2001 – A Space Odyssey

Posted on by Simon in Blog, Films, Sci Fi

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My god – it’s full of stars! The words uttered by Dave Bowman as he’s sucked into the star gate. The line was never used in the film, in fact there wasn’t much of words used in the film. It was however full of beautiful and well selected music.

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The premise of the story centres around the monolith, a perfectly smooth black rectangular slab that seems to have powers beyond human understanding

 

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Have a look at the pictures from this – have a guess when the film was created? 80’s 90’s? Nope – 1968. This film could be put against other films made within the last 20 years and still stand up well against them. The film like the story hasn’t aged much because it was that well made.

There is very little dialogue in this film and to be honest it would have ruined the film if there was . This flim, this story comes up with some of the most iconic science fiction characters or fetures. The monolith, a source of power? a channel for an anien race? it was completely indestructible and what it was is never truly answered in any of Clarkes books in this series. HAL (Stands for Heuristic ALgorithm) the psychopathic computer on discovery that kills most of the crewand the mellow psycho tone in which HAL says “Dave – I think you should calm down and think things through”

This film captures in it’s feel many of the essences of what space travel will almost certainly be like – isolated, lonely and quiet. Something that would happen on Earth that is a small problem will be massively amplified in a spacecraft environment. All this was beautifully captures in stunning reality, both in the book and in the film.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, in fact at the premier many people walked out and Kubricks carrer was almost over as soon as it begun. But those people that walked out, came back becasue they wanted to know what happened and the rest as they say is history.

Could 2001 A space Odyssey be the greatest science fiction movie ever made? It’s tough to answer, but it’s up at the top at least. What do you think?

Simon 🙂

Published by Simon

My name is Simon and I create stories and art and pictures. Things just come to me, ideas and expressions and that what my blogs are about. My spaces to express and reach out to the world.

24 thoughts on “2001 – A Space Odyssey”

  1. It took me watching it a few times before I “got” it. My oldest son…who has adores Kubrick says its in his top 10 of all time. Not in the same genre, but I loved “A Clockwork Orange”
    Not everyone understands SK…I guess.

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  3. Ugh! Sorry. Can’t stand this movie. Even had to watch it in my ninth grade physical science class. Usually, walking into a classroom and knowing we were going to watch a movie was something to be happy about. It says much about my feelings for this movie when I would have preferred to just have class. However, I’m sure my brother could talk to you about it for a long time. 🙂

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  4. First, I have to relate Richard Pryor’s take: by 2001, there are no black people.

    Okay, with that said, it is in my opinion the best. HAL (or the next letter up from IBM) is the core. But even more to the point, is the interaction between Dave and HAL, when Dave shuts HAL down. The moment HAL says “I’m scared, Dave” 2001 goes where few films have gone.

    It is ultimately an exploration (without conclusion?) of what is the nature of self-consciousness that we human believe separates us from other beings.

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    1. It’s true what you say about black people. I had never thought of it before. This is definitely an echo from attitudes on the 60’s.
      I’ve also heard about the IBM and HAL relation before, I had forgotten until I saw you comment on it.
      All of the books in the 2001 series are exploration without conclusion. Even in the final book 3001 there were aspects without being finsihed and now they never ever will. Thanks for a great comment 🙂

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  5. I could never get into this one, probably my own prejudices about how SF films ‘should be’ and my other bug-bear, the more the professional critics tell me a film is good the less I like it.
    Yeh, it’s all skewed; next time the opportunity arises with your words in mind Simon, I will give it another go.

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    1. It’s like I say, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s a film done for art and realism not necessarily for entertainment and the lack of dialogue and slow pace make it hard to swallow.
      Let me know if you do give it another go.

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      1. Will do (Of course reading MAD’s parody back when it came out didn’t help- big fan of MAD back in the 1960s-70s)

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