2001: A Space Odyssey is an American 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life. It is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, ambiguous imagery that is open-ended to a point approaching surrealism, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue.

The film has a memorable soundtrack—the result of the association that Kubrick made between the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes, which led him to use The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss II,^[3] and the famous symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, to portray the philosophical evolution of Man theorized in Nietzsche's work of the same name.^[4][5]

Despite initially receiving mixed reviews, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today recognized by many critics and audiences as one of the greatest films ever made; the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time.^[6] In addition, in 2010 it was named the #1 greatest film ever made by The Moving Arts Film Journal.^[7] It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for visual effects. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Overview

Title

In the beginning, Kubrick and Clarke privately referred to their project as How The Solar System Was Won as an homage to MGM's 1962 Cinerama epic, How the West Was Won. However, Kubrick chose to announce the project, in a press release issued on February 23, 1965, as Journey Beyond The Stars.^[8] "Other titles which we ran up and failed to salute were Universe, Tunnel To The Stars, and Planetfall", Clarke wrote in his book The Lost Worlds Of 2001. "It was not until eleven months after we started—April 1965—that Stanley selected 2001: A Space Odyssey. As far as I can recall, it was entirely his idea."^[9] Intending to set the film apart from the standard "monsters and sex" type of science-fiction movies of the time, Kubrick used Homer's The Odyssey as inspiration for the title. "It occurred to us", he said, "that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation".^[10]

Style

Clarke and Kubrick wrote the novel and screenplay simultaneously, but while Clarke ultimately opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and Star Gate in his book, Kubrick chose to make his film more cryptic and enigmatic by keeping dialogue and specific explanations to a minimum.^[5] "2001", Kubrick says, "is basically a visual, nonverbal experience" that avoids the spoken word in order to reach the viewer's subconscious in an essentially poetic and philosophic way. The film is a subjective experience which "hits the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does, or painting".^[11]

The film conveys what some viewers have described as a sense of the sublime and numinous. Roger Ebert notes:

North's [rejected] score, which is available on a recording, is a good job of film composition, but would have been wrong for 2001 because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action -- to give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. It uplifts. It wants to be sublime; it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals.^[12]

In a book on architecture, Gregory Caicco writes that Space Odyssey illustrates how our quest for space is motivated by two contradictory desires, a "desire for the sublime" characterized by a need to encounter something totally other than ourselves — "something numinous" — and the conflicting desire for a beauty that makes us feel no longer "lost in space", but at home.^[13] Similarly, an article in The Greenwood encyclopedia of science fiction and fantasy titled "Sense of Wonder" describes how 2001 creates a "numinous sense of wonder" by portraying a universe that inspires a sense of awe, which at the same time we feel we can understand.^[14] Christopher Palmer has noted that there exists in the film a coexistence of "the sublime and the banal", as the film implies that to get into space, mankind had to suspend the "sense of wonder" that motivated him to explore space to begin with.^[15]

Plot

The film consists of four major sections, all of which, except the second, are introduced by superimposed titles.

The Dawn of Man

A tribe of herbivorous ape-like early humans is foraging for food in the African desert. A leopard kills one member, and another tribe of man-apes drives them from their water hole. Defeated, they sleep overnight in a small exposed rock crater, and awake to find a black monolith has appeared in front of them. They approach it shrieking and jumping, and eventually touch it cautiously. Soon after, one of the apes (Daniel Richter) realizes how to use a bone as both a tool and a weapon, which the apes then use to kill prey for food. Later they reclaim control of the water hole from the other tribe by killing its leader. Triumphant, the ape leader throws his weapon-tool into the air, switching via match cut from a bone to an orbital satellite millions of years in the future.

TMA-1

A Pan Am space plane carries Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) to a space station orbiting Earth for a layover on his trip to Clavius Base, a US outpost on the moon. After making a videophone call from the station to his daughter (Vivian Kubrick), he encounters his friend Elena (Margaret Tyzack), a Russian scientist, and her colleague Dr. Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter), who ask Floyd about "odd things" occurring at Clavius, and the rumor of a mysterious epidemic at the base. The American declines to answer any questions about the epidemic.

At Clavius, Floyd heads a meeting of base personnel, apologizing for the epidemic cover story but stressing secrecy. His mission is to investigate a recently found artifact—"Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One" (TMA-1)—"deliberately buried" four million years ago. Floyd and others ride in a Moonbus to the artifact, a black monolith identical to the one encountered by the apes. The visitors examine the monolith, and pose for a photo in front of it. While doing so, they hear a very loud radio signal coming from the monolith.

Jupiter Mission

Eighteen months later, aboard the American spaceship Discovery One bound for Jupiter are two mission pilots and scientists—astronauts Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood)—three other scientists in cryogenic hibernation, and the ship's computer HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), or "Hal", who runs most of Discovery's operations. While Bowman and Poole watch Hal and themselves being interviewed in a BBC show about the mission, the computer states that he is "foolproof and incapable of error." Hal also speaks of his enthusiasm for the mission, and how he enjoys working with humans. When asked by the host if Hal has genuine emotions, Bowman replies that he appears to, but that the truth is unknown.

Hal asks Bowman about the unusual mystery and secrecy surrounding the mission, but interrupts himself to report the imminent failure of a device which controls the ship's main antenna. After retrieving the component with an EVA pod, the astronauts cannot find anything wrong with it. HAL suggests reinstalling the part and letting it fail so the problem can be found. Mission control concurs, but advises the astronauts that results from their twin HAL 9000 indicate the ship's HAL is in error predicting the fault.

When queried, Hal insists that the problem, like all previous issues with the HAL series, is due to "human error". Concerned about Hal's behavior, Bowman and Poole enter one of the EVA pods to talk without the computer overhearing them. They both have a "bad feeling" about Hal, despite the HAL series' perfect reliability, but decide to follow his suggestion to replace the unit. As the astronauts agree to deactivate the computer if it is proven to be wrong, they are unaware that Hal is reading their lips through the pod's window.

While attempting to replace the unit during a spacewalk, Poole's EVA pod, controlled by Hal, severs his oxygen hose and sets him adrift. Bowman, not realizing the computer is responsible for this, takes another pod to attempt a rescue, leaving his helmet behind. While he is gone, Hal terminates the life functions of the crew in suspended animation. When Bowman returns to the ship with Poole's body, Hal refuses to let him in, stating that the astronaut's plan to deactivate him jeopardizes the mission. Bowman manually opens the ship's emergency airlock and bodily enters the ship risking death from anoxia.

After donning a helmet, Bowman proceeds to HAL 9000's memory core intent on disconnecting the computer. Hal first tries to reassure Dave, then pleads with him to stop, and finally begins to express fear—all in a steady monotone voice. Dave ignores him and disconnects each of the computer's memory modules. Hal eventually regresses to his earliest programmed memory, the song "Daisy Bell", which he sings for Bowman.

When the computer is finally disconnected, a pre-recorded video message from Floyd plays. In it, he reveals the existence of the four million-year-old black monolith on the moon, "its origin and purpose still a total mystery". Floyd adds that it has remained completely inert, except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

At Jupiter, Bowman leaves Discovery One in an EVA pod and finds another monolith in orbit around the planet. Approaching it, the pod is suddenly pulled into a tunnel of colored light,^[16] and a disoriented and terrified Bowman finds himself racing at great speed across vast distances of space, viewing bizarre cosmological phenomena and strange alien landscapes of unusual colors. He finds himself, middle-aged and still in his spacesuit, standing in a bedroom containing Louis XVI-style decor. Bowman sees progressively older versions of himself, his point of view switching each time, alternately appearing formally dressed and eating dinner, and finally as a very elderly man lying in a bed. A black monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it, he is transformed into a fetus-like being enclosed in a transparent orb of light.^[17] The new being floats in space beside the Earth, gazing at it.

Cast

• Keir Dullea as Dr. David Bowman
• Gary Lockwood as Dr. Frank Poole
• William Sylvester as Dr. Heywood R. Floyd
• Douglas Rain as the voice of the HAL 9000
• Daniel Richter as the chief ape ("Moon-Watcher" in Clarke's novel)
• Leonard Rossiter as Dr. Andrei Smyslov
• Margaret Tyzack as Elena
• Robert Beatty as Dr. Ralph Halvorsen
• Frank Miller as mission controller
• Edward Bishop as Lunar shuttle captain
• Edwina Carroll as Aries stewardess
• Penny Brahms as stewardess
• Heather Downham as stewardess
• Alan Gifford as Poole's father
• Ann Gillis as Poole's mother
• Vivian Kubrick as Floyd's daughter (uncredited)
• Kenneth Kendall as the BBC announcer (uncredited)

Daniel Richter, a professional street mime, in addition to playing the lead ape was also responsible for choreographing the movements of the other apes, who were mostly portrayed by his standing mime troupe.^[18]

Production

Writing

Kubrick and Clarke meet

Shortly after completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), Stanley Kubrick became fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life,^[19] and determined to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie".^[20] Searching for a suitable collaborator in the science fiction community, Kubrick was advised to seek out the noted science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staffer Roger Caras. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick agreed that Caras would cable the Ceylon-based author with the film proposal. Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?"^[21] Meeting for the first time at Trader Vic's in New York on April 22, 1964, the two began discussing the project that would take up the next four years of their lives.^[22]

Search for source material

Kubrick told Clarke he was searching for the best way to make a movie about Man's relation to the universe, and was, in Clarke's words, "determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe,...even, if appropriate, terror".^[23] Clarke offered Kubrick six of his short stories, and by May, Kubrick had chosen one of them—"The Sentinel"—as source matter for his film. In search of more material to expand the film's plot, the two spent the rest of 1964 reading books on science and anthropology, screening science fiction movies, and brainstorming ideas.^[24] Clarke and Kubrick spent two years transforming "The Sentinel" into a novel, and then into a script for 2001.^[25] Clarke notes that his short story Encounter in the Dawn inspired the opening sequence of 2001.^[26]

Parallel development of film and novelization

The collaborators originally planned to develop a novel first, free of the constraints of a normal script, and then to write the screenplay; they envisaged that the final writing credits would be "Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick" to reflect their preeminence in their respective fields.^[27] In practice, however, the cinematic ideas required for the screenplay developed parallel to the novel, with cross-fertilization between the two. In a 1970 interview with Joseph Gelmis, Kubrick explained it this way:

"There are a number of differences between the book and the movie. The novel, for example, attempts to explain things much more explicitly than the film does, which is inevitable in a verbal medium. The novel came about after we did a 130-page prose treatment of the film at the very outset. This initial treatment was subsequently changed in the screenplay, and the screenplay in turn was altered during the making of the film. But Arthur took all the existing material, plus an impression of some of the rushes, and wrote the novel. As a result, there's a difference between the novel and the film...I think that the divergences between the two works are interesting."^[28]

In the end, the screenplay credits were shared while the novel, released shortly after the film, was attributed to Clarke alone, but Clarke wrote later that "the nearest approximation to the complicated truth" is that the screenplay should be credited to "Kubrick and Clarke" and the novel to "Clarke and Kubrick".^[29]

Depiction of alien life

Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his book The Cosmic Connection that Clarke and Kubrick asked his opinion on how to best depict extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan, while acknowledging Kubrick's desire to use actors to portray humanoid aliens for convenience's sake, argued that alien life forms were unlikely to bear any resemblance to terrestrial life, and that to do so would introduce "at least an element of falseness" to the film. Sagan proposed that the film suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence. He attended the premiere and was "pleased to see that I had been of some help." ^[30] Kubrick hinted at the nature of the mysterious unseen alien race in 2001 by suggesting, in a 1968 interview, that given millions of years of evolution, they progressed from biological beings to "immortal machine entities", and then into "beings of pure energy and spirit"; beings with "limitless capabilities and ungraspable intelligence".^[31]

Depiction of computers

As the central character of the "Jupiter Mission" segment of the film, HAL was shown by Kubrick to have as much intelligence as human beings, possibly more, while sharing their same "emotional potentialities". Kubrick agreed with computer theorists who believed that highly intelligent computers that can learn by experience will inevitably develop emotions such as fear, love, hate, and envy. Such a machine, he said, would eventually manifest human mental disorders as well, such as a nervous breakdown—as HAL did in the film.^[32]

Clarke noted that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of HAL's name immediately preceded those of IBM in the alphabet.^[33] The meaning of HAL has been given both as "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and as "Heuristic ALgorithmic computer". The former appears in Clarke's novel of 2001 and the latter in his sequel novel 2010. In computer science, a heuristic is a programmable procedure not necessarily based on fixed rules producing a well-informed guess often using trial-and-error. A heuristic may still produce erroneous results (such as in a computer program that plans optimal routes, or attempt to predict such things as the stock market, sports scores, or the weather).^[34] Sometimes, in the case of metaheuristics, this entails selecting on-the-fly one of several methods to solve a problem based on previous experience in efforts to solve the problem.^[35] On the other hand, an algorithm is a programmable procedure that produces reproducible results using invariant established methods (such as computing square roots).^[34]

In contemporary parlance, the distinction is sometimes expressed as "heuristic algorithm" vs. "optimal algorithm", as sometimes in computer science the word "algorithm" is used more inclusively. In his 2002 book Combinatorial Algorithms, Te Chiang Hu writes "If a heuristic algorithm works for most of the input data or its maximum percentage error is tolerable, we may prefer the heuristic algorithm to an optimum algorithm that requires a long time."

Depiction of spacecraft

All of the vehicles in 2001 were designed with extreme care in order for the small-scale models as well as full-scale interiors to appear realistic.^[36] The modeling team was led by Kubrick's two hirees from NASA, science advisor Fred Ordway and production designer Harry Lange,^[37] along with Anthony Masters who was responsible for turning Lange's 2-D sketches into models.^[38] Ordway and Lange insisted on knowing "the purpose and functioning of each assembly and component, down to the labeling of individual buttons and the presentation on screens of plausible operating, diagnostic and other data."^[36] Kubrick's team of thirty-five designers^[39] often were frustrated by script changes done after designs for various spacecraft had been created. Douglas Trumbull, chief special effects supervisor, writes "One of the most serious problems that plagued us throughout the production was simply keeping track of all ideas, shots, and changes and constantly re-evaluating and updating designs, storyboards, and the script itself. To handle all of this....a "control room"...was used to keep track of all progress on the film."^[40] Ordway (who worked on designing the station and the five principal space vehicles^[41]) has noted that U.S. industry had problems satisfying Kubrick with its equipment suggestions, while design aspects of the vehicles had to be updated often to accommodate rapid screenplay changes, one crew member resigning over an unspecified related issue.^[36] Eventually, conflicting ideas of what Kubrick had in mind, what Clarke was writing, and equipment and vehicular realities emerging from Ordway, Lange, Masters, and construction supervisor Dick Frift and his team were resolved, and coalesced into final designs and construction of the spacecraft before filming began in December 1965.^[36]

Stages of script & novel development

Arthur C. Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001. The script went through many stages of development in which various plot ideas were considered and subsequently discarded. Early in 1965, right when backing was secured for Journey Beyond the Stars, the writers still had no firm idea of what would happen to Bowman after the Star Gate sequence, though as early as October 17, 1964 Kubrick had come up with what Clarke called a "wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease".^[29] Initially all of Discovery's astronauts were to survive the journey; a decision to leave Bowman as the sole survivor and have him regress to infancy was agreed by October 3, 1965. The computer HAL was originally to have been named "Athena", after the Greek goddess of wisdom, with a feminine voice and persona.^[29]

Early drafts included a short prologue containing interviews with scientists about extraterrestrial life,^[42] voice-over narration (a feature in all of Kubrick's previous films),^[43] a stronger emphasis on the prevailing Cold War balance of terror, a slightly different and more explicitly explained scenario for HAL's breakdown,^[36][44][45] and a differently envisaged monolith for the "Dawn of Man" sequence. The last three of these survived into Arthur C. Clarke's final novel, which also retained an earlier draft's employment of Saturn as the final destination of the Discovery mission rather than Jupiter, and the discarded finale of the Star Child exploding nuclear weapons carried by Earth-orbiting satellites.^[45] Clarke had suggested this finale to Kubrick, jokingly calling it "Son of Dr. Strangelove"; a reference to Kubrick's previous film. Feeling that this conclusion's similarity to that of his previous film would be detrimental, Kubrick opted for a more pacific conclusion.^[46]

Some changes were made simply due to the logistics of filming. The production was unable to develop a convincing rendition of Saturn's rings; hence the switch to Jupiter,^[47] while early prototypes of the monolith did not photograph well. However, other changes were due to Stanley Kubrick's increasing desire to make the film more non-verbal, reaching the viewer at a visual and visceral level rather than through conventional narrative.^[48] Vincent LeBrutto notes that Clarke's novel has "strong narrative structure" which fleshes out the story, while the film is a mainly visual experience where much remains "symbolic".^[49]

Remnants of early drafts in final film

While many ideas were discarded in totality, at least two remnants of previous plot ideas remain in the final film.

HAL's breakdown

While the film leaves it mysterious, early script drafts spell out that HAL's breakdown is triggered by authorities on Earth who order the computer to withhold information from the astronauts about the true purpose of the mission. (This is also explained in the film's sequel 2010.) Frederick Ordway, Kubrick's science advisor and technical consultant, working from personal copies of early drafts, states that in an earlier version, Poole tells HAL there is "...something about this mission that we weren't told. Something the rest of the crew know and that you know. We would like to know whether this is true", to which HAL enigmatically responds: "I'm sorry, Frank, but I don't think I can answer that question without knowing everything that all of you know."^[36] In this version, HAL then falsely predicts a failure of the hardware maintaining radio contact with Earth (the source of HAL's difficult orders) during the broadcast of Frank Poole's birthday greetings from his parents.

While the film drops this overt explanation, it is hinted at when HAL asks David Bowman if the latter feels bothered or disturbed by the "mysteries" and "secrecy" surrounding the mission and its preparations. After Bowman concludes HAL is dutifully drawing up the "crew psychology report", the computer then makes its false prediction of hardware failure.

In a 1969 interview with Joseph Gelmis, Stanley Kubrick simply stated that "[HAL] had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility"^[50]

Military nature of orbiting satellites

Another holdover of discarded plot ideas is with regard to the famous match-cut from prehistoric bone-weapon to orbiting satellite, followed sequentially by views of three more satellites. Kubrick initially intended to have a voice-over narrator explicitly stating these were armed nuclear weapon platforms while speaking of a nuclear stalemate between the superpowers.^[52] This would foreshadow the now-discarded conclusion of the film showing the Star Child detonating them.^[53] Piers Bizony, in his book 2001 Filming The Future, states that after ordering designs for orbiting nuclear weapon platforms, Kubrick became anxious to avoid too many associations with Dr. Strangelove and decided not to make it so obvious that they were "war machines".^[54] Alexander Walker, in a book he wrote with Kubrick's assistance and authorization, describes the bone as "transformed into a spacecraft of the year A.D. 2001 as it orbits in the blackness around earth", and states that Kubrick eliminated from the finished film the theme of a nuclear stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union, each with a globe-orbiting nuclear bomb. Kubrick now thought this had "no place at all in the film's thematic development", the bombs now being an "orbiting red herring". Walker further notes that some filmgoers in the 1960s would know that agreement had recently been reached in 1967 between the powers not to put nuclear weapons into space, and if the film suggested otherwise, it would "merely have raised irrelevant queries to suggest this as a reality of the twenty-first century".^[55] Clarke, in the Canadian TV documentary 2001 and Beyond, states not only is the military purpose of the satellites "not spelled out in the film, there is no need for it to be", repeating later in the documentary "Stanley didn't want to have anything to do with bombs after Dr. Strangelove".^[56] Kubrick in a 1968 New York Times interview, merely refers to the satellites as "spacecraft", as does the interviewer, but observes that the match-cut from bone to spacecraft shows they evolved from "bone-as-weapon", stating "It's simply an observable fact that all of man's technology grew out of his discovery of the weapon-tool".^[57]

Nothing in the film calls attention to the purpose of the satellites. James John Griffith, in a footnote in his book Adaptations As Imitations: Films from Novels, writes "I would wonder, for instance, how several critics, commenting on the match-cut that links humanity's prehistory and future, can identify — without reference to Clarke's novel — the satellite as a nuclear weapon".^[58] Arthur C. Clarke, in the TV documentary "2001: The Making Of A Myth", describes the bone-to-satellite sequence in the film, saying "The bone goes up and turns into what is supposed to be an orbiting space bomb, a weapon in space. Well, that isn't made clear, we just assume it's some kind of space vehicle in a three-million-year jump cut".^[59][60] Former NASA research assistant Steven Pietrobon^[61] writes "The orbital craft seen as we make the leap from the Dawn of Man to contemporary times are supposed to be weapons platforms carrying nuclear devices, though the movie does not make this clear."^[62] The vast majority of film critics, including noted Kubrick authority Michel Ciment,^[63] initially interpreted the satellites as generic spacecraft (possibly moonbound).^[64]

The perception that the satellites are nuclear weapons persists in the minds of some viewers (and some space scientists), however, due to their appearance and statements by production staff who still refer to them as weapons. Walker, in his book Stanley Kubrick, Director, notes that although the bombs no longer fit in with Kubrick's revised thematic concerns (thus becoming "red herrings"), "nevertheless from the national markings still visible on the first and second space vehicles we see, we can surmise that they are the Russian and American bombs." ^[65] (Similarly, Walker in a later essay^[66] states that two of the spacecraft seen circling Earth are meant to be nuclear weapons, after asserting that early scenes of the film "imply" nuclear stalemate.) Pietrobon, who was a consultant on 2001 to website Starship Modeler regarding the film's props, observes small details on the satellites such as air force insignias and "cannons".^[67] In the film, a U.S. air force insignia, and flag insignias of China and Germany (including what appears to be a Maltese cross) can be seen on three of the satellites,^[68] which correspond to three of the bombs' stated countries of origin in a widely circulated early draft of the script.^[69]

Production staff who continue to refer to "bombs" (in addition to Clarke) include production designer Harry Lange (previously a space industry illustrator), who has since the film's release shown his original production sketches for all of the spacecraft to Simon Atkinson, who refers to seeing "the orbiting bombs".^[70] Fred Ordway, the film's science consultant, sent a memo to Kubrick after the film's release listing suggested changes to the film, mostly complaining about missing narration and shortened scenes. One entry reads: "Without warning, we cut to the orbiting bombs. And to a short, introductory narration, missing in the present version".^[36] Multiple production staff aided in the writing of Jerome Agel's 1970 book on the making of the film, in which captions describe the objects as "orbiting satellites carrying nuclear weapons"^[71] Actor Gary Lockwood (astronaut Frank Poole) in the audio DVD commentary ^[72] says the first satellite is an armed weapon, thus making the famous match-cut from bone to satellite a "weapon-to-weapon cut". Several recent reviews of the film mostly of the DVD release refer to armed satellites,^[73] possibly influenced by Gary Lockwood's audio commentary.

A few published works by scientists on the subject of space exploration or space weapons tangentially discuss 2001: A Space Odyssey and assume at least some of the orbiting satellites are space weapons.^[74][75] Indeed, details worked out with input from space industry experts, such as the structure on the first satellite that Pietrobon refers to as a "conning tower", match the original concept sketch drawn for the nuclear bomb platform.^[62][76] Modelers label them in diverse ways. On the one hand, the 2001 exhibit (given in that year) at the Tech Museum in San Jose and now online (for a subscription) referred merely to "satellites",^[77] while a special modeling exhibition at the exhibition hall at Porte de Versailles in Paris also held in 2001 (called "2001 l’odyssée des maquettes (2001: A Modelers Odyssey)") overtly described their reconstructions of the first satellite as the "US Orbiting Weapons Platform".^[78] Some, but not all, space model manufacturers or amateur model builders refer to these entities as bombs.^[79]

How one views the satellites may effect one's reading of the film. Noted Kubrick authority Michel Ciment, in discussing Kubrick's attitude toward human aggression and instinct, observes "The bone cast into the air by the ape (now become a man) is transformed at the other extreme of civilization, by one of those abrupt ellipses characteristic of the director, into a spacecraft on its way to the moon."^[80] In contrast to Ciment's reading of a cut to a serene "other extreme of civilization", science fiction novelist Robert Sawyer, speaking in the Canadian documentary "2001 and Beyond", sees it as a cut from a bone to a nuclear weapons platform, explaining that "what we see is not how far we've leaped ahead, what we see is that today, '2001', and four million years ago on the African veldt, it's exactly the same—the power of mankind is the power of its weapons. It's a continuation, not a discontinuity in that jump."^[81]

Kubrick, notoriously reluctant to provide any explanation of his work, never publicly stated the intended functions of the orbiting satellites, preferring instead to let the viewer surmise what their purpose might be.

Filming

Principal photography began December 29, 1965, in Stage H at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England. The studio was chosen because it could house the 60'x 120'x 60' pit for the Tycho crater excavation scene, the first to be shot.^[82][83] The production moved in January 1966 to the smaller MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, where the live action and special effects filming was done, starting with the scenes involving Floyd on the Orion spaceplane;^[84] it was described as a "huge throbbing nerve center... with much the same frenetic atmosphere as a Cape Kennedy blockhouse during the final stages of Countdown."^[85] The only scene not filmed in a studio—and the last live-action scene shot for the film—was the skull-smashing sequence, in which Moonwatcher (Richter) wields his new-found bone "weapon-tool" against a pile of nearby animal bones. A small elevated platform was built in a field near the studio so that the camera could shoot upward with the sky as background, avoiding cars and trucks passing by in the distance.^[18][86]

Filming of actors was completed in September 1967,^[87] and from June 1966 until March 1968 Kubrick spent most of his time working on the 205 special effects shots in the film.^[88] The director ordered the special effects technicians on 2001 to use the painstaking process of creating all visual effects seen in the film "in camera", avoiding degraded picture quality from the use of blue screen and traveling matte techniques. Although this technique, known as "held takes", resulted in a much better image, it meant exposed film would be stored for long periods of time between shots, sometimes as long as a year.^[89] In March 1968, Kubrick finished the 'pre-premiere' editing of the film, making his final cuts just days before the film's general release in April 1968.^[90]

The film was initially planned to be photographed in 3-film-strip Cinerama (like How the West Was Won), because it was a part of a production/distribution deal between MGM and Cinerama Releasing corporation, but that was changed to Super Panavision 70 (which uses a single-strip 65 mm negative) on the advice of special photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, due to distortion problems with the 3-strip system.^[91] Color processing and 35 mm release prints were done using Technicolor's dye transfer process. The 70 mm prints were made by MGM Laboratories, Inc. on Metrocolor. The production was $4.5 million over the initial $6.0 million budget, and sixteen months behind schedule.^[83]

Special effects

The first director to use front projection with retroreflective matting in a mainstream movie, Kubrick chose the technique to produce the backdrops for the African scenes showing ape-men against vast natural-terrain backgrounds, as traditional techniques such as painted backdrops or rear-projection did not produce the realistic look Kubrick demanded. In addition to the "Dawn of Man" sequence, the front-projection system was used to depict astronauts walking on the lunar surface with the moonbase in the background.^[92] The technique has been used widely in the film industry since 2001 pioneered its use, although starting in the 1990s it has been increasingly replaced by green screen systems.

The front projection technique used by Kubrick consisted of a separate scenery projector set precisely at a right angle to the camera, and a half-silvered mirror placed at an angle in front of the camera that reflected the projected image forward, directly in line with the camera lens, onto a backdrop made of specially designed retroreflective material. The highly reflective, but extremely directional, screen material reflects back to the camera 100 times as much light as it receives, but only if it, and the projected image, are in perfect alignment with the axis of the camera lens. The image was then reflected back into the camera, along with the light from the objects and actors in the foreground, but because it is 100 times dimmer than the reflected image, the projected image falling on the actors is washed out by set lighting and is invisible to the camera.^[93]

Front projection had been used in smaller settings before 2001, mostly for still-photography or television production, using small still images and projectors. The expansive backdrops for the African scenes required a screen 40 feet tall and 110 feet wide, far larger than had ever been used before. When the reflective material was applied to the backdrop in 100 foot strips, however, they discovered variations at the seams of the strips led to obvious visual artifacts, a problem that was solved by tearing the material into smaller chunks and applying them in a random "camouflage" pattern on the backdrop. The existing projectors using 4 by 5 inch transparencies resulted in grainy images when projected that large, so the 2001 team worked with MGM's Special Effects Supervisor, Tom Howard, to build a custom projector using 8 by 10 inch transparencies, which required the largest water-cooled arc lamp available.^[93]

Other "in-camera" shots were scenes depicting spacecraft moving through space. The camera used to shoot the stationary model of the Discovery One spacecraft was driven along a track on a special mount, the motor of which was mechanically linked to the camera motor—making it possible to repeat camera moves and match speeds exactly. On the first pass, the model was unlit, masking the star-field behind it. The camera and film were returned to the start position, and on the second pass, the model was lit without the star field. For shots also showing the interior of the ship, a third pass was made with previously-filmed live-action scenes projected onto rear-projection screens in the model's windows. The result was a film negative image that was exceptionally sharper and clearer than a typical visual effects negative of the time.

For interior shots inside the spacecraft, ostensibly containing a giant centrifuge that produces artificial gravity, Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating "ferris wheel" built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering Group at a cost of $750,000. The set was 38 feet in diameter and 10 feet wide.^[94] Various scenes in the Discovery centrifuge were shot by securing set pieces within the wheel, then rotating it while the actor walked or ran in sync with its motion, keeping him at the bottom of the wheel as it turned. The camera could be fixed to the inside of the rotating wheel to show the actor walking completely "around" the set, or mounted in such a way that the wheel rotated independently of the stationary camera, as in the famous jogging scene where the camera appears to alternately precede and follow the running actor. The shots where the actors appear on opposite sides of the wheel required one of the actors to be strapped securely into place at the "top" of the wheel as it moved to allow the other actor to walk to the "bottom" of the wheel to join him. The most notable case is when Bowman enters the centrifuge from the central hub on a ladder, and joins Poole, who is eating on the other side of the centrifuge. This required Gary Lockwood to be strapped into a seat while Keir Dullea walked toward him from the opposite side of the wheel as it turned with him.

Another rotating set appeared in an earlier sequence on board the Aries trans-lunar shuttle. A stewardess is shown preparing in-flight meals, then carrying them into a circular walkway. Attached to the set as it rotates 180 degrees, the camera's point of view remains constant, and she appears to walk up the 'side' of the circular walkway, and steps, now in an "upside-down" orientation, into a connecting hallway.

The realistic looking effects of the astronauts floating weightless in space, and inside the spacecraft, were accomplished by suspending the actors from wires attached to the top of the set, with the camera underneath them pointing up. The actors' bodies blocked the camera's view of the suspension wires, creating a very believable appearance of floating. For the shot of Poole floating into the pod's arms during Bowman's rescue attempt, a stuntman replaced a dummy on the wire to realistically portray the movements of an unconscious human, and was shot in slow motion to enhance the illusion of drifting through space.^[95] The scene showing Bowman entering the emergency airlock from the EVA pod was done in a similar way, with an off-camera stagehand, standing on a platform, holding the wire suspending Dullea above the camera positioned at the bottom of the vertically configured airlock. At the proper moment, the stagehand first loosened his grip on the wire, causing Dullea to fall toward the camera, then, while holding the wire firmly, he jumped off the platform, causing Dullea to ascend back up toward the hatch.^[72]

The colored lights in the Star Gate sequence were accomplished by slit-scan photography of thousands of high-contrast images on film, including op-art paintings, architectural drawings, moire patterns, printed circuits, and crystal structures. Known to staff as "Manhattan Project", the shots of various nebula-like phenomena, including the expanding star field, were colored paints and chemicals swirling in a pool-like device known as a cloud tank, shot in slow-motion in a dark room.^[96]

Detailed instructions in relatively small print for various technological devices appear at several points in the film, the most notable of which is the lengthy instructions for the zero-gravity toilet on the Aries moon shuttle. Similar detailed instructions for explosive bolts also appear on the hatches of the EVA pods.

An article by Douglas Trumbull about the creation of special effects for 2001 appears in the June 1968 issue of American Cinematographer.^[97]

Deleted scenes

Kubrick filmed several scenes that were deleted from the final film. These fall into two categories: scenes cut before any public screenings of the film, and scenes cut a few days after the world premiere on April 2, 1968.^[98]

The first 'pre-premiere' set of cuts includes a schoolroom on the moon base—a painting class that included Kubrick's daughters, additional scenes of life on the base, and Floyd buying a bush baby from a department store via videophone for his daughter. The most notable cut was a 10-minute black-and-white opening sequence featuring interviews with actual scientists, including Freeman Dyson,^[99] discussing extraterrestrial life, which Kubrick removed after an early screening for MGM executives.^[100] The actual text survives in the book The Making of Kubrick's 2001 by Jerome Agel.^[101]

The second 'post-premiere' set of cuts includes details about the daily life on Discovery, additional space walks, astronaut Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor, a number of cuts from the Poole murder sequence including the entire space walk preparation and shots of HAL turning off radio contact with Poole—explaining HAL's response that the radio is "still dead" when Bowman asks him if radio contact has been made—and notably a close-up shot of Bowman picking up a slipper during his walk in the alien room; the slipper can still be seen behind him in what would have been the next shot in the sequence.^[102]

Kubrick's rationale for editing the film was to tighten the narrative; reviews suggested the film suffered too much by the radical departure from traditional cinema story telling conventions. Regarding the cuts, Kubrick stated, "I didn't believe that the trims made a critical difference. [...] The people who like it, like it no matter what its length, and the same holds true for the people who hate it".^[103]

As was typical of most movies of that era released both as a "road-show" (in Cinerama format in the case of Space Odyssey) and subsequently put into general release (in 70 mm in the case of Odyssey), the entrance music, intermission music (and intermission altogether), and post-credits exit music were cut from most (though not all) prints of the latter version, although these have been restored to most DVD releases.^[104][105]

According to Kubrick biographer Jan Harlan, the director was adamant the trims were never to be seen, and that he "even burned the negatives"—which he had kept in his garage—shortly before his death. This is confirmed by former Kubrick assistant Leon Vitali: "I'll tell you right now, okay, on Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, some little parts of 2001, we had thousands of cans of negative outtakes and print, which we had stored in an area at his house where we worked out of, which he personally supervised the loading of it to a truck and then I went down to a big industrial waste lot and burned it. That's what he wanted."^[106]

In December, 2010, Douglas Trumbull announced that Warner Brothers had located 17 minutes of lost footage, "perfectly preserved", in a Kansas salt mine vault. A Warner Brothers press release asserts definitively that this material is from the post-premiere cuts, which Kubrick has stated totaled 19 minutes.^[107][108]

No immediate plans have been announced for the footage, but Trumbull intends to use stills from them in a book he is publishing^[109]

Reuse of special effects shots

Although special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull had been unable to provide convincing footage of Saturn for 2001 (thus causing the filmmakers to change the mission's destination to Jupiter), he had solved the technical problems involved in reproducing Saturn's rings by the time he directed Silent Running four years later in 1972, employing effects developed but not completed for 2001.^[110]

In spite of Kubrick's tendency to destroy scenes he shot but did not use in the film, unused footage from the final Stargate sequence appears in the Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour during the sequence accompanied by their instrumental song Flying.^[111]

Release

The film's world premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.. It opened two days later at the Warner Cinerama Theatre in Hollywood, and Loew's Capitol in New York. Kubrick then deleted 19 minutes of footage from the film before its general release in five other U.S. cities on April 10, 1968, and internationally in five cities the following day,^[112][113] where it was shown in 70mm format, with a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack, and projected in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio. The general release of the film in its 35mm anamorphic format took place in autumn 1968, with either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural soundtrack.^[114]

The original 70 mm release, like many Super Panavision 70 films of the era such as Grand Prix, was advertised as being in "Cinerama" in cinemas equipped with special projection optics and a deeply curved screen. In standard cinemas, the film was identified as a 70 mm production. The original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70 mm Cinerama with six-track sound played continually for more than a year in several venues, and for 103 weeks in Los Angeles.^[115]

MGM/CBS Home Video first released 2001 on VHS and Beta home video in 1980.^[116] MGM also published letterbox laserdisc editions (including an updated edition with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound), in 1991 and 1993. (Although Turner Entertainment had acquired the bulk of MGM's film library, the MGM company had a distribution deal with Turner.) There also was a special edition laserdisc from The Criterion Collection in the CAV format. In 1997, it was re-released in VHS, and as part of the "Stanley Kubrick Collection" in both VHS format (1999) and DVD (2000) with remastered sound and picture.

It has been released on Region 1 DVD four times: once by MGM Home Entertainment in 1998 and thrice by Warner Home Video in 1999, 2001, and 2007. The MGM release had a booklet, the film, trailer, and an interview with Arthur C. Clarke, and the soundtrack was remastered in 5.1 surround sound. The 1999 Warner Bros. release omitted the booklet, yet had a re-release trailer. The 2001 release contained the re-release trailer, the film in the original 2.21:1 aspect ratio, digitally re-mastered from the original 70 mm print, and the soundtrack remixed in 5.1 surround sound. A limited edition DVD included a booklet, 70 mm frame, and a new soundtrack CD of the film's actual (unreleased) music tracks, and a sampling of HAL's dialogue.

Warner Home Video released a 2-DVD Special Edition on October 23, 2007 as part of their latest set of Kubrick reissues. The DVD was released on its own and as part of a revised Stanley Kubrick box set which contains new Special Edition versions of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, and the documentary A Life in Pictures. Additionally, the film was released in high definition on both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The Imdb.com listing of this DVD and the official Warner Brothers webpage^[117] have a complete listing of all the special features but both omit a documentary entitled "What is Out There?" featuring interviews with Keir Dullea and Arthur C. Clarke.

The film saw a broad theatrical rerelease to movie houses in the year 2001 in the countries of Germany, France, and Japan, but not in the United States.^[118]

In some video releases, three title cards were added to the three "blank screen" moments; "OVERTURE" at the beginning, "ENTR'ACTE" during the intermission, and "EXIT MUSIC" after the closing credits.^[119][120]

Reaction

Upon release, 2001 polarized critical opinion, receiving both ecstatic praise and vehement derision. Some critics viewed the original 161-minute cut shown at premieres in Washington D.C., New York, and Los Angeles,^[121] while others saw the 19-minute-shorter general release version that was in theaters from April 10, 1968 onwards.^[122] In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor...The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing."^[123] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times opined that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future...it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film."^[124] Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth."^[125] Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D.W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man...Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch."^[126] The Boston Globe's review indicated that it was "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere...The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life."^[127] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale."^[128] He later put it on his Top 10 list for Sight & Sound.^[129] Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews of the film in various issues in 1968, each one slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review dated December 27, 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."^[130]

However, Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie,"^[131] and Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called it "a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull."^[132] Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring."^[133] Variety's 'Robe' believed the film was a "Big, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic...A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark."^[134] Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life...2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points."^[135] (Sarris reversed his opinion upon a second viewing of the film, and declared "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist."^[136]) John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines...and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans...2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story."^[137] It has been noted that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon its initial release.^[138]

2001 earned Stanley Kubrick an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Kubrick), and Original Screenplay (Kubrick, Clarke). Although it was not even nominated for Best Picture, 2001 is considered by many sources to be among the greatest films of all time.^[139]

Influence

The influence of 2001 on subsequent filmmakers is considerable. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and others, including many special effects technicians, discuss the impact the film has had on them in a featurette entitled Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001 included in the 2007 DVD release of the film. Spielberg calls it his film generation's "big bang", while Lucas says it was "hugely inspirational", labeling Kubrick as "the filmmaker's filmmaker". Sydney Pollack refers to it as "groundbreaking", and William Friedkin states 2001 is "the grandfather of all such films". At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott stated he believed 2001 was the unbeatable film that in a sense killed the sci-fi genre.^[141] Similarly, film critic Michel Ciment in his essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" stated "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete."^[142] Others, however, credit 2001 with opening up a market for films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, and Contact; proving that big-budget “serious” science-fiction films can be commercially successful, and establishing the “sci-fi blockbuster” as a Hollywood staple.^[143] Science magazine Discover's blogger Stephen Cass, discussing the huge impact of the film on subsequent science-fiction, writes that "the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000, and the ultimate alien artifact, the Monolith, have all become enduring cultural icons in their own right."^[144]

Awards and honors

Academy Awards

No Oscar for Best makeup award existed until 1981. Nonetheless, it is considered ironic by both Arthur C. Clarke^[111] and others^[146] that in the same year that 2001 was released, a special honorary Oscar for ape makeup was given to Planet of the Apes, but the more realistic ape-makeup in 2001 was ignored. Clarke believes the committee may have not realized the apes were actors (actually professional street-mimes.)

Other awards

Won

• BAFTA Awards:
  1. Best Art Direction (Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer)
  2. Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth)
  3. Best Road Show
  4. Best Sound Track (Winston Ryder)
• Cinema Writers Circle, Spain:
  1. Best Foreign Film
• David di Donatello Awards, Italy:
  1. Best Foreign Production (Stanley Kubrick)
• Hugo Awards:
  1. Best Dramatic Presentation
• Kansas City Film Critics:
  1. Best Director (Stanley Kubrick)
  2. Best Picture
• Laurel Awards:
  1. Best Road Show

Nominated

• BAFTA Awards:
  1. Best Film (Stanley Kubrick)
  2. UN Award (Stanley Kubrick)
• Directors Guild of America (DGA):
  1. Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Stanley Kubrick)

Top film lists

2001 was number 22 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, was named number 40 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, included on its 100 Years, 100 Quotes ("Open the pod bay doors, Hal."), HAL 9000 is the #13 villain in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, is the only science fiction film to make the Sight & Sound poll for ten best movies, and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of "greatest science fiction films of all time."^[147] In 1991, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry. Other lists that include the film are 50 Films to See Before You Die (#6), The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th Century (#11), the Sight & Sound Top Ten poll (#6),^[148] and Roger Ebert's Top Ten (1968) (#2). In 1995, the Vatican named it as one of the 45 best films ever made (and included it in a sub-list of the "Top Ten Art Movies" of all time.)^[149]

American Film Institute recognition:

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (1998) – #22
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills (2001) – #40
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains (2003):
  • HAL 9000 – #13 Villain
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes (2005):
  • "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." – #78
  • "Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid." – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers (2006) – #47
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007) – #15
• AFI's 10 Top 10 (2007) – #1 Sci-Fi film

The film made number 8 on Clarke's own List of the best Science-Fiction films of all time, following The Day the Earth Stood Still at #7.

Interpretation

Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analyzed and interpreted by professional movie critics, amateur writers and science fiction fans. Kubrick encouraged people to explore their own interpretations of the film, and refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened" in the movie, preferring instead to let audiences embrace their own ideas and theories. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick stated:

You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point.^[31]

In a subsequent discussion of the film with Joseph Gelmis, Kubrick said his main aim was to avoid "intellectual verbalization" and reach "the viewer's subconscious". However, he said he did not deliberately strive for ambiguity- it was simply an inevitable outcome of making the film nonverbal, though he acknowledged this ambiguity was an invaluable asset to the film. He was willing then to give a fairly straightforward explanation of the plot on what he called the "simplest level", but unwilling to discuss the metaphysical interpretation of the film which he felt should be left up to the individual viewer.^[150]

Questions about 2001 range from uncertainty about its deeper philosophical implications about humanity's origins and final destiny in the universe,^[151] to interpreting elements of the film's more enigmatic scenes such as the meaning of the monolith, or the final fate of astronaut David Bowman. There are also simpler and more mundane questions about what drives the plot, such as the causes of HAL's breakdown^[152] (explained in earlier drafts but kept mysterious in the film).

Rolling Stone reviewer Bob McClay sees the film as like a four-movement symphony, its story told with "deliberate realism".^[153] Carolyn Geduld believes that what "structurally unites all four episodes of the film" is the monolith, the film's largest and most unresolvable enigma.^[154] Vincent LoBrutto's biography of Kubrick notes that for many, Clarke's novel is the key to understanding the monolith.^[155] Similarly, Geduld observes that "the monolith ...has a very simple explanation in Clarke's novel", though she later asserts that even the novel doesn't fully explain the ending.

The monolith appears four times in 2001: on the African Savannah, on the moon, in space orbiting Jupiter, and near Bowman's bed before his transformation. After the first encounter with the monolith, we see the leader of the apes have a quick flashback to the monolith after which he picks up a bone and uses it to smash other bones. Its usage as a weapon enables his tribe to defeat the other tribe of apes occupying the water hole who do not use bones as tools. After this victory, the ape-leader throws his bone into the air, after which the scene shifts to an orbiting satellite four million years later, implying that the discovery of the bone as tool inaugurated human evolution.^[156]

The first and second encounters of humanity with the monolith have visual elements in common; both apes, and later astronauts, touch the monolith gingerly with their hands, and both sequences conclude with near-identical images of the sun appearing directly over the monolith (the first with a crescent moon adjacent to it in the sky, the second with a near-identical crescent Earth in the same position), both echoing the sun-earth-moon alignment seen at the very beginning of the film.^[157] The second encounter also suggests the triggering of the monolith's radio signal to Jupiter by the presence of humans,^[158] echoing the premise of Clarke's source story The Sentinel.

McClay's Rolling Stone review notes a parallelism between the monolith's first appearance in which tool usage is imparted to the apes (thus 'beginning' mankind) and the completion of "another evolution" in the fourth and final encounter^[159] with the monolith. In a similar vein, Tim Dirks ends his synopsis saying "The cyclical evolution from ape to man to spaceman to angel-starchild-superman is complete".^[156]

The monolith is the subject of the film's final line of dialogue (spoken at the end of the "Jupiter Mission" segment): "Its origin and purpose still a total mystery". Reviewers McClay and Roger Ebert have noted that the monolith is the main element of mystery in the film, Ebert writing of "The shock of the monolith's straight edges and square corners among the weathered rocks", and describing the apes warily circling it as prefiguring man reaching "for the stars".^[160] Patrick Webster suggests the final line relates to how the film should be approached as a whole, noting "The line appends not merely to the discovery of the monolith on the moon, but to our understanding of the film in the light of the ultimate questions it raises about the mystery of the universe."^[161]

Scientific accuracy

2001 is "perhaps the most thoroughly and accurately researched film in screen history with respect to aerospace engineering".^[163] There were several technical advisers hired for 2001, some of whom were recommended by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke, who also had a background in aerospace. Advisors included Marshall Spaceflight Center engineer Frederick I. Ordway III, who worked on the film for two years,^{[163][164][165][166]} and I. J. Good, whom Kubrick consulted with on Supercomputers due to Good's authorship of treatises such as "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" and "Logic of Man and Machine".^[167]

2001 accurately presents outer space as transmitting no sound, in sharp contrast to other films with space scenes in which explosions or sounds of passing spacecraft are heard. 2001's portrayal of microgravitation in spaceships and outer space is notable for its realism. Tracking shots inside the rotating wheel providing artificial gravity contrast with the "weightlessness" outside the wheel during the repair and Hal disconnection scenes. (Scenes of the astronauts in the Discovery pod bay, along with earlier scenes involving shuttle flight attendants, depict walking in zero-gravity with the help of velcro-equipped shoes labeled "Grip Shoes".) Notable also is the depiction of the time delay in conversations between the astronauts and Earth due to the extreme distance between the two (which the BBC announcer explains have been edited out of the broadcast), as is attention to small details such as the sound of breathing inside the spacesuits, the conflicting spatial orientation of astronauts inside a zero-gravity spaceship, and the enormous size of Jupiter in relationship to the spaceship.

The general approach to how space travel is engineered is highly accurate; in particular, the design of the ships was based on actual engineering considerations rather than attempts to look aesthetically "futuristic".^[168] Many other science-fiction films give spacecraft an aerodynamic shape, which is superfluous in outer space (except for craft, such as the Pan Am shuttle, that are designed to function both in atmosphere and in space). Kubrick's science advisor, Frederick Ordway, notes that in designing the spacecraft "We insisted on knowing the purpose and functioning of each assembly and component, down to the logical labeling of individual buttons and the presentation on screens of plausible operating, diagnostic and other data."^[165] Onboard equipment and panels on various spacecraft have specific purposes such as alarm, communications, condition display, docking, diagnostic, and navigation, the designs of which relied heavily on NASA's input. Aerospace specialists were also consulted on the design of the spacesuits and space helmets. The space dock at moonbase Clavius shows multiple underground layers which could sustain high levels of air pressure typical of Earth. The mooncraft design takes into account the lower gravity and lighting conditions on the moon. The Jupiter-bound Discovery is meant to be powered by a nuclear reactor at its rear, separated from the crew area at the front by hundreds of feet of fuel storage compartments. Although difficult to be recognized as such, actual nuclear reactor control panel displays appear in the astronaut's control area.

The suspended animation of three of the astronauts on board is accurately portrayed as worked out by consulting medical authorities.^[36] Such hibernation would likely be necessary to conserve resources on a flight of this kind as Clarke's novelization implies.^[169]

A great deal of effort was made to get the look of the lunar landscape right, based on detailed lunar photographs taken from observatory telescopes. The depiction of early apes was based on the writings of anthropologists such as Louis Leakey.^[36]

The film is scientifically inaccurate in minor but revealing details; some due to the technical difficulty involved in producing a realistic effect, and others simply being examples of artistic license. It is arguable that the inaccuracies stand out precisely because the film is so accurate overall.

The appearance of outer space is problematic, both in terms of lighting and the alignment of astronomical bodies. In the vacuum of outer space, stars do not twinkle,^[170] and light does not become diffuse and scattered as it does in air.^[171] The side of the Discovery spacecraft unlit by the sun, for example, would appear virtually pitch-black in space. The stars would not appear to move in relation to Discovery as it traveled towards Jupiter, unless it was changing direction. Proportionally, the Sun, Moon, and Earth would not visually line up at the size ratios shown in the opening shot, nor would the Galilean moons of Jupiter ever align as in the shot just before Bowman enters the Star Gate. Kubrick himself was aware of this latter point.^[172] (Due to the perfect Laplace resonance of the orbits of the four large moons of Jupiter, the first three will never align, and the third moon, Ganymede, will always be exactly 90 degrees away from the other two whenever the two inmost moons are in perfect alignment.^[173]) Finally, the edge of Earth appears sharp in the movie, when in reality it is slightly diffuse due to the scattering of the sunlight by the atmosphere, as is seen in many photos of Earth taken from space since the film's release.^[174]

The sequence in which Dave Bowman re-enters Discovery shows him holding his breath just before ejecting from the pod into the emergency airlock. Doing this before exposure to a vacuum—instead of exhaling—would, in reality, rupture the lungs. In an interview on the 2007 DVD release of the film, Arthur C. Clarke states that had he been on the set the day they filmed this, he would have caught this error.^[175] Also, the blown pod hatch simply vanishes while concealed behind a puff of smoke.^[176]

While the film's portrayal of reduced or zero-gravity is realistic, problems remain. While Floyd sips a meal in zero gravity from liquipaks, liquid slips back down the straw when he stops sucking (this is problematic only if no method was employed in the future to make the liquid behave that way). When spacecraft land on the Moon, dust is shown billowing as it would in air, not moving in a sheet as it would in the vacuum of the Lunar surface, as can be seen in Apollo moon landing footage.^[176][177] While on the moon, all actors move as if in normal Earth gravity, not as they would in the 1/6 gravity of the moon. Similarly, the behavior of Dave and Frank in the weightless pod bay is not fully consistent with a zero-G environment. Although the astronauts are wearing zero-G 'grip shoes' in order to walk normally, they are oddly leaning on the table while testing the AE-35 unit as if held down by gravity. Finally, in an environment with a radius as small as the main quarters, the simulated gravity would vary significantly from the center of the crew quarters to the 'floor', even varying between feet, waist, and head. The rotation speed of the crew quarters was meant to be only fast enough to generate an approximation of moon gravity, not that of the Earth. However, Clarke felt this was enough to prevent the physical atrophy that would result from complete weightlessness.^[178]

The first two appearances of the monolith, one on Earth and one on the Moon, conclude with the sun rising over the top of the monolith at the zenith of the sky. While this could happen in an African veldt anywhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, it could not happen anywhere near the crater Tycho (where the monolith is found) as it is 45 degrees south of the lunar equator.^[179] It is also odd that the sun reaches the zenith so soon after a lunar sunrise, and the appearance of a crescent Earth near the sun is in complete discontinuity with all previous appearances of Earth, whose position from any spot on the Moon never varies.

The movement of Dr. Floyd's floating pen while en route to the station is in a circular arc (the result of it actually being attached to a rotating clear-plastic disc), but it is unclear why it isn't rotating around its own center of gravity (rather than a point external to it) or moving in a straight line unless the space shuttle is rotating.^{[citation needed]}

Geophysicist Dr. David Stephenson in the Canadian TV documentary 2001 and Beyond notes that "Every engineer that saw it [the space station] had a fit. You do not spin on a wheel that is not fully built. You have to finish it before you spin it or else you have real problems".^[180]

Except for the first approach scenes, the space station is seen rotating counter-clockwise when viewed from the approaching Pan Am shuttle; therefore, someone inside the space station when facing the approaching shuttle, should see the background of stars rotating in a counter-clockwise direction. However, in the film, the stars are rotating clockwise as we peer outside the space station's docking port.^[181] Furthermore, when the ship synchronizes its rotating motion with the space station so that the station now appears stationary, the stars behind the station rotate, but the shadows from sunlight no longer shift over the surface of the space station.

There are other problems that might be more appropriately described as continuity errors, such as the change of which side of Earth is lit when viewed from Clavius, and the schematic of the space station on the Pan Am space plane's monitors continuing to rotate after the plane has synchronized its motion with the station. The latter is due to the position readout being a rear-projected film shown in a continuous loop.^[168] The direction of the rotation of the Earth's image outside the space station window is clockwise when Floyd is greeted by a receptionist, but counterclockwise when he phones his daughter.

Imagining the future

Over fifty organizations contributed technical advice to the production, and a number of them submitted their ideas to Kubrick of what kind of products might be seen in a movie set in the year 2001.^[182] Much was made by MGM's publicity department of the film's realism, claiming in a 1968 brochure that "Everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey can happen within the next three decades, and...most of the picture will happen by the beginning of the next millennium."^[183] Although the predictions central to the plot —colonization of the Moon, manned interplanetary travel and artificial intelligence—did not materialize by that date (and still have not), some of the film's other futuristic elements have indeed been realized.

Technology

One futuristic device shown in the film already under development when the film was released in 1968 was voice-print identification; the first prototype was released in 1976.^[184] A credible prototype of a chess-playing computer already existed in 1968, even though it could be defeated by experts; computers did not defeat champions until the late 1980s.^[185] While 10-digit phone numbers for long-distance national dialing originated in 1951, longer phone numbers for international dialing became a reality in 1970.^[186] Installation of personal in-flight entertainment displays by major airlines began in the early-to-mid 1990s, offering video games, TV broadcasts and movies in a manner similar to that shown in the film.^[187] The film also shows flat-screen TV monitors, of which the first real-world prototype appeared in 1972 produced by Westinghouse, but was not used for broadcast television until 1998.^[188] Plane cockpit integrated system displays, known as glass cockpits, were introduced the 1970s^[189] (originally in NASA Langley's Boeing 737 Flying Laboratory). Rudimentary voice-controlled computing began in the early 1980s with the SoftVoice Computer System and exists in more sophisticated form in the early 2000s,^[190] although it is still not as sophisticated as depicted in the film. The first picture phone was demonstrated at the 1964 New York World's Fair;^[191] however, due to the bandwidth limitations of telephone lines, personal video communication has only been practical over broadband internet connections.^[192]

Some technologies portrayed as common in the film which have not materialized in the 2000s include commonplace civilian space travel, space stations with hotels, moon colonization, suspended animation of humans, and strong artificial intelligence of the kind displayed by HAL.

Companies and countries

Many more BBC stations existed in 2001 than did in 1968 as shown in the film, although there is no BBC 12. The corporations IBM, Aeroflot, Howard Johnson's, and Hilton Hotels, all of which appear in the film, have survived beyond 2001. On the other hand, the film depicts a still-existing Pan Am and still-autonomous Bell System telephone company.^[193] The Bell System logo seen in the film was modified in 1969 and dropped entirely in 1983.^[194]

Many reviewers thought the Russian scientists met by Dr. Floyd in the space station were affiliated with the then-extant Soviet Union.^{[195][196][197]} Nonetheless, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.^[198]

Set design and furnishings

Kubrick involved himself in every aspect of production, even choosing the fabric for his actors' costumes.^[199] Notable pieces of contemporary furniture were obtained by Kubrick for use in the film. When Floyd exits the Space Station V elevator, he is greeted by an attendant seated behind a slightly modified George Nelson Action Office desk from Herman Miller's 1964 "Action Office" series.^[200] First introduced in 1968, the Action Office style "cubicle" would eventually occupy 70 percent of office space by the mid-2000s.^[201][202] Noted Danish designer Arne Jacobsen designed the cutlery used by the Discovery astronauts in the film.^{[203][204][205]}

Perhaps the most noted pieces of furniture in the film are the bright red Djinn Chairs seen prominently throughout the Space Station.^[206][207] Designed by Olivier Mourgue in 1965, the Djinn chair is one of the most recognizable chair designs of the 1960s, at least partly due to their visibility in the film.^[206] Today the chairs, particularly in red, are highly sought-after examples of modern furniture design.^[206] Near the Djinn chairs the actors in the film are seated in is one of Eero Saarinen's 1956 pedestal tables, another famous piece of "modern" design. The pedestal table would later make an appearance in another science fiction film, "Men in Black".^[206] Mourgue has been using the connection to 2001 in his advertising; a frame from the film's space station sequence and three production stills appear on the homepage of Mourgue's website.^[208] Shortly before Kubrick's death, film critic Alexander Walker informed Kubrick of Mourgue's use of the film, joking to him "You're keeping the price up".^[209] Commenting on their use in the film, Walker writes:

Everyone recalls one early sequence in the film, the space hotel,^[210] primarily because the custom-made Olivier Morgue(sic) furnishings, those foam-filled sofas, undulant and serpentine, are covered in scarlet fabric and are the first stabs of color one sees. They resemble Rorschach "blots" against the pristine purity of the rest of the lobby.^[211]

Soundtrack

Music

Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal experience,^[212] one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during any scenes with dialogue.

The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Most feature films then and now are typically accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written especially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove.^[213] However, during post-production, Kubrick chose to abandon North's music in favor of the now-familiar classical music pieces he had earlier chose as "guide pieces" for the soundtrack. North did not know of the abandonment of the score until after he saw the film's premiere screening.^[214] The world's first exposure to North's unused music was via Telarc's issue of the main theme on Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, a compilation album by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. All the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varèse Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release but before North's death. Eventually, a mono mix-down of North's original recordings, which had survived in the interim, would be released as a limited edition CD by Intrada Records.

In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick explained:

However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time? When you are editing a film, it's very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the scene...Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary tracks can become the final score.^[215]

Roger Ebert notes that Alex North's rejected score contains emotional cues to the viewer while the final music selections exist outside the action, while uplifting it. With regard to the space docking sequence, Ebert notes the peculiar combination of slowness and majesty that it has as a result of the choice of Strauss's Blue Danube waltz, bringing "seriousness and transcendence" to the visuals. Speaking of the music generally, Ebert writes

When classical music is associated with popular entertainment, the result is usually to trivialize it (who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger?). Kubrick's film is almost unique in enhancing the music by its association with his images.^[12]

2001 is particularly remembered for using pieces of Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube), during the extended space-station docking and lunar landing sequences, and the use of the opening from the Richard Strauss tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (Usually translated as "Thus Spake Zarathustra" or occasionally "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"^[216] - the soundtrack album gives the former, the movie's credits give the latter). Composers Richard and Johann Strauss are not related.

In addition to the majestic yet fairly traditional compositions by the two Strauss's and Aram Khatchaturian, Kubrick used four highly modernistic compositions by György Ligeti which employ micropolyphony, the use of sustained dissonant chords that shift slowly over time. This technique was pioneered in Atmosphères, the only Ligeti piece heard in its entirety in the film. Ligeti admired Kubrick's film, but in addition to being irritated by Kubrick's failure to obtain permission directly from him, he was not entirely pleased that his music occurred in a film soundtrack shared by composers Johann and Richard Strauss.^[217]

The Richard and Johann Strauss pieces and György Ligeti’s Requiem (the Kyrie section) act as recurring leitmotifs in the film’s storyline. Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra is first heard in the opening title which juxtaposes the sun, earth, and moon. It is subsequently heard when an ape first learns to use a tool, and when Bowman is transformed into the Star-Child at the end of the film. Zarathustra thus acts as a bookend for the beginning and end of the film, and as a motif signifying evolutionary transformations, first from ape to man, then from man to Star-Child. This piece was originally inspired by the philosopher Nietzsche’s book of the same name which alludes briefly to the relationship of ape to man and man to Superman. The Blue Danube appears in two intricate and extended space travel sequences as well as the closing credits. The first of these is the particularly famous sequence of the PanAm space plane docking at Space Station V. Ligeti’s Requiem is heard three times, all of them during appearances of the monolith. The first is its encounter with apes just before the Zarathustra-accompanied ape discovery of the tool. The second is the monolith's discovery on the Moon, and the third is Bowman's approach to it around Jupiter just before he enters the Star Gate. This last sequence with the Requiem has much more movement in it than the first two, and it transitions directly into the music from Ligeti’s Atmosphères which is heard when Bowman actually enters the Star Gate. No music is heard during the monolith's much briefer final appearance in Dave Bowman’s celestial bedroom which immediately precedes the Zarathustra-accompanied transformation of Bowman into the Star-Child. A shorter excerpt from Atmosphères is heard during the pre-credits prelude and film intermission, which are not in all copies of the film. Gayane's Adagio from Aram Khatchaturian's Gayane ballet suite is heard during the sections that introduce Bowman and Poole aboard the Discovery conveying a somewhat lonely and mournful quality. Other music used is Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna and an electronically altered form of his Aventures, the last of which was so used without Ligeti's permission and is not listed in the film's credits.^[218]

HAL's version of the popular song "Daisy Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) was inspired by a computer-synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories Murray Hill facility when he was, coincidentally, visiting friend and colleague John Pierce. At that time, a speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell" ("Bicycle Built For Two"), with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later used it in the screenplay and novel."^[219]

Many foreign language versions of the film do not use the song "Daisy." In the French soundtrack to 2001, HAL sings the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" while being disconnected. In the German version, HAL sings the children's song "Hänschen Klein" ("Johnny Little") and in the Italian version HAL sings "Giro giro tondo."

A recording of British light music composer Sidney Torch's "Off Beats Mood" was chosen by Kubrick as the theme for the fictitious BBC news programme "The World Tonight" seen aboard the spaceship Discovery.^[220]

Since the film, Also sprach Zarathustra has been used in many other contexts. It was used by the BBC and by CTV in Canada as the introductory theme music for their television coverage of the Apollo space missions, as well as stage entrance music for multiple acts including Elvis Presley late in his career. Jazz and rock variants of the theme have also been composed, the most well known being the 1972 arrangement by Eumir Deodato (itself used in the 1979 film Being There). Both Zarathustra and The Blue Danube have been used in numerous parodies of both the film itself and science fiction/space travel stories in general. HAL's "Daisy Bell" also has been frequently used in the comedy industry to denote both humans and machines in an advanced stage of madness.

On 25 June 2010 a version of the film specially remastered by Warner Bros without the music soundtrack opened the 350th anniversary celebrations of the Royal Society at Southbank Centre in co-operation with the British Film Institute, with the score played live by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Choir.^[221]

Soundtrack album

The initial MGM soundtrack album release contained none of the material from the altered and uncredited rendition of "Aventures", used a different recording of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" than that heard in the film, and a longer excerpt of "Lux Aeterna" than that in the film. In 1996, Turner Entertainment/Rhino Records released a new soundtrack on CD which included the material from "Aventures" and restored the version of "Zarathustra" used in the film, and used the shorter version of "Lux Aeterna" from the film. As additional "bonus tracks" at the end, this CD includes the versions of "Zarathustra" and "Lux Aeterna" on the old MGM soundtrack, an unaltered performance of "Aventures", and a nine-minute compilation of all of Hal's dialogue from the film.

Citing John Culshaw's autobiography Putting the Record Straight,^[222] the Internet Movie Database explains

The end music credits do not list a conductor and orchestra for "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Stanley Kubrick wanted the Herbert von Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic version on English Decca for the film's soundtrack, but Decca executives did not want their recording "cheapened" by association with the movie, and so gave permission on the condition that the conductor and orchestra were not named. After the movie's successful release, Decca tried to rectify its blunder by re-releasing the recording with an "As Heard in 2001" flag printed on the album cover. John Culshaw recounts the incident in "Putting the Record Straight" (1981)... In the meantime, MGM released the "official soundtrack" L.P. with Karl Böhm's Berlin Philharmonic "Also Sprach Zarathustra"^[223] discretely substituting for von Karajan's version.^[224]

As aforementioned, Alex North's unused original score for the film has twice been released on compact disc.

Dialogue

Alongside its use of music, the lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues in 2001 has been noted by many reviewers.^[225] There is no dialogue at all for the entirety of both the first and last 20 minutes or so of the film; the total narrative of these sections is carried entirely by images, actions, sound effects, a great deal of music (See Music) and two title cards.

Only when the film moves into the postulated future of 2000 and 2001, does the viewer encounter characters who speak. By the time shooting began, Kubrick had deliberately jettisoned much of the intended dialogue and narration,^[226] and what remains is notable for its apparent banality (making the computer HAL seem to have more human emotion than the actual humans), while it is juxtaposed with epic scenes of space.^[227] The first scenes of dialogue are Floyd's three encounters on the space station. They are preceded by the space docking sequence choreographed to Strauss' The Blue Danube waltz and followed by a second extended sequence of his travel to the moon with more Strauss, the two sequences acting as bookends to his space-station stopover. In the stopover itself, we get idle chit-chat with the colleague who greets him followed by Floyd's slightly more affectionate phone call to his daughter, and the distantly friendly but awkwardly strained encounter with Soviet scientists. Later, en route to the monolith, Floyd engages in trite exchanges with his staff while we see a spectacular journey by Earthlight across the moon's surface. Generally, the most memorable dialogue in the film belongs to the computer Hal in its exchanges with David Bowman.^[228] Hal is the only character in the film who openly expresses anxiety (primarily around his disconnection), as well as feelings of pride and bewilderment.

The first line of dialogue is the space-station stewardess addressing Heywood Floyd saying "Here you are, sir. Main level D." The final line is Floyd's conclusion of the pre-recorded Jupiter mission briefing about the monolith. "Except for a single, very powerful radio emission, aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin — and purpose — still a total mystery."

Sequels and adaptations

Kubrick did not envisage a sequel to 2001, fearing the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet). To the dismay of MGM Studios, he ordered all sets, props, miniatures, production blueprints, and prints of unused scenes destroyed. Most of these materials were lost, with two notable exceptions: a 2001 spacesuit backpack appeared in the "Close Up" episode of the Gerry Anderson series UFO,^{[54][229][230][231][232]} and one of Hal's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of HAL's Legacy, David G. Stork.

Clarke went on to write three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). The only filmed sequel, 2010, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel and was released in 1984. Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which was directed by Peter Hyams in a straightforward style with more dialogue. Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel,^[233] and had a brief cameo appearance in the film. As Kubrick had ordered all models and blueprints from 2001 destroyed, Hyams was forced to recreate these models from scratch for 2010. Hyams also claimed that he would not make the film had he not received both Kubrick's and Clarke's blessings:

I had a long conversation with Stanley and told him what was going on. If it met with his approval, I would do the film; and if it didn't, I wouldn't. I certainly would not have thought of doing the film if I had not gotten the blessing of Kubrick. He's one of my idols; simply one of the greatest talents that's ever walked the Earth. He more or less said, "Sure. Go do it. I don't care." And another time he said, "Don't be afraid. Just go do your own movie."^[234]

The other two novels have not been adapted for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks has expressed interest in possible adaptations of 2061 and 3001.^[235]

Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published both a Jack Kirby-written and drawn comic adaptation of the film and a Kirby-created 10-issue monthly series "expanding" on the ideas of the film and novel.

Parodies and homages

2001 has been the frequent subject of both parody and homage, sometimes extensively and other times briefly, employing both its distinctive music and iconic imagery.

In print and advertising

• Thought to be the first time Kubrick gave permission for his work to be re-used, Apple Inc.'s 1999 website ad "It was a bug, Dave" was made using footage from the film. Launched during the era of concerns over Y2K bugs, the ad implied that HAL's weird behavior was caused by a Y2K bug, before driving home the point that "only Macintosh was designed to function perfectly".^[236]
• Shortly after the release of the film, Mad magazine (#125 -March 1969) included a spoof called 201 Minutes of a Space Idiocy written by Dick DeBartolo and illustrated by Mort Drucker. In the final panels it is revealed that the monolith is a movie script titled "How to Make an Incomprehensible Science Fiction Movie" by Stanley Kubrick." It was reprinted in various special issues, in the MAD About the Sixties book, and partially in the book "The Making of Kubrick's 2001".^[237]

In film and television

• Mel Brooks' satirical film History of the World, Part I opens with a parody of Kubrick's "Dawn of Man" sequence, narrated by Orson Welles. DVDVerdict describes this parody as "spot on".^[238] (Ironically, Brooks had earlier defeated 2001: A Space Odyssey in competition for the Best Screenplay Oscar.) A similar spoof of the "Dawn of Man" sequence also opened Ken Shapiro's 1974 comedy The Groove Tube in which the monolith was replaced by a television set. (The film is mostly a parody of television.) Film and Filming ^[239] held that after this wonderful opening, the film slid downhill.
• Woody Allen cast actor Douglas Rain (HAL in Kubrick's film) in an uncredited part as the voice of the controlling computer in the closing sequences of his science-fiction comedy "Sleeper".^[240]
• Kubrick was both a great fan of The Simpsons^[241] and in friendly contact with the show's producers, according to his stepdaughter Katharina. Analysts of the show argue that The Simpsons contains more references to many films of Stanley Kubrick than any other pop culture phenomenon.^[242][243] Gary Westfahl has noted that while references to "fantastic fiction" in The Simpsons are copious, "there are two masters of the genre whose impact on The Simpsons supersedes that of all others: Stanley Kubrick and Edgar Allan Poe."^[244] John Alberti has referred to "the show's almost obsessive references to the films of Stanley Kubrick."^[245] Simpson's creator Matt Groening is also the creator of the shorter-lived Futurama which also has copious references to various Kubrick films.
  Of the copious references to Kubrick in Groening's work, perhaps the most notable Space Odyssey reference in The Simpsons is the episode Deep Space Homer in which Bart throws a marker into the air; in slow motion it rotates in mid-air, before a match cut replaces it with a cylindrical satellite. In 2004 Empire magazine listed this as the third best film parody of the entire run of the show.^[246] In the Futurama episode Love and Rocket (Season 4, Episode 3) a sentient spaceship revolts in manner similar to HAL. Total Film listed this as number 17 in its list of 20 Funniest Futurama parodies, while noting that Futurama has referenced Space Odyssey on several other occasions.^[247]
• Peter Sellers starred in Hal Ashby's comedy-drama Being There about a simple-minded middle-aged gardener who has lived his entire life in the townhouse of his wealthy employer. In the scene where he first leaves the house and ventures into the wide world for the first time, the soundtrack plays a jazzy version of Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra arranged by Eumir Deodato. Film critic James A. Davidson writing for the film journal Images suggests "When Chance emerges from his home into the world, Ashby suggests his child-like nature by using Richard Strauss' Thus Sprake Zarathustra as ironic background music, linking his hero with Kubrick's star baby in his masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey."^[248]
• Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a scene (using actual footage from A Space Odyssey) in which the monolith morphs into a chocolate bar.^[249] Catholic News noted that the film "had subtle and obvious riffs on everything from the saccharine Disney "Small World" exhibit to Munchkinland to, most brilliantly, a hilarious takeoff on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey." ^[250]

• Andrew Stanton, the director of WALL-E, revealed in an interview with WIRED magazine that his film was in many ways an homage to Space Odyssey, Alien, Blade Runner, Close Encounters and several other science-fiction films.^[251] The reviewer for USA Today noted the resemblance of the spaceship's computer, Auto, to HAL.^[252] The same year saw the release of the much less successful film Eagle Eye, about which The Charlotte Observer noted that, like 2001, it featured a "red-eyed, calm-voiced supercomputer that took human life to protect what it felt were higher objectives" ^[253]
• Commenting on the broader use of Ligeti's music beyond that by Kubrick, London Magazine in 2006 noted Monty Python's use of Ligeti in a 60-second spoof of Space Odyssey in the Flying Circus episode commonly labeled "A Book at Bedtime".^[254]
• The poorly reviewed Canadian spoof 2001: A Space Travesty has been occasionally alluded to as a full parody of Kubrick's film,^[255] both because of its title and star Leslie Nielsen's many previous films which were full parodies of other films.^[256] However, Space Travesty only makes occasional references to Kubrick's material, its "celebrities are really aliens" jokes resembling those in Men in Black.^[257] Canadian reviewer Jim Slotek noted "It's not really a spoof of 2001, or anything in particular. There's a brief homage at the start, and one scene in a shuttle en route to the moon that uses The Blue Danube...The rest is a patched together plot".^[258] Among many complaints about the film, reviewer Berge Garabedian derided the lack of much substantive connection to the Kubrick film (the latter of which he said was "funnier").^[259]
• Among spoof references to several science-fiction films and shows,^[260] Airplane II features a computer called ROK 9000 in control of a moon shuttle which malfunctions and kills crew members, which several reviewers found reminiscent of HAL.^{[261][262][263]}

In video games

2001: A Space Odyssey has also been referenced in multiple video games, usually either with reference to either the monolith or HAL. In SimEarth and Spore, monoliths are used to encourage the evolution of species.^[264][265] In Metal Gear Solid the human character of Hal Emmerich was named in-world by his father for the computer HAL.^[266]

See also External links.

See also

• List of films about outer space
• List of spacecraft from the Space Odyssey series
• NASA Advanced Space Transportation Program
• Toynbee tiles, mysterious notices in U.S. cities mentioning "Kubrick's 2001"
• List of films considered the best

Notes

References

• Agel, Jerome (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. Signet. ISBN 0-451-07139-5.
• Bizony, Piers (2001). 2001 Filming the Future. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 1-85410-706-2.
• Castle, Alison (ed.), ed. (2005). "Part 2: The Creative Process / 2001: A Space Odyssey". The Stanley Kubrick Archives. New York: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-2284-1. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Chion, Michel (2001). Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey. translated by Claudia Gorbman. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-840-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)
• Ciment, Michel (1980, 1999). Kubrick. New York: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-21108-9. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
• Clarke, Arthur C. (1972). The Lost Worlds of 2001. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 0-283-97903-8.
• Fiell, Charlotte (2005). 1,000 Chairs (Taschen 25). Taschen. ISBN 978-3822841037.
• Gelmis, Joseph (1970). The Film Director As Superstar. New York: Doubleday & Company.
• Hughes, David (2000). The Complete Kubrick. London: Virgin Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-7535-0452-9.
• Kolker, Robert (ed.), ed. (2006). Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517453-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Pina, Leslie A. (2002). Herman Miller Office. Pennsylvania, USA: Schiffer Publishing. ISBN 978-0764316500.
• Richter, Daniel (2002). Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-1073-X.
• Schwam, Stephanie (ed.), ed. (2000). The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. introduction by Jay Cocks. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75528-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Walker, Alexander (2000). Stanley Kubrick, Director. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0-393-32119-3.
• Wheat, Leonard F. (2000). Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3796-X.

Further reading

• Shuldiner, Herbert (1968) How They Filmed '2001: A Space Odyssey', Bonnier Corporation: Popular Science, June 1968, pg. 62–67, Vol. 192, No. 6, ISSN 0161-7370

External links

• 2001: A Space Odyssey at IMDb
• 2001: A Space Odyssey at Rotten Tomatoes
• The HAL 9000 Simulator Animated interfaces inspired by the movie. Screensavers and wallpapers.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Internet Resource Archive
• Kubrick 2001: The Space Odyssey Explained
• The 2001: A Space Odyssey Collectibles Exhibit
• Roger Ebert's Essay on 2001
• Article about various video releases of the film
• The Alt.Movies.Kubrick FAQ many observations on the meaning of 2001
• The Kubrick Site including many works on 2001
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Houston Section, Tribute to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, April Issue 2008