 2001; they concentrated on differences from the TV series.) I have many problems with TMP - only a few of which were addressed by the Director's Edition DVD - but the same would be true if an "ideal" version of TMP had been released in 1979.
It wasn't until I visited this site that I ever came across the idea that they should be compared. In my opinion a more apt comparison would be with Peter Hyams' 2010 (1984).
Having seen 2001 for the first time in decades recently, I can see some stylistic and pacing similarities with TMP easily enough. They're both somewhat deliberate films that also have moments of grandeur, something that it can likely be argued sets TMP aside from the other Trek films. It's also easy enough to argue that in the case of both films the focus is not primarily on the humans.
Yeah, it’s the grandeur, the pacing, the cinematography, the relatively high-concept ideas and the distant, chilly tone. The long, languid tours of the Enterprise and V’ger naturally invite comparison — just add some Strauss. Thematically, both films are interested in man’s relationship with technology and potential future evolution, and both climax with the birth of a posthuman lifeform.
Tonally, TMP is night and day from the fun romp of Star Wars, which came out two years earlier, and quite different even from its source series. So it gets lumped in the “smart but sterile” category with 2001, which isn’t exactly bad company to be in (except for suffering by comparison).
This topic certainly comes up a lot in relation to TMP: the ol' "Was TMP influenced by 2001?" question.
I don't know how much they were consciously trying to ape (no pun intended) the Kubrick film, but there are some rather striking overlaps. And it's easy to see why. Not only were some of the same people involved (i.e., Doug Trumbull), but 2001 came out toward the end of TOS' run on television, as if marking a "stargate" transition between "old" Trek and the more elevated conception that took hold with TMP. In fact, the release of 2001 in the United States broadly coincides with NBC's fateful decision to move the original series to its kiss-of-death 10:00 PM Friday night time slot -- this decision occurring in March 1968, and 2001 going on release in the U.S. in April 1968.
This is mere speculation, but perhaps GR took some solace in 2001 itself, realising what a game-changer it was, and vowed to one day make something in the Science-Fiction field of that calibre, even if he wasn't explicitly compelled to project into the future and foresee himself deliberately "patterning" Star Trek in its "image" (again, no puns intended). A young filmmaker just getting his start in the 1970s, one George Walton Lucas, was very much impacted by 2001, and it would actually shape some of the thinking that went into Star Wars; even if largely in a contrapuntal sense. Shortly after Star Wars came out, Lucas would coolly remark:
"Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science-fiction movie and it is going to be very hard for somebody to come along and make a better movie, as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t want to make a
2001, I wanted to make a space fantasy that was more in the genre of Edgar Rice Burroughs; that whole other end of space fantasy that was there before science took it over in the Fifties. . . . On a technical level [Star Wars] can be compared, but personally I think that
2001 is far superior."
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/george-lucas-the-wizard-of-star-wars-53162/
No serious filmmaker working in Science-Fiction or fantasy could fail to be moved by the intense scope and awesome tone of 2001. And given that Gene Roddenberry didn't want to make another Star Wars, it seems only logical he would lean back in the direction of Kubrick's masterpiece -- consciously or otherwise. There's little denying that 2001 was *the* reference point for anyone trying to make a serious Science-Fiction film, and it remains that way to this very day, half a century later.
With 2001, the bar had been seriously raised. It's rare that such a thing happens in one film, but put brilliant minds like Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick together and it's actually possible. If there is a comparable synergy in TMP, it would obviously be between Gene Roddenberry and Robert Wise (with Douglas Trumbull and Jerry Goldsmith enacting their cinematic "Word" in the visual and aural plains respectively).
Never again would Star Trek enjoy such synergy, such an uncanny alignment. All the sequels would chase more of that "Star Wars" feeling. The 2001 feel of TMP would be left behind, not unlike the way Spock deliberately yet carelessly blasts himself into the heart of V'Ger, leaving his rocket seat adrift, its fuel extinguished (TMP was maybe that 2001 feeling on overdrive -- necessitating some sort of change or abandonment thereafter?). To chase a Star Wars vibe isn't bad, but it did somewhat limit the scope of the series going forward. And boy, did it have consequences...
So much so, by the time we get to Star Trek XI, the whole thing has been rebooted into a rapid-fire "coming of age" shoot-em-up in space (sort of a brainless TWOK focusing on callow youth instead of old age and youth restored), and the person heading up this populist rebranding is none other than Star Wars fanboy (and eventual Star Wars Sequel Trilogy producer and director) J.J. Abrams. Yet TMP's influence remains. Indeed, there is a bit of TMP-TWOK seasoning in "Abrams Trek", due to the importance placed on the bond between Kirk and Spock, the black-hole-as-time-travel-device motif (first alluded to by Decker toward the end of TMP), and a noticeably-older Leonard Nimoy there to give everything his blessing ("Thrusters on full" -- an oblique TMP reference to Spock's personal "spacewalk" into V'Ger's innards, and also an echo of Kirk watching nervously as Saavik takes the command chair at Spock's discretion in TWOK). At the end of filming, Abrams was also gifted a TMP movie jacket.
It's funny that TMP has the same function and standing within the pantheon of Star Trek movies that 2001 does within the pantheon of Science-Fiction cinema. It is basically the loftiest film in the series, which no-one quite knows how to interpret or explain, or what to do about, which is perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay it -- the very quality that most aligns it with 2001 and makes it worthy of the 2001 crown. Were they trying to give it that standing in advance? I'm sure, on some level, they were just trying to make a compelling film. But sometimes, a creative's impulses can defiantly curve the spacetime of cinema, and a little of that may have occurred here.
The ape tossing the bone into the air in 2001 might as well be Gene Roddenberry tossing his concept into space, deliberately trying to advance it a million years or more, into the realm of the heavenly bodies. Even though it's a Trumbull sequence, note the celestial objects that Spock witnesses as patterned representations when he journeys inside the V'Ger Orifice -- clearly the most advanced part of the V'Ger mechanism, which only Spock experiences (well, and the viewer, in an obvious echo of Bowman's stargate journey in 2001). TMP, like 2001, suggests a much grander and mindbending set of experiences awaits human beings in the larger cosmos (Spock is sort of "rewarded" with this vision sequence due to his prior pursuit of "pure logic" -- work through the implications of that if you may). There is a sort of religious ecstasy unique to both movies that none of the other ST movies come closely to rivalling. At least not with the same depth, maturity, or grace.
Some footnotes here (although call these "midnotes" if you like -- this is more of an intermission!):
i) This thread from 2017 is worth pursuing, especially for posts
#1 (by
SteveG) and
#3 (by
pfontaine2):
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-tmp-kubrick-verses-trumbull.286354/
2) A more in-depth version of what is said or touched upon in those cited responses can be read in a neat little article by Bob Lockard from 2012:
https://dejareviewer.com/2012/03/06...k-the-motion-picture-vs-2001-a-space-odyssey/
I'm too temped to steal his list and post it here, so here it is (please read the full article for explication of each item):
- The beginning involves a group of primitive creatures facing an unknown entity.
- The space scenes are long and slow-moving.
- Music plays an important part in highlighting onscreen events.
- A commander is unwittingly demoted.
- The crew is in the dark about their superiors’ intentions for their mission.
- A character drifts aimlessly through space and has to be rescued.
- A man and a machine face off in a battle of wits until they reach a stalemate.
- A computer’s circuitry is cut at a key moment, forcing the humans to take action.
- The aliens responsible for much of the plot remain unseen.
- A human merges with an alien entity to become a new lifeform.
The list doesn't fully capture all the resonances -- for instance, the author spends a short time detailing the "approach" sequences in both films, where Floyd journeys in a space shuttle to the space station orbiting Earth (famously set to Strauss' "Blue Danube"), while Kirk is escorted by Scotty in a shuttle to the Enterprise in drydock around the Earth (which has Jerry Goldsmith's masterful musical accompaniment).
One that many people miss (even the author doesn't capture it) is the significance of Jupiter in both films. Its significance in the plot of 2001 is obvious (its presence in the film cannot be missed -- it replaces Saturn from the novel), while it has more of a cameo role in TMP, when the Enterprise briefly flies past Jupiter on its way out of the solar system. This would seem to be TMP doffing its cap to 2001 in a basic "waystation" sense -- paying homage to a previous "star voyager" of the big screen (and also anticipating the real-life Voyager probes' brief swing-by of Jupiter:
Voyager 1's closest approach was on March 5th 1979 and Voyager 2's was on July 9th 1979), much like the way Kirk orders a departure angle of Earth on the viewer.
Another semi-obscure resonance between 2001 and TMP is the original snake-like design of V'Ger by Mike Minor, which bears a similarity with the filament-like "Discovery" craft in the Kubrick film. Behind-the-scenes photo of the model on the following page about half-way down:
http://beyondthemarquee.com/21991
All in all, I feel there are many resonances between the two films, big and small. It is also interesting that both seem to be attempting to be definitive, capstone statements on their respective decades. 2001 is very much a 1960s aesthetic and 1960s Cold War paranoia projected into the future (the Cuban Missile Crisis was only a few years before), while TMP is very earth-toned and lush and (as has been repeatedly observed) blatantly 1970s in its space-pajama aesthetic. 2001 was the only Science-Fiction film Kubrick ever made. TMP was the only time Gene Roddenberry ended up making a Science-Fiction film. If you're gonna make one and only one (perhaps GR sensed it might be his only shot despite the hope for sequels), go big. Make a statement. Both men seemed to know how to do that. Both men also leaned on other writers, other talents, to make their statements as epic as possible. And both men, while downplaying the label, perhaps considered themselves prophets and visionaries of the modern technocratic era. Incidentally, both men were also born and died in the same decade(s) and lived to the same age.
Well, I can agree that the focus isn't primarily on humans in 2001, although TMP insisted that "the human adventure is just beginning" in many of the posters/ads and at the conclusion of the movie itself. Yes, one could say that both films end by showing a process by which a human transcends, or is made to transcend, into something else (but in very different ways). The major and overriding difference, however, is that whereas TMP presents us with attempts at analysis ("V'ger is a child," etc.) and ultimately reveals Voyager 6, 2001 is interested in the mystery itself and insists on remaining ambiguous, and that has a lot to do with why it's remained memorable.
I tend to think the human aspect of TMP is underappreciated -- both Kirk and Spock go on very human journeys, and the film concludes by restoring the TOS status quo it initially denies us. But I can see why people find it chilly and remote. I can imagine how fans must have felt at the time -- it must have been cold water in the face after TOS's warm mug of cocoa.
I agree. In relative terms, TMP may have a clinical and detached feel compared to the ST movie sequels and television series, but it's also a lot warmer (subjectively speaking) than 2001. Indeed, in the Kubrick film, human beings are essentially portrayed as a cosmological irrelevance; we are left with nowhere to go but to transcend. Our own creations have largely gotten the better of us and it's time to check out of Hotel Reality and truly head into that "Undiscovered Country".
TMP, by contrast, is a bit more nuanced on the matter. We bear witness to a human-machine transcendence, and even play a role in that process, but the result is that V'Ger basically goes its way and we continue to go ours. TMP posits a kind of parallel evolution: a multiplicity of beings with their own agendas and modes of operation (consider the Klingons fighting V'Ger at the start of the movie), and these agendas and modes continuing in a relatively unhindered fashion, even with many other intelligences and possibilities within the universe.
Heck, no one's even mad at the end of the movie that V'Ger neglected to share even a drop of its vast knowledge with anyone else -- not even a few scrolls from its vast library. Of course, that idea was considered for the end and dropped. V'Ger is allowed to keep that knowledge, and humans are allowed to remain ignorant: ignorant and striving. Transcension is possible, but it has its limits. In many ways, to echo a line or a sentiment from "The Final Frontier", it's the search that matters and the bonds and stories forged along the way. 2001 is truly cosmic in the sense it leaves humans with nowhere to go, nothing else to do (of course, Arthur C. Clarke did write sequels). TMP leaves us in quiet rapture with the stirring promise that "the human adventure is just beginning".
). To get them to a point where they not only split up but are unconcerned about each other is a huge jump that the film is uninterested in exploring but which begs some explanation. 
