I’ve always seen Alien as more or less a big budget haunted house movie. The production value, actually decent acting, superb direction, and a sense of maturity set it above most films in the horror genre, but it also sticks to many of the conventions that come with it. From the jump scares, to characters stupidly wandering off alone to be killed, to even a final confrontation between the female lead and the monster/ghost/serial killer/etc… *Alien *is a very well made film, but the more conventional one for sure.
2001 is on another level entirely. It’s probably the best example of film being treated as an art form. Kubrick tells this fairly imaginative story on the visuals alone, to the point where the dialogue seems useless. Hell, there’s maybe less than 40 minutes of it in the entire running time. The special effects were groundbreaking (and frankly still hold up to this day), the story is epic and thought provoking, the music is perfectly timed and placed, and as mentioned, the masterfully unique direction ties it all together. *2001 *is more an experience to me, than just a film, and the strong focus on the mise-en-scene definitely helps with that immersion.
Thanks for that.
In terms of visual style, I can see how what you mention would have influenced Kubrick. Yet the style used reminds me of paintings, sculptures and architecture that I’ve seen before.
The lines and strong colors remind me of Mondrian, it isn’t quite abstract but it’s seems to be halfway there.
How would the architecture of the spaceships be called if they were made for real? What if they were a painting or a sculpture?
2001 is a landmark movie and a classic forever; Alien is a pretty good horror movie set in outer space (and not as good as its first sequel IMHO). So 2001 gets my vote here, although both are on my personal Top 20 Best SF Movies list.
There’s a lot of cool things in 2001, but the deep, cerebral themes people mention – what are those again? Maybe my problem is I’m generally skeptical of anyone pointing out supposedly profound ideas in movies or literature, but let’s look at this. Humans have evolved from a point where advanced technology is a bone they pick up off the ground to constructing a spaceship. Or an AI, an improved version of its own mind. Like we’re Gods in our own right. And we will continue to evolve in ways that are as mysterious to us as we are to ancient ape people. That’s the basic message, right? That’s pretty straight forward. You’d get that just by knowing a little history. You don’t even have to believe in evolution to know that. Am I supposed to have mystical goosebumps because aliens or God are placing flag markers for us to find?
Or hey, the spaceship looks like a sperm + Jupiter is the egg = space baby! That’s cute.
Oh, I’m sure you are. You’re missing a lot; just watch it in the daytime with some friends and you’ll be fine. You won’t be sorry, and you’ll come to appreciate the movie in a whole new way.
Yeah, do it, Trinopus. I’m curious to know what someone who’s never seen it thinks of it afresh.
Come on, grab a friend as ally/alternative victim, make a fort with some boxes, have the dog/cat act as sentry, drape yourself in your blankie, clutch your Teddy bear, watch the movie and report back.
As the OP asks, regarding the style and mood or the two movies -
2001 came at a time when society was still basically optimistic about the future. The clean-lines design motif reflected that futuristic optimism. The future was going to be “nicer”. Frankly, I miss that optimistic view.
Alien came at a time of greater underlying cynicism (post Watergate, post Viet Nam). In it, the future was something to be feared. The design ethos was that the future was going to be crappy.
Visually, I think Alien won out, in that the default design ethos for the future in movies is junky and dirty. You still see a lot of clean-line versions of the future, but those often end up looking quaint, retro, and out of step - because we are so used to seeing the opposite.
Whereas in real life? Well, Apple and Google seem to be doing well with a clean-line approach (which IMHO is designed to unconsciously resonates with futuristic optimism).
Yeah, I can definitely see how the simplicity of the visuals in 2001 would be more pleasant and inspire more optimistic emotions than the messy visuals of Alien. Simple, almost bare, visuals with simple elements in them also resemble classical music.
When it comes to the visuals of 2001, I think of images like these:
Yes, I was somewhat surprised that that movie included toilet humor.
I suppose, the bad thing about toilet humor is that the people who make toilet jokes and the people who make clever/novel jokes don’t intersect much in the great Venn diagram of life.
That certainly counts as a novel twist on toilet humor, especially the length of the description and the concerned look on the man’s face.
The panel was reproduced in Jerome Agel’s book The Making of Kubrick’s 2001, where you could read it at leisure. Agel said that Kubrick called it “the only on-purpose joke” in the film.
If you read it, the bulk of the instructions actually detail how to take a zero-gee bath, not a zero-gee dump. So it literally is “bathroom” humor, rather than mainly scatological.
They used to have a copy of it (Xeroxed from Agel’s book, I assume) on one of the cabinets at the MIT Science Fiction Society library for years. I don’t think it’s there anymore.
2001 has the best opening title sequence - mix of visuals and music - of any movie, ever. Still powerful nearly 50 years later. Grand in its simplicity.
Really has to be seen on the big screen to feel the impact though.
Dunno… You should have seen me yesterday, out on the hiking trail, encountering a tarantula, and having to be led around it with my eyes tightly closed… I am one top-notch coward!
I have read the “photo-novel” of the movie – a book of screen shots. That was as much as I can handle.
I admire the movie wholeheartedly! Giger’s designs are brilliant.
Wait … aren’t we all? I thought that was a prerequisite for joining.
Well, there are some people who actually know and do stuff too. To me, they seem like non-playing fans at a local blues jam. I have no idea why they hang around, but God bless 'em!
I was all set to write a long comment, but, well, pretty much this. For most of us, 'nuff said. However, I will give a nod to those who opined that these movies probably shouldn’t be compared, as those folks are correct, as well.
For those who find 2001 too slow and pointless, I really just want to tell them to just sit down and watch the movie, and let it be what it is, for once. Every second is filled with something meaningful (at least up until the psychedelic bit at the end - you can start complaining there). Just because there aren’t fistfights and explosions every x minutes doesn’t mean something isn’t filling the screen with meaning.
