A few months ago, I had heard that 2001: a space odyssey was going to be re-released in December. Well, here it is, just a coupla weeks prior to that year, and I have not seen any ads or other publicity. Am I mistaken, did they change their minds, or has anyone else heard anything about this? I would just LOVE to see it on the big screen again!
I’ve read that as well. But now they might be releasing it in October 2001. Here’s a site that talks about it: http://www.upcomingmovies.com/2001spaceodyssey.html
From,
Anake
yow Anake, thanks! Lotsa good info there!
Since the OP has been answered…
What is so great about this movie? I watched it once, and towards the end I just fell asleep. What the heck happened there? What the heck is up with that monolith? Can someone explain what makes this movie so great that it would even be re-released?
I watched it for the bad-ass computer, HAL. But HAL’s voice put me to sleep! It’s even more monotone than Ben Stein! Before I saw this movie I would bitch about how sound in space is not true, but when watching this movie I realized why they do put sound in space in movies, even if it’s wrong: So the audience doesn’t fall asleep! I think the reason why it was so popular back in the 60’s was because of the trippy colors in the end.
From,
Anake
That would explain it. I wasn’t high when I watched it.
c_goat writes:
What is so great about this movie? I watched it once, and towards the end I just fell asleep. What the heck happened there? What the heck is up with that monolith? Can someone explain what makes this movie so great that it would even be re-released?
“2001” is one of my favorite science fiction movies, despite its flaws. It is easily the most impressive, both visually and in overall spirit. If you want to show people that science fiction is a serious medium, not fanciful “kid stuff”, then “2001” is an ideal showcase. Far more than any sf film before (or since) it treats its subject soberly, magnificently, and impressively. Compare it with any sf film that appeared before – especially George Pal’s “Conquest of Space”, which also featured a shuttle, a space station, and an interplanetray flight. Ceertainly the special effects are better (and Kubrick and company INVENTED effects for 2001 – it’s technical landmark as well), but even the way they are used – set against a sonic background of classical music, it looks like something you could take seriously. Also, since it was made during the era of the NASA flights and had Arthur C. Clarke as advisor and author (as well as an army of unsung experts and artists) the LOOK of the film is totally different from previous films. For the first time the ships and stations looked like real and working items, not smooth idealistic cigar shapes.
The ships MOVED correctly, too. Ships that were travelling at incredible speeds seemed to float, since there was no nearby reference. The “space pods” pivoted about their centers of mass. Ships did not “bank” as in “Star Wars”.
The people were downplayed to show Man dwarfed by his machines and his enterprise.
As for the plot, I agree that it’s mystical and confusing, even more mystical than Clarke normally is. The film represents a tug of war between the visions of Kubrick and Clarke (Don’t take Clarke’s novel as the ultimate interpretation of Kubrick’s vision). If you want a good interpretation, look up the book “The Making of Kubrick’s 2001”. There’s an analysis by a high school student in it. (My HS English teacher knew HER HS English Teacher). There IS something annoying about the computer-turns-against-its-creator notion. Are we EVER going to get away from that? And the end is confusing as all heck. Harlan Ellison had caustic things to say about that. Nevertheless, “2001” alternates with “Forbidden Planet” as my all-time favorite sf film. If FP was the celluloid version of good 1940s sf, then “2001” is the celluloid expression of good 1950s sf. (SF movies are always at least a decade behind literature, and usually further.)
Ok. So people like it because it looks cool and has some good (and realistic) special effects for its time. From my one viewing, I would say this is true.
You seem to agree with me that the movie made absolutely no sense at all and spent way too much time with nothing happening, my main gripe about it.
If this is the case, why bother rereleasing it, because by today’s standards, the effects are crap. Plus 2001 kind of loses it fictionality since it is 2001 and nothing of the sort has happened, except that we’ve started building a space station.
I first “saw” this in utero so I’m anxious to actually see it soon. It will be playing on Turner Classic Movies starting at 12:00 AM, January 1, 2001. Not as good as the big screen, but perfect timing.
C_goat:
You are a bit of a literalist.
I own 2001 on video and watch it over and over. Just because I KNOW what is going to happen doesn’t make it irrelevant. Do you toss your CDs after you hear them once?
I’d argue about the effects being better. 2001 used hand-drawn mattes. I heard they did each color separately. That totally blows away Star Wars. A lot of the things in 2001 look rather static, but aside from that I’m not convinced that CGI has caught up to it yet.
Just wanted to add that I’ve seen the restored 70mm film of 2001 a few years ago. The print looked awesome. Seeing it in 70mm was a new experience for me, and it blew me away.
CalMeacham:
This isn’t really going where I want. I’m not trying to debate the quality of the effects compared to today. I was really just wondering what made this movie so great. I personally thought it sucked and would never watch it again, and was hoping to hear a good reason to watch it again and maybe understand it (like an explanation of the plot). I’m not saying other people can’t enjoy it. I just feel like I’m dumb because I didn’t like it.
I don’t know what it means to be a literalist, except that maybe I take everything at face value, so I’ll just leave that alone.
Maybe I just don’t get Kubrick. I watched A Clockwork Orange and I have the same feelings for it as I do for 2001. I even like classical music but I still hated those movies.
Hype over “years.” It’s 2001, and so we MUST re-release “2001” because…ooooh ooh guess what, they have the same year in the title! Oh my God! What a coincidence! It’s the year 2001 and the title is (giggle) “2001!” Isn’t that soooo neat!!! OK, so I’m being sarcastic way beyond what I need to, but that’s what hype is. Created by the media and such. I’m wondering if the same thing happened in 1984 to the book “1984.” Since I was only two then, I wouldn’t remember.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an OK movie and I probably will go see it in the theater (I want to give it a second chance–I HATED Rocky Horror Picture Show when I first saw it but I saw it a second time on a whim and it turned out not to be too bad). But meida-hype annoys me.
From,
Anake
I think the inscrutability of 2001 is one of the things that makes it stand out. I first saw it when I was about 8, and I was bored to tears. But I will never forget having seen it that first time. Years later I saw it again on TV, and read the book, and started to understand what was happening in the movie. It doesn’t have the same feelings of suspense and completion that other movies do, but I think it could launch a thousand discussions.
You could wonder about how we really would contact an alien civilization (abductions and crop circles only show how limited our imaginations are about such things). Could we ever make a machine smart enough to trust with our lives without making it too smart to trust with our lives? How can HAL be the scariest character and the most sympathetic? 2001 is a great document of its era. We’d only just started sending men into space and we were already shooting for the moon. We really thought we’d be on our way to Jupiter by now. It stands up with movies like Lawrence of Arabia in portraying things as epic and grand in scale. I’ve also noticed cinematic tricks in it (maybe because without a plot, or charcters, I had more time to notice things), like the fact that there is absolutely no camera movement during the entire Dawn of Man sequence until the camera pans upward to follow the bone tossed in the air. I think that was deliberate, any kind of smooth camera motion would have subtly implied technology even if the audience wasn’t aware of it.
I eventually saw the film again on a big screen, and it was back at the same theater as when I was 8. It wasn’t deja vu of course, because I knew I had been there before. But it was one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever had.
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c_goat, is your username a reference to Infinite Jest
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With the OP asked and answered, this is really a movie review thread, so I’ll move it to IMHO.
Horse puckey m’lad. When you consider that 2001 was made without any computerized special effects, it stands as one of the last monuments to hand crafted film making.
Read the book “The Making of 2001” for a glimpse of just how wrong you are. Some examples:
[li]The shuttle at the beginning of the space sequences was made of over one hundred different model kits. Everything from battleship to racing car parts were used to fabricate it. Despite being only about a foot long, the camera could approach to within 6" and still have perfect detail[/li]
[li]The long spaceship “Discovery” was about 60 feet in length and represents what, to this day, a large scale interplanetary probe might look like.[/li]
[li]There is only one ape in the entire beginning sequence. Namely the infant held in the mother’s arms. The casting director had to recruit very skinny ballet performers in order to fit them into the ape suits and still have them be scrawny enough to resemble early homonid man. The facial expressions were activated with a bank of toggle switches located in the mouthpiece of the mask that were actuated by tongue movements. It was a running joke that the only reason why the ape costumes didn’t get an Academy Award was because the judges didn’t realize that the apes were real people.[/li]
[li]Kubrick consulted with many major corporations in order to achieve a realistic appearance to the various videophones and other appliances depicted.[/li]
[li]The production group studied telemetered data from the Ranger moon probes in order to determine the best substance to use for the moon soil in the lunar shots. They finally settled on superheated sand.[/li]
[li]In the space sequences, the stars are where they are supposed to be. The effects team used star maps to create these backdrops.[/li]
[li]All space animation had to be achieved within less than seven passes in order to avoid any fading of the black space backgrounds to a dark grey.[/li]
[li]One master copy of all live footage had to be scored with a grid pattern in order to register the movement of all later animation. Imagine the tremendous cost of trashing a master print to assure that all movements were correct and non-conflicting.[/li]
When you watch the movie, you are seeing one of the pinnacles of the film makers art. I doubt that there will ever be another film made by hand that incorporates such difficult yet realistic special effects. When you consider that the musical soundtrack was recorded by what was arguably the finest orchestra, conducted by the finest conductor on earth at that time, it is hard to imagine how the film could be any better.
If you would like to appreciate the ending of the film a little more, try and find the book (“The Lost Endings of 2001”?) that details all of the various endings that were storyboarded to depict the final contact with aliens. There were a dozen or more final sequences considered. All of them requiring a lot of technical work and extra special effects that never saw the light of day.
When you consider how simple it is to let the computers do all of the animation detail that looks so impressive these days, the work of Douglas Trumbull’s team is only that much more outstanding. The Star Wars movies are merely space westerns compared to the difficult and exacting work done by the crews involved in the making of 2001.
This is my point. The average moviegoer could care less how much work went into the effects, they still don’t LOOK all that impressive. The whole beginning looked like a bunch of guys in monkey suits to me, I didn’t (and never would have) noticed that the camera didn’t move. You basically said that unless you know how much work went into the effects, then the effects look crappy, which was my point anyway. When people go to the movies to watch it, most of them will come out saying “that movie was so cheesy with the special effects”. I was wondering if this was such a good idea, since it seems like it’ll be out of the theater faster than Cool as Ice.
Maybe a plot would help. That’s great that they worked so hard on the effects, and I commend them. Anyway, I think I got the answer I was looking for. Apparently noone understands this movie and thinks the effects are great.
I did some searching and found what you were referring to. No, I’m not that original and obscure, though if you want you can refer to me as “Coolest Guy Of All Time”. Whatever makes you (and me) happy. 
It almost makes me want to read the book. But no.
2001 is like the LOR trilogy. You can go back to it again and again and get something more or different each time. Reading through this thread reminded me of watching 2001 on TV with my Dad, the patron saint of movie-haters. “The apes are fakey!” (They’re proto-humans, not supposed to be apes per se). “When is something going to happen?!” Just watch…
If you don’t have the patience to watch 2001 a couple of times then you really ought not to watch it. There is no reason to defend this classic. It is interesting to note that critics of the era absolutely did not know what the fuck to make of it. It was widely panned before word -of-mouth kept it in theaters. Thank god for directors with the balls to keep control. 2001 could not be made in todays focus-group movie making wasteland. There sure are a lot of very expensive movies that suck
c_goat:
OK, if you keep on asking for a plot, I’ll give you my abbreviated version of the plot. I’m a little reluctant to do this, because there are so many subtle things going on in the movie that relate to the plot that just a general rundown of the plot doesn’t do the movie justice. Plus, this is all my interpretation, it’s much better to watch and think about it for yourself; it’s certainly one of the most ambitious movies ever made, IMHO.
The Dawn of Man:
We’re apes, we eat vegetables. The monolith comes along. The monolith is kind of like evolution/God/aliens all rolled into one, depending on how you look at it. Knowledge is imparted to the apes, the apes begin using tools for the first time. Of course, as soon as this happens, they begin using tools to fight one another. Then the bone flies up and turns into a spaceship, indicating that, in a sense, we, in the space age, are still “the dawn of man”. Sure, we know how to use tools and everything, but we still fight and bicker amongst ourselves, we really haven’t come a very long way, after all.
So another monolith is found on the moon, apparently placed so it would not be discovered until we had the ability to travel there. It sends a signal to Jupiter, and, so of course, we send a ship to Jupiter immediately, to discover just what the hell is going on.
Anyway, so there’s the battle between Hal and the crew, kind of reversing/confusing the roles of man and machine. Then Dave gets to Jupiter, and, well, that of course is very open to interpretation. In a nutshell, kind of like the death/rebirth into the next stage of development of man.
The End.
There’s really quite a lot more to be found in the movie, you really ought to watch it again and take it from here.
Cabbage:
THANK YOU! That helps a lot. A general idea was all I really wanted anyway. Like I said, it must be that I just didn’t “get” Kubrick. To me, that’s a reason for a movie to be great, because it makes a statement about mankind in general. Not because the effects are great (or time consuming).
You’ve single-handedly made me want to watch the movie again, this time trying to understand it (with something to start from). Good job.