New for 2013: An In-Depth Analysis of Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey

An anonymous reader writes "Long time /. member maynard has written one of the most obsessively detailed and extensive analyses of Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey seen in some time. At more than 22,000 words, it contains still images, film clips, musical score selections and copious references, including by Piers Bizony, author of Filming the Future, Nietzsche, Foucault, Freud, and film theorists like Bazin, Kracauer and Zizek. It's already gained some notoriety, having been retweeted by Nicholas Jackson, former editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Slate. Anyone who loves the film or SF in general should find this an amazing read!" I don't know whether it can topple my all-time favorite analysis of 2001, Leonard F. Wheat's Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory .

Comments

Arthur C Clarke's novel isn't as long

[Anonymous Coward]

as this analysis.

Remember the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen picks an argument with a man showing off his knowledge of Marshall McLuhan?

Re:Arthur C Clarke's novel isn't as long

[doti]

Reminds me of the analysis of "Close To The Edge" lyrics.

http://www.yhwh.com/ctte.htm

I've started reading it,

[pecosdave]

and I might actually finish. As far as OCD dissections are concerned - I salute the author.

Re:I've started reading it,

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, the discussions generated by deconstructions that are not intellectually genuine, or at the very least wildly inaccurate, are more entertaining.

Re:I've started reading it,

[donaldm]

I read the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was written by Arthur C Clark a few years prior to watched the film when it came out. Personally I did like the film but If I had not read the book I would have found many parts of the film and particularly it's ending incomprehensible. To write a 22,000 work critique on the film to me is rather a waste since the best way of understanding the film is to read the book. Sill I do remember when the movie "Star Wars" (125 minutes long) came out there were many hours of TV time dedicated to how they did the special effects which to me was surprisingly entertaining.

Re:I've started reading it,

[Anonymous Coward]

ISill I do remember when the movie "Star Wars" (125 minutes long) came out there were many hours of TV time dedicated to how they did the special effects which to me was surprisingly entertaining.

Yeah, I have seen such a document too, enjoyed the program much more that the film and was thinking: what a shame they have used all those neat tricks to shot such a crappy film with poorly written script*

*Apologies to all Star Wars fans who think that the original film was great, maybe it was in comparison with se/prequels but I have no desire to watch them

Re:I've started reading it,

[pecosdave]

I know they used practical effects, and yes Star Wars was awesome for its time, but I still don't think it topped 2001, Kubrick was just way too dedicated to his visual art.

Re:I've started reading it,

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know. First, the way the essay is licensed makes me wary this is an honest attempt to start a dialog about the movie. Why isn't it under the GPL?

Second, I'd be curious to know if the author has written anything on a less taxing movie we could review, just to ensure the author has the qualifications. Has the author ever said anything about, say, Tron, which like 2001 was ahead of its time in special effects, but could easily be argued to be less challenging intellectually?

Re:I've started reading it,

[nitehawk214]

and I might actually finish. As far as OCD dissections are concerned - I salute the author.

I first read that as "-1 salute the author".

Re:I've started reading it,

[Cornwallis]

I read the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was written by Arthur C Clark a few years prior to watched the film when it came out. Personally I did like the film but If I had not read the book I would have found many parts of the film and particularly it's ending incomprehensible. To write a 22,000 work critique on the film to me is rather a waste since the best way of understanding the film is to read the book. Sill I do remember when the movie "Star Wars" (125 minutes long) came out there were many hours of TV time dedicated to how they did the special effects which to me was surprisingly entertaining.

You couldn't have. The book was written concurrently with the movie and published after the movie's release. Clarke's short story "The Sentinel" was the basis for the film.

Re:I've started reading it,

[Hognoxious]

Has the author ever said anything about, say, Tron, which like 2001 was ahead of its time in special effects, but could easily be argued to be less challenging intellectually?

That's because you don't really understand it. [Furrows borws; puts pipe in mouth]

Re:I've started reading it,

[Anonymous Coward]

He said he read the book before watching the movie.
I think that is in the realms of possibility.

Re:I've started reading it,

[Anonymous Coward]

*Apologies to all Star Wars fans who think that the original film was great, maybe it was in comparison with se/prequels but I have no desire to watch them

Why apologise? Your opnions are your own, and you are entitled to them.

I mean, I think that Star Wars was a great movie, but I don't think it was a quality film. It exploited the attitudes to science fantasy at the time by taking what would normally be a ridiculously camp sibject, and framed it in a slightly gritty way, and a more serious light used for other genre at the time. I don't think it entirely succeeded, but they avoided ridiculously big hair and shiny silver costumes. Star Wars treated the viewer somewhat with respect, even if it didn't treat them as an intellectual.

2001, in comparison, is dreadfully dull if your idea of good story telling is laser blasts and hyperspace. I've always enjoyed it, right from the first time I saw it (around 12 years old). I read the book after seeing it, and it helped me understand a lot of what was going on. (I've got a form of Asperger's, so I have trouble judging the subtle meanings and motivations behind interactions. Interestingly, through-out Return of the Jedi, apparently there are hints that Luke was being tempted by the Dark Side. I never got that, it didn't even occur to me until I was in my 20s and someone mentioned it.)

One of the things that I love about 2001, and have from the start, is the attention to detail. Looking at those vehicles, there's no reason to believe they couldn't be built, and with the hindsight of reading the book, I am fascinated by the almost deadpan dismissals of the Soviet's questions. The contradiction that the people are as dead and emotionless in voice as they can be while expressing how much they care about the safety of the ship with the emergency, yet the artificial intelligence, while similarly flat in tone, is quite the opposite.

Re:I've started reading it,

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was written by Arthur C Clark a few years prior to watched the film when it came out.

Re:I've started reading it,

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the OP meant Clark wrote it before the movie. I think he meant that OP read the book 2 years prior to him seeing the film for the first time.

Unless I missed something.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"Drug trip" doesn't appear anywhere. Fail.

Re:Unless I missed something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently I forgot to add the smiley face.

Ooops almost did it again. :)

Re:Unless I missed something.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Troll"? Apparently someone didn't actually watch the movie. The whole part at the end is Kubrick's artistic rendering of a drug trip.

Is this news to some of you?

Re:Unless I missed something.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because 2001 was born in the '60s, which were all about, like, expanding your mind, man!

Toynbee Idea

[nitehawk214]

Toynbee Idea
In movie 2001
Resurrect dead
On planet Jupiter

Re:Toynbee Idea

[korgitser]

Burma shave!

Good luck with that

[Hentes]

You have better chances finding a needle in a haystack than meaning in Space Odyssey. It's pointless to try and picture the movie for more than the pretty show it was: while it admittedly looks gorgeous even today, it didn't have much to offer beyond the special effects. Space Odyssey was the Star Wars or Avatar of the '60s, the only difference being that instead of relying on simple or shallow story and characters, it did away with those things entirely.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably the most accurate description of the movie in the fewest sentences. Well put.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure '2001' had some point for it's time.

Nowadays however, i tend to agree with one of my favorite movie reviewer, Confused Matthew. *less* then great.

Re:Good luck with that

[mlwmohawk]

The problem with reviewing or even understanding 2001, today, is that you are critiquing it out of time.

1st, that it was "all special effects," well, yes, but more importantly they are "accurate" special effects. Even today, 2001 portrays the PHYSICS of space travel better than any other movie ever made. It is one thing to use computers to create "action" with special effects, 2001 portrayed "space." I can't emphasize this enough. In 1969, this was simply revolutionary. Star Trek was fantasy, we had men going to the moon and trek was clearly scifi. 2001, at the time, seemed real and possible. It was science fiction in the classic sense that the science was real and the story was fiction.

It must be hard for people 40 years old and younger to imagine this period in time. About 12 years 10 years prior, the world changed with Sputnik. We were moving from weather balloons to weather satellites, science was changing everything and we were dreadfully afraid of the Russians beating us. 2001 was a view of space travel attainable from the perspective of the Apollo missions. It was astutely political. It asserted evolution. It worked in "our" albeit future, world.

Unfortunately, 2001 also suffered from concepts that are difficult to visualize. I agree with another post, it is almost impossible to understand without having read the book first.

Still one of my "Most Important Movies Ever Made"

Re:Good luck with that

[nigelo]

I disagree.

I'm sorry you didn't like the book, but if you did, you might see that the enjoying the film pretty much requires you to like the book.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Not much to offer beyond the special effects?

I first watched this in 2008 at age 29. My mind was blown by this movie. While the special effects still hold their own today, one cannot say that they "stand out" any more. Your own example "Avatar" demonstrates this.

What this movie offered for me was a fantasy where I could explore in my own mind the origin of life, of us, of what being human means. What it means to create, to learn, to destroy, and to choose. How important the concept of choice is. How vastly and incomprehensibly insignificant we are. And what's next for us? Truly?

Sure, one can think of these things without a movie, but the movie provides a context for exploration; an anchor point for threads of thought to cling to and grow. It is abstract. Aside from some specific themes related to the deceit and struggle between Dave and HAL, whatever meaning you derive comes from you. If all you got from it was a pretty show, I think you missed out.

(I haven't read the book, but I've read it solidifies some of these concepts - if you insist on having the author's meaning rather than your own.)

On the other hand, Star Wars and Avatar are very direct. The themes of good vs evil, religion, militarisation, and in Avatar's case environmentalism are rammed down your throat. There's no gray area. No exploration. No room for interpretation beyond the obvious ("'The light side / dark side is like God / Satan!" - stunning revelation.). You either buy into the narrative or you don't.

Entertaining as these movies are, they are no 2001; the comparison is absurd, really.

I may be biased though. I'm not sure what it was, but I believe I had what might be called a 'religious experience' after watching 2001 the first time. (I wasn't under the influence of anything). For the next few days or a week or so, I dunno, I was profoundly calm. I viewed everything in a very detached manner. Nothing bothered me at work. Noise, people, everything was just in the background, like all of that just wasn't very important anymore. I felt no pressure or stress. I felt very strange. I don't know how else to describe it. It was like the protagonist in Office Space. The movie really resonated with me, I guess.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

The flying shuttle for travelling between one point of the moon to another is totally unrealistic. It's not impossible to make such a shuttle but it's completely unoptimal: no air, no portance so it must fly like a rocket does and that would consume too much fuel.

Re:Good luck with that

[HornWumpus]

Kubrick was a genius. By making the story clear as mud, he left room for argument.

'2001 a Space Odyssey' is kind of like a more coherent 'Finnegan's Wake'. You can find any meaning you want in the ending of 2001. Infinite room for disagreement. Potential for a lifetime of employment for literature professors, plus the opportunity to torture undergrads who might actually attempt to understand the thing.

Re:Good luck with that

[HornWumpus]

The Ruskys have their own moon base with radar and traffic with it's own radar. Fuck the fuel waste, they're flying in the radar shadow of the lunar mountains when traveling to/from the biggest secret in history. The fact suck a craft is ready tells you there has been a good amount of sneaking around on the moon.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the book?

Re:Good luck with that

[PCM2]

I'm not sure I agree with this.

For starters, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke called "The Sentinel." Clarke wrote the novel at the same time the movie was being made, and it was actually released after the movie, so it's essentially an adaptation of the film and by no means essential to appreciating or understanding the film.

What's more, Kubrick has a track record for taking the material he is bringing to the screen and adding to it or taking it in new directions not expressed in the written work -- see The Shining, for example, which diverges from Stephen King's book wildly.

Kubrick's film should be enjoyed as a film. All these comments saying you need to read the book to understand it just sound like people who couldn't understand the movie and feel guilty about it, so they went and got the book from the library. Don't feel guilty. The film is designed to be a bit inscrutable and to inspire thought and debate.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

A land vehicle would be sneakier and consume much less fuel.

Re:Good luck with that

[HornWumpus]

No doubt the equipment used to excavate the monolith were transported by land after being assembled at the moon base.

For a VIP they run the whatyamajigger and burn fuel to save time.

Re:Good luck with that

[icebike]

The fact suck a craft is ready tells you there has been a good amount of sneaking around on the moon.

I'll have you know that sentence hurt my brain.

Even putting "such" in place of "suck" makes for little improvement.

Re:Good luck with that

[earthforce_1]

What blew me away is how real it was, (space is dead silent, the only thing astronauts hear is their own breathing) so real that that the flat screen PDAs were actually used in the Apple/Samsung case to demonstrate prior art. They also enhanced realism by using real products (GE-Whirlpool, IBM, Pan-AM) that were household names at the time.

Pick up a copy of the book and read the description of the "news pad" device they were using, keeping in mind it was written in the late 1960s. You could dial an electronic code for iany newspaper in the world, which had headlines that would update every few minutes on a tablet like device. Sound somewhat familiar? When have you ever seen a 40 year old movie nail technology that accurately? I look at a lot of old movies and find even their near future predictions quite laughable.

Another thing I find interesting and somewhat sad about the movie, (released during the heyday of Apollo) is they fully expected there to be large scale manned bases on the moon by 2001 and at least a few examples of computers exhibiting true human like artificial intelligence. Someone jumping in from that time would be very disappointed at how little we have truly progressed in these areas.

Re:Good luck with that

[Clueless Moron]

If you read the book, the movie makes perfect sense.

Now, I absolutely love 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I will freely admit that its one major failing as a movie goes is that it cannot stand alone. It gives absolutely no context or explanation at all for the "beyond the infinite" section.

Kubrick must have known that, and to this day I don't know why he chose to make such a lavish film that won't make sense without the book. I suspect a big part of it is that since Bowman is entirely alone at the end, it would take either internal dialogue, narration, or some back-and-forth with his hosts, all of which would have come across as utterly goofy or corny, so he decided to go weapons-grade primadonna artsy-fartsy instead.

So you have to read a book to appreciate this movie. There are worse things in life...

Re:Good luck with that

[HornWumpus]

I'll have you know, that I'm pendant-sadist. Its not easy two write sentences that are this not elegant. Knowing it makes our brain hurt (it will have to come out) makes it all worth it.

Now go blow a goat.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

I did the math, and apparently a trip from one side of the moon to the other should take about 13 minutes, and require about 484.33MJ of energy, under the assumption of maintaining 2G of accelleration the whole time, and a total weight of 5000kg.

But that seems to only come out to 13.8L of kerosine and 35.2L of liquid oxygen, for a grand total of $25 worth of fuel per trip, so, clearly I've screwed up somewhere.

Re:Good luck with that

[Mr. Slippery]

It was science fiction in the classic sense that the science was real

Well, except for the "ET made us smart" beginning. And the "God is not dead, he's living on Jupiter" ending.

Re:Good luck with that

[gl4ss]

even today, 2001 portrays the PHYSICS of space travel better than any other movie ever made.

well.. yeah.. except that one teleportation-magic-device-slab-of-blackrock. that's the thing, it does display space travel accurately except at the point when it connects to the plot of the thing - well, that and the murderous robot nobody back at earth seemingly understood how it would act. so just the two things which make it into 2001 and not a scifi what if documentary

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, except for the "ET made us smart" beginning.

What's your problem with that? It was the prime mover in the story - or did you not figure that out?

And the "God is not dead, he's living on Jupiter" ending.

Excellent! You've spotted precisely what didn't happen! Now if you'll put your mind to work, you'll come up with another theory or two.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

> A land vehicle would be sneakier and consume much less fuel.

Sneakier? No. It would leave tracks that could be followed.

Re:Good luck with that

[Hentes]

But if the book is required to understand the film, why did Kubrick release the film before the book?

interesting background

[Trepidity]

According to his LinkedIn, maynard was a sysadmin in MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and while there, graduated from neighboring Harvard with a liberal-arts degree, presumably through nights-and-weekends courses.

Re:interesting background

[Anonymous Coward]

I think maynard needs a girlfriend.

Re:interesting background

[koan]

Why? To distract him? To cause grief in his life?

Re:interesting background

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tronguy.jpg

(No, really, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Maynard)

Re:interesting background

[Anonymous Coward]

Harvard extension school is not the same as Harvard university.

Re:interesting background

[korgitser]

This makes sense. You need both of your brain hemispheres developed to see the forest behind the trees of 2001. Sadly the comments here indicate a strong left-brain dominance, up to the point of arrogance and dismissal towards the unfamiliar.

Re:interesting background

[Anonymous Coward]

No, and he's not the same as a trust-fund hipster faggot either.

Re:interesting background

[maynard]

AC Wrote: "I think maynard needs a girlfriend."

My wife disagrees. -M

Re:interesting background

[Anonymous Coward]

they always do (except in Utah)

I still watch it

[koan]

And it still has better effects than anything made today and a great story line. (which is open to interpretation)

Re:I still watch it

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the rocket engines in space didn't have smoke that went up.

Re:It's a

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is black and white; your comment is over the top.

OMFG

[maynard]

Uhhh. Hi folks!

I'm in Aussieland, where everything that moves is poisonous, and it's past 11pm. If there are any questions, I'll try to answer as timely as I can. But the wifey has dibs too.

Pretty fracking cool /. and thanks timothy! And it's aright if you think there's better words out there on the film. Damn thing has embossed more ink on paper than just about any flick in existence. I just couldn't help myself 'cause I love the movie. So I wanted my say too.

Whoa.

Re:OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

Maynard,

Are you going to do a similar writeup for Logan's Run?

- different AC

Re:OMFG

[maynard]

(scrunches up face in consideration)

Hadn't thought of that. Kindof a marginal adaptation of a cool book. Would love to see a remake though.

Re:OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for all the time you put in your research, I read your analysis and enjoyed it very much.
I myself liked the imagery and the story in the movie, however, its music is honestly quite disgusting... Your analysis gave explanations to the dissonance between the visual and audio elements.

I also liked the comparison of robot depictions in different stories at the end of the analysis, it is well worth reading in itself!

Re:OMFG

[maynard]

Ligeti is pretty avant-garde stuff. He makes extensive use of polyrhythm and chromatic polyharmony. His stuff is meant to be difficult listening. Clashing sounds that evoke discomfort and disturbed emotions. I won't say that my interpretation is an 'explanation' for why Kubrick chose that kind of music for his score, but I do think it's fair to say that he chose it on purpose.

Glad you liked the read!

Re:OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

I was convinced there was a remake, but checked and found it's never quite got there. But it's surely only a matter of time.

Re:OMFG

[Hognoxious]

Who would you suggest for the getting her tits out role?

Re:OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved your review. Evernoted it.

Re:OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the ampitheatre scene near the beginning where Michael York's character shouts "Renew!" was classic. Too bad some of the special effects (which somehow won an Oscar) looked like they came straight out of the "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" sixties TV series. Maybe they should just punch up the original film with new FX the way George Lucas did with Star Wars.

Not to quibble, but...

[amacbride]

...I've just started reading it, and I'm not sure how seriously I can take a piece that purports to be an in-depth commentary yet can't even spell Arthur C. ClarkE's name correctly.

Re:Not to quibble, but...

[maynard]

I own many of Clarke's books, including 2001. I'm sorry to say, but I think you should check your sources on that one. See here. Further, I checked the essay source and found 26 instances of the name "Clarke" and no misspellings of "Clark". Can you quote a portion of text where you found the error? If so, I'll fix it. -M

Re:Not to quibble, but...

[amacbride]

Um, in the very first sentence:

Stanley Kubrick's most popular and enduring film is 2001: A Space Odyssey, a work he co-wrote with noted Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clark. It's considered among the best in the genre.

Sorry to sound snarky, but that combined with the initial quote didn't start me off with a particularly favorable impression. I reject the premise that there is "commercial film" as opposed to "real film": there is a continuum of works, making use of various techniques to a greater or lesser extent.

Furthermore, I think 2001 the film works precisely because of the tension between Clarke's fundamentally optimistic view of human nature, and Kubrick's pessimistic one.

Re:Not to quibble, but...

[maynard]

amacbride wrote: "Um, in the very first sentence..."

You're right and fixed. Thank you! It's the only spelling error of the man's name in the essay. Copyedit errors happen.

"Furthermore, I think 2001 the film works precisely because of the tension between Clarke's fundamentally optimistic view of human nature, and Kubrick's pessimistic one."

Read on and I think you'll find we're very much in agreement on that point. -M

Re:TL;DR

[TCM]

TL;DR, the gang sign of illiterate idiots.

Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Any more pretentiousness and I'm gonna puke (both the movie and the analysis).

Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know whether it can topple my all-time favorite analysis of 2001, Mad Magazine's "201 Minutes of Space Idiocy".

Best analysis ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Best analysis ever comes 2nd hand from a friend who saw it when it came out originally, in the theatre.

Guy turns to him and says, "what was that?".

There. Three words in the form of a question. That's all you need.

Re:Best analysis ever

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I said to my friend after watching Prometheus. I think I actually said, "what the HELL was that?"

Re: TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

Humorless condescension, the gang sign of the mouth-breathing basement dweller.

Too Stupid; Didn't Read.

[EWAdams]

What might have been insightful commentary was undermined by the sexist wisecracks under the pictures, so I stopped reading.

who cares?

[stenvar]

Any symbolic or allegorical content that requires decades to decode is of no interest or relevance to anyone. If that was the intent of the work, it has failed. When all is said and done, 2001 is a generally well-made (for the time) and entertaining SciFi that has some significant plot holes and problems.

Re:who cares?

[quacking duck]

Any symbolic or allegorical content that requires decades to decode is of no interest or relevance to anyone. If that was the intent of the work, it has failed. When all is said and done, 2001 is a generally well-made (for the time) and entertaining SciFi that has some significant plot holes and problems.

Shakespeare's definitely of no interest or relevance to anyone then. His works have been analyzed, decoded and reinterpreted for *centuries*. Like Shakespeare (or art that's more abstract), you can walk away from 2001 it with just the surface story, or you can dig deeper to find additional layers of meaning. The meaning may or may not be what the creator intended, and can be shaped by biases of the person and what period they live in, but if it makes enough people sit back and seriously think about it, it has succeeded in ways that can't be measured by box office revenue.

I'm not saying 2001 deserves of all the praise it gets, but your main premises for both the movie and this analysis ("who cares"; "no interest or relevance"; "failed") are clearly wrong.

And if it has "some" significant plot holes and problems... that's still far fewer than most major sci-fi films in the last three decades.

Re:who cares?

[PCM2]

Any symbolic or allegorical content that requires decades to decode is of no interest or relevance to anyone.

That's it, everybody! Last one out, get the lights.

Re:who cares?

[stenvar]

Apparently, you can't even understand a simple sentence. I didn't say that it was useless to use artistic works as the basis of further reflection or creation. I said that if an author puts content into a work that takes others decades to decode, then the author did something wrong.

Shakespeare, Clarke, and Kubrick were competent artists, and you can be sure that any meaning they intended you to find in their work, they have made pretty clear. Any meaning that takes you decades to discover is not meaning they put in, it's something you created on your own.

Re:who cares?

[quacking duck]

Apparently, you can't even understand a simple sentence. I didn't say that it was useless to use artistic works as the basis of further reflection or creation. I said that if an author puts content into a work that takes others decades to decode, then the author did something wrong.

Ah I see. I guess I didn't decode your original sentence right away...

Re:who cares?

[stenvar]

True, but decoding Shakespeare or 2001 doesn't mean that everbody decodes it quickly, it means that some people decode it quickly.

Overlooking the obvious

[slimdave]

>> In almost every way this film should have failed. But it didn't. Instead, it's considered a great masterpiece. Why?

Because people would be too embarrassed to admit that they found it slow-moving, impenetrable, and dull?

I just watch it for Leonard Rossiter -- Rigsby in space!

Re:Overlooking the obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

The patriarchal 1960's shine through the movie. The important daddy is giving an important speech on the importance of national security to important moon base workers. These people take themselves far too seriously. Scientists and science come through much better in Ghostbusters than 2001.

The one interesting point in the movie is HAL. At the time it was considered fantastic that a machine could possess a soul (albeit a self-important one). Since then, it has become a natural part of many movies: the Replicants, the Terminator, Bishop, Data. The humanity is now ready to grant an immortal soul to machines.

The other side of the coin is less well charted. When a process/human soul can be suspended, forked, reverted etc, what will happen to culture and ethics? The Matrix and Tron touch upon it. The topic is covered in more depth in some Ijon Tichy short stories, but the field is largely unexplored in the movies. What will happen when you can be cloned instantly and limitlessly? Will your life still be worth a cent? Will you love or hate your clones? During a fight with your SO, will she erase you and resurrect yesterday's snapshot? While you're on a vacation, could you have your clone keep company to your SO in the meantime? Would you be jealous? And: will we still need an H1B program? One man, one vote, what?

Re:Overlooking the obvious

[HornWumpus]

As I said above; it's the 'Finnegan's Wake' of science fiction. Incoherence leaves the human brain room to find false patterns then argue about them.

Re:TL;DR

[noh8rz10]

TL;DR, the gang sign of illiterate idiots.

TL;DR

Re:It's a

[HornWumpus]

Don't feed the troll.

Did anybody else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read "Nicholas Jackson" as "Jack Nicholson", and get excited by the idea that he's on twitter? Imagine the stories he could tell...

archive

[Msdose]

Looking back, I would say that the DNA of our original species was archived on a moon of Jupiter or whatever. Once our species has been eugenically bred out of existence by the priests, politicians and witch doctors that plague us, the robot computers that are left can find our original genetic makeup and reconstitute our extinct species.

'medium is the..."

[globaljustin]

ah, Marshall McLuhan...confusing the hell out of undergrads studying Comm Theory with one quotation...

I'm going to have to check out Annie Hall now.

FYI, McLuhan's quotation, "The medium is the message" is a tautology. It's like saying on the topic of candy, "The shape is the taste"

skittles and M&M's have the same shape, but very different tastes...what I mean is, McLuhan's quotation is only erudite if you take a ridiculously reductive understanding of communication theory...

My response to McLuhan when I used to teach Comm Theory: "The message is the message, the 'medium' is the channel by which the message is transmitted"

I used it to introduce the Shannon-Weaver Model.

The value of McLuhan's quotation is this: it introduces us to a deeper, more complex understanding of Communications analysis...it isn't valuable in and of itself, but it teases us with notions best explained by others.

Re:'medium is the..."

[hairyfeet]

I'm sorry but I have to agree with Confused Matthew that 2001 sucks balls. You look at Kubrick's entire body of work there is ONE that stands out like a sore thumb as being completely unlike the rest, like the old Sesame Street "one of these things is not like the others" and that is 2001.

With all his other works you had story, characters, plot, or sure it may be a dark or twisted story but its there, if you cut out all the "crap floating in space to music" where there is NOTHING happening but a ship going from one place to another place with little to no dialog? You'd lose a good 70%+ of the movie. I truly believe he became so enamored of the effects, which to be fair had NEVER been attempted anywhere close to that level of realism before, that he simply put everything else on the backburner and never came back to it. And the man was never a good writer to begin with, watch the afterword at the bottom of the link I posted for a piece of an interview with Steven Spielberg after Kubrick's death, where he can list point after point in favor of Kubrick as a director but when it comes to his writing his details on his praise all end and he comes up with an excuse instead.

So I'm sorry Kubrickians but there is a REASON why nobody else has made a film in the vein of 2001, because anybody else would have been called to the carpet for making a movie with no plot, narrative, story, frankly if it wasn't for the (sadly too damned short) parts with HAL there really wouldn't be any real characters at all, just bland empty vessels. It reminds me of how nobody but Terrence Malick can make a Terrence Malick movie because only Terrence Malick gets a free pass from the critics to be as pretentious as he possibly can without getting called to the carpet.

Just look at the opening of Matthew's 2010 review where he simply reads POSITIVE reviews of 2001 and shows how they are almost word for word identical to NEGATIVE reviews of other movies, Kubrick was one of the handful of artists that were/are "critic proof" but with 2001 you have something a little dark and ugly because many of those critics use it like the emperor's clothes, such as what Terry Gilliam does here, basically making it sound like those that don't love and watch 2001 from end to end (honestly I haven't met anybody who doesn't fast forward through the draggiest parts to get to HAL) are basically rabble who just "don't get it".

So I really don't get how a director becomes "critic proof" but I think that is the case with 2001, what would be considered a negative in any other film, dragging scenes, no real narrative, bland characters, scenes continuing well past any need for them to, is somehow a positive when it comes to 2001. No film before or since that I know of has been given such a huge get out of jail free card and the fact that it is so beloved to this day really baffles the hell out of me.

Re:'medium is the..."

[PCM2]

(honestly I haven't met anybody who doesn't fast forward through the draggiest parts to get to HAL)

Well, you haven't met me, but if you're talking about everything between the ape men and Discovery then those happen to be my favorite parts of the film. My absolute favorite scene, in fact, is when Heywood Floyd runs into the Russian scientists at the Pan Am lounge on the space station. And if you want to see why these scenes are absolutely essential to 2001, look no further than the film 2010, which completely fails to understand anything about the earlier movie and portrays the Heywood Floyd character -- and everybody else, for that matter -- as a bumbling incompetent who couldn't survive an airline flight to Greece, let alone an interstellar voyage.

Re:'medium is the..."

[ctmurray]

For some reason the furniture and decor of that scene in the space station (white floor, walls and bright red '60s funky furniture) has become popular . The main building at work has been completely redone in this style. Also a new library at UNC. Really awful looking and useless.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Em Adespoton]

ah, Marshall McLuhan...confusing the hell out of undergrads studying Comm Theory with one quotation...

I'm going to have to check out Annie Hall now.

FYI, McLuhan's quotation, "The medium is the message" is a tautology. It's like saying on the topic of candy, "The shape is the taste"

skittles and M&M's have the same shape, but very different tastes...what I mean is, McLuhan's quotation is only erudite if you take a ridiculously reductive understanding of communication theory...

My response to McLuhan when I used to teach Comm Theory: "The message is the message, the 'medium' is the channel by which the message is transmitted"

I used it to introduce the Shannon-Weaver Model.

The value of McLuhan's quotation is this: it introduces us to a deeper, more complex understanding of Communications analysis...it isn't valuable in and of itself, but it teases us with notions best explained by others.

Odd, I always took McLuhan's tautology to mean "The transmission method used shapes the meaning of the content". But it's short and memorable. This is kind of like the original 2001 novel; it's compressing a lot of potential information into something fairly short (leaving lots of space in the movie for visual art), and being dense yet vague enough for reams of analysis to be produced out of a dense but lossy source material.

I've always thought that this is how the best works are created -- spark the intellect, but leave the gaps to be filled in by the reader/viewer.

More useful for art than hard communication, of course.

Oh, and as for "the shape is the taste" -- this doesn't quite fit for me. More like "the shape is the promise". You see something that shape and size, and assume that it's designed to be eaten, and is a layered candy. This of course is why you should keep medicine out of the reach of small children.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Hognoxious]

FYI, McLuhan's quotation, "The medium is the message" is a tautology. It's like saying on the topic of candy, "The shape is the taste"

That word doesn't mean what you appear to think it does.

I used to teach Comm Theory

I pity your students. They'd have better spent their time on feminist basket weaving or cetacean poetry.

Re:'medium is the..."

[earthforce_1]

What always amazing me is how incredibly cool looking but uncomfortable those '60s furniture were. Bean bag chairs and cool looking seats that give you back pain after an hour or so.

Re:'medium is the..."

[gl4ss]

..but it's a great piece of crap floating in space.

as a movie like that, it's great. the story didn't have a leg to stand on.
I even read the book as well, that didn't have a leg to stand on either, so it's not like I didn't "understand" the story or shit like that, there just isn't that much of a story in it beyond the alien card they played. but it was a greatly done movie about space and tech - too bad they had to play mystery aliens card for the plot.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

...[B]ecause anybody else would have been called to the carpet for making a movie with no plot, narrative, story...[without] real characters at all, just bland empty vessels.

So, just like, say, Pacific Rim? Or maybe Avatar? Or perhaps After Earth? How about Avengers? Iron Man? Man of Steel? Or any of your so many other favorite braindead and worthless CGI orgies for retarded 14-year-old boys that have replaced real films?

Re:'medium is the..."

[korgitser]

"The transmission method used shapes the meaning of the content"

Even more than that, the medium defines the content to the point that there is no difference between them. You can easily see it on american TV - it's a very distinct form of crap, and you can easily see that nothing but more and worse of this crap can ever be hoped to be broadcast on this american TV.

Any medium has certain kind of message(s) it is able to convey. American press on a scale is able to convey american exceptonalism, but unable to convey real critique. Taken as a sum, the message becomes unseparable from the medium - they define and create each other like space/time/matter/energy.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

With all his other works you had story, characters, plot, or sure it may be a dark or twisted story but its there, if you cut out all the "crap floating in space to music" where there is NOTHING happening but a ship going from one place to another place with little to no dialog? You'd lose a good 70%+ of the movie.

Someone did create a version of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 5 minutes for the "tl;dw" crowd, but my personal favorite nutshell version is One: A Space Odyssey

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be an American thing.

In this world, there exist people that don't care for movies about Bruce Willis making quips and walking away from explosions with a "cool" look on his face. These people are called.. Not Americans! Gasp!

Re:'medium is the..."

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Thank you. That whole Russian dialog is wonderful. They act as if they're onto something, and Heywood responds appropriately, everybody going through motions while everybody knows it's really about something else, but what? The Russians wanna know badly.

Do they suspect something more than a disease outbreak? How is Heywood's response to be interpreted depending on which view the Russians hold?

Watching 2001 is like watching Citizen Kane -- Just looking for near infinite numbers of little film tricks here and there, cool things nobody did before, or executed with such skill.

Imagone someone "remaking" this film in the modern way -- there would be nothing there. They wouldn't have had the "hamster wheel". The airlock scene wouldn't be completely silent as it should be. The moon landing would be an idiotic fast thing. There would be no curve to the space station internally. They would sweat the wrong details.

Hell, just look at 2010 where they begrudgingly addressed this with the flipping pen en route to making it about 1/3 action movie.

Re:'medium is the..."

[HornWumpus]

Somebody should repro the tables from the Korova Milk Bar. Milk dispensers too.

Re:'medium is the..."

[hairyfeet]

And thank you for proving my point, anybody who says they didn't care for watching hours of crap floating in space MUST be "herpa de derp, splosions" rabble, right?

But I enjoyed Gattaca, pretty much zero action scenes in that, The Man From Earth, gripping movie without so much as a fist fight and the entire "set" is a single room in a cabin, and of course classics like Citizen Kane, no CGI boomfests there, so maybe, JUST maybe, like the rest of the critics you are giving Kubrick a "get out of jail free" card he doesn't deserve? Again watch the opening to the 2010 review where Matthew reads POSITIVE reviews of 2001 and then shows they are word for word copies of NEGATIVE reviews of other movies. again just like only Malick is allowed to make a Malick movie because he gets a get out of jail free card by the critics so too did Kubrick have critics swoon no matter what he made. kubrick could have made "guy eats a pickle" and been up for a dozen awards, that is how much the critics loved him.

Re: 'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you might be confusing 2001 with Event Horizon...

Re:'medium is the..."

[b4dc0d3r]

POSITIVE reviews of 2001 and shows how they are almost word for word identical to NEGATIVE reviews of other movies...

what would be considered a negative in any other film, dragging scenes, no real narrative, bland characters, scenes continuing well past any need for them to, is somehow a positive when it comes to 2001. No film before or since that I know of has been given such a huge get out of jail free card and the fact that it is so beloved to this day really baffles the hell out of me

It baffles you because, as Gilliam says, you don't get it. And you won't get it after reading this. But you should be less baffled. Audiences didn't immediately get it either - it started slowly.

The movies accused of having bland characters and no narrative were either trying and not managing to, or didn't have anything else to fall back on. Hence the negative reviews. And I think you are underestimating the "nothing" where things are happening. Consider for a moment a "movie" told in snapshots - kodak pictures, or slideshows, Maybe background music, but no dialog. I remember maybe Google+ having an ad where a dude gets added to a "friends" circle, and they end up married - just in very simple acts like clicking and dragging. Used correctly, these methods can be very powerful.

For popular audiences (the rabble), the 20 minutes of "nothing" at the beginning set it apart from anything they ever experienced - and the stillness and quiet and loneliness of space is really conveyed by the atmosphere of the whole movie - not just a few scenes here and there. The bulky space suits and slow motion are embodied by the film. The lack of flashy personalities matches what we would expect for scientists on a boring flight. Calm, reasonable, rational, and almost sterile.

For more astute observers, a lot of detail and information are conveyed when there is seemingly nothing else happening. Especially when you look at personal interpretations such as this analysis - so many people have strong feelings about their interpretation, when it is based on information they got not from the film (or it would be indisputable) but from their interaction with the film.

You don't get it because you didn't interact with the film - you just watched it. And that's not your fault, or a deficiency on your part - I have watched other movies the same way and don't "get" them, which is why I understand where you are coming from.

In fact, the shear number of treatises on meaning in the movie shows how much information was conveyed without having much dialog. The plot was able to be furthered without dialog to explain what was happening. The characters did not have to evolve and be rich and multi-dimensional, because it is the atmosphere, and specifically HAL, that evolves. The characters do evolve, but it is a quiet, internal change that is either implied or understood. We know that Dave is scared of being killed by HAL - but he is not going to be the stereotypical whimpering woman or big bad ass - no "Imma bust all up in your memory crystals" sound bite, because HAL controls everything and already killed Frank on the mere mention of a possibility of disconnecting Hal.

That kind of quiet drama is so rare, and often poorly done, that it generates the kind of negative reviews you mentioned. In fact, there are a number of Italian films I specifically remember for having almost nothing at all happening of any substance, but they were extremely well done, and highly affecting. The much ridiculed bag from American Beauty - I recognized it as a very rushed (and therefore uncomfortable) attempt to capture this style of movie making. It had the opposite effect from what was intended, for most people, precisely because this sort of thing is rare in American cinema, and it was crammed in to a movie that did not have the slow pace required. And the dialog was clunky too, which didn't help.

The remake of Solaris, which is the slowest movie I can think of recently, had dra

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree. Wish I had mod points.

I love Arthur C. Clarke's work.

I love Stanly Kubrick's work.

But this one movie is so revered, and I think it so awful. People may not remember how little serious or semi-serious sci-fi there used to be at the movie theater. I went and watched 2001 thinking great writer, great director in Kubrick how could it not be pretty good if not great. If anyone else had made it, I would have walked out halfway through, and nearly did. It had nothing going for it. And even for then, the effects weren't really great. Would be a few years before Industrial Light and Magic, but still nothing to write home about.

Have watched it a couple times in the intervening years wondering if I just didn't get it when I was a young adult. Unfortunately there is really nothing to get other than what you make up yourself (out of boredom in my case). I merely wasted an additional 6 hours of life for no good.

Re:'medium is the..."

[redneckmother]

+1.

One thing that disappointed me about A Clockwork Orange is that it didn't follow Burgess' book closely enough. Another is that Walter (Wendy?) Carlos' music wasn't ready to score movie.

Overall, I did enjoy it, though.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Man On Pink Corner]

Yes, I, too, remember how I felt the first time I watched 2001.

Watch it again.

Re:'medium is the..."

[redneckmother]

Oops... s/score movie/score the movie/

Re: 'medium is the..."

[O('_')O_Bush]

No, what the person you are responding to wrote accurately. You foolishly replied back before comprehending what was being said.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Concerned Onlooker]

"dragging scenes, no real narrative, bland characters, scenes continuing well past any need for them to"

It's not a crime to have completely missed the point of the movie, but you might not want to trumpet it so loudly.

The whole idea of the "dragging scenes" was realism. Nothing happens quickly under those conditions. Contrary to movies that pass for science fiction these days, which are in fact just basically action flicks set in space, 2001 sought to show what it might really be like to have to live and work in space. And in these "dragging scenes" you're supposed to be thinking about what is going on and appreciating the solitude that the astronauts would have to endure and the amount of time it takes to get anywhere in space.

The characters were anything but bland. They were, especially in Bowman's and Poole's case, excellent examples of the engineering-type that would be necessary on a mission of that sort. If you think they were bland then you obviously did not watch the scene were Bowman is on the edge of losing his cool with Hal as he tries to regain entry to Discovery. It's one of my favorite movies scenes of all time.

The entire story is so fascinating that I find it hard to believe you watched it at all. Or perhaps people are now beyond the ability to watch anything that isn't full of jump cuts and explosions. The idea that some entity or race planted a device on the moon that waited for millions of years for us to discover it is mind bending if you take to the time really think about it. Also, plot lines are not the end-all of a movie. Sometimes it's enough to just put something up for consideration and the awe that it can inspire.

We do agree on one point however. There is one of Kubrick's movies that is different from the rest and it is 2001. It's just that I think it is way better than the others.

Re: 'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Far be it from me to agree with Hognoxious, but a tautology is an assertion that is self-evidently true when it becomes clear that one term is a euphemism for the other. When you define something in terms of itself, it can't help but be true. McLuhan's maxim doesn't meet that description.

Re:'medium is the..."

[b4dc0d3r]

Here's what I did for you. I listened to Confused Matthew's criticism. Then I watched 2001 again. And this is what I wrote (below the dashes). This is just about what actually happens in the movie, no interpretation or analysis or meaning. The short version is - there is a LOT happening, and it happens with the imagery and not with what people traditionally expect - dialog. The set is basically another character that does a lot of the talking that normally would break the feel of realism. If you object to realism, then just stop replying and go away because that's the fundamental point of the movie, if you strip away the details and analysis.

My conclusion first so you don't get bored: , about "changing the form" as Spielberg said Kubrick was doing, in the Afterword review, Matthew said that Kubrick "changed the form so much that it isn't recognizable any more." And here is the clincher - recognizable to the countless fans of the movie, but not to Matthew and not to you. And if you are going to quote someone to support your point, you can't present it as support, then select one of those statements and object to it. He says near the end that video has to have writing, and lists viewer feedback about the meaning of the movie. And apparently anyone can put pictures with music, and it doesn't qualify as a film. I did not know that. And if someone follows some simple formulae to create something like the political commercial, it is just as good as 2001. Listen to that part of the review again and see if it really passes the smell test. It is nonsensical and full of false equivalences. And Fantasia is a silent movie, while 2001 is not.

Gattaca has a lot of dialog - there is a lot going on. I didn't see The Man From Earth. The classics of course had most everything happen in dialog - all the explanations and history and circumstance. There was no atmosphere or scene, for the most part, other than an appropriate stage so the actors don't have to say "What a nice Doctor's office you have, Doctor". The classic movies are plays with better sets.

Gattaca is much more classically styled in this way, which makes it endurable by Confused Matthew. 2001 is certainly not standard Hollywood fare - but Gattaca is very much so, which is why apparently it qualifies as a film and 2001 does not. Gattaca is therefore probably the worst example you both could have used. It's a play, set in the future. If either of you had mentioned one of the Italian verismo films I might have just accepted and moved on. It had a blockbuster cast, $36 million budget. And it's a thriller.

Now for what I prepared
dashes here - lameness accounted.

Confused Matthew is genuinely confused. He is doing a review that starts out claiming to be objective, but then the profanity and exasperation starts immediately. There is no hint of an attempt to understand the film, and he asserts "nothing is happening" when there is clearly something going on.

I'll start with the end of the review: The last 3 minutes of the last review are based on completely refusing to see that anything happened at all in the movie beyond Hal. Clarke said that anyone understanding the movie *completely* missed the point, and it wanted to raise more questions than it answered. But he concluded as if Clarke said that anyone *partly* understanding missed the point (a box full of scrabble letters is a masterpiece). And if it was supposed to raise questions, wouldn't Matthew have some actual questions? Unless he actually missed the point of the movie completely. Most people would at least ask "What the hell is that space baby?" instead of saying "Same as a turkey sandwich". This paragraph is why you should not listen to anything Confused Matthew said, at all.

The opening serves to set the stage for the rest of the movie. In a relatively short timespan, it shows two groups of apes in disagreement, one inventing tools to hunt, and then one group using those tools to kill members of the other group

Re: 'medium is the..."

[Hognoxious]

Shape and flavor are clearly NOT the same thing, so the comparison is garbage even if the medium and the message are.

Which they aren't. I can get the news "MSFT tanks 11% on rumors about Ballmer's health" via a newspaper, radio news, TV announcement handwritten note, intarwebz.

Same message, different media.

Now run along and deconstruct something, will you?

Re: 'medium is the..."

[Hognoxious]

No, what the person you are responding to wrote accurately.

That's not a correct sentence.

replied back

Now that actually is a tautology, well done!

Re: 'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

A movie cannot be 'about' space and tech. It's about the human implications/impact of those things. Kubrick, like Malick, chooses to construct this (looser but more expressive) meaning through jarring pacing and editing, and slow visual accumulation, rather than overt plot.

That does seem to be what's required for a deeper examination of the subject in this medium, when you consider the dearth of intellectual rigour in the alternatives (the laughable Prometheus, for example). But clearly it's not a mainstream interest, either, so it is odd there isn't a superficial plot woven around it too, like he did with The Shining.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"The medium is the message" is a tautology. It's like saying on the topic of candy, "The shape is the taste"

I'm pretty sure that "tautology" is not the word you were looking for.

Re:'medium is the..."

[hairyfeet]

If you think its a good movie then do me a favor, cut out ALL the parts where there is NO dialog, plot development character development, or story progression and then get back to me, okay? i think you'll find you have a movie that is 30, maybe 40 minutes tops. yes you can have character and plot development visually but that is NOT what you get in 2001, you get crap floating in space to music PERIOD. Just look at how long that simple flight to the moon takes, fuck look at how long that damned stewedardess takes just bringing a fricking tray! Is that tray integral to the story? Does it move the plot forward? NOPE, its just Kubrick being in love with the idea of space travel so he has to show us every.boring.tiny.bit. of space travel.

As Nicholas Meyer once said "A scene should never last for longer than it can justify itself" and Good Lord is that rule ever broken in 2001! BTW did you know that what you are watching is the SECOND release? The ORIGINAL theatrical release had another hour and ten minutes of crap floating in space to music and he had so many people walking out and bad reactions to screenings he cut it down, so why do you think X amount of crap floating in space is good but everyone thought Y amount of crap floating in space is bad?

So I'm sorry but for me there is one simple little test,how much of the movie can you HONESTLY describe the plot, not guess and make up shit like so many of the Kubrickians do, which just FYI look up what Kubrick has said on the movie and you'll see it wasn't SUPPOSED to have any kind of defined meaning...well if your fricking director says something doesn't have meaning then guess what? It doesn't have a fricking script because THAT IS WHAT THE SCRIPT IS FOR, it lays out what the fricking film is about, but how much of the ACTUAL plot can you honestly describe that isn't gonna end up EXACTLY like what Matthew was doing, "the ship is going, the ship is going, the ship is going" a billion times over?

And just FYI I don't agree with everything matthew says its just damned hard to find any critic that doesn't suck Kubrick's dick, no different than how Terrence Malick can make the most pretentious POS in the history of film and the critics will trip over themselves to kiss his ass, in fact you'd be hard pressed to find a director whose behind got kissed more than Kubrick, he could have filmed a guy eating a pickle and won an Oscar. But again look at Kubrick's own work, ALL of his movies have rich plot, characters, narrative...except one. Hell you could remove the fricking sound from a good 60% of the movie and not miss a damned thing because its just SFX put to music!

BTW if you want to see a GOOD movie with no CGI booms, no SFX put to music, just a deep rich story that makes you think? Try "The Man From Earth" sometime, or hell pretty much anything Kubrick did OTHER than 2001. Even Clarke said there weren't any definitive answers to be found on screen....really? I mean for fucks sake the guy is admitting that even the writer doesn't have an answer which means there IS no answer, and he STILL gets a pass?

Re:'medium is the..."

[HornWumpus]

I thought the score was brilliant. Whatever Carlos/Garrison called it's self back then.

IIRC the movie only left out a couple of scenes. Where the booky dude gets beat and the unique books destroyed, then later when he takes his revenge on lame Alex. One of the closest film adaptions I've ever seen. Then again it's been decades sense I read the book, but I remember my impression of how true to the book the movie was.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone did create a version of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 5 minutes for the "tl;dw" crowd, but my personal favorite nutshell version is One: A Space Odyssey

And 2012: A Pony Odyssey...

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

> And 2012: A Pony Odyssey

10 min. 14 secs. = tl;dw

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

So b4dc0d3r read the crap review you linked to, watched the movie again, and posted a 2k word retort, but you can't do any better than reword your original post? How about addressing his points? When was the last time you watched the movie?

You don't like 2001. We get it. Many people do like it, and for good reasons. There are many iconic scenes and dialog (ironic, no?) that still resonate in our culture today. I'm glad that not all of Hollywood and indie filmmakers think that every second of the film needs to "cut out ALL the parts where there is NO dialog, plot development character development, or story progression". How about instilling a sense of wonder in the audience? Proposing questions on the nature of man and the universe? Asking how we got here, and where are we going? These things can demonstrably be done without involving dialog, plot or character development, or story progression.

All those things were woven around a fairly traditional Frankenstein monster story, but if you think 2001 was a story about a killer computer, you have failed. Another hint: when Clarke said there were no definitive answers to be found on screen - he meant that as a compliment, not a complaint.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Anonymous Coward]

You're batshit nuts, on both counts. Carlos's score was a masterpiece, and the screenplay was adapted almost verbatim from the US version of the novel.

The only significant departure was the omission of the last chapter, in which Alex and his friends grow up, mellow out, and start families.

Re:'medium is the..."

[redneckmother]

You're batshit nuts, on both counts. Carlos's score was a masterpiece, and the screenplay was adapted almost verbatim from the US version of the novel.

The only significant departure was the omission of the last chapter, in which Alex and his friends grow up, mellow out, and start families.

Err... I LOVED Carlos' score - I was expressing my disappointment that it wasn't ready in time for incorporation in the movie release. Also, the final chapter would have, to me, been VERY welcome in the movie.

Milton William Cooper

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Bill Coopers analysis of 2001 from Mystery Babylon series radio transmissions more.

A better one

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Rob Ager's analysis? (collativelearning)

Buzzword compliant pseudo-philosophy

[Animats]

Read through the review. Not impressed. It has the requisite references to Nietzsche and Focault found in too many pretentious philosophy papers. There's obsession over the movie's presentation of zero-g and rotating space station issues, as if those had great philosophical import. In reality, they're severely practical - 2001 was the first movie with the budget to show space realistically. (And one of the last to try.)

There's a long analysis of Hal 9000's motivations, with much emphasis on Hal's growing "self awareness". This misses one of the big points of the movie - Hal had been ordered to make the mission succeed, and that goal had a higher priority than keeping the crew alive. To academics today, that's an alien concept. It wasn't alien in the 1960s, when there were still many WWII veterans around. See "Twelve O-Clock High" for a clear expression of the "mission comes first" mentality. Or "633 Squadron", which is even clearer about the need to send men to their death just to advance the tactical position slightly. Or, if you're in a hurry, read "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner", which is a five-line poem. Those were understood concepts for those who lived and fought through the first half of the twentieth century.

The paper has yet another attempt to explain the ending. Clarke himself once did, and that's probably the only explanation worth reading. Realistically, the ending looks like a writer getting stuck. Some writers and directors have a real problem with endings. Woody Allen was famous for that. Good writers try to avoid pat endings, but alternatives may just lose the audience. That's 2001.

Anyway, that long review is much less profound than it would like to think it is.

Re:Buzzword compliant pseudo-philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

There's obsession over the movie's presentation of zero-g and rotating space station issues, as if those had great philosophical import. In reality, they're severely practical - 2001 was the first movie with the budget to show space realistically. (And one of the last to try.)

Here you appear to be suggesting that Kubrick didn't have a choice. He did - Star Trek predates 2001 by a few years, and didn't have zero-g and rotating space stations. Hell, it wouldn't have been very hard at all to put the latter into Trek.

Here's the thing: making it realistic was Kubrick's choice. It wasn't forced on him by anybody.

This misses one of the big points of the movie - Hal had been ordered to make the mission succeed, and that goal had a higher priority than keeping the crew alive.

Is this from some part of the film that I missed? I've watched it a number of times, and I don't recall that scene in it anywhere.

To academics today, that's an alien concept. It wasn't alien in the 1960s, when there were still many WWII veterans around. See "Twelve O-Clock High" for a clear expression of the "mission comes first" mentality. Or "633 Squadron", which is even clearer about the need to send men to their death just to advance the tactical position slightly. Or, if you're in a hurry, read "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" [wikipedia.org], which is a five-line poem. Those were understood concepts for those who lived and fought through the first half of the twentieth century.

This is sufficient evidence to support your interpretation of a given scene, but such a scene does not exist.

The paper has yet another attempt to explain the ending. Clarke himself once did, and that's probably the only explanation worth reading. Realistically, the ending looks like a writer getting stuck.

Realistically, this looks like you reaching for a conclusion to support your assumption.

Some writers and directors have a real problem with endings. Woody Allen was famous for that. Good writers try to avoid pat endings, but alternatives may just lose the audience. That's 2001.

So you're saying that because others have a problem with endings, and you don't understand this ending, then Kubrick clearly had a problem with ending. That's not much of a conclusion to draw. You should just stop trying to tell people about your One True Interpretation of the film.

Anyway, that long review is much less profound than it would like to think it is.

So is yours. Beyond length, the main difference is that yours is significantly more presumptive in a shorter space.

Re:Buzzword compliant pseudo-philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

Hal had been ordered to make the mission succeed, and that goal had a higher priority than keeping the crew alive. To academics today, that's an alien concept. It wasn't alien in the 1960s, when there were still many WWII veterans around.

It wasn't even that alien a concept in 1994 when Star Trek TNG did an episode where the Bridge Officer's test revolved around ordering a friend to his certain death to save the ship. By 1996, Voyager had an episode where the main plot was Captain Janeway refusing to mate with Q who could literally snap has fingers and send their lost ship back home. Kill your friend to save the ship? That's an order! Prostitution to save the ship? That's politically incorrect! And that's one of the reasons Voyager sucked.

the 'grad student read'

[globaljustin]

aka 'skimming'....

the author of TFA definitely babbles on about imaginary correlations to other philosophical ideas...stuff that most likely wasn't on Kubrick's radar screen...but there's good stuff in there...

he draws out more commonalities between the monkey/bone, humans/nukes, hal/monolith thing and the author summarizes these notions succinctly (when he bothers to try and summarize)

ex: here he tries to further elucidate his interpretive theory by comparing to other Kubrick films...he summarizes Clockwork Orange:

[Kubrick's] stories seem to negate the myths humanity tells itself about our own nature, instead throwing cold water on our collective faces in order to reawaken us to our merciless underlying psychological forces. But unlike Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, Kubrick's narratives don't serve to act as a warning so much as simply a documentary newsreel of humanity's selfish abandon.

That's good stuff...especially viewing Kubrick's work as journalistic and attempting impartiality while depicting the ideas clashing on screen.

I wish someone had explained that to me before I saw Kubrick films...it would have spared me alot of misunderstanding and saved me time which I could have spent thinking of more productive things...like this..."Kubrick's films are awesome but they are unsettling...he shows rape and it might feel like he is somehow glorifying the act, but he's attempting to be impartial where other directors might not..."

Re:the 'grad student read'

[maynard]

globaljustin wrote: "(when he bothers to try and summarize)"

That's a fair point. I could cut the word count down significantly and recast several of the ideas into separate academic papers. But I was shooting for a more general audience, one who might need a breakdown of the film scene by scene. Those who haven't seen the film more than once. But I could have done better. Every piece of work has its warts.

I'm on to other projects now, but may one day revisit the work and attempt a more concise revision.

Re: TL;DR

[TCM]

So you're an illiterate idiot or why the need to speak up?

it's true...

[globaljustin]

Odd, I always took McLuhan's tautology to mean "The transmission method used shapes the meaning of the content"

So, *your* idea is solid...the fact that the channel by which the sender and/or receiver choose to access the information can affect how they interpret the symbols, which drives their social construction of reality...

yes!

But McLuhan wasn't saying that in his work. Have you read it? Yikes...it's dense like a philosophy text.

McLuhan was more in 'TED talk' mode, breathlessly in wonder at the potential insights gleanable from the act of analyzing human communication with the tools of the network engineer.

More like "the shape is the promise". You see something that shape and size, and assume that it's designed to be eaten, and is a layered candy. This of course is why you should keep medicine out of the reach of small children.

Again, I can agree here.

My main point is, *you* are responsible for these ideas, via expanding your mind cybernetically to factorize symbols which were previously to fuzzy to factorize accurately. That's *your* ideas...McLuhan isn't in the picture...

except that in modern American discourse, his quotation is often mentioned...the continued use of it means it has to 'mean' something...so we project *our* ideas on it...

so yeah, it is a 'good quotation' in that it can be applied many ways! to me it is bad in that if the hearer wants to know more of the idea, and investigates the origin of the quotation...well, they are usually destined for more confusion not more understanding

Re:it's true...

[Em Adespoton]

But McLuhan wasn't saying that in his work. Have you read it? Yikes...it's dense like a philosophy text.

McLuhan was more in 'TED talk' mode, breathlessly in wonder at the potential insights gleanable from the act of analyzing human communication with the tools of the network engineer.

I'd still argue that McLuhan is in the picture, but that quote is very definitely not an accurate summation of his overall message; when I studied what he was doing, that quote was presented and interpreted more as a battle cry to change the way people approached transmission vs signal -- and then he had to contort his logic to attempt to back up that battle cry in any meaningful way (partly because he was only seeing part of the picture and was trying to push a narrow agenda). I'd definitely agree about him being in 'TED talk' mode, that sums it up quite nicely :)

Add to that that some of his ideas were obviously not credible, even at the time, and you get this disconnect between people that see his one famous line and then dive into his works expecting some amazing revelation of the thought that went behind that. In reality, the more interesting work is done by others after the fact refuting his claims (and thereby also discovering the use cases for his transmission theory).

Then again, I haven't read any of his stuff in around 20 years, so I've probably introduced a lot of situational bias and coloured memory into this :)

Re: TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the same AC,

But you sound just like the Simpson's comic book guy: a lot of condescension and absolutely no sense of how ridiculous their petty remarks make them look.

You may feel better about yourself for insulting and denigrating others, but you are no better than the people you're trying to deride.

Probably the best thing you could do is grow up.

Re: TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this guy has it.
TCM you come off like the world's biggest prick.

Re:TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

DR

it's still true...

[globaljustin]

I'd still argue that McLuhan is in the picture,

Ha!

What's funny is, by my own logic, the fact that you still make that argument makes it true, in a sense...

Because of what I said here:

That's *your* ideas...McLuhan isn't in the picture...except that in modern American discourse, his quotation is often mentioned...the continued use of it means it has to 'mean' something...so we project *our* ideas on it...

I'm giving you the credibility enough to read/think about your posts and ideas...that mental action on my part opens the door for you to take that credibility and turn the table, so to speak...

Fine! We can agree to disagree on that point ;)

Re:it's still true...

[Em Adespoton]

This is where I double-check that I actually posted to slashdot....

Any comment on this review of your book?

[justthinkit]

Any comment on this review of your book?

Re:Any comment on this review of your book?

[maynard]

Welp, I didn't write or read that book. I didn't write the review. And I didn't comment to the reviewer either, though there was one note written by a "James M" who wasn't me.

(scratches head)

Can't say much else here. Sorry.

My bad

[justthinkit]

I assumed you were the author being featured in this thread. Mea culpa. The commenter I linked to appears to be off the boil, yet Amazon is featuring her comment. Anyway, sorry to have thrown all that at you...

Re:My bad

[maynard]

I wrote the 2001 essay featured here, but I didn't write or read the book you linked to at Amazon. Nor did I write the review comment.

Re:My bad

[maynard]

OK, so I get it now. Timothy linked to a /. review of that book in the submission intro, and you linked to an Amazon review of that book as well. But the book wasn't written by me. I got confused.

However, I read the Amazon review and thought - beyond her criticisms of a book I haven't read - some of what she said about the movie was very interesting. I'd love to read her essay on 2001 and will definitely do a google search and look for it. I suspect she'd trash my work, but also believe that in her criticisms I'd learn many interesting new things.

On the fence here over whether I'd prefer she review my essay. Woman got a harsh tonue. Lol. -M

I have an almost opposite perspective

[justthinkit]

I have an almost opposite perspective. "2001" is one of only two Kubrick films I am impressed with(, the other being Full Metal Jacket). The "story, characters, plot" is generally an important criteria. In the case of "2001", however, one has to put oneself "back in the 60's" to appreciate that little thing called "doing it first". I saw it "live on the big screen" then and, much like the movie "Woodstock" that followed a few years later, it left a lasting impression.
.

"Star Wars", a few years after that, was really the second compelling space movie, yet it has survived and thrived, in a dandelion kind of way, thanks to the infinite promotional abilities of G.L. At the time I was impressed with Star Wars, but the franchise has not weathered well. If Stanley had tried to make 7 movies about "2001", they would have collectively suffered the fate.

Some things are ground breaking. "The Matrix" pulled the rug out from under "Star Wars 1: The Phantom Edit". Ground breaking things do that. Matrix 1 1/2 & 2 were about as bad as SW1. "You can't go home again"...but that doesn't take anything away from the original effort.

So I'm sorry Kubrickians but there is a REASON why nobody else has made a film in the vein of 2001, because anybody else would have been called to the carpet for making a movie with no plot, narrative, story

Here you are so right. You can't be groundbreaking in the same movie category twice, without creating a new category. The closest I've seen a movie come to this is Godfather two, after the blockbuster that was one. Yet even then there is not a lot new. I think two worked because Michael surprised us in being almost as compelling as Vito. In that sense, it was more like Toy Story Two, an equal to One but nothing new really.

, frankly if it wasn't for the (sadly too damned short) parts with HAL there really wouldn't be any real characters at all, just bland empty vessels.

Maybe you prefer the Star Wars 1 approach of cloning characters to fill the screen? For me, sparse is good. Works with dialog, and especially with music, in my view.

It reminds me of how nobody but Terrence Malick can make a Terrence Malick movie because only Terrence Malick gets a free pass from the critics to be as pretentious as he possibly can without getting called to the carpet.

And only G.L can....And only Steven Spielberg can... And only Michael Man can...While you are at it, you could say that only Robin Williams/Jim Carrey/Al Pacino can play an R.W./J.C./A.P. role...And then what have you said? Not much. Some actors/directors are known for a wide variety of roles (Marlon, Bale, Tommy Lee & Ron Howard come to mind) while the majority are mostly monochrome -- even De Niro, for all his greatness, is somewhat monochromatic.

Challenge for you -- come up with one or more movies that have held their appeal over 20 or 30 years of re-watching and movie making progression. Then consider that "2001" is just shy of 50 years out of print. For me, searching for something as equally enduring from the 60s leads me to "Lawrence of Arabia", at 51 years old. But if you didn't like Kubrick's 2.21 to 1 aspect ratio, you probably won't dig Lean's 2.20 to 1. And "2001"'s 160 minute running time looks nearly instantaneous compared to LoA's 187 to 228 minute verboseness. And what's the deal with all those quietly walking across the desert scenes?

Re:I have an almost opposite perspective

[redneckmother]

Kubrick was a (perhaps "the") master of telling a story through image. I have enjoyed his work, and wonder what else he might have given us, if he were still alive.

Re:I have an almost opposite perspective

[justthinkit]

if he were still alive
.

So true. 14 years after he passed away there is a slashdot thread about one of his great movies. I think he also should be given credit for not cranking out 2 and 3 movies a year. Just 16 movies in 48 years, according to IMDB.

cool Man

[Anonymous Coward]

While finally getting to see a 70MM print of the movie with my friends and one of my friends uncles, I commeted that the flying thru the monolith with the swirly lines and stuff part would probably be better on acid.
My friends uncle said it was...
Tell me a producer/director/writer who's movies are more quoted. Or emulated. Or analyzed (20K words really, was the script that long?).
Kubrick may have been crazy, but so was HAL.

Movies with staying power

[fyngyrz]

come up with one or more movies that have held their appeal over 20 or 30 years of re-watching and movie making progression.

Wizard of Oz. Gone With the Wind. Sword in the Stone. Romeo and Juliet. Taming of the Shrew.

Re:Movies with staying power

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, but none of those movies have/had any appeal to me, at any time.

Re:Movies with staying power

[fyngyrz]

"anecdote" != "data"

Those movies have held their appeal to huge audiences. The fact that you are not in those audiences does not change the situation.

Re:Movies with staying power

[Anonymous Coward]

What "situation" are you talking about? For a movie to meet my _criteria_ is completely different from "what remains popular decades later". By your criteria, religion must be a double plus good thing.
.

Hollywood, movies & the world in general are completely skewed. I have no interest in what movie industry douche bags enjoy. Movies like E.T., Jaws, The Departed, Inception and "There Will Be Blood" are not good movies. Massive amounts of movie promotion propaganda changes nothing.

Try thinking for yourself instead of telling me what cud the herd is chewing.

Re:Movies with staying power

[Anonymous Coward]

And the movie-going public could give less than a shit about your opinion. So when you say a movie has not "held its appeal" over 20 or 30 years, you'd better be using a yardstick other than the one up your ass.

Re:Movies with staying power

[Anonymous Coward]

The yardstick was intended to be personal. In other words, you try to come up with movies that have held sway _for you_. My point is that few movies are compelling across the decades, and "2001" is certainly one of them.
.

Of the movies you mentioned, "The Wizard Of Oz" stands out for cheeziness. Contrasting it with "2001" that looks 40 years newer. Score one for 2001.

"Gone With The Wind" was significant in that it ran in movie theaters for _years_ and was pretty much the _only_ thing running in those theaters. It was the first monopoly movie. "2001" competed with perhaps a dozen others, yet ran at "The Bay" in Vancouver (where I saw it) for over a year. Noteworthy to achieve near monopoly status on a theater during a non-monopoly time.

You mentioned "Sword in the Stone" and all I could think of was the Disney movie. I go to IMDB and that is all that comes up. Is this the best Disney "movie" in your mind?! SitS's animation/artwork/story like a million other Disney movies, "2001" stands miles above this.

"Romeo and Juliet. Taming of the Shrew". I hope you are not seriously suggesting these are movies that are compelling over a span of decades. Shakespeare (i.e. Marlowe) equals "had to watch/read it in high school". I guess some people never graduate. You can only seriously be listing these for their story, and that is not what is being compared here.

We are looking for compelling movie experiences that span decades. You gave me Oz (kid's stuff, at best), GwtW (the first American "epic", surely, but a very average movie on most fronts), SitS (another kid's movie), and 2 "Shakespeare"s. See you at graduation.

2001 started a meme

[Provocateur]

That when encountering advanced alien civilization(s), we will be presented with something that can either be shot in a studio (see the hotel room scene in 2001) or on location (faked beach scene in Contact)

Was it written in Fidus Writer?

[charlesjo488]

Just curious.

"having been retweeted by Nicholas Jackson"

[Anonymous Coward]

Impressive. How did he manage to retweet a 22000 word essay without running up against the 140 character limit?

Unfathomable: Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some concepts stated by many above: weak plot, unfathomable, incomrehensible, weak characters, slow, lack of action...
which for all add up to a great success!

Why is it a requirement that a movie has to be understandable? Just as a start.

PS. further reference, check out the French Movie: Last Year at Marienbad (from 1961)

===
I do not consider 2001 a failure, but a great, one of the greatest movies. But a few failures: Zardoz, Electric Glide in Blue, Dune by David Lynch, many more, I find more enjoyable and rewarding over the long haul that many so-called successful movies. They reach and fail, compared to movies that don't fail, but don't reach.
===
Planet of the Apes got an Academy Award for the Ape costumes. A tall tale (tail--no apes don't tails) is that someone who worked on the 'ape-men' in 2001 asked someone on the Academy nominating committee why 2001 wasn't even nominated for the much superior ape-men costumes. The answer: "Those were actors in costumes?!?!?)
===
I haven't read all the above, but has anyone mentioned the thrill of the light corridor scene near the end while under the influence of mind altering substances? Redundancy magnified!

Arthur C. Clarke ...

[RockDoctor]

... wrote what is more likely to be the definitive book on "2001 - A Space Odyssey", back in 1968.

Re: TL;DR

[dywolf]

it is not being a prick to point willful ignorance and stupidity that is deliberately insulting and itself condescending. TL;DR is part of the culture of the glorification of stupid, the denigration of intellect. to call it what it is is compeltely justified.