Alien vs 2001, a space odyssey

Cafe Society
61

I’d say that a quote or story synopsis can’t be “profound” in the way some scientific discoveries are profound. But comparatively speaking, the concepts in 2001 are, mmm, light years beyond average movie fare.

Here’s my own plot summary from another thread. Are there other films with that type of story line? Are there other films with a substantial budget and an obsessive craftsman for a director with that type of storyline. And to make it more exclusive, let’s throw in “and a plot presented with adequate clues to understand, but not at all spoon-fed to the audience.”

Compared to 2001’s concept, which spans the entire history of humans, beginning to end, movies like Blade Runner are light entertainment. Time travel movies come off like cheap tricks. A sf movie like Forbidden Planet (good film) is impressive (largely) because it has an unexpected villain, but 2001 is in another league.

So no, a story line can’t be profound, but it can be very different, and very powerfully and uniquely presented.

62

2001 is my favorite movie ever. I’ve seen it dozens of times, twice in Cinerama as God and Kubrick intended.

Alien is a haunted house movie in space, a good one, though a bit of a ripoff of van Vogt’s Black Destroyer. I’ve seen it, but I have no desire to see it again.

Being a huge fan of Clarke’s work, I got 2001 the first time I saw it. It is not just the evolution of humanity, it is the directed evolution of humanity, which is a deep concept. And it is hardly optimistic. Remember the loyalty oaths that Floyd gets everyone to sign? Plus it says that murder pushes us forward - Moonwatcher’s first murder ever of the other ape, and Bowman’s murder of HAL.
Think of Kubricks’ range. 2001 came right after Dr. Strangelove, after all.

Alien does have one thing on 2001 - Sigourney Weaver’s knickers.

63

I don’t think so. While the New Wave was going strong when 2001 came out, it was planned and written long before that. I don’t think Ballard had a lot of influence on Clarke. As mentioned in the wiki article the New Wave turned its back on space (or hated space if you include Barry Malzberg) while 2001 after the first section was set entirely in space.
The most New Wave thing in it, the transformation of Bowman, is similar to the end of Childhood’s End from 1953 IIRC. I don’t recall reading anything about the trip scene having roots in the pschedelic movement, but it would be plausible. It certainly got marketed that way when they found out what was going on in theaters.

I was quite familiar with the New Wave at the time, and never noticed a connection.

64

Excellently put. “Directed evolution of humanity” – precisely. “Murder a necessary component” – interesting.

65

If you think Forbidden Planet is impressive “largely because it has an unexpected villain”, then you need to watch it again, carefully. You obviously missed most of the film.

66

i wouldn’t mind watching it again; just saw it once decades ago. I understand it’s heavily influenced by the Tempest, and in the top rank of sf films of its era. Still, based on that one viewing I believe that its reputation is (largely) based on the unexpected villain. (My phrasing was designed not to spoil the film, because there are many people haven’t seen it.)

67

FP isn’t merely “heavily influenced” by The Tempest – it lifts its plot bodily from that work. But I hesitate to say that it’s simply The Tempest dressed up in SF drag, because the characters’ motivations are completely different.

The appeal of FP, though, is in the way it succeeded in transferring the best traditions of 1940s magazine SF to the screen (movies are always a decade behind literature. I think 2001 is prime 1950s-era magazine SF. And it is, of course, based on a 1950s Arthur C. Clarke story) It not merely has the trappings of SF from that era – spaceships that travel faster than light, space military, “blasters”, aliens – it has the sensibilities and the sheer logic of that era’s sf as well. It’s well thought-out, with a consistent and deep backstory. And it’s the first time much of this stuff appeared on-screen, especially in a non-juvenile way. The civilization of the future has been at space colonization for a while – they have “standard charts” for planets. It’s the first film to depict faster-than-light travel, and its logical but not obvious adjunct – stasis fields for acceleration and deceleration (They use them in the beginning at the “DC” point – “Deceleration” – but don’t explain what’s going on, and don’t make a big deal of it). They have standard military procedures. Robby the Robot actually obeys Asimov’s Laws of robotics (and that is used, near the end, to drive home a point). He has an Emergency Cancellation Code – a failsafe, thereby avoiding all the “runaway robot” clichés (that the poster, ironically, suggests). When the Monster attacks, Doc Ostrow logically reasons about it, coming to a very correct conclusion.

The entire film is permeated with such logical but non-obvious conclusions, leading up to the Big One at the Climax – once you set up your premise with the Secret of the Krel, you can logically extrapolate to the ending, as with any good mystery – even though most people won’t.

This shows up in other ways which appear trivial at first – Robby boasts of being able to speak 187 languages and their sub-tongues. Which seems ridiculous and pointless, but actually does make sense – Morbius is a philologist, and probably had a lot of spare time, despite his studies, while Altaira was growing up.
Add to this the excellent special effects, the pioneering use of an electronic music score, and the depiction of many SF ideas, and it’s quite a trip. This little film is an extensive exercise in world-building. The entire background had to be conceived and presented. No wonder Gene Roddenbery strip-mined it when he created Star Trek.

You can’t dismiss this with a casual “memorable because it had an unexpected villain”. That describes an episode of a 1960s TV detective show. This film is a symphony of consistent creation.

68

Really this is an apples/oranges comparison. Besides the fact that both movies occur in space, there’s no real similarity. Alien is essentially a science fiction slasher film, while 2001 is a psychological thriller.

Personally I prefer 2001, and think Alien is almost unwatchable. Like many slasher films, the problems in Alien could have been avoided from the outset if anyone had used their brains a little. 2001 is much smarter, presenting a problem that is feasible, and is handled by Bowman in an intelligent manner.

69

George R.R. Martin wrote in Dreamsongs, Vol. I that Forbidden Planet is still his favorite sf movie. He, too, noted that Roddenberry cribbed a lot of, er, paid homage to it in Star Trek.

70

Eh, it’s the Circle of Ideas. Roddenberry ripped off Forbidden Planet, Forbidden Planet ripped off Shakespeare, and while The Tempest appears to have been original to the Bard, it’s about the only thing he didn’t rip off from older sources. It doesn’t matter where you get your ideas from; it matters what you do with them.

71

Please, what story? I didn’t know this! I just Googled, and didn’t have any luck. (One promising result went 404.) I definitely want to read that story!

Thanks!

72

Sorry – you mis-read that. I said

…meaning that 2001 is based on an Arthur C. Clarke short story, The Sentinel. It originally appeared as Sentinel of Eternity in 10 Story Fantasy in 1951, then was reprinted in the Clarke anthology Expedition to Earth, which was for a long time the most likely place to find it. It ap;peared in a few other anthologies, and was reprinted in Clarke’s The Lost Worlds of 2001 in 1972, and with lots of commentary in The Sentinel in 1983, and in The Collected Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.

Here’s the isfdb page on it:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?25639
Forbidden Planet, as noted, is based on The Tempest, and on no previous SF story (although a novelization was published coincident with the movie’s release . It’s by mystery novelist and sometime SF writer Philip MascDonald, writing as W.J. Stuart.

73

Other stories also. The re-entry sequence is taken from “Take a Deep Breath” in The Other Side of the Sky - and was a favorite Clarke theme,

74

See my post 47 for Dullea’s explanation of how they filmed that.

75

As you note, Clarke used it on other occasions. It’s in Earthlight, as well, and he discusses the issue at length in an essay reprinted in The View from Serendip. Since he has used the “don’t need a spacesuit for short jumps” thing before, I’m not sure you can say 2001 took it from anywhere in particular.

I suspect the design of the ship Discovery owes something to the one in his story “Breaking Strain”, but , again, there care other possible sources.

76

I’m going to totally cop-out here, and say that I like both movies equally, and for the same reasons. Sure, they are different movies, but there are several similarities, in my opinion:

Dedicated directors determined to bring a certain well-crafted vision to the screen.

Science-fiction that relies upon the empty vastness of space.

Special effects that were new and revolutionary at the time, and which still hold up.

The value, and sometimes worthlessness, of humanity - especially when pitted against nature and technology.

Mesmerizing designs and attention to detail.

Suspense.

Incidentally, since some of the best reviewed and received movies of all time had production problems and unintended results, Alien and 2001 are no exceptions. Cracked has several articles that discuss both Alien and 2001. If to be believed:

The quizzical and trippy portions of 2001 that everyone has questions about actually had narration behind it, sort of explaining what was going on and what you were seeing. I forget if Kubrick put it in, and the studio removed it right before release, or the other way around, but it supposedly exists…somewhere.

The screenwriter of Alien had some pornographic scenes written into Alien, I guess to stress the importance of biology and evolution with no regard to humans - like what we saw in Prometheus - and Ridley Scott had to do some serious rewritings to get around it.

Segue about the sequel, Aliens. Even if you are a die-hard fan who has seen it several times, I seriously suggest watching the director’s cut of it. It adds about a half hour that was cut due to time constraints. In it are scenes where Ripley, who comes out of space-sleep decades later, learns that her daughter, who was a toddler when she left, had recently died as an older lady. She missed her daughter’s entire life while she was sleeping.

Also, you see scenes of the colony on LV-426 before it was overtaken by the aliens, including the crashed spaceship that is explored in Alien. Very reminiscent of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on Tatooine before the stormtroopers arrived.

Also, you see the removed theatrical scene with the automated turrets running low on ammunition, as the aliens descended upon our space marines.

And, then, to tantalize or torture you further, Alien 3 was so bad because the budget and time was spent on so many different possibilities, including a well-received screenplay by William Gibson, that by the end, they had so little money left, they had to buy a cheap script, hire a then no-name director named David Fincher, and settle for a basic set, to film the movie that we eventually got.

77

Oops; sorry! Too bad, as I’d really gotten my hopes up! Please forgive a bloke whose reading comprehension can best be measured in imaginary numbers!