Nah just being provocative here. This is not the worst of course - probably the best I've ever seen for showing a computer AI interacting with humans partly because it was so remarkably ahead of its time but also because of the amazing realism of many of the scenes including Dave's chess game with HAL, HAL's eery interest in viewing Dave's drawings, HAL's ability to diagnose whether an electronic circuit board was faulty, and the eventual deconstruction of HAL's brain as Dave takes revenge on the AI gone haywire. Totally brilliant. Made in 1968 this movies still blows virtually all other sci-fi competition out of the water despite the decades of CGI development that have occurred since. The only thing one might criticize in my mind were when HAL kills the hibernating astronauts on board the space ship there is a big sign that lights up saying "LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED". I can understand why Kubrick would have felt the need for something like this for dramatic effect but the sign seems a little cheesy thinking about it - why would there be a big sign like this on board? Who is supposed to be viewing it? The other thing that always bugged me is when HAL boasts about his infallibility and then predicts the circuit failure in the transponder unit with 100% certainty. Instead of going out to retrieve the unit the astronauts could have simply asked HAL what was the basis for his prediction. Might have save themselves a lot of heartache:-)
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Nah just being provocative here. This is not the worst of course - probably the best I've ever seen for showing a computer AI interacting with humans partly because it was so remarkably ahead of its time but also because of the amazing realism of many of the scenes including Dave's chess game with HAL, HAL's eery interest in viewing Dave's drawings, HAL's ability to diagnose whether an electronic circuit board was faulty, and the eventual deconstruction of HAL's brain as Dave takes revenge on the AI gone haywire. Totally brilliant. Made in 1968 this movies still blows virtually all other sci-fi competition out of the water despite the decades of CGI development that have occurred since. The only thing one might criticize in my mind were when HAL kills the hibernating astronauts on board the space ship there is a big sign that lights up saying "LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED". I can understand why Kubrick would have felt the need for something like this for dramatic effect but the sign seems a little cheesy thinking about it - why would there be a big sign like this on board? Who is supposed to be viewing it? The other thing that always bugged me is when HAL boasts about his infallibility and then predicts the circuit failure in the transponder unit with 100% certainty. Instead of going out to retrieve the unit the astronauts could have simply asked HAL what was the basis for his prediction. Might have save themselves a lot of heartache :-)