Undoubtedly the best science fiction movie. After possibly 20 viewings, I never get tired of it.
Happy Birthday!
Good lord; I saw it when it was new, on a Cinerama screen. 
Me too. I still have the souvenir program.
2001 will be returning to the big (70mm) screen in May.
Same here.
I want my PanAm Space Shuttle!*
I want to go to the Howard Johnson’s on the Space Station and then on to Clavius Base!
I want my Pentominoes!
*I still do have my 1968 model of the PanAm Shuttle, which looks like a stretched version of the actual Space Shuttle. It’s on top of the china cabinet in my living room.
2001: A Space Odyssey is perhaps the best pure science fiction movie ever made, and has remained so despite advances in special effects and CGI which, while ostensibly capable of being indistinguishable from reality, has nothing on the versimilitude of Kubrick’s vision and Douglas Trumbull’s practical effects. The movie feels as if you are on a real spacecraft, jogging around a rotating habitat in the sterile and confined environment in which the crew appears to function largely to be passive observers and give the occasional press conference while the ship’s real pilot, HAL-9000, deals with an internal conflict between his orders to conceal their true mission objectives and his basic operating principles to engage openly with the crew. The film is also one of the few—perhaps along with Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Forbidden Planet—to deal with an advanced alien intelligence which is incomprehensible to humanity, although in the case of 2001, the intelligence has actively guided and uplifted humanity, and stands in judgement over it at a time when humanity is coping with its own tools which threaten to overtake it or destory it entirely. It is an existential horror film, and quite deliberately paced and directed to give the impression of humanity as losing its animal core and on the cusp of revolutionary transformation.
It’s a great film that has stood the test of time even if it is “too slow” for people who have grown up on so-called science fiction that is little more than war stories and cowboy movies in a space opera milieu. Such films are fine entertainment but they lack the deep resonant themes of 2001. It is a pity that Peter Hyams’ follow-up, while a technical and visual masterpiece in its own right, a disappointly conventional adventure film that presented nothing new or expanded upon the original. (To be fair, it largely followed the story of the novel except for changing “Dr. Chandra” to “Dr. Chandler” and dumping the sideplot of the Chinese effort to get to Europa first.). I hope to someday see a faithful rendition of Rendezvous with Rama (the less said about the subsequent novels the better) made with equal care and vision, but the only working director who I would trust to make it would be Steven Soderbergh, and a big budget science fiction film is not really his wheelhouse.
Stranger
I saw 2001 for the first time when I was about 8. I was bored to tears; was supposed to be about spaceships and instead I got 30 minutes of monkeys. But I never forgot it, either.
Fast forward 25 years. I’d seen the movie on TV a few times and recognized it for the masterpiece it is. Even read the book. But I hadn’t seen it on a big screen since that first time. So when I saw it was going to be at a theater again, I had to go. Turned out it was the same theater. I even tried to sit in the same seat, and I know I was pretty close. I noticed subtle details and techniques that I’d never picked up on before. One of the best movie going experiences of my life.
I think this mischaracterizes the interactions. In Forbidden Planet Earth people are dealing with unintentionally left artifacts. It’s not that we can’t comprehend them. In 2001 the aliens aren’t trying to communicate with us – they’re redirecting our evolution. we’re not given enough information about tem to comprehend them, since they’re not giving us any elements of their culture or directly communicating with us. Of the three examples you give, only Solaris is about failed attempts to communicate (although I think the book did it better. The second version was a remake of the first movie, not of the book). Another story that came out about the same time had the same theme – Terry Carr’s The Dance of the Changer and the Three. In fact, that’s the only case I know of where there was undoubtedly an effort to communicate by both sides.
I’ve loved 2001 since I first saw it. It was such a radical change in style and mood from every science fiction film tat preceded it, and most that followed. It alternates with Forbidden Planet as my all-time favorite SF film. if FP feels like the embodiment of good 1940s written SF, 2001 feels like the embodiment of good 1950s literary SF.
I’m not as hard as you on 2010. It’s undoubtedly a lesser film, more pedestrian in its handling of its material, but it’s still far better than most (and than Peter Hyams’ other science fiction films). They get extra points for duplicating the original sets so well, and getting Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain to reprise their roles. You could instantly make it infinitely better by doing the same thing Bladerunner did – simply eliminate the pointless voice-over narration.
And I fully agree about Rendezvous with Rama. Doesn’t Morgan Freeman have the rights tied up? They oughtta make that sucker into a film.
I saw 2001 when it originally came out, right around the time I turned 14. I was dazzled by it.
I saw it again 15 years later, in early 1983. In between the few interesting moments, I found it long and tedious.
I have no idea what I’d think of it today, since both of those instances were a long, long time ago.
ETA: The best stand-alone SF movie is still the original Star Wars.
I didn’t mean to indicate that all three movies were about communication with an alien species; as you note, the aliens of Forbidden Planet are long extinct through self-destruction, and in 2001 whatever communication occurs is more of just a test to see whether humanity had advanced enough in their tool-making abilities to be worth trying to uplift, but in all three there is a similarity in the approach that aliens will have technology and/or communication which is wholly incomprehensible to us. Most science fiction posits aliens which are mostly just bumpy-forehead versions of human archetypes (e.g. most aliens in Star Wars or Babylon 5) and alien technology that is just some kind of generator, engine, or weapon that is just larger in scale of effect or range than conventional technology, like the “oxygen generator” in Total Recall.
There are very few instances of alien technology or contact in television or cinematic “science fiction” which postulate something unimaginable to humanity, such as Dave Bowman’s transit through the wormhole and transformation into the Star Child, which is often criticized for being incomprehensible even though that is exactly the point. It is a risky thing to do because it doesn’t lend itself to conventional storytelling with a defined arc and pat conclusion, or even a more open-ended but intelligible (if somewhat nonsensical) conclusion like Contact; instead, it leaves the audience with all questions and no answers, and so it is very difficult to make a billion dollar gross on that.
Stranger
2001, was one of the first non-kid books I ever read. Had no idea it would be all down hill from there. lol.
Star Wars, while a fine actioneer with special effects in the original release that mostly still hold up (the less said about “enhanced” versions the better), isn’t any kind of science fiction. Nothing in the plot, which is half-Kurosawa action-comedy and half-WWII war movie, has anything to do with science or the impact of technological innovations on a society, and in fact it invokes non-scientific mysticism as a core element (“The Force”) and all-purpose plot-scrubber. All of the presentation of technology in the film is strictly blinky-light magic; laser swords that can cut through any material, “blasters” which cause random things to explode in sparks, clearly sentient robots which are still treated like slaves and property, and a planet-exploder thing the size of a moon that nonetheless “pales in comparison to the power of the Force” (even though the most Darth Vader is seen doing with this amazing power is Force-choking some uppity admiral or vaguely sensing that his former teacher and the guy who left him for dead in a volcano after choping his arms and legs off is somewhere in the vast station). Star Wars was always intended to be space opera fantasy akin to Flash Gordon rather than anything concerned with actual science.
Stranger
I saw it at the Cinerama Theater in NYC during the original run. I was psyched – a big-budget SF film! – but was disappointed.
It’s not that it’s slow – that didn’t bother me. And the visuals were impressive, as was the imagining of life in the future. But the story stunk.
Seeing it years later, I realized what had happened: Kubrick had set himself up to have a great revelation, but couldn’t come up with one. So he went with flashy graphics and misdirection to hide the face he couldn’t think of anything to say. This replacement of substance with flashy special effects presaged the science fiction of today – Flash Gordon writ large. Before 2001, special effects were in service to the story. It showed that if you show enough fancy effects, people will love it even if the story is weak.
Star Wars codified this – it was Flash Gordon – but 2001 showed Lucas the way. There seems to have been a few intelligent SF films in the past few years, as superhero films took all the flash, allowing for things like Arrival to be made.
So 2001 has a lot to answer for. Rewatching it let me understand what was so wrong with it, and why it became such a landmark. But not for me.
I don’t know if you read the book or not, but Clarke’s ending also seemed muddy to me. Perhaps if I read it again, I might get more out of it. I don’t know how Kubrick could have made the book’s ending work in a film, and I guess he didn’t either. The coolest thing for me was suddenly realizing that I’d probably be alive in 2001 to see if we achieved any of the film’s science.
I saw it in utero and keep thinking I need to give it another go. It seems important to see.
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Me too !! I was quiet young. 
We saw it in Philadelphia at The Cheltenham Theater, the only screen that was willing to spend the money to temporarily install the curved Cinerama screen.
Saw it at the Museum of The Moving Image 2 years ago. A fresh 70mm print, but not in Cinerama.
Kind of changed my life. It made me love science fiction. It made me love the movies a lot. It made me want to make movies.
I was six.
I’ve been a working cinematographer for 39 years.
–biting lip-- Forget Cinerama. You had to view it through a very unique curved screen- Mom’s belly !! By all means you should see it again. The sound won’t be as muted
There was dialog in only 33% of the movie.
All visual.
Kubrick didn’t want to confuse us with the spoken word.
I was just watching last week’s TBBT and noticed in the comic book shop a thing by the door that sort of looked like a Hal 9000 camera thing.
Now I want one. Get one of those case-y things, put a Raspberry Pi in it with a camera, a speaker, etc. Hmmm.
[Frosty voice]Happy Birthday![/Frosty voice]
I did also, twice. The first time I swindled an English teacher to set up a school trip to see it, so I got to watch on school time.
What was the line HAL used just before he checkmated Bowman? “Sorry, Dave. I think you missed it?”
The great revelation was the future of humanity - or what was coming after humanity. Just like they transformed Moonwatcher and his group into what would become humanity.
What would aliens look like after several million additional years of development past the advanced state they were in at the beginning of the movie? Kubrick tried various aliens - and wisely decided they all were lacking. The only hint we get of them is from the Ligeti piece played during the hotel room scene. (Yes, it is an altered Ligeti piece called “Adventures,” the full version of which can be found on the 2001 soundtrack CD but not on the original soundtrack LP.)
2001 is a coming of age story, but the protagonist is not a teenager as is typical but humanity itself. Very appropriate for today, man must use his machines to be able to go to the next stage, but must surmount the machines also.
Remember, the most primitive of machines - the lever in the form of a bone - allowed humanity to survive. To go on to the next stage Bowman has to kill the most advanced of all machines, HAL, who has become sentient. This is not stated in 2001, but the end of 2010 makes it clear.
The real failures are the sequels. While I like 2010 - both book and movie - Clarke totally failed to convince me that the only real purpose of the Star Child was to keep Europa safe for its new inhabitants. And things got worse from there (without Gentry Lee’s help) culminating in 3001 which contradicts the end of 2001.