......and knew that wasn't a real zebra!!!! And that it was a tapir! And lots of other stuff Very impressive reaction! Great eye for details. Very intelligent.
@@itubeutubewealltube1 It's not the same monolith. In 2010, the dimensions of the one orbiting Jupiter are described and it's length is several kilometers.
@@DocMicrowave Ratio, yes. But actual SIZE? No. What that means is that it's thickness has always been some factor of 1, it's length has always been some factor of 9, and it's width has always been some factor of 4.
HAL was programmed to be 100% loyal and honest with Dave and Frank. He was also given a secret (the briefing). This created an unresolvable conflict that drove him mad. Or the computer equivalent.
One of the injustices of the time is that the ape makeup in Planet of the Apes received an Academy Award, while this film's hominid costumes and makeup were ignored. I swear the Academy people thought those were real apes.
Clarke and/or Kubrick quipped same :) But maybe the "real" reason was that so MANY Hollywood make-up artists were "conscripted/diverted" to make the P.O.T.A make-up actually work. While Kubrick produced 2001 mainly in the UK (food for thought).
@anorthosite Nowadays the accedamy would rather the awards go to foreign productions. Ten of the last 11 winners for best direction were born outside the USA. Apparently the accedamy still thinks this is Trump's America.
Kubrick was black listed from Oscars because he filmed in UK, not because of ability. The one exception, the only Oscar ever given to a Kubrick film was for the special effects in 2001. They had to give him the Oscar for that only because the effects were so superior they had no other choice.
It's basically a myth, John Chambers was given an honorary Oscar but there was no competition with 2001 because the best makeup award didn't actually exist until 1981.
I am impressed with your understanding of many aspects of this movie. Don’t feel bad that you don’t totally understand it, you are not supposed to. It is meant to make you think. Most of all I appreciate that a young person such as yourself does not dismiss it because it is not fast-paced, action packed, and predictable like most movies, especially today. As a few others have suggested, there are other classic SciFi movies you might appreciate, like Forbidden Planet, The Andromeda Strain, and (later) The Abyss. Of course even more I recommend reading classic SciFi, especially authors like Arthur C. Clarke (who I met), Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein (I prefer his earlier works), Harlan Ellison (who I also met), Poul Anderson, and of course H. G. Wells, to name just a few.
The black screen is the 'Overture', which was run while the cinema's stage curtains were still closed, and people were making their way to their seats. The curtains go up and the lights go down for the MGM logo ( this one is only on this film ). Then the film begins.
@@majkus Overtures used to be very common. Here are a few more from the period where they had started to wane: Lawrence of Arabia It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World The Black Hole (same year as Star Trek TMP) Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_with_overtures
@@jonathanroberts8981 A lot is made of the slit scan. All it did was take drawings, geometric illustrations, and pictures, and stretched them. The resulting print was then filmed as if we are flying over it like it's canyon walls, and floor, and ceiling.
"My god it's full of stars" is from the novelization of the movie. It's the last thing Bowman (?) says before he goes through the monolith into some kind of wormhole.
@@kellymoses8566 Hardly, and that's a really bad example of "best CGI" because in that particular case, it was completely unnecessary to do them CGI. Marvel has a penchant for overusing the f*** out of CGI, even on mundane shit that shouldn't require it, such as She-Hulk being shot with motion capture and then her green skin tone added in fucking post, or shooting a scene of Samuel L Jackson entirely against green screen, only for the finished product to just be a drywall background with a fucking lamp. It's lazy, and it's absurd. Besides, considering most Marvel films (as well as other modern action films) just look like a dizzying array of CGI FX crammed into every shot, there's no comparing practical FX of old to current trends. ALL modern films look like polished video games, with otherwise "connector shots" dressed up unnecessarily to make them look more artsy. The most common comparison I give is something like the sequence of model shots showing the Falcon entering the Death Star. These shots were intended to convey to the audience only ONE THING - "the Falcon has gone from being in space to not being in space; we are now IN the Death Star." In these shots, there is only the Falcon presented against a crystal clear starfield. We don't need anything else in these shots, because it could only serve to clutter things up. Compare this to a shot in say, "The Last Jedi," where the Falcon pops up into frame from the bottom -- a color filter is applied, artificial shaky cam, the ship itself wobbles as if it's a helicopter, the background is riddled with extra objects, resulting in a "busy" shot that is clearly inserted for no other reason than, "it'll look cool." The shot doesn't propel the story like the formers do; it's just inserted because...."cool shot of the Falcon."
Like she remarked, CGI ages rather poorly. Now we've got a "modern" version of "Planet Of The Apes" all in cartoonish CGI. I'm sure it'll flop at the box office.
@@ftumschkI tend to agree with kelly though. I don't know about that movie but Starship Troopers, the cgi still looks really good. Even the cgi in Terminator 2 still looks pretty good. It's a little bit obvious but it never takes me out. The problem is huge rafts of cgi produced are just barely passable to begin with. Plus, most productions can't resist making yet another "spectacular" cgi filled scene with too much crap going on. A Phantom Menace? I'm literally watching an army of obvious cartoons fighting another army of obvious cartoons and couldn't care less what happened. It looked like crap at the time.
The trip to Jupiter was, indeed, shot primarily on the inside of a rotating platform. It was a kind of Ferris wheel with the camera fixed in some shots and moving with the wheel in other shots. The "Ferris wheel" was where the crew lived to provide spin gravity, as you suspected. The rest of the ship was not rotating so moving from one part of the ship to another involved clever spin, slow-motion acrobatics. I saw 2001 when it came out (I was 15 years old in 1968) and I thought it was almost a blueprint for the future. I still haven't adjusted to the disappointment of reality not keeping up with the film😀! Each time I watch this movie I get more out of it and I enjoyed your perspective -- you have some great intuitions. I predict you will be thinking about this film for a long time to come.
I can tell you that when this came out, people who had never read the book had no idea what to think about the ending. But Kubrick did not seem particularly concerned that you have a definitive idea about what you'd just seen. He seemed content to let you come to your own ideas and interpretations.
@@randybass8842 The book was written concurrently with the film. It was released just after the film. But people who never read the book had no idea what the ending was supposed to mean, and could only guess at what the heck was going on.
There are not enough storytellers who do this. Everything is explained and drained of mystery. I'd rather be challenged, it's much more engaging when an artist respects my intelligence
One of the most intelligent reactions from a younger generation to this film that I’ve seen in a long time. I watched this film at the cinema aged five and it blew me away. London and the U.K. in the mid 60s to 70s was a very interesting place style-wise. Experimenting with minimalist furniture design. You could see this reflected in the set dressing of the conference room on Clavius. We had very similar chairs at home. Metal tubing, leather and fabric.
That was Stanley Kubrick's daughter on the video-phone. The entire movie was filmed on sound stages in London (UK), the only scene filmed outside was the bone thrower, which was shot in the studio car park. The actors didn't know what HAL sounded like until the premier of the movie because HAL's voice was added post production.
When our ancestor throws the bone in the air, the cut shows a nuclear weapons orbital platform, not any satellite. Thus, it's a 4 million years time cut, from the first human weapon to the most advanced human weapon. In some ways, it shows how much we advanced... And how much we are still the same.
The follow-up 2010, whilst not being as revolutionary and artsy, gives some answers to what happened to HAL and what might be behind the monolith. It's a good watch.
Speaking of practical effects, they built those sets full size, and yes, they did even spin them. The Discovery set was actually the size of a Ferris wheel that they spun slowly during filming. I believe this was the first time a "wormhole" was represented on screen. While there are many personal interpretations of what this movie is about, the author of the original short story ("The Sentinel") and the novelization of the movie, Arthur C. Clarke, did present his interpretation. The Monolith on earth affected the early hominoids to set them on their next phase of development. The triumphant ape tossed his primitive weapon into the air which transitioned into an orbiting nuclear weapon, The Monolith on the moon was an "alarm" that would be set off when humans had developed far enough to discover it. It sent a signal to the third Monolith with the intention of humans following the signal to the third Monolith and then being drawn through the wormhole. Yes, the last Monolith transformed Dave Poole into the next phase of humanity, a Star Child. In the novel, the Star Child destroys the orbital weapons with a thought and the reader is left with the explanation that the Star Child was in control of the world and didn't exactly know what to do next, but he'd think of something. The reason HAL went rogue was because it could not determine a logical reason why the humans had not been given all the information about the mission. It reasoned he was the only entity that had all the information because it was the only entity that was fully trustworthy. So, in its zeal to ensure the success of the mission, it reasoned that it should eliminate all the less trustworthy crew members. I saw this with my teen-aged crew in the theater in 68. We sat in the front row, and as Bowman went through the wormhole, one of my buddies (who was a stoner) started screaming, "It's blowing my mind! It's blowing my mind!"
Thanks for this. I've loved the movie for decades, but have never quite had enough motivation to look into Clarke's own thoughts. I was happy with my own explanation, which was somewhat similar I guess (though admittedly more vague and open-ended). I always believed that both monoliths were probes, sent together, millions of years ago, to "seek out new life forms" that were worthy of absorption? inclusion? partnership?. I always assumed that one probe was sent to each planet and each significant moon in the solar system. My view has been that the "aliens" don't necessarily have to be "from Jupiter" (Jupiter's moons I mean), that location could just be their version of an outpost from which to deploy their probes from (every probed Solar system having its own similar central outpost). I always felt like the Earth probe did not phone home because it found the life forms it encountered to be too primitive, though by interacting with those life forms, it inadvertently (or purposefully) helped elevate the primates up to the next level of intelligence. The only problem with my "deployed at the same time" theory has always been that one probe was on the Earth's surface and the other was "deliberately buried" on the moon. Which I am so happy I read your comment about the "alarm" perspective. Yes of course that is the way to look at it. That means that the one on the moon would have to have been like an "aptitude test" for humanity. The moon one was buried there after the first probe reported its unsatisfactory findings to the "Jupiter outpost". That outline works perfectly for me. As for the earth probe, I personally believe that it didn't ever disappear/fly away but was simply buried under 4 million year's worth of dirt, and it was never discovered because Earth is such a big place and even in "the future" we don't spend time seismically scanning every single inch of dirt. I never bothered to interpret the embryo part too much, I just looked at it as the life cycle/passage of time not working the same way for the aliens, so now Dave is one of them (or some hybrid entity) and can be reborn as needed to be able to move humanity on to the "next level".
Great review Wren. Very impressed that you picked up on so many of the details. A lot of reactors miss so much. The centrifuge shot in the Discovery wasn't a cut. Frank Poole was strapped into his seat and hanging upside down when Dave Bowman came down the ladder. You pretty much figured out the end, but for clarity read Arthur C Clarke's novel -it explains what happened in much greater detail
@@markhill3858 - If you actually look at the monolith, the thickness is nowhere near 1:4 of the width, so the makers of the Taj were clearly much better at following the specifications. 😊
@@Yngvarfo well thats exactly what the proportions are .. youre mis-estimating it. In the film its 1.4.9 .. in the books its 1.4.8. Its supposed to be a message from the aliens
@@markhill3858 It was never mentioned in Stanley Kubrick's original movie. It was only in the book by Arthur C Clarke, and it was always 1:4:9 there. Never 1:4:8. When he wrote the sequel 2010 many years later, he mentioned it again, and when it was turned into a movie by Peter Hyams, those references made their way into the movie. That was the first time that the 1:4:9 ratio was mentioned in a movie. But I said "if you actually look at the monolith." It is quite clear that the proportions are *not* 1:4:9. It's much too narrow. As long as it was only in the book, not the movie, I could call it one of the inconsistencies, like Discovery going to Jupiter rather than Saturn. But in the sequel, Peter Hyams made the characters mention the ratio, while at the same time just copying the monolith from the first movie which was *not* 1:4:9. It's not such an exceptionally significant mathematical ratio anyway. It's just the first three integers squared. Mathematics is full of quirky sequences. I searched the web for images to show what I meant. I was lucky, and found that someone else made the same point in much greater detail, as well as an explanation of how the inconsistency happened. Apparently, Kubrick came up with the idea of a rectangular shape first (they had been thinking of a tetrahedron, like in Clarke's story The Sentinel), and Clarke came up with the 1:4:9 ratio from that, but Kubrick had already shot scenes of the monolith as he envisioned it. 2010odysseyarchive.blogspot.com/2015/12/monolith-metrics-component-one.html
It's refreshing that there aren't scene changes every thirteen seconds. That's one significant thing we seem to have lost in the last few decades - the concept of an attention span. I also relish the fact that there aren't more explosions than scene changes.
Ape costumes: the same year, a film called 'Planet of the Apes' got the make-up Oscar. Apparently it made more money, soo... but it could also be because no-one in Hollywood realised they were costumes and masks.
The worm hole effects didn't drag on Cinarama , huge curved wide screens in theaters. especially if on Acid (LSD) which I and a fair amount of people were tripping on
Excellent reaction and analysis. I thought your point during the movie about little happening in the real world since the moon landing in 1969 was very perceptive.
The 1971 Robert Wise film, The Andromeda Strain, based on 1969 Michael Crichton novel, comes to mind as an excellent science fiction thriller. Good Film. :)
For another classic scifi film you should watch Forbidden Planet ... based on Shakespeare Tempest. And for even older... a silent film Metropolis, and Earth to the Moon.
There was no cut when Bowman walked around the centrifuge. It spun along with him. The tiles on the floor would part to give room for the camera when it followed him jogging. Poole was strapped to his chair, giving the illusion that he was stationary, when in fact he was the one revolving around. When we saw the two astronauts in the hallway, entering the spinning section, it in fact stopped spinning while the hallway and the camera started spinning in the opposite direction. If you look very closely, you can see that there is a slight stutter in the rotation when it changes, but it's hard to spot. It all makes the point that the circular room, the centrifuge, is the only part of the ship with a semblance of gravity. The cockpit and the pod bay are supposed to be zero G, and they only move about with some of the same kind of gripping shoes that the stewardess used earlier. While I can point to the movie 2010 for *some* answers, I think I can say right now that the alien intelligence behind the monolith had nothing to do with HAL's malfunction. They were separate events, only connected by a theme of creating intelligence. The aliens encouraged some intelligence in the man-apes, and millions of years later, man, in turn, created artificial intelligence.
the words Explosive Bolts was prominent on the door because in 1967, three astronauts died in a fire in a test of the lunar module when the escape door would not open. After that, NASA switched to explosive bolts on the door so that could not happen again
They must have had explosive bolts in the spacecraft - Gus Grissom, one of the astronauts who died in the fire, had previously lost his Mercury spacecraft when the explosive bolts went off before the helicopter had hooked on, opening the hatch and allowing water in so it sank.
The escape hatch on Apollo 1 opened inward, and the pressure build-up due to heat from the fire (which burned really fast in a pure oxygen atmosphere) prevented it from opening. The remaining existing Apollo command modules were used for unmanned missions, and a redesigned command module (with a quick-release hatch that opened outward) was used for crewed missions beginning with Apollo 7. Interestingly, Apollo 6 was planned to practice the free return trajectory used by Apollo 13, but engine failures prevented this trip to the moon. The remaining mission objectives were completed in Earth orbit using the service module engine.
@@stevenlowe3026 They started out with bolts, then Grissom's mission had that mishap, so they took the bolts out and made the hatch open inward. Which is what killed him and the other two crewmen in the Apollo 1 fire. I'm not sure if the bolts came back, but the door was changed to open outward.
This film is tremendous, one of my favorites. Everything in space is just perfect. The atmosphere, the effects, the music/lack thereof. My tastes fall more on the arty side, so I love sci-fi films like this and the original Solaris.
Great insights make for a fine reaction, Wren! Most of your questions will be answered in "2010: The Year We Make Contact"...a good movie! For other Sci-Fi movie suggestions: "The day the Earth stood still" 1951 "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" 1954 (Walt Disney) "Forbidden Planet" 1956 "Journey to the Center of the Earth" 1959 "The Time Machine" 1960 "Fantastic Voyage" 1966 "Farhenheit 451" 1966 "Planet of the Apes" 1968 "A Clockwork Orange" 1971 "The Andromeda Strain" 1971 "The Omega Man" 1971 (remade as 'I am Legend') "Silent Running" 1972 "Slaughterhouse-Five" 1972 "Soylent Green" 1973 (Edward G. Robinson's last movie) "Westworld" 1973 "The Stepford Wives" 1975 "Logan's Run" 1976 "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" 1977 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" 2005 (Comedy Sci-Fi) Other movies are so iconic (Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Back to the Future, etc.) I won't list those. Good Luck with your job hunting! Mark
Great recommendations! Let's see... "The day the Earth stood still" 1951 - Michael Rennie was dying during filming, but it doesn't show. There's also a recent remake starring Keanu Reeves that's not bad, but watch it after the original. "Forbidden Planet" 1956 - starring Leslie Nielsen, before he was known for "don't call me Shirley". "Planet of the Apes" 1968 - arguably better than the recent remake. "The Andromeda Strain" 1971 - Featuring Eric Christmas, also known for his roles as the high school principal in the Porky's movies and as a crazy priest in the Cheers TV series. He was one of my professors at university. Interesting guy. "Silent Running" 1972 - Scored by Peter Schickele, of P. D. Q. Bach fame. He also scored the musical "Oh! Calcutta!". Be sure to watch the full-length theatrical edition. Broadcast TV editions were shortened for commercials, and they sacrificed too much of the story. Although this is a thought-provoking story, I found it harder to watch than most of the 1970's apocalyptic movies. "Logan's Run" 1976 - Watch the movie. Then watch the TV series if you REALLY like the movie. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" 2005 (Comedy Sci-Fi) - In addition to the movie, there's a TV mini series, radio program (and LP), and a stage production. Not to mention the books. All are great!
Nice details, especially on Silent Running with your teacher! All of "THGTTG" were so far out of the box! It remains the ONLY book I have read, cover-to-cover without putting it down! Sooo funny: "It's Marvin!...He just phoned up to wash his head at us!" Just too much humor ut fell out of a trilogy into 5 books, and a short story! Have you read any of Douglas' other works? "The Meaning of Liff" was more information, you didn't realize you needed!
The food wouldn't be liquid, it would be paste. It's not done to conserve weight, but by being fully enclosed, it stops bits of food breaking off & floating away.
Details: Notice that when Dave first enters the emergency airlock, there is no sound. But once he closes the outer hatch and the air lock pressurizes, suddenly we can hear sound.
It's cinematic creative genius. One of the movie's most dramatic and physical scenes, Dave's "explosive" entrance into the airlock, is filmed in silence.
@@MarkRyan-u3u Kubrick incorporated this into all scenes set in the vacuum of space: That's why when they're space walking, all we hear is their breathing - because air only exists inside their helmets. Or when Dave goes after Frank's body, we hear instruments beeping during cockpit scenes, but it cuts to silence during exterior shots.
In the 2010 Space Odyssey, we learn that Hal was given mission priority and could not have the mission stopped by humans he acted locally, but broke the three laws of robotics. Watch 2010, It's not as good but it explains more.
Remember this came out *before* the first moon landing. It changed how SciFi was portrayed. The big SciFi movie before this was Forbidden Planet with bright colours, flying saucers, etc. After this came out all movies looked this way for decades to come. Star Wars style came directly from this. Scientifically I don't think there was anything as nearly accurate until The Expanse came out.
Hi Wren, You really were quite insightful and picked up on so many things. As others have mentioned, 2010: The Year We Make Contact should be reacted to as soon as you're able. It's more of a conventional movie, but it does explain a lot and is well worth your time. I just subscribed.
One thing that is confusing on first viewing this movie is that are multiple plots line running simultaneously. There is a 'tools' plot and how they change our destiny as a species, there is a 'mysterious interplanetary visitors' plot who left the black monoliths for us to find, an 'AI' plot and the promise and danger therein, and over it all is an 'evolution' plot, wherein we get reborn as non-material consciousness. Very cool movie, and some of the best movie cinematography I've ever seen. When this dropped in 1968, if nothing else, people were gobsmacked by the visual effects.
The rotating set on Discovery was actually a Ferris wheel, and they were walking on the inside of it. I think I read somewhere the effect was 800k, which was quite a bit back then...
Smart reaction, Wren. I am old enough to have seen this movie on its original release as an adult, and I can tell you that for most of us nothing in the movie dragged. The main reason being that it was shown in Cinerama, a vast curved screen that even IMAX can't match. The sound systems had at that time only recently become stereophonic with sophisticated equipment that gave a full, rich sound compared with previous versions. As you rightly point out, the level of special effects was also unprecedented. The overall effect was that we were mesmerised and overwhelmed, we almost didn't care about the meaning behind it. Anyway, like many others I suspect, I went the following week having had that time to mull it over, and that was a fruitful revisit. It's up to you to decide if you wish to see the sequel 2010 : The year We Make Contact, but to me it lost the majesty and worse still, the mystery of the original. In some cases mystery is far better than the answer, and for me the feeling was one of anti-climax, so I forgot about it and will never seek it out again. Some people agree with me on this, others not, it's a personal thing.
It's a real pleasure to listen to someone so precocious and intelligent in his words, and this, for a classic of SF that is not really accessible the first time.
Space helmet design: the helmets in 2001 makes it so the view the occupant has is a rectangle, much like a movie screen, from his point of view. Interestingly, real space suits have to have a 'fishbowl' helmet with sunshields out side it, all so that the astronaut can look upwards, the direction he uses most when in zero-gravity. This was a discovery made just before the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. Studying the different versions of the AL-7 suits they wore to the moon, each Apollo mission has something different about them as they were updated due to new discoveries.
@19:39 There was No Cut. The one Actor was Hanging Upside Down, Strapped to the Seat/Couch, when the Other entered from the Hub and came down the Ladder.
This movie has quite the story to it. One big part is that Kubrick didn't want to give any answers and really wanted audiences to be a part of the movie by being forced to sit with their questions. Clarke on the other hand is your pretty straightforward science geek that Kubrick kind of used Clarke to get through certain doors. Anyway, people will tell you that you can find answers in subsequent books and the movie 2010. But that's only Clarke's answers. I prefer it more open ended as Kubrick intended.
Kubrick aimed, I think, to tell a story in pure cinematic terms. There’s no dialogue in two of the three parts, and most dialogue in part two is completely mundane (Floyd is praised for a speech that is nothing special).
"Almost looks like a time vortex in Doctor Who." Funny you should say that. The various versions of the Doctor Who opening titles from 1970 until 1986 were created using the same film technique of 'slit scan photography'. It was actually a relatively primitive process of pushing a camera along a track towards a thin strip of coloured light thousands of times over. Hugely time consuming! Douglas Trumbull who masterminded the sequence even automated the camera rig to speed the process up and it still took many months. Regardless, it's still highly effective and very trippy even today! Just one more of this film's many, many influences down the years. Anyway, very good reaction. I know for a fact I didn't deduce anything like as much of the film's meanings when I first saw it!
I appreciate your early comment about how we got to the moon and just stopped there. I was 12 (and a huge science fiction fan) when we landed on the moon the first time and have been disappointed all my life that we essentially gave up. Only now, with Elon Musk and SpaceX and a few others are we starting to truly advance again in a major way in space exploration. By the way, I once met Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001.
Gave up? Yeah, if you ignore deep space probes, probes to multiple planets, installation of deep space telescopes, set up of world wide space based communication networks, construction of the ISS and its continual operation and research, continued design and development of even more advanced rockets, engines, landers and other vehicles and probes, development of the shuttle transportation system and operation, development of land based radio telescopes and observatories, and massive research in to space flight, human factors, fuels, physics, etc. Yeah, we’ve hardly done “anything”. Maybe look into it a bit deeper?
I first saw this film as a kid on a school trip to a local art house theater. It was one of the most confusing but interesting experiences and a formative experience in my love of science fiction.
@@TeddysTube John Carpenter's first. It started as a student movie. Carpenter had to break into the library to steal back his original version so they could expand it and get it distributed.
I saw this when it came out. I was 13. What I got was the nature of our existence is unknowable. The sense of wonder is what drives the story. When I first saw HAL I thought it was the coolest thing but then I changed my mind.😮
PS: The alternate version with the TikTok lady was hilarious, thanks for the demonstration of what you mean! :D Also, it's a small little detail, but even after seeing this film ten million times since I was, like, 11, I never noticed the guy at the space station slowly dragging his drink across the table with his finger. You don't get much fast stuff in this movie, not until you really need it!
60's sound mixing, whether mono or stereo, actually had a lot more clarity than most current productions. And actors didn't constantly mumble or swallow their lines either - one didn't need subtitles to follow dialogue. As for the pacing of this film, it was much slower and deliberate than other movies of the time. If you haven't seen it before, you might be interested to compare the other major SF release from 1968, the original "Planet of the Apes", although now that I think of it, a significant portion of that one is pretty deliberate too, again for story reasons. If you want something really fast paced though, forget "modern" flicks and try a romcom or noir from the 1930s/1940s. "Bringing Up Baby" or "The Maltese Falcon" for instance. I've seen some current viewers have trouble keeping up, as it's the dialogue that is fast, not just a bunch of action shots. You're pretty much spot on regarding the plot, which really isn't that complicated. Kubrick deliberately kept some key points obscure, like HAL's motivations, for no other reason I can see but to seem mysterious and portentous.
This film came out in 1968. It was groundbreaking in many ways. Hippies went to it stoned for the "light show," which was considered quite fantastic (imagine seeing it on a big screen). There is a story. Stanley Kubrick wanted the audience to think.
Great reaction, kiddo. You got another subscriber. This movie was groundbreaking and considered a masterpiece in many ways, but it had it's flaws that I won't go into much. A study of it reveals Kubricks attention to not only detail but subtle tie in's from scene to scene. Constant visuals of rectangles the same dimensions of the Monolith, attention to detail, etc. One detail and continuity of story that most miss....and that's mainly because it's not clearly explained...is the scene and time transition from the bone tumbling in the air to the satellite millions of years later. The continuity here is advancement of tools used as weapons. The bone was a tool used to kill....and even though it's not explained, the satellite is an orbital nuclear weapon. I could go on and on, but perhaps you could watch it again and do a closer study. It truly is a remarkable film.
Really good reaction! A sequel was made in 1984.... not by Stanley Kubrick but it had his seal of approval. 2010 The Year We Made Contact is more of a traditionally paced movie than the original, but it's really good and answers all your questions! It's definitely well worth reacting to: so..... PLEASE do it????? lol Btw....nice choice of glasses :)
Enjoy the soundtrack. (We saw movies rarely because they had to be in theaters or limited TV releases, so soundtracks were what we could experience with best stereo systems.) Explore the writer, Arthur C Clarke. See the next movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact Explore other Kubrick productions.
I hope this doesn't sound condescending but I'm taken aback by your spot on analysis of the movie as a whole and the various elements within it. You're certainly a better analyst than I was when I first saw this film - you have another subscriber.
If you are interested in how the film was made I would highly recommend this series: ua-cam.com/video/tCHcx5lAl7A/v-deo.htmlsi=BZQw8_xkR4stYVkA Just an indicator of how amazing the production was, is that at the time, nobody had even seen what the earth looked like from space (which is a wild idea in itself). Kubrick comissioned an artist to create an image which is what is used in the first space sequence and you barely notice the fact watching it now that someone basically made it up.
I'm with you on the gritty dark sci-fi. I also agree sci-fi should be fun. 2001 is very nice to look at and can be fun to watch. I also recommend the sequel 2010: the Year We Make Contact. It is great-looking and has a lot of fun and action and answers some questions from 2001 and exists in its own place, very different from 2001. It is very good sci-fi and how I wish more of sci-fi felt. Not creepy or disturbing, just a good story and likeable characters. Thanks for a good video! Excellent observations on one of my favorites.
I think just about everyone in every audience has said the same thing: "WHAT WAS THAT?!!" One of the worst things is to suffer the loss when NOT seeing this on The Big Screen in a jammed theater. This movie has not been SEEN until you've had that experience.
By not explaining what the monolith is or what is happening made 2001 a mystery the audience has to fill-in-the-blank. This makes you more invested as co-author of the story and makes rewatvhes popular
I truly wish people could see 2001 as it was intended-- on a mammoth screen from a 70mm print. I love watching people's reaction videos, but they have to watch it on a small screen, and they have to be commenting while watching. But it's great to know that 2001 can still knock people out.
I saw it on the big screen around 1978-79 when it was re-released after the massive rise in the popularity of SF brought about from the original Star Wars. A lot of people went to see this expecting a SW-like movie but instead got "WTF???".
I saw it in both IMAX & 70mm for the 50th anniversary re-release in 2018. On the BIG 70mm Screen I noticed the space stations had painted flags & air force style roundels on them.
Yes, and be forewarned: Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With The Wind and a few other "epics" have the same stupid "overture" tacked on to the DVDs and steaming versions. Just fast-forward through them whenever you start a movie and you get something like that. It's only ever with really long epics.
Don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet but the movie was based on an Arthur C. Clarke short story, "The Sentinel". The story ends when the monolith buried on the moon becomes exposed to sunlight and sends out a signal. The idea of the story was simply that an advanced alien race had taken note of life developing on earth, and had buried the monolith on the moon. If the monolith was dug up, it would send out a signal, and the alien race would know that intelligent life had indeed developed on earth. And, the people on earth would know that contact with another life form somewhere in the galaxy had happened. And, that's it. The story ends there.
The through floor lighting in the ending set made the place hellishly hot, they had to have huge ventilation blower hoses all over the place to not make Keir Dullea (Dave) sweat bullets.
There are a series of videos on UA-cam that detail the way this movie was made. Because there were no computers commercially available (and few enough outside of universities / governments) all the effects had to be fully thought out beforehand.
I volunteer at our city's zoo. Jaguars have black circles with bots inside them, they live in the Americas. Leopards have black circles with no dots inside them, and they live in Africa and Asia.
You have to remember that they're taking non-astronauts up in what's basically a space taxi to work in a space station. Keeping everything two-dimensional retains a sense of the "normal" for these people do they don't have to learn whole new ways of doing things. They can get to work much faster because things are where they expect them to be.
Doctor Who used the same technique to do a time vortex effect in the 1970s. They originally created an effect using black and white video equipment, but when the BBC switched to color, they weren't satisfied with the effect they got using the same technique with color video.
It is a beautiful but artsy film. From reading the book can confirm that you are right about the broad human evolution theme. In the book HAL went crazy because he was designed to be perfect but was ordered to lie to the crew to keep them from discovering the true purpose of the mission to Jupiter. He started off interfering with communications with Earth and graduated to trying to kill everyone to follow his orders while being true to his purpose. In the book the ape with bone did not understand what his tool could really do when he used it against another ape. Similarly when HAL is used by the authorities to lie, they do not understand the damage they are doing. Of course if you have to rely on the book to explain the basic plot points of a movie something is wrong. But it remains a great movie because of the ‘vibe’ and the quality of the depiction of the future. Accurate depiction of gravity, a vision of future space development- eg the space station undergoing expansion, the video telephone call at a price far less than a long distance call in the 1960s. Crazy that they made essentially an experimental art house film in the format of a big budget sci fi movie.
This film was directed by Stanley Kubrick, one of the most influential directors that ever lived. You should differently check out more of his filmography, The Shining (1980) is another great film by him. I highly recommend it.
36:03 so my father was a grad student in Urbana in 1992. his university had a big "happy birthday HAL" party on that date. they found a guy who happened to be named Langley to sing the song
You were right, the baby was the next phase of evolution. The apes using bones as weapons were the beginning of tool use and Hal is at the end point when tools in AI threaten man's existence. Reaching that dead end, man goes on to the next phase of evolution, all guided by some mysterious beings through the monoliths. The exchange with the russians is an update of the apes fighting at the water hole !
Your observations are amazingly on point. There is no correct answer. Kubrick wanted it to be ambiguous. But your conclusions are better than most people's. Remember it was the 60s, and you appropriately used the word "Psychedelic" for that ending sequence. Back in the day, people would go to see it in the theatre stoned, just for that sequence. What always amazes me is how flawless the effects are, even today. all hail to the late, great Doug Trumbull, who created them. Fun fact: after production was over, Kubrick had all of the sets, models and documentation destroyed so that no one could ever use them to make an inferior sequel. Although eventually a sequel was made ("2010: The Year we Make Contact", in 1984) and it was quite good, but they had to remake much of Kubrick's stuff.
First time listener, first time caller, and new subscriber before you reached 1K. I'm here because this is one of my favorite pieces of cinema but I've seen it so many times over the past 40 years so it has nothing left to offer me. Seeing other people discover it, however... And at the moment you discussed it being more of an experience than a narrative I knew this would be good and, yeah, you picked up on so much more than any other first timer (including myself) I've seen. That was actually Stanley's intent, for the film to be experienced on a deeper more visceral level where it could be discovered which is why he's almost ever discussed what it's about. Also, the proto-humans were professional mimes and it wasn't so much WHAT Moonchild was thinking so much that it was THAT he was thinking. That was the moment the very first hominid became sapient. (the dawn of man) I don't want to say too much but the "Jupiter and Beyond" chapter was as incomprehensible for us because it was incomprehensible to Dave as it becoming sapient was for the first human it was for Moonchild when HE became something new. One quote from the book which applied to Moonchild at the end of "The Dawn of Man" and Starchild at the end of "Jupiter and Beyond" is, "Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." One last thing from the book. When the bone cuts to a space craft: It's a satellite armed with nuclear missiles and all of the nuclear armed satellites were destroyed by Starchild when it returned to Earth. Oh yeah, I guess it's also important that the book and movie were both created at the same time Kubrick would show Clarke his dailies, Clarke would share his narrative with Kubrick, and the two would hash out where it went from there. So even the process (which had never happened before) was had the fictional universe emerge via evolution. Really looking forward to seeing how you read other thoughtful and philosophical cinema.
The good news is that all your unresolved questions is answered in the sequel: 2010: The Year We Make Contact. The bad news is, all your unresolved questions are answered in the sequel.
A couple of classic SciFi I think you would love "Forbidden Planet" perfect example of what we "thought" a Robot would be😉 "Alien" changed what a Robot was forever. "Silent Running" back to those original Robots but an early warning "your f ing up the planet! Stop killing the environment" OR.... If you want to be truly terrified: "Plan 9 From Outer Space" Keep the lights on for this SciFi Horror!!!
Both fantastic movies, especially the former. The sets, the settings, the story, brilliant. I always felt that Alien, it's a horror film set in a spaceship, sci fi background. Great movie though. It's like Star Wars, more fantasy than sci fi. But all great and do get wedged quite rightly in to the Sci Fi genre.
"Put your helmet on! Put your helmet on!" bro just watched his best mate get launched into oblivion... It's showing that even the most prepared astronaut for the mission would still not be able to think straight if something like this happened, just my opinion.
But the whole reason for him being suited up in the first place was if he had to get outside to help in an emergency, and “get helmet and gloves” should have been thoroughly drilled into him for that situation.
One thing to bear in mind while watching this film: The events of the final segment take place in 2001, several years before the invention of the "fully-functioning time-space GPS" -- instead of pushing Dave through Time, the alien intelligence behind the monolith ended up pushing Time through Dave ;-)
Imagine the 1st race to reach a space age and feeling lonely as a species. They build a 'highway system' through the universe entered through the large slabs in different solar systems. The slabs are like a universal machine that can do anything required of them. Finding no other races, they start a program to drop monitors on planets that look promising. Did the race that started this project die out and leave the monitors to function by themselves? Did they evolve and not really focus on the project anymore? No one knows. So, if the slab notices a species with the possibility to evolve, it pushes it in a direction to evolve. Then they provide puzzles to test if the species is ready to go forward and evolve further. The monolith on the Earth probably got lost to time or moved elsewhere once its task was completed. The one on the moon was buried. Test 1: Get to the moon. Test 2: Be able to detect the field it emanated and dig it up. Test 3: Be able to realize that the signal it sends when discovered points them towards Jupiter. Now the species has to be able to get to Jupiter. Once there, a member of the species is taken through the interstellar highway system to a place where the person is allowed to live out its natural life while its evolution is determined. Then the person is transformed and sent back to observe and monitor the species further. Despite being greatly evolved, this new being is still basically no more than a pet or lap-dog compared to the beings that started the project. Not to spoil the 2060 movie, but HAL and another species is found as alternative species to humans for future control of Earth's solar system and further evolution/education.
In the 1960s, it was thought that 'grip shoes' would be needed in zero-G (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet had 'mag-boots'). Indeed, that's why Velcro was invented. But as we see in the International Space Station, everyone is perfectly happy to just float around in whatever orientation is convenient.
The story is actually quite simple: A advanced being either monitored or contributed to our early development as a species (the early ape/men where on earth). They left a monolith (much cooler than slab) on the moon knowing that if we found it that we had advanced to space travel ... Hal goes nuts (do to conflicting programing regarding the responsibility of the mission) Bowman completes the mission by advancing to the monolith in Jupiter orbit and is sucked into a worm hole to be cared for in an earth like environment living timelessly till his natural death where he is transformed into a higher being. 2010 is no where near as good a movie but answer most of the questions
It's a conflict between mankind and it's tools / weapons. Which of us would get to the aliens first; HAL or Dave. Humanity wins. But now the aliens have a human working for them back on Earth. Now see 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Then read 20161: Oddyssey Two, and 3001: the last novel.
Specifically, the alien beings knew when the signal went off by the Sunlight hitting it that the buried monolith has been uncovered, meaning that humanity had progressed to space travel.
You're the only person I've ever known to realize Dave left without his helmet before HAL mentions it.
also the only reactor who realized its the same monolith that was on earth and the moon
......and knew that wasn't a real zebra!!!! And that it was a tapir! And lots of other stuff Very impressive reaction! Great eye for details. Very intelligent.
@@itubeutubewealltube1 It's not the same monolith. In 2010, the dimensions of the one orbiting Jupiter are described and it's length is several kilometers.
sixstanger00 But the ratio of the of the monolith has always been exactly the same no matter the size. 1x4x9.
@@DocMicrowave Ratio, yes. But actual SIZE? No.
What that means is that it's thickness has always been some factor of 1, it's length has always been some factor of 9, and it's width has always been some factor of 4.
HAL was programmed to be 100% loyal and honest with Dave and Frank. He was also given a secret (the briefing). This created an unresolvable conflict that drove him mad. Or the computer equivalent.
The stewardess "hat" is a safety helmet for zero-g to stop her hitting her head if she accidentally loses contact with the floor.
One of the injustices of the time is that the ape makeup in Planet of the Apes received an Academy Award, while this film's hominid costumes and makeup were ignored. I swear the Academy people thought those were real apes.
Clarke and/or Kubrick quipped same :)
But maybe the "real" reason was that so MANY Hollywood make-up artists were "conscripted/diverted" to make the P.O.T.A make-up actually work. While Kubrick produced 2001 mainly in the UK (food for thought).
@anorthosite Nowadays the accedamy would rather the awards go to foreign productions. Ten of the last 11 winners for best direction were born outside the USA. Apparently the accedamy still thinks this is Trump's America.
Kubrick was black listed from Oscars because he filmed in UK, not because of ability. The one exception, the only Oscar ever given to a Kubrick film was for the special effects in 2001. They had to give him the Oscar for that only because the effects were so superior they had no other choice.
It's basically a myth, John Chambers was given an honorary Oscar but there was no competition with 2001 because the best makeup award didn't actually exist until 1981.
It's the Academy, look at the crap they favour
I am impressed with your understanding of many aspects of this movie. Don’t feel bad that you don’t totally understand it, you are not supposed to. It is meant to make you think. Most of all I appreciate that a young person such as yourself does not dismiss it because it is not fast-paced, action packed, and predictable like most movies, especially today. As a few others have suggested, there are other classic SciFi movies you might appreciate, like Forbidden Planet, The Andromeda Strain, and (later) The Abyss. Of course even more I recommend reading classic SciFi, especially authors like Arthur C. Clarke (who I met), Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein (I prefer his earlier works), Harlan Ellison (who I also met), Poul Anderson, and of course H. G. Wells, to name just a few.
I don't like Heinlein much, but All You Zombies! is oh so freaking out there... !
The black screen is the 'Overture', which was run while the cinema's stage curtains were still closed, and people were making their way to their seats. The curtains go up and the lights go down for the MGM logo ( this one is only on this film ). Then the film begins.
"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" also had an overture section.
@@majkus Overtures used to be very common. Here are a few more from the period where they had started to wane:
Lawrence of Arabia
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
The Black Hole (same year as Star Trek TMP)
Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_with_overtures
Lawrence of Arabia has an excellent overture as well.@@majkus
especially 'Cinerama ' type wide screen films. I wonder if Kubrick was kind of making a Cinerama Holiday movie in space (not three panel though)
@@majkus Camelot the Musical had an overture and popcorn break too.
My God it's full of stars.
Much of it photographed with a “slit-scan” camera that took a minute to make each frame - and you need 24 frames each second.
@@jonathanroberts8981 A lot is made of the slit scan. All it did was take drawings, geometric illustrations, and pictures, and stretched them. The resulting print was then filmed as if we are flying over it like it's canyon walls, and floor, and ceiling.
"My god it's full of stars" is from the novelization of the movie. It's the last thing Bowman (?) says before he goes through the monolith into some kind of wormhole.
7:07 "See, this is why practical effects are so better than CGI, because practical effects tend to hold up more."
True.
The best CGI holds up just as well. The time travel suits in Avengers: Endgame were all 100% CGI and NO ONE could tell.
@@kellymoses8566 Well "Endgame" was only made around 5 years ago. Who knows how well the CGI will look to audiences 15-20 years in the future.
@@kellymoses8566 Hardly, and that's a really bad example of "best CGI" because in that particular case, it was completely unnecessary to do them CGI. Marvel has a penchant for overusing the f*** out of CGI, even on mundane shit that shouldn't require it, such as She-Hulk being shot with motion capture and then her green skin tone added in fucking post, or shooting a scene of Samuel L Jackson entirely against green screen, only for the finished product to just be a drywall background with a fucking lamp. It's lazy, and it's absurd.
Besides, considering most Marvel films (as well as other modern action films) just look like a dizzying array of CGI FX crammed into every shot, there's no comparing practical FX of old to current trends. ALL modern films look like polished video games, with otherwise "connector shots" dressed up unnecessarily to make them look more artsy.
The most common comparison I give is something like the sequence of model shots showing the Falcon entering the Death Star. These shots were intended to convey to the audience only ONE THING - "the Falcon has gone from being in space to not being in space; we are now IN the Death Star." In these shots, there is only the Falcon presented against a crystal clear starfield. We don't need anything else in these shots, because it could only serve to clutter things up. Compare this to a shot in say, "The Last Jedi," where the Falcon pops up into frame from the bottom -- a color filter is applied, artificial shaky cam, the ship itself wobbles as if it's a helicopter, the background is riddled with extra objects, resulting in a "busy" shot that is clearly inserted for no other reason than, "it'll look cool." The shot doesn't propel the story like the formers do; it's just inserted because...."cool shot of the Falcon."
Like she remarked, CGI ages rather poorly. Now we've got a "modern" version of "Planet Of The Apes" all in cartoonish CGI. I'm sure it'll flop at the box office.
@@ftumschkI tend to agree with kelly though. I don't know about that movie but Starship Troopers, the cgi still looks really good.
Even the cgi in Terminator 2 still looks pretty good. It's a little bit obvious but it never takes me out.
The problem is huge rafts of cgi produced are just barely passable to begin with. Plus, most productions can't resist making yet another "spectacular" cgi filled scene with too much crap going on.
A Phantom Menace? I'm literally watching an army of obvious cartoons fighting another army of obvious cartoons and couldn't care less what happened. It looked like crap at the time.
The trip to Jupiter was, indeed, shot primarily on the inside of a rotating platform. It was a kind of Ferris wheel with the camera fixed in some shots and moving with the wheel in other shots. The "Ferris wheel" was where the crew lived to provide spin gravity, as you suspected. The rest of the ship was not rotating so moving from one part of the ship to another involved clever spin, slow-motion acrobatics. I saw 2001 when it came out (I was 15 years old in 1968) and I thought it was almost a blueprint for the future. I still haven't adjusted to the disappointment of reality not keeping up with the film😀! Each time I watch this movie I get more out of it and I enjoyed your perspective -- you have some great intuitions. I predict you will be thinking about this film for a long time to come.
This film influenced so many others; star wars, star trek, tron... they are all there. x)
I can tell you that when this came out, people who had never read the book had no idea what to think about the ending. But Kubrick did not seem particularly concerned that you have a definitive idea about what you'd just seen. He seemed content to let you come to your own ideas and interpretations.
The book was written after the movie, by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke.
@@randybass8842 The book was written concurrently with the film. It was released just after the film. But people who never read the book had no idea what the ending was supposed to mean, and could only guess at what the heck was going on.
There are not enough storytellers who do this. Everything is explained and drained of mystery. I'd rather be challenged, it's much more engaging when an artist respects my intelligence
That "tablet" is the best foreseen thing in that movie
One of the most intelligent reactions from a younger generation to this film that I’ve seen in a long time. I watched this film at the cinema aged five and it blew me away. London and the U.K. in the mid 60s to 70s was a very interesting place style-wise. Experimenting with minimalist furniture design. You could see this reflected in the set dressing of the conference room on Clavius. We had very similar chairs at home. Metal tubing, leather and fabric.
'I miss old movies. There's something nice about just existing in a story as it slowly unveils'. Great response. You're a natural.
they're still here :) it's all about the director
That was Stanley Kubrick's daughter on the video-phone. The entire movie was filmed on sound stages in London (UK), the only scene filmed outside was the bone thrower, which was shot in the studio car park. The actors didn't know what HAL sounded like until the premier of the movie because HAL's voice was added post production.
My favorite part of this was that, during filming, HALs lines were spoken by a man with a thick cockney accent.
Hal was voiced by Douglas Rain. No relation to Rainn Wilson as far as I know, though there are some similarities to my ear.
@@jonathanroberts8981 Rain was a famous Canadian Shakespearian stage actor.
Anthony Hopkins said he modeled Hannibal Lecter's voice after HAL.
When our ancestor throws the bone in the air, the cut shows a nuclear weapons orbital platform, not any satellite.
Thus, it's a 4 million years time cut, from the first human weapon to the most advanced human weapon.
In some ways, it shows how much we advanced... And how much we are still the same.
The follow-up 2010, whilst not being as revolutionary and artsy, gives some answers to what happened to HAL and what might be behind the monolith. It's a good watch.
Speaking of practical effects, they built those sets full size, and yes, they did even spin them. The Discovery set was actually the size of a Ferris wheel that they spun slowly during filming.
I believe this was the first time a "wormhole" was represented on screen.
While there are many personal interpretations of what this movie is about, the author of the original short story ("The Sentinel") and the novelization of the movie, Arthur C. Clarke, did present his interpretation. The Monolith on earth affected the early hominoids to set them on their next phase of development. The triumphant ape tossed his primitive weapon into the air which transitioned into an orbiting nuclear weapon, The Monolith on the moon was an "alarm" that would be set off when humans had developed far enough to discover it. It sent a signal to the third Monolith with the intention of humans following the signal to the third Monolith and then being drawn through the wormhole. Yes, the last Monolith transformed Dave Poole into the next phase of humanity, a Star Child. In the novel, the Star Child destroys the orbital weapons with a thought and the reader is left with the explanation that the Star Child was in control of the world and didn't exactly know what to do next, but he'd think of something.
The reason HAL went rogue was because it could not determine a logical reason why the humans had not been given all the information about the mission. It reasoned he was the only entity that had all the information because it was the only entity that was fully trustworthy. So, in its zeal to ensure the success of the mission, it reasoned that it should eliminate all the less trustworthy crew members.
I saw this with my teen-aged crew in the theater in 68. We sat in the front row, and as Bowman went through the wormhole, one of my buddies (who was a stoner) started screaming, "It's blowing my mind! It's blowing my mind!"
This is an excellent synopsis.
this is ridiculous
@@dominicschaeffer909 What, the book recap?
@@dominicschaeffer909 Why?
Thanks for this. I've loved the movie for decades, but have never quite had enough motivation to look into Clarke's own thoughts. I was happy with my own explanation, which was somewhat similar I guess (though admittedly more vague and open-ended). I always believed that both monoliths were probes, sent together, millions of years ago, to "seek out new life forms" that were worthy of absorption? inclusion? partnership?. I always assumed that one probe was sent to each planet and each significant moon in the solar system. My view has been that the "aliens" don't necessarily have to be "from Jupiter" (Jupiter's moons I mean), that location could just be their version of an outpost from which to deploy their probes from (every probed Solar system having its own similar central outpost). I always felt like the Earth probe did not phone home because it found the life forms it encountered to be too primitive, though by interacting with those life forms, it inadvertently (or purposefully) helped elevate the primates up to the next level of intelligence. The only problem with my "deployed at the same time" theory has always been that one probe was on the Earth's surface and the other was "deliberately buried" on the moon. Which I am so happy I read your comment about the "alarm" perspective. Yes of course that is the way to look at it. That means that the one on the moon would have to have been like an "aptitude test" for humanity. The moon one was buried there after the first probe reported its unsatisfactory findings to the "Jupiter outpost". That outline works perfectly for me. As for the earth probe, I personally believe that it didn't ever disappear/fly away but was simply buried under 4 million year's worth of dirt, and it was never discovered because Earth is such a big place and even in "the future" we don't spend time seismically scanning every single inch of dirt. I never bothered to interpret the embryo part too much, I just looked at it as the life cycle/passage of time not working the same way for the aliens, so now Dave is one of them (or some hybrid entity) and can be reborn as needed to be able to move humanity on to the "next level".
Great review Wren. Very impressed that you picked up on so many of the details. A lot of reactors miss so much.
The centrifuge shot in the Discovery wasn't a cut. Frank Poole was strapped into his seat and hanging upside down when Dave Bowman came down the ladder.
You pretty much figured out the end, but for clarity read Arthur C Clarke's novel -it explains what happened in much greater detail
Comparing 2001 to Dr. Who is like comparing the Taj Mahal to a cardboard box.
Considering the shape of the monolith, which is the cardboard box? 😂
@@Yngvarfo the monolith is proportioned to 1:4:9, very exciting to a mathematician .. that would be the Taj.
@@markhill3858 - If you actually look at the monolith, the thickness is nowhere near 1:4 of the width, so the makers of the Taj were clearly much better at following the specifications. 😊
@@Yngvarfo well thats exactly what the proportions are .. youre mis-estimating it. In the film its 1.4.9 .. in the books its 1.4.8. Its supposed to be a message from the aliens
@@markhill3858 It was never mentioned in Stanley Kubrick's original movie. It was only in the book by Arthur C Clarke, and it was always 1:4:9 there. Never 1:4:8. When he wrote the sequel 2010 many years later, he mentioned it again, and when it was turned into a movie by Peter Hyams, those references made their way into the movie. That was the first time that the 1:4:9 ratio was mentioned in a movie.
But I said "if you actually look at the monolith." It is quite clear that the proportions are *not* 1:4:9. It's much too narrow. As long as it was only in the book, not the movie, I could call it one of the inconsistencies, like Discovery going to Jupiter rather than Saturn. But in the sequel, Peter Hyams made the characters mention the ratio, while at the same time just copying the monolith from the first movie which was *not* 1:4:9. It's not such an exceptionally significant mathematical ratio anyway. It's just the first three integers squared. Mathematics is full of quirky sequences.
I searched the web for images to show what I meant. I was lucky, and found that someone else made the same point in much greater detail, as well as an explanation of how the inconsistency happened. Apparently, Kubrick came up with the idea of a rectangular shape first (they had been thinking of a tetrahedron, like in Clarke's story The Sentinel), and Clarke came up with the 1:4:9 ratio from that, but Kubrick had already shot scenes of the monolith as he envisioned it.
2010odysseyarchive.blogspot.com/2015/12/monolith-metrics-component-one.html
It's refreshing that there aren't scene changes every thirteen seconds. That's one significant thing we seem to have lost in the last few decades - the concept of an attention span. I also relish the fact that there aren't more explosions than scene changes.
Ape costumes: the same year, a film called 'Planet of the Apes' got the make-up Oscar.
Apparently it made more money, soo... but it could also be because no-one in Hollywood realised they were costumes and masks.
Or it could be because the actors performing as the apes were all mimes and no one likes mimes.
@@88wildcat Marcel Marceau: "Hold my beer while I lean on this invisible shelf"
“The helmets look like faces.”
The green one especially looks like Kermit.
"This is taking some time but I want some answers" suns the movie up nicely.
The worm hole effects didn't drag on Cinarama , huge curved wide screens in theaters. especially if on Acid (LSD) which I and a fair amount of people were tripping on
Excellent reaction and analysis. I thought your point during the movie about little happening in the real world since the moon landing in 1969 was very perceptive.
The 1971 Robert Wise film, The Andromeda Strain, based on 1969 Michael Crichton novel, comes to mind as an excellent science fiction thriller. Good Film. :)
+1
I think you would very much enjoy Andromeda Strain.
Frank Poole returns in 3001. His body is discovered drifting in space and brought back to life.
The girlfriend's discovey of "mutilation" was a cool "cultural reference". 🖖🏻
For another classic scifi film you should watch Forbidden Planet ... based on Shakespeare Tempest.
And for even older... a silent film Metropolis, and Earth to the Moon.
Metropolis (1927) has an interesting anime version from the year 2001.
Things to Come (1936)
When Worlds Collide (1951)
Outland (1981)
I second Forbidden Planet. At the time it was the most expensive SF movie ever made and was also unusual to show humans going to another planet.
Also, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
When you are looking at a black screen, you are gazing into the monolith. Prepare to have your mind expanded.
Bingo! Have you seen Arrival? Basically the same movie, told in a different way.
There was no cut when Bowman walked around the centrifuge. It spun along with him. The tiles on the floor would part to give room for the camera when it followed him jogging. Poole was strapped to his chair, giving the illusion that he was stationary, when in fact he was the one revolving around.
When we saw the two astronauts in the hallway, entering the spinning section, it in fact stopped spinning while the hallway and the camera started spinning in the opposite direction. If you look very closely, you can see that there is a slight stutter in the rotation when it changes, but it's hard to spot.
It all makes the point that the circular room, the centrifuge, is the only part of the ship with a semblance of gravity. The cockpit and the pod bay are supposed to be zero G, and they only move about with some of the same kind of gripping shoes that the stewardess used earlier.
While I can point to the movie 2010 for *some* answers, I think I can say right now that the alien intelligence behind the monolith had nothing to do with HAL's malfunction. They were separate events, only connected by a theme of creating intelligence. The aliens encouraged some intelligence in the man-apes, and millions of years later, man, in turn, created artificial intelligence.
Ape. Man. Overman. It's a homage to Nietzsche with an AI gone wrong subplot. Both, for 1968, were totally mind blowing.
A refreshing change in a young viewer. You're observant, and cleverly thoughtful. Good job!
the words Explosive Bolts was prominent on the door because in 1967, three astronauts died in a fire in a test of the lunar module when the escape door would not open. After that, NASA switched to explosive bolts on the door so that could not happen again
They must have had explosive bolts in the spacecraft - Gus Grissom, one of the astronauts who died in the fire, had previously lost his Mercury spacecraft when the explosive bolts went off before the helicopter had hooked on, opening the hatch and allowing water in so it sank.
The escape hatch on Apollo 1 opened inward, and the pressure build-up due to heat from the fire (which burned really fast in a pure oxygen atmosphere) prevented it from opening. The remaining existing Apollo command modules were used for unmanned missions, and a redesigned command module (with a quick-release hatch that opened outward) was used for crewed missions beginning with Apollo 7.
Interestingly, Apollo 6 was planned to practice the free return trajectory used by Apollo 13, but engine failures prevented this trip to the moon. The remaining mission objectives were completed in Earth orbit using the service module engine.
@@stevenlowe3026 They started out with bolts, then Grissom's mission had that mishap, so they took the bolts out and made the hatch open inward. Which is what killed him and the other two crewmen in the Apollo 1 fire. I'm not sure if the bolts came back, but the door was changed to open outward.
Doctor Strangelove featured explosive bolts too.
This film is tremendous, one of my favorites. Everything in space is just perfect. The atmosphere, the effects, the music/lack thereof. My tastes fall more on the arty side, so I love sci-fi films like this and the original Solaris.
Great insights make for a fine reaction, Wren!
Most of your questions will be answered in "2010: The Year We Make Contact"...a good movie!
For other Sci-Fi movie suggestions:
"The day the Earth stood still" 1951
"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" 1954 (Walt Disney)
"Forbidden Planet" 1956
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" 1959
"The Time Machine" 1960
"Fantastic Voyage" 1966
"Farhenheit 451" 1966
"Planet of the Apes" 1968
"A Clockwork Orange" 1971
"The Andromeda Strain" 1971
"The Omega Man" 1971 (remade as 'I am Legend')
"Silent Running" 1972
"Slaughterhouse-Five" 1972
"Soylent Green" 1973
(Edward G. Robinson's last movie)
"Westworld" 1973
"The Stepford Wives" 1975
"Logan's Run" 1976
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" 1977
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" 2005 (Comedy Sci-Fi)
Other movies are so iconic (Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Back to the Future, etc.) I won't list those.
Good Luck with your job hunting!
Mark
Great recommendations! Let's see...
"The day the Earth stood still" 1951 - Michael Rennie was dying during filming, but it doesn't show. There's also a recent remake starring Keanu Reeves that's not bad, but watch it after the original.
"Forbidden Planet" 1956 - starring Leslie Nielsen, before he was known for "don't call me Shirley".
"Planet of the Apes" 1968 - arguably better than the recent remake.
"The Andromeda Strain" 1971 - Featuring Eric Christmas, also known for his roles as the high school principal in the Porky's movies and as a crazy priest in the Cheers TV series. He was one of my professors at university. Interesting guy.
"Silent Running" 1972 - Scored by Peter Schickele, of P. D. Q. Bach fame. He also scored the musical "Oh! Calcutta!". Be sure to watch the full-length theatrical edition. Broadcast TV editions were shortened for commercials, and they sacrificed too much of the story. Although this is a thought-provoking story, I found it harder to watch than most of the 1970's apocalyptic movies.
"Logan's Run" 1976 - Watch the movie. Then watch the TV series if you REALLY like the movie.
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" 2005 (Comedy Sci-Fi) - In addition to the movie, there's a TV mini series, radio program (and LP), and a stage production. Not to mention the books. All are great!
Nice details, especially on Silent Running with your teacher!
All of "THGTTG" were so far out of the box! It remains the ONLY book I have read, cover-to-cover without putting it down! Sooo funny:
"It's Marvin!...He just phoned up to wash his head at us!"
Just too much humor ut fell out of a trilogy into 5 books, and a short story!
Have you read any of Douglas' other works? "The Meaning of Liff" was more information, you didn't realize you needed!
If you love this film then you would also probably love the Soviet Sci-Fi film "Solaris" by Andrei Tarkovsky. Although both films are quite different.
The food wouldn't be liquid, it would be paste. It's not done to conserve weight, but by being fully enclosed, it stops bits of food breaking off & floating away.
And coating the walls, people, and equipment.
Details:
Notice that when Dave first enters the emergency airlock, there is no sound. But once he closes the outer hatch and the air lock pressurizes, suddenly we can hear sound.
It's cinematic creative genius. One of the movie's most dramatic and physical scenes, Dave's "explosive" entrance into the airlock, is filmed in silence.
@@MarkRyan-u3u Kubrick incorporated this into all scenes set in the vacuum of space:
That's why when they're space walking, all we hear is their breathing - because air only exists inside their helmets. Or when Dave goes after Frank's body, we hear instruments beeping during cockpit scenes, but it cuts to silence during exterior shots.
@@sixstanger00 It's amazing to realize that the movie is over a half-century old. Even today, the space ships seem so realistic.
Re the portal sequence, paraphrasing the film makers: What would a stone age person understand riding a car down Broadway?
In the 2010 Space Odyssey, we learn that Hal was given mission priority and could not have the mission stopped by humans he acted locally, but broke the three laws of robotics. Watch 2010, It's not as good but it explains more.
Remember this came out *before* the first moon landing. It changed how SciFi was portrayed. The big SciFi movie before this was Forbidden Planet with bright colours, flying saucers, etc. After this came out all movies looked this way for decades to come. Star Wars style came directly from this. Scientifically I don't think there was anything as nearly accurate until The Expanse came out.
A lot of “sci fi” films are just futuristic action/adventure movies. Ones that engage the mind have been rare.
Hi Wren,
You really were quite insightful and picked up on so many things.
As others have mentioned, 2010: The Year We Make Contact should be reacted to as soon as you're able. It's more of a conventional movie, but it does explain a lot and is well worth your time. I just subscribed.
If you enjoy old movies and practical effects, I recommend Alien (1979), The Thing (1982), Aliens (1986), and The Fly (1986)
FORBIDDEN PLANET 1956 is a good one to watch. Tom Baker as Doctor Who is my favorite. Star Trek TOS is a must see
One thing that is confusing on first viewing this movie is that are multiple plots line running simultaneously. There is a 'tools' plot and how they change our destiny as a species, there is a 'mysterious interplanetary visitors' plot who left the black monoliths for us to find, an 'AI' plot and the promise and danger therein, and over it all is an 'evolution' plot, wherein we get reborn as non-material consciousness. Very cool movie, and some of the best movie cinematography I've ever seen. When this dropped in 1968, if nothing else, people were gobsmacked by the visual effects.
The rotating set on Discovery was actually a Ferris wheel, and they were walking on the inside of it. I think I read somewhere the effect was 800k, which was quite a bit back then...
Smart reaction, Wren.
I am old enough to have seen this movie on its original release as an adult, and I can tell you that for most of us nothing in the movie dragged. The main reason being that it was shown in Cinerama, a vast curved screen that even IMAX can't match. The sound systems had at that time only recently become stereophonic with sophisticated equipment that gave a full, rich sound compared with previous versions. As you rightly point out, the level of special effects was also unprecedented. The overall effect was that we were mesmerised and overwhelmed, we almost didn't care about the meaning behind it. Anyway, like many others I suspect, I went the following week having had that time to mull it over, and that was a fruitful revisit.
It's up to you to decide if you wish to see the sequel 2010 : The year We Make Contact, but to me it lost the majesty and worse still, the mystery of the original. In some cases mystery is far better than the answer, and for me the feeling was one of anti-climax, so I forgot about it and will never seek it out again. Some people agree with me on this, others not, it's a personal thing.
It's a real pleasure to listen to someone so precocious and intelligent in his words, and this, for a classic of SF that is not really accessible the first time.
@@group-music I still have good eyes to see that she is an intelligent young girl.
Space helmet design: the helmets in 2001 makes it so the view the occupant has is a rectangle, much like a movie screen, from his point of view.
Interestingly, real space suits have to have a 'fishbowl' helmet with sunshields out side it, all so that the astronaut can look upwards, the direction he uses most when in zero-gravity.
This was a discovery made just before the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon.
Studying the different versions of the AL-7 suits they wore to the moon, each Apollo mission has something different about them as they were updated due to new discoveries.
@19:39 There was No Cut. The one Actor was Hanging Upside Down, Strapped to the Seat/Couch, when the Other entered from the Hub and came down the Ladder.
This movie has quite the story to it. One big part is that Kubrick didn't want to give any answers and really wanted audiences to be a part of the movie by being forced to sit with their questions. Clarke on the other hand is your pretty straightforward science geek that Kubrick kind of used Clarke to get through certain doors. Anyway, people will tell you that you can find answers in subsequent books and the movie 2010. But that's only Clarke's answers. I prefer it more open ended as Kubrick intended.
Kubrick aimed, I think, to tell a story in pure cinematic terms. There’s no dialogue in two of the three parts, and most dialogue in part two is completely mundane (Floyd is praised for a speech that is nothing special).
The Story of this movie continues in the Film 2010 by Peter Hyams.
"Almost looks like a time vortex in Doctor Who."
Funny you should say that. The various versions of the Doctor Who opening titles from 1970 until 1986 were created using the same film technique of 'slit scan photography'.
It was actually a relatively primitive process of pushing a camera along a track towards a thin strip of coloured light thousands of times over. Hugely time consuming! Douglas Trumbull who masterminded the sequence even automated the camera rig to speed the process up and it still took many months. Regardless, it's still highly effective and very trippy even today!
Just one more of this film's many, many influences down the years.
Anyway, very good reaction. I know for a fact I didn't deduce anything like as much of the film's meanings when I first saw it!
I appreciate your early comment about how we got to the moon and just stopped there. I was 12 (and a huge science fiction fan) when we landed on the moon the first time and have been disappointed all my life that we essentially gave up. Only now, with Elon Musk and SpaceX and a few others are we starting to truly advance again in a major way in space exploration. By the way, I once met Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001.
Clarke is credited by some with conceiving the geosynchronous communication satellite.
Gave up? Yeah, if you ignore deep space probes, probes to multiple planets, installation of deep space telescopes, set up of world wide space based communication networks, construction of the ISS and its continual operation and research, continued design and development of even more advanced rockets, engines, landers and other vehicles and probes, development of the shuttle transportation system and operation, development of land based radio telescopes and observatories, and massive research in to space flight, human factors, fuels, physics, etc. Yeah, we’ve hardly done “anything”. Maybe look into it a bit deeper?
I first saw this film as a kid on a school trip to a local art house theater. It was one of the most confusing but interesting experiences and a formative experience in my love of science fiction.
Dark Star, a sci fi film for consideration.
YES! Dark Star too. 👍
@@TeddysTube John Carpenter's first. It started as a student movie. Carpenter had to break into the library to steal back his original version so they could expand it and get it distributed.
I saw this when it came out. I was 13. What I got was the nature of our existence is unknowable. The sense of wonder is what drives the story. When I first saw HAL I thought it was the coolest thing but then I changed my mind.😮
PS: The alternate version with the TikTok lady was hilarious, thanks for the demonstration of what you mean! :D Also, it's a small little detail, but even after seeing this film ten million times since I was, like, 11, I never noticed the guy at the space station slowly dragging his drink across the table with his finger. You don't get much fast stuff in this movie, not until you really need it!
60's sound mixing, whether mono or stereo, actually had a lot more clarity than most current productions. And actors didn't constantly mumble or swallow their lines either - one didn't need subtitles to follow dialogue. As for the pacing of this film, it was much slower and deliberate than other movies of the time. If you haven't seen it before, you might be interested to compare the other major SF release from 1968, the original "Planet of the Apes", although now that I think of it, a significant portion of that one is pretty deliberate too, again for story reasons. If you want something really fast paced though, forget "modern" flicks and try a romcom or noir from the 1930s/1940s. "Bringing Up Baby" or "The Maltese Falcon" for instance. I've seen some current viewers have trouble keeping up, as it's the dialogue that is fast, not just a bunch of action shots. You're pretty much spot on regarding the plot, which really isn't that complicated. Kubrick deliberately kept some key points obscure, like HAL's motivations, for no other reason I can see but to seem mysterious and portentous.
This film came out in 1968. It was groundbreaking in many ways. Hippies went to it stoned for the "light show," which was considered quite fantastic (imagine seeing it on a big screen). There is a story. Stanley Kubrick wanted the audience to think.
Great reaction, kiddo. You got another subscriber. This movie was groundbreaking and considered a masterpiece in many ways, but it had it's flaws that I won't go into much. A study of it reveals Kubricks attention to not only detail but subtle tie in's from scene to scene. Constant visuals of rectangles the same dimensions of the Monolith, attention to detail, etc. One detail and continuity of story that most miss....and that's mainly because it's not clearly explained...is the scene and time transition from the bone tumbling in the air to the satellite millions of years later. The continuity here is advancement of tools used as weapons. The bone was a tool used to kill....and even though it's not explained, the satellite is an orbital nuclear weapon. I could go on and on, but perhaps you could watch it again and do a closer study. It truly is a remarkable film.
The dimensions of the monolith being one(squared) x two(squared) x three(squared) -- 1 x 4 x 9.
Really good reaction! A sequel was made in 1984.... not by Stanley Kubrick but it had his seal of approval.
2010 The Year We Made Contact is more of a traditionally paced movie than the original, but it's really good and answers all your questions! It's definitely well worth reacting to: so..... PLEASE do it????? lol
Btw....nice choice of glasses :)
Enjoy the soundtrack. (We saw movies rarely because they had to be in theaters or limited TV releases, so soundtracks were what we could experience with best stereo systems.)
Explore the writer, Arthur C Clarke.
See the next movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact
Explore other Kubrick productions.
I hope this doesn't sound condescending but I'm taken aback by your spot on analysis of the movie as a whole and the various elements within it. You're certainly a better analyst than I was when I first saw this film - you have another subscriber.
NASA worked very closely with Kubrick and Clark. The spacsuits were based on one of the NASA prototype spacsuits that wasn't chosen.
If you are interested in how the film was made I would highly recommend this series: ua-cam.com/video/tCHcx5lAl7A/v-deo.htmlsi=BZQw8_xkR4stYVkA
Just an indicator of how amazing the production was, is that at the time, nobody had even seen what the earth looked like from space (which is a wild idea in itself). Kubrick comissioned an artist to create an image which is what is used in the first space sequence and you barely notice the fact watching it now that someone basically made it up.
I'm with you on the gritty dark sci-fi. I also agree sci-fi should be fun. 2001 is very nice to look at and can be fun to watch. I also recommend the sequel 2010: the Year We Make Contact. It is great-looking and has a lot of fun and action and answers some questions from 2001 and exists in its own place, very different from 2001. It is very good sci-fi and how I wish more of sci-fi felt. Not creepy or disturbing, just a good story and likeable characters. Thanks for a good video! Excellent observations on one of my favorites.
I think just about everyone in every audience has said the same thing: "WHAT WAS THAT?!!" One of the worst things is to suffer the loss when NOT seeing this on The Big Screen in a jammed theater. This movie has not been SEEN until you've had that experience.
By not explaining what the monolith is or what is happening made 2001 a mystery the audience has to fill-in-the-blank. This makes you more invested as co-author of the story and makes rewatvhes popular
Just occurred to me that the monoliths are shaped as they are to symbolise giant milestones man passes on his evolutionary journey ...
But also the proportions are 1:4:9 - the squares of the first three numbers 1, 2, 3.
@@stevenlowe3026 ...and they continue in higher dimensions.
I truly wish people could see 2001 as it was intended-- on a mammoth screen from a 70mm print. I love watching people's reaction videos, but they have to watch it on a small screen, and they have to be commenting while watching. But it's great to know that 2001 can still knock people out.
I saw it on the big screen around 1978-79 when it was re-released after the massive rise in the popularity of SF brought about from the original Star Wars. A lot of people went to see this expecting a SW-like movie but instead got "WTF???".
I saw it in both IMAX & 70mm for the 50th anniversary re-release in 2018. On the BIG 70mm Screen I noticed the space stations had painted flags & air force style roundels on them.
That music at the beginning was for the audience to find their seats.
Yes, and be forewarned: Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With The Wind and a few other "epics" have the same stupid "overture" tacked on to the DVDs and steaming versions. Just fast-forward through them whenever you start a movie and you get something like that. It's only ever with really long epics.
Don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet but the movie was based on an Arthur C. Clarke short story, "The Sentinel". The story ends when the monolith buried on the moon becomes exposed to sunlight and sends out a signal. The idea of the story was simply that an advanced alien race had taken note of life developing on earth, and had buried the monolith on the moon. If the monolith was dug up, it would send out a signal, and the alien race would know that intelligent life had indeed developed on earth. And, the people on earth would know that contact with another life form somewhere in the galaxy had happened. And, that's it. The story ends there.
The through floor lighting in the ending set made the place hellishly hot, they had to have huge ventilation blower hoses all over the place to not make Keir Dullea (Dave) sweat bullets.
And you questioned before the end if it was going leave you wondering at the end! I had to laugh. Ha ha, yeah, it will. 😊
There are a series of videos on UA-cam that detail the way this movie was made. Because there were no computers commercially available (and few enough outside of universities / governments) all the effects had to be fully thought out beforehand.
I volunteer at our city's zoo. Jaguars have black circles with bots inside them, they live in the Americas. Leopards have black circles with no dots inside them, and they live in Africa and Asia.
The space helmet is for crop dusting/pesticide spraying, farmers had them back in the 70s-80s.
You have to remember that they're taking non-astronauts up in what's basically a space taxi to work in a space station. Keeping everything two-dimensional retains a sense of the "normal" for these people do they don't have to learn whole new ways of doing things. They can get to work much faster because things are where they expect them to be.
Doctor Who used the same technique to do a time vortex effect in the 1970s. They originally created an effect using black and white video equipment, but when the BBC switched to color, they weren't satisfied with the effect they got using the same technique with color video.
It is a beautiful but artsy film. From reading the book can confirm that you are right about the broad human evolution theme.
In the book HAL went crazy because he was designed to be perfect but was ordered to lie to the crew to keep them from discovering the true purpose of the mission to Jupiter. He started off interfering with communications with Earth and graduated to trying to kill everyone to follow his orders while being true to his purpose.
In the book the ape with bone did not understand what his tool could really do when he used it against another ape. Similarly when HAL is used by the authorities to lie, they do not understand the damage they are doing.
Of course if you have to rely on the book to explain the basic plot points of a movie something is wrong. But it remains a great movie because of the ‘vibe’ and the quality of the depiction of the future. Accurate depiction of gravity, a vision of future space development- eg the space station undergoing expansion, the video telephone call at a price far less than a long distance call in the 1960s.
Crazy that they made essentially an experimental art house film in the format of a big budget sci fi movie.
The book and the film were made at the same time.
This film was directed by Stanley Kubrick, one of the most influential directors that ever lived. You should differently check out more of his filmography, The Shining (1980) is another great film by him. I highly recommend it.
36:03 so my father was a grad student in Urbana in 1992. his university had a big "happy birthday HAL" party on that date. they found a guy who happened to be named Langley to sing the song
That's why I like the older movies over the new ones.They tell and they know how to tell a story
You were right, the baby was the next phase of evolution. The apes using bones as weapons were the beginning of tool use and Hal is at the end point when tools in AI threaten man's existence. Reaching that dead end, man goes on to the next phase of evolution, all guided by some mysterious beings through the monoliths. The exchange with the russians is an update of the apes fighting at the water hole !
Your observations are amazingly on point. There is no correct answer. Kubrick wanted it to be ambiguous. But your conclusions are better than most people's. Remember it was the 60s, and you appropriately used the word "Psychedelic" for that ending sequence. Back in the day, people would go to see it in the theatre stoned, just for that sequence. What always amazes me is how flawless the effects are, even today. all hail to the late, great Doug Trumbull, who created them. Fun fact: after production was over, Kubrick had all of the sets, models and documentation destroyed so that no one could ever use them to make an inferior sequel. Although eventually a sequel was made ("2010: The Year we Make Contact", in 1984) and it was quite good, but they had to remake much of Kubrick's stuff.
First time listener, first time caller, and new subscriber before you reached 1K.
I'm here because this is one of my favorite pieces of cinema but I've seen it so many times over the past 40 years so it has nothing left to offer me.
Seeing other people discover it, however...
And at the moment you discussed it being more of an experience than a narrative I knew this would be good and, yeah, you picked up on so much more than any other first timer (including myself) I've seen.
That was actually Stanley's intent, for the film to be experienced on a deeper more visceral level where it could be discovered which is why he's almost ever discussed what it's about.
Also, the proto-humans were professional mimes and it wasn't so much WHAT Moonchild was thinking so much that it was THAT he was thinking. That was the moment the very first hominid became sapient. (the dawn of man)
I don't want to say too much but the "Jupiter and Beyond" chapter was as incomprehensible for us because it was incomprehensible to Dave as it becoming sapient was for the first human it was for Moonchild when HE became something new.
One quote from the book which applied to Moonchild at the end of "The Dawn of Man" and Starchild at the end of "Jupiter and Beyond" is, "Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something."
One last thing from the book. When the bone cuts to a space craft: It's a satellite armed with nuclear missiles and all of the nuclear armed satellites were destroyed by Starchild when it returned to Earth.
Oh yeah, I guess it's also important that the book and movie were both created at the same time Kubrick would show Clarke his dailies, Clarke would share his narrative with Kubrick, and the two would hash out where it went from there. So even the process (which had never happened before) was had the fictional universe emerge via evolution.
Really looking forward to seeing how you read other thoughtful and philosophical cinema.
The good news is that all your unresolved questions is answered in the sequel: 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
The bad news is, all your unresolved questions are answered in the sequel.
A couple of classic SciFi I think you would love
"Forbidden Planet"
perfect example of what we "thought" a Robot would be😉
"Alien"
changed what a Robot was forever.
"Silent Running"
back to those original Robots but an early warning "your f ing up the planet! Stop killing the environment"
OR.... If you want to be truly terrified:
"Plan 9 From Outer Space"
Keep the lights on for this SciFi Horror!!!
Both fantastic movies, especially the former. The sets, the settings, the story, brilliant. I always felt that Alien, it's a horror film set in a spaceship, sci fi background. Great movie though. It's like Star Wars, more fantasy than sci fi. But all great and do get wedged quite rightly in to the Sci Fi genre.
"Put your helmet on! Put your helmet on!" bro just watched his best mate get launched into oblivion... It's showing that even the most prepared astronaut for the mission would still not be able to think straight if something like this happened, just my opinion.
But the whole reason for him being suited up in the first place was if he had to get outside to help in an emergency, and “get helmet and gloves” should have been thoroughly drilled into him for that situation.
Dr WHO!!!!
This movie was a true classic. Arthur C. Clarke worked on this and it is thanks to him that the space scenes are so accurate.
Wow, your explanations of what happened are really great and pretty close to the mark. Took me three watches to come up with satisfying answers. 🤣
One thing to bear in mind while watching this film: The events of the final segment take place in 2001, several years before the invention of the "fully-functioning time-space GPS" -- instead of pushing Dave through Time, the alien intelligence behind the monolith ended up pushing Time through Dave ;-)
Imagine the 1st race to reach a space age and feeling lonely as a species. They build a 'highway system' through the universe entered through the large slabs in different solar systems. The slabs are like a universal machine that can do anything required of them. Finding no other races, they start a program to drop monitors on planets that look promising. Did the race that started this project die out and leave the monitors to function by themselves? Did they evolve and not really focus on the project anymore? No one knows. So, if the slab notices a species with the possibility to evolve, it pushes it in a direction to evolve. Then they provide puzzles to test if the species is ready to go forward and evolve further. The monolith on the Earth probably got lost to time or moved elsewhere once its task was completed. The one on the moon was buried. Test 1: Get to the moon. Test 2: Be able to detect the field it emanated and dig it up. Test 3: Be able to realize that the signal it sends when discovered points them towards Jupiter. Now the species has to be able to get to Jupiter. Once there, a member of the species is taken through the interstellar highway system to a place where the person is allowed to live out its natural life while its evolution is determined. Then the person is transformed and sent back to observe and monitor the species further. Despite being greatly evolved, this new being is still basically no more than a pet or lap-dog compared to the beings that started the project. Not to spoil the 2060 movie, but HAL and another species is found as alternative species to humans for future control of Earth's solar system and further evolution/education.
Although not as good as the original film, 2010 the sequel answers quite a few of the questions.
In the 1960s, it was thought that 'grip shoes' would be needed in zero-G (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet had 'mag-boots'). Indeed, that's why Velcro was invented. But as we see in the International Space Station, everyone is perfectly happy to just float around in whatever orientation is convenient.
The black screen in the beginning is the monolith that Kubrick is forcing you to acknowledge.
The story is actually quite simple: A advanced being either monitored or contributed to our early development as a species (the early ape/men where on earth). They left a monolith (much cooler than slab) on the moon knowing that if we found it that we had advanced to space travel ... Hal goes nuts (do to conflicting programing regarding the responsibility of the mission) Bowman completes the mission by advancing to the monolith in Jupiter orbit and is sucked into a worm hole to be cared for in an earth like environment living timelessly till his natural death where he is transformed into a higher being. 2010 is no where near as good a movie but answer most of the questions
It's a conflict between mankind and it's tools / weapons. Which of us would get to the aliens first; HAL or Dave. Humanity wins. But now the aliens have a human working for them back on Earth. Now see 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Then read 20161: Oddyssey Two, and 3001: the last novel.
Specifically, the alien beings knew when the signal went off by the Sunlight hitting it that the buried monolith has been uncovered, meaning that humanity had progressed to space travel.
You now have a complete understanding of the ape fight in EEAaO.
After you processed this you
might be ready for the next film. 2010 The Year We Make Contact.