I don’t think the movie made it clear why HAL went crazy, or how it was connected to the monoliths.
Also, I don’t think no 2 was really that clear. There was a monolith on prehistoric Earth, there was a monolith on the Moon, there was a monolith on Jupiter. It wasn’t clear that the second pointed to the third. Unless you’ve read the book.
what made the eyeball look weird was all the jujubes that were thrown at and stuck to the screen.
After Dave deactivates HAL, he sees a recorded message from Dr. Floyd that was supposed to be played once they reached Jupiter. It explains that a monolith was found on the moon, that it sent a radio signal to Jupiter, but has otherwise been inert.
I must have fallen asleep and missed that bit.
I remember MAD Magazine called it “201: min. of A Space Idiocy.”
I saw this in the theater when I was three years old. Held my attention the entire time and I never even got drowsy.
I haven’t read the novel, but I have read the script, and I believe a few bits were left out from the movie. There was a sequence that I believe was left out but in this context was very important.
In the prehistoric section, there is a scene where one of the ape-men gets killed by a lion. Later, after the monolith appears, the apes trap and kill the lion. This shows what has fundamentally changed: the apes became human because they rejected the “natural” order. They started evolving beyond biological evolution, through conscious decisions, but still in an effort for self-preservation.
HAL did not go crazy. He rejected the natural order to protect himself. Lions eat apes, humans program computers. HAL killed Poole, just like the apes killed the lion.
Andy Warhol’s “Empire” is more boring.
Look, 2001 is exactly what it was meant to be. There is not a single frame in the film that Kubrick didn’t specifically want to be there. You either accept it for what it is, or you don’t. But you can’t say it needed to be more tightly edited or faster paced. It would be like saying Requiem for a Dream needed much fewer smash-cut edits, less camera tricks, a more conventional musical soundtrack, and a more upbeat message. No it didn’t. You just needed to watch a different movie.
Both films are the arch-stereotype of avant-garde film making. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with either of those films. If you didn’t enjoy them the problem is with you, not the films…
The novel (based on a short story) is considerably easier to understand.
Like saying Rick and Elsa should have been together at the end of Casablanca. Like saying that Citizen Kane should have had a happy ending.
These movies are successful because they took chances, they dared, they broke expectations, and they challenged the viewer.
(Or like saying Disney’s The Little Mermaid should have had an unhappy ending, the way the original story did… That movie succeeded by not taking chances, by not daring, by not breaking expectations, and by not challenging the viewer! And it made a blort-load of money. So what’s the lesson we should learn here?)
Somebody never sat through Prince of the City.
My “most boring” movie is Antonioni’s Red Desert, but maybe I’d appreciate it more if I watched it again.
As for 2001, I thought it was pretty dull the first time I watched it as a teenager, but I was able to follow the story a bit better when I watched it as an adult (and I knew what to expect). I still think the ending is pretty incomprehensible, though.
Nonsense. The movie isn’t an original work, it’s an adaptation- and, frankly, in some ways, it’s kind of a lousy adaptation. Much like Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, it changed a lot and presented a lot of things in a different way- not only from what the standard filmgoer expects, but from what the source material was.
Taken as an isolated piece of art, 2001 is, indeed, what it is, and shouldn’t (which is not the same as can’t) be judged by mainstream standards; but as an adaptation (which is most people are, sooner or later, going to judge it as), there is quite a bit wrong with the film.
Better described as a collaboration rather than an adaptation. Clarke and Kubrick worked on novel and film concurrently.
As to Clarke’s earlier short story:
[QUOTE=Arthur C. Clarke]
I am continually annoyed by careless references to ‘The Sentinel’ as ‘the story on which 2001 is based’; it bears about as much relation to the movie as an acorn to the resultant full-grown oak. (Considerably less, in fact, because ideas from several other stories were also incorporated.) Even the elements that Stanley Kubrick and I did actually use were considerably modified.
[/QUOTE]
The Dawn of Man sequence and the segue into the space age was a brilliant work of art. After that the pace could have been a little quicker. It’s certainly not the modern frenetic style of movie making, but that’s a good thing.
I agree with the OP, this movie is boring… REALLY boring. I consider myself a bit of a movie buff and I can enjoy a slow paced movie, even a really long and slow paced movie, but even then, there comes a point where it needs to be cut down. I get that the visuals in the movie were stunning when they were on the big screen over 45 years ago. Hell, I think even most of the practical effects hold up reasonably well. But then they’re interspersed with scenes of people just floating in space and the only sound is them breathing… for minutes on end.
I also appreciate that Kubrik is a much more visual storyteller than many other directors, and I think his approach, especially to cinematography is beautiful. Unfortunately, I feel like the storytelling in this film is ruined in two major ways. First, his visual cues are a little too abstract, especially at the end of the film. I get what he’s going for, but only after the fact, when I had to go read about what the hell was supposed to be happening. Knowing what he was trying to communicate, it’s neat, but not knowing it, it’s just confusing and I really don’t know how anyone who didn’t already know what was happening could have reasonably expected to understand it. Second, I feel like the three acts of the film are disconnected. Obviously the first leads to the third, and the second with HAL is iconic, but it really hurts with the overall story of the film and just makes the end of it that much more confusing.
Of course, all of this is just magnified when viewed by a modern audience where we’re used to much more impressive visuals, faster pacing, and tighter editting. It may be a landmark film, but it just isn’t watchable anymore.
There are great moments, but large swaths of actionless scenery backed by classical music puts me to sleep everytime. To be fair the novel, which was written concurrently with the film, has large portions which are also snooze worthy.
Clarke’s sequel novels 2010 and 2063 (which follow the film rather than his own novel) have quite a bit more meat to them. 3001 is essentially a novel length character sketch with some futurism thown in; the plot itself is probably resolved inside of twenty pages. However it is still worth a read.
I tend to agree with this. I’m not a movie buff by any stretch of the imagination, and I saw the movie once, ten years ago, and I was absolutely floored by it, even if I didn’t quite understand it all (I did end up reading the novel a few years later, which helped connect the dots.) I can’t imagine changing a thing about it without altering the experience of the movie and the emotions it conveys.
When I first watched it I fell right asleep, too.
I watched it again like 15-20 years later (just a few years ago) and I really loved it. I don’t think I tried to get too much into the story or try to understand the ending - but as a piece of cinematic art, I thought it was amazing.
I really like to think about the craftsmanship that went in to Star Wars and the stuff Jim Henson did, so to think what they were doing on 2001 all those years before Star Wars was just incredible!!
There were slow parts though, yes 