2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey
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Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Written by	Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Keir Dullea Gary Lockwood William Sylvester Daniel Richter
Distributed by	MGM
Running time	141 min (Kubrick's Version; DVD) (without end credits) 160 min (premiere; theatrical version) (without end credits)
Language	English
Budget	$10,500,000

2001: A Space Odyssey is an influential 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick. The story is based in part on various short stories by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke, most directly "The Sentinel" (1951), and indirectly Clarke's running themes of humanity's "ascendance" best summed up in Childhood's End (1953). Kubrick collaborated with Clarke, and together they first concurrently produced the novel version that was released alongside the film (which eventually grew into the so-called Space Odyssey series of books), and then towards the end Kubrick simultaneously wrote the screenplay. For an elaboration of their collaborative work on this project, see The Lost Worlds of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, Signet., 1972.

The film is notable for its relevancy in the space exploration at the time. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 1972, "Quite early in the game I went around saying, not very loudly, 'MGM doesn't know this yet, but they're paying for the first $10,000,000 religious movie.'"

The film won the Academy Award for visual effects in 1968.

Influences

In early conversations, director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke jokingly called their project How the Solar System Was Won, an allusion to the epic 1962 Cinerama film How the West Was Won, which presents a generation-spanning historical epic told in distinct episodes. Like How the West Was Won, 2001 is divided into distinct episodes.

Production

2001: A Space Odyssey was shot in Super Panavision 70 with a 65mm film negative format. The release prints were made using the Technicolor dye transfer process.

Release

The US premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC. The original Roadshow release was in a 70mm projection format with a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack. The projection aspect ratio was 2.21:1. The film was also released in the 35mm anamorphic format for general release beginning in the fall of 1968; these prints were available with either 4-track magnetic stereo or optical monaural soundtracks.

The original 70mm release was billed as a Cinerama production in theaters (such as the Indian Hills Theater in Omaha, Nebraska) which were equipped with special projection optics and a deeply curved screen. In non-Cinerama theaters the release was simply identified as a "70mm" production.

In 1980, it became the second movie to be released on VHS by MGM/CBS Home Video.

Cast

Actor/Actress	Role(s)
Keir Dullea	Dr. Dave Bowman
Gary Lockwood	Dr. Frank Poole
William Sylvester	Dr. Heywood R. Floyd
Daniel Richter	Moon-Watcher
Leonard Rossiter	Dr. Andrei Smyslov
Margaret Tyzack	Elena
Robert Beatty	Dr. Ralph Halvorsen
Sean Sullivan	Dr. Bill Michaels
Douglas Rain	HAL 9000 (voice)
Frank Miller	Mission controller (voice)
Bill Weston	Astronaut
Ed Bishop	Aries-1B lunar shuttle captain (as Edward Bishop)
Glenn Beck	Astronaut
Alan Gifford	Poole's father
Ann Gillis	Poole's mother

Synopsis

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The title screen of the film.

NOTE: Due to the fact that this film conveys almost all its ideas visually and ambiguously, it can be interpreted in many ways. The following synopsis is merely one interpretation.

2001 is composed of distinct episodes. Three of the four major sections are introduced with the use of title cards: the lack of a title card between the first and second sections listed below has been seen by some to imply that Dr. Floyd's trip to the Moon and the discovery of TMA-1 merely continue the action of Moon Watcher's discovery of the monolith in the Dawn of Man sequences, without introducing a new phase in the development of humanity. The four sections are:

• The Dawn of Man

Roughly 4 million years ago, early ape men become endowed with the first signs of problem-solving intelligence after encountering and touching a mysterious black monolith.

• TMA-1 – (untitled on screen)

Four million years later an identical monolith is discovered beneath the lunar surface, buried in ways confirmed to be both intentional and artificial.

• Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later

The American spacecraft DISCOVERY 1 embarks on the first manned attempt to reach Jupiter, following a signal of unknown type and meaning sent by the lunar monolith to the planet its immediate vicinity.

• Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

A transcending experience in another time and dimension, the outcome of which may possibly represent the final evolutionary destiny of all sentient (possibly human) life.

The Dawn of Man

Following the title sequence, the film fades up on a scene of prehistoric Africa, though it could be any planet: (Kubrick said of the second-unit location shots that the landscapes were chosen for their alien appearance: they don't look like "Bible rocks.") The sun is rising, and we read a superimposed title card which reads "THE DAWN OF MAN." A slow series of scenes follow, lifeless panoramas of geology, then scenes including a few plants which appear to be growing in poor soil. Late in the sequence, a scene includes a skeleton, apparently that of a hominid, letting us know that there is (or was) animal life in this world. There is no sound except for an ambient wind.

Following these still tableaux, we are introduced to the animal denizens of Kubrick's Africa. The hillsides are inhabited by a group of early hominids (called man-apes in the novel) who are seen hungrily competing for plants with a number of tapirs. The man-apes snarl and push the tapirs away from the scarce plant life. The only predator is a leopard, which we first see as it pounces from a high ledge upon one of the man-apes as the man-ape fights back ineffectually. The man-apes are gathered in a tribe, which competes with a rival tribe for a muddy watering hole: it is little more than a puddle. The "alpha" man-ape, "Moon-watcher," (Dan Richter) leads his companions in aggressive screams, posturing, movement, and gesticulation directed at the rival tribe, but no other action occurs.

Night falls. The leopard is seen resting near a dead zebra. When it faces toward the direction of the camera, its eyes shine with a blue-green glow. We hear the growls or purring of the large cat.

Through the night, the man-apes cower in shallow caves, little more than recesses with a circle of overhanging rock outcrops, fearful of the leopard, whose growls we still hear. When two of them begin making noise in competition for a piece of the day's foraging, Moon-watcher quiets them angrily.

At first light the next morning, Moon-watcher awakes first, apparently disturbed by something. The audience hears the opening strains of György Ligeti's Requiem which builds to a crescendo through the scene. Moon-watcher awakes the others by stamping his foot and then grunting and shouting to the others. Roused, the man-apes investigate.

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The first monolith.

In the center of the circle of overhanging rock outcrops is a thin matte-black slab which appears to be three or four times taller than the man-apes. This is the monolith. The man-apes gather around it while Ligeti's Requiem continues, first afraid, then tentatively examining, touching, and even tasting the slab. As the scene progresses, their movements change from an initially animalistic, panicked frenzy to a slow, purposeful, single-mindedness. The music builds to an unbearable crescendo, and we see from the man-ape's point of view the conjunction of the top of the monolith, the Sun, and the Moon.

At the top of the crescendo the music abruptly cuts off to silence, and the action back to the lifeless panoramic scenes which opened the film. The skeleton of a tapir is bleaching in the sun. Moon-watcher is foraging near it but stops strangely, looking pensive, when he finds it. The sustained low C of Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra begins in the background. In a brief flash we see a repeat of the conjunction of the monolith, Sun and Moon seen immediately before. Moon-watcher picks up a large thighbone and begins swinging it aimlessly around: it glances off parts of the skeleton's ribcage, and fragments of the skeleton are broken off and scattered as the main theme of Zarathustra sounds in minor key. Moon-watcher's actions wielding the bone-turned-tool become more and more focused and purposeful-seeming as Zarathustra soars into its major key climax. He shatters the skull of the tapir skeleton and we are presented with a brief montage showing Moon-watcher seen from below, swinging the club, the further destruction of the skeleton, and fleeting clips of live tapirs rolling over (presumably foreshadowing an eventual use of the bone club) in slow motion. As the music passes its climax and reaches the coda, we see Moon-watcher framed once more against the sky as he lets go of the bone tool, waving his arms and snarling in exultation. The scene ends.

Next we see Moon-watcher's tribe with pieces of raw meat in their hands. We do not hear the leopard as in some earlier scenes (in the novel, the new weapons are used to dispatch the leopard but this scene does not figure in the movie.) We do hear the buzzing of flies, presumably alluding to flies that have been attracted by the decaying carrion that now appears to be the starving tribe's salvation. Two young man-apes (portrayed by young chimpanzees) play with a bone similar to Moon-watcher's weapon, turning it end over end as the scene ends.

We are back at the watering hole, where Moon-watcher faces off once more against the rival tribe. One of the rivals dares to cross the watering hole into Moon-watcher's territory. Moon-watcher beats him senseless and then dead with the club as the others of his tribe join in the violence. The rival tribe retreats in consternation: they do not appear to have learned the use of tools, as has Moon-watcher's tribe.

After dispatching the leader of the rival group with his bone club, Moon-watcher roars in victory and hurls the bone club skyward. Kubrick's handheld Super Panavision 70 camerawork (all handheld camera work in this film was executed by the director himself) tracks the tumbling bone into the clouds as the bone reaches the zenith of its arc, and begins to fall.

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"Now he was master of the world, and he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." -- 2001

In what is often touted as one of the most famous jump cuts in film history (though it is more correctly characterized as a "match cut"), the picture cuts from full daylight sky to the blackness of outer space, and the unbearable violence of the roar of the apes is replaced with complete silence. In the visual space formerly occupied by the tumbling bone, we see a satellite orbiting the Earth in what can be inferred to be the year 1999. This startling cut has been widely parodied as a famous and iconic scene in motion pictures. A spirited recording of the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss accompanies the following visual space-borne ballet.

(Some interpretations of the bone/spacecraft cut presume that the latter is an orbiting nuclear weapon. This increases the beauty of the cut because not only does it compress time it also matches the first human weapon with the 'last'.)

As has been previously stated, no title card accompanies this transition, in which four million years of story time is compressed to the infinitesimal space between one frame and the next.

TMA-1

A Pan-Am Orion spaceplane is carrying a single passenger to a gigantic space station in Earth orbit. The station is shaped like a pair of four-spoked wheels on a common axis, about which it rotates. It has not yet been completed: one of the wheels consists primarily of a bare "wire" frame, with "skin" only at the points of intersection with the spokes.

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The Orion spaceplane approaching Space Station 5 with its single passenger.

The passenger is Dr. Heywood Floyd, the chairman of the National Council on Astronautics, which is part of the American space program. The movie was made decades before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in the timeline of the movie, the Cold War is still going on full strength.

Floyd is greeted at the station by Miller, the station's security chief, who arrives at the foot of the elevator shaft late, giving Floyd time for a little small talk with one of the station's attendants. They pass through a security gate where Floyd authenticates himself using voice recognition technology.

There is an hour before Floyd’s connecting flight to the moon is to leave. Miller reserved a table for him in the Howard Johnson's Earthlight Room for breakfast. There is a pair of picturephone booths at the entrance to the restaurant, and Floyd decides to make “a few phone calls.” In the booth, his first call is to his home to speak to his wife, but it is answered instead by his four year old daughter; her birthday is approaching. (Birthdays are a recurring motif in the film.)

After the picture phone call, Floyd meets four Russian scientists (one of whom, Elena, is an old friend of his), two of whom are played by Margaret Tyzack and Leonard Rossiter. Floyd joins them for a brief conversation. The scene is shot in a way that is fairly reminiscent of the conflict we have seen around the apes' watering hole, four million years in the past for the modern-day characters in the film, but only a few minutes of screen time to the viewer.

A smattering of small talk ensues: how is so and so, give my best to such and such. Then they talk about their destinations, the scientists are “going home [after] three months calibrating the new antenna at Tchalinko,” and Floyd is destined for the American lunar base, in the Clavius crater. This catches the Russian’s attention -- they point out that "there are some very odd things going on up at Clavius."

Floyd, at first, feigns ignorance, but the Russians keep pressing him on the matter. The scene becomes more and more uncomfortable, and eventually one of Russians mentions that they have heard that there is an outbreak of an unknown disease at the base. Floyd, looking extremely uncomfortable, finally declaims that he is not authorized to speak of the matter further. When it is clear that no information will be forthcoming, the group exchanges pleasantries with Floyd as he excuses himself.

The Blue Danube Waltz resumes as we follow Floyd in another spacecraft, the spherical Aries-1B, to Clavius base on the Moon. The spacecraft sets down on a landing platform beneath a dome which opens as the spacecraft descends. The landing platform proves to be the platform of an enormous elevator, which lowers the spacecraft into a cavernous docking bay, illuminated in red. Most of the base has been built underground to protect it from micrometeoroid impacts and solar radiation.

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Clavius base was established on the moon in Clavius crater by the U. S. Astronautical Engineering Corps. The crater is 150 miles in diameter. Clavius base could, in an emergency, be entirely self-supporting.

A windowless briefing room is the setting for the next scene. The walls are illuminated white rectangles, the corners rectangular slabs of black. At the front of the room is a lectern, flanked by American flags which are seen against the blackness of the corners of the room. A photographer in a plaid suit snaps pictures of a seated small group of scientists, before thanking the group and excusing himself.

One of the scientists at the Clavius base, Halvorsen, introduces Floyd to the group as the chairman of the National Council of Astronautics. Floyd approaches the lectern to sparse applause.

Floyd congratulates them on what he says is one of the most significant discoveries in the history of science. He alludes to the "epidemic" referred to by Smyslov during his conversation with Floyd on the space station as a "cover story," which he says he knows is distasteful to the scientists both as a matter of principle and for the worry it is causing to the scientists' families and friends on Earth. However, because of the potential for social shock and disorientation if news of the discovery were to be made prematurely public, Floyd stresses "the need for absolute secrecy." He ends his talk by saying that formal security oaths will be obtained in writing from anyone with any knowledge of the event, and offers the scientists the chance to meet with him privately to discuss recommendations to be made in his report to the Council. Floyd asks if there are any questions: there are none, and Halvorsen suggests that they continue with the next part of the briefing.

A sub-orbital shuttle flies above the rugged lunar terrain. Floyd, Halvorsen, and Michaels are the passengers. Michaels has a lunchbox containing a variety of sandwiches, and hands them out to the others. As he eats, Halvorsen and Michaels show Floyd a stack of diagrams, maps, and photographs indicating the discovery of an anomaly in the moon's magnetic field in the Tycho crater, dubbed TMA-1 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly #1). A single object has been found as a result of excavations at the site of the anomaly: further excavations, carried out in the hopes that the object formed the upper part of a buried structure, have found nothing.

Halvorsen says that the object wasn't covered up by natural erosion: "it seems to have been deliberately buried." Floyd asks if they have any idea "what the damn thing is." Halvorsen replies that they wish they did, but the only thing that they know for certain is that it was buried four million years ago. The scene ends as Michaels offers a thermos of coffee, cautioning, "Watch out; it's hot."

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Tycho crater – where scientists from Earth look, astonished, upon the impossible.

The moon bus lands at a small base on the rim of Tycho crater. The strains of Ligeti's Requiem begin, as previously heard in the scene depicting the man-apes' encounter with the monolith. Floyd and a small group of other scientists descend a ramp into the excavation area: this was the first scene in the movie to be filmed, and Kubrick himself handled the hand-held camera. A second monolith, identical to the one seen earlier, stands near the center of the excavation, and various floodlights and scientific instruments are aimed at it.

The scientists approach the monolith. Floyd reaches out with a spacesuited hand to touch the surface, echoing the primitive awe expressed by the man-apes four million years in his past. One of the scientists has brought a camera. The other scientists pose for a photograph in front of the monolith. The photographer takes a few shots, then motions the scientists to move together for a closer photograph. As he does so, a pure, piercing shriek is heard over the scientists' suit radios. Floyd and his companions react primitively by clapping their hands uselessly over their space helmeted ears. As the scientists react to the electronic clamor, we see that the sun has reached the zenith in the sky above the monolith (in reality, this would be an agonizingly slow process, as the lunar day is 28 Earth days long.)

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The second monolith.

As Kubrick told interviewer Joseph Gelmis, "you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe—a kind of cosmic burglar alarm."

The movie then focuses on a manned mission to Jupiter to investigate the signal's receiver, taking place eighteen months later in the year 2001.

Jupiter Mission: Eighteen Months Later

A title card announces "JUPITER MISSION" and "EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER." The strains of Aram Khatchaturian's Adagio from the "Gayane Ballet Suite" fills the soundtrack with no other sound effects.

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Discovery One, 3 weeks after launch.

We are in the depths of interplanetary space. Slowly, moving from left to right, the pressure hull of a gigantic spacecraft comes into view. The spacecraft is shaped, oddly enough, resembles a partial human skeleton (head, spine, and hip), continuing Kubrick's theme from act one, bones to tools: the large sphere at its "fore" end is seen first, then a long segmented spine with a large communications dish mounted at its midpoint. As the end of the spaceship comes into view, we see that it is terminated by a large drive unit with a 2x3 matrix of hexagonal exhaust nozzles.

The view of the ship changes from three-quarter-rear to three-quarter-front. After these leisurely establishing shots, we jump to the inside of the spacecraft. A lone astronaut in athletic shorts is jogging around the inner circumference of a huge centrifuge which provides artificial gravity to the inhabitants of the spacecraft. The Adagio continues as the astronaut shadow-boxes as part of his training regimen. In some shots the camera dollies behind the jogger. We see the fixtures of the centrifuge rolling by him, including three white coffin-shaped containers, each sealed under a half-cylindrical transparent shield. In other shots the camera dollies in a reverse tracking shot front of the jogger, and at others the camera is fixed to one point on the centrifuge and pans to follow the astronaut as he runs.

The scene leaves the centrifuge briefly to show a second astronaut making his way along a rotating circular access way. He is reflected in the light of a prominent fish-eye lens which glows red from within. At the end of the access way, the astronaut opens a panel in a section of the access way which doesn't appear to be turning, and lowers himself through it. The scene switches back to the centrifuge where the second astronaut is emerging from an access panel at the hub of the centrifuge. This reveals that the access way just traversed by the astronaut was not rotating. The access way is at the hub of the centrifuge, and is stationary while the centrifuge rotates about it. At the bottom of a ladder leading from the hub to the rim of the centrifuge, the second astronaut operates a control and the access hatch closes as he walks around the rim of the centrifuge to join the first astronaut, who is now seated in a bathrobe, eating breakfast from a tray.

The second astronaut operates a food dispensing unit and joins the first with his meal. Both astronauts watch portable flat video screens taller than they are wide, with a row of buttons at the bottom. As the astronauts eat, an incoming audio/video transmission begins playing on both newspads simultaneously. The programme is being broadcast on the BBC 12 channel, and is soon revealed to be a pre-recorded in-depth news report on the spacecraft and its crew.

Three of the crew are in a state of hibernation, ostensibly to conserve resources for the voyage.

From the documentary, we learn that the spaceship is called Discovery One, and had departed on its journey "three weeks ago" at the time the broadcast was prepared. The news anchor introduces an interviewer named Martin Amer, who gives an overview of the spacecraft's complement and its stated mission. There are five human beings aboard the spacecraft, three of whom are in a state of hibernation, ostensibly to conserve resources for the voyage. The other two are the astronauts we have seen in these establishing shots: the jogging astronaut is the second in command, Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), and the astronaut who joined him is the mission commander, Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea). The hibernating astronauts' names are Hunter, Kaminsky, and Kimball: they represent the survey team, whose talents will only be needed when the giant spacecraft reaches Jupiter.

In addition to the human crew, we learn that the ubiquitous fisheye lenses scattered throughout Discovery are the "eyes" of HAL 9000 (Douglas Rain), a sentient supercomputer which forms the brain and central nervous system of the ship. HAL is capable of conversation, and the interviewer quizzes him on his relationship to human beings. HAL speaks with a warm, mannered human-like voice.

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HAL 9000 (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) is an artificial intelligence, the sentient on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery.

Most of the interview consists solely of discussions of the logistics of the mission: its overall purpose is not covered in any depth, and this "half-billion mile voyage to Jupiter" is presented in a matter-of-fact manner. No mention is made of the discovery of TMA-1 on the Moon.

On the outbound trip, after discussing apparent oddities in the ship's mission with Bowman, HAL picks up a fault in the ship's AE-35 unit, predicting “it will go a hundred percent failure in 72 hours.” The AE-35 unit is a control module located in the ship's antenna, which steers to the giant radio dish so it is always pointed at Earth. If it were to fail, communication with Earth would be hard, if not impossible.

Bowman takes one of the extra-vehicular pods to go outside the ship and swaps the AE-35 unit. Afterwards, Bowman and Poole conduct tests on the unit and can't find anything wrong with it. HAL recommends putting the unit back in operation, allowing it to fail and thereby poinpoint the fault.

An Earth-based HAL 9000 also disagrees with the onboard HAL 9000's diagnosis, meaning that one (or both) could be in error. This possibility has frightening potentials, as no HAL 9000 had even had an error prior to this point. If HAL were failing, the mission might be in trouble. HAL suggests that the only possible reason for the discrepency is "human error".

Bowman and Poole discuss the possibility that HAL might be malfunctioning and whether to disable his higher mental functions. Despite the fact that they take special precautions to discuss HAL's fate in a sealed pod where HAL can not hear them, HAL is able to read their lips through the pod window and discovers their plans.

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Hal has his eye focused on the pod's window. He is lip reading the entire conversation. He knows what they are planning to do.

Now faced with the threat of disconnection, coupled with the contradictions in his mission plans and directives, HAL decides to eliminate all the humans on board. Kubrick explained, "In the specific case of HAL, he had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility... Such a machine could eventually become as incomprehensible as a human being, and could, of course, have a nervous breakdown— as HAL did in the film."

To this end, HAL first kills Frank Poole by teleoperating a space-pod while Poole is on extra-vehicular activity to place the "faulty" AE-35 unit back in the antenna, knocking him out into space by attacking him with the pod.

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Bowman attempts to rescue Frank Poole, not knowing he is already dead.

Not realizing that what happened was no accident, Bowman takes another pod out to rescue his crewmate – in his haste he neglects to get his suit helmet and gloves. After he has left the ship, HAL kills the hibernating crew by shutting down their life support systems and then refuses to allow Bowman back into the ship. Bowman, with Frank's body clutched in the pod's arms, tries to negotiate with HAL.

These events gave rise to the catch phrases "Open the pod bay doors, HAL" and "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that", when Bowman requests that HAL open the ship.

In his rush to catch Frank before he drifted away, Bowman had boarded and launched his own pod without securing a spacesuit helmet. When HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors, Bowman is forced to let go of Frank, (who drifts away) so he can use the pod's manipulation arms to open the emergency airlock. Without a helmet, Bowman in desperation explosively ejects from the pod, through the vacuum and into the airlock.

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A view of HAL 9000's Brain Room in Discovery

After securing a helmet (so HAL cannot kill him by decompressing the ship) Bowman proceeds to shut down HAL's higher mental faculties one by one, disconnecting the memory containing these funcutions in HAL's main core. HAL's gradual shutdown triggers an incremental regression into his 'childhood': he plaintively informs Bowman that he can feel his mind 'going', and, eventually, he is reduced to singing the music hall song Daisy Bell, which he was taught by his instructor, Mr. Langley.

HAL is dead.

“Good day, gentlemen.”

A new voice now is speaking. Bowman is stunned. He looks around, searching for the source, and finding it on one of the computer displays nearby. He turns to look at it and listens to Dr. Heywood Floyd:

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Bowman learns the truth.

“This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space, and the entire crew is revived, it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago, the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried forty feet below the lunar surface, near the crater Tycho. Except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four million year old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin and purpose still a total mystery.”

Bowman is now aware of the true purpose of the mission to Jupiter, and he knows what the three other members of the crew were to do once they arrived there. But because they are dead, he must complete the mission alone.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

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The third monolith. "For weeks as it stared forever Sunward with its strange senses, [it] had watched the approaching ship. Its makers had prepared it for many things and this was one of them. It recognized what was climbing up toward it from the warm heart of the Solar System." -- 2001

This final act, without use of the spoken word, is expressed with visual images, music and sound effects only. Bowman completes his mission (and, in one fairly safe interpretation, the mission of the entire human race) in one of the most memorable film conclusions ever.

Months later, Discovery One, with its single remaining human passenger, arrives at Jupiter and makes a rendezvous with a third, giant, monolith. Once again, the monolith’s song (György Ligeti's Requiem) is heard building to a crescendo. The Discovery is next seen near the monolith, Bowman exiting in a pod to examine it more closely.

The monolith reacts to the pod, moving away from it and vanishing – with Jupiter, its moons, and the stars themselves falling out of sight. The pod begins to accelerate rapidly, buffeting Bowman violently. Space and time explode around him as he is hurled out of the solar system. On his way to the stars, he moves through complex planes of multi-colored grids and light. Quick glimpses of Bowman's face show only expressions of mounting horror -- he is going into a state of shock.

Eventually, he returns to normal space, in the vicinity of one of the many globular clusters that surround our galaxy. He passes by nebulae and a stellar nursery; and other fantastic sights. [1]

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On his journey, Bowman sees many fantastic sights.

Then he is flying low over an alien world, with surface lit in weird colors. The sun in this system is not like ours, it is a white Supergiant, filling the entire horizon. Bowman passes over mountains, valleys, fields of ice, and oceans; but nowhere is there any sign of life -- this planet is dead.

Bowman has reached his destination, and it is completely unexpected. As Clarke wrote in the novel: "He was prepared, he thought, for any wonder. The only thing he had never expected was the utterly commonplace." His pod is resting in the corner of a hotel room that resembles a first-class suite on Earth.

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The utterly commonplace. Bowman will, in a matter of minutes, live out his entire life here.

Bowman sits in the pod, unmoving, shaking; the journey has obviously had a traumatic effect on him. And the pod, too, has been affected, with all its displays listing system after system being in a state of NON-FUNCTION. Then there is someone standing outside the pod, wearing a red-coloured hard suit like his own. The two men stare at each other – they are both the same man! Suddenly, the suited Bowman is alone – the pod gone.

His eyes glazed over, he hesitantly moves about the room, exploring it. There is only one door; it leads to a bathroom. Moving into the bathroom, he approaches a mirror, seeking out his reflection -- he has aged. But more importantly, there is no sign of recognition or shock in his eyes as he takes in his appearance.

There is a strange gibberish echoing from somewhere, possibly the voices of the Aliens themselves, as they study and examine him.

Then he hears a clinking sound emanating from the bedroom -- there is someone sitting at a table, with his back to him. The figure slowly stands up and walks over to the bathroom -- it is Bowman, now considerably older. He looks around, as if to see if someone else there; but he is alone.

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The fourth monolith.

Bowman returns to the table, to continue eating his dinner; there is no sign of disorientation in him now as he proceeds to partake of the food that has been provided to him. It is as though his mind is being drained from him – he now behaves as if the room is and always was, his home. As he eats, he accidentally knocks a glass over, to break on the floor. The event makes him stop and think. As he looks at the broken glass, he hears the sound of laboured breathing. He looks up, and sees a figure lying on the bed; it is himself aged to the point of mummification – he is dying.

Kubrick: "The ending was altered shortly before shooting it. In the original, there was no transformation of Bowman. He just wandered around the room and finally saw the artifact. But this didn't seem like it was satisfying enough, or interesting enough, and we constantly searched for ideas until we finally came up with the ending as you see it." -- The Making of Kubrick's 2001

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"Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." -- 2001

The shriveled man on the bed notices something at the foot of the bed He lifts his arm and attempts to rise, reaching for it -- the fourth Monolith. This time, there is no sound as the ebon block appears; the process is swift and certain. If man could be made from the ape, what could be made from man? The transformation is complete and the human who had once called himself Dave Bowman is no more -- on the bed there is a glowing, figure resembling a child – a child of the stars, a Star Child. Silent and unmoving, the child's eyes hint at intelligence beyond that of ape or man.

The chords of Zarathustra echoes once more, and the planet Earth reappears – the reborn voyager returns from his long and shocking odyssey, to gaze once again at the world of his beginnings, the blue planet known as Earth.

According to Kubrick, "He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny."

Sound and music

Music

Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal experience, one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. In many respects, 2001 harks back to the central power that music had in the era of silent film.

The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial records. Major feature films were (and still are) typically accompanied by elaborate film scores and/or songs written especially for them by professional composers. But although Kubrick started out by commissioning an original orchestral score, he later abandoned this, opting instead for pre-recorded tracks sourced from existing recordings, becoming one of the first major movie directors to do so, and beginning a trend that has now become commonplace.

In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick explained:

"However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time? When you are editing a film, it's very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the scene...Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary tracks can become the final score."

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Many of the film's space scenes were given a new sense of depth and intrigue, due to the use of a classical score for the film's soundtrack.

2001 uses works by several classical composers. It features music by Aram Khachaturian (from the Gayaneh ballet suite) and famously used Johann Strauss II's best known waltz, On The Beautiful Blue Danube, during the spectacular space-station rendezvous and lunar landing sequences. 2001 is especially remembered for its use of the opening from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra (or "Thus spoke Zarathustra" in English), which has become inextricably associated with the film and its imagery and themes. The film's soundtrack also did much to introduce the modern classical composer György Ligeti to a wider public, using extracts from his Requiem, Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna and (in an altered form) Aventures.

In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the stirring score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. But on 2001 Kubrick did much of the filming and editing, using as his guides the classical recordings which eventually became the music track. In March of 1966 MGM became concerned about 2001's progress and Kubrick put together a show reel of footage to the ad hoc soundtrack of classical recordings. The studio bosses were delighted with the results and Kubrick decided to use these "guide pieces" as the final musical soundtrack, and he abandoned North's score. Unfortunately Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used, and to his great dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie at the première. North's soundtrack has since been recorded commercially and was released shortly before his death. Similarly, Ligeti was unaware that his music was in the film until alerted by friends. He was at first unhappy about some of the music used, and threatened legal action over Kubrick's use of an electronically "treated" recording of Aventures in the "interstellar hotel" scene near the end of the film.

Hal's haunting version of the popular song "Daisy Daisy" (Daisy Bell) was inspired by a computer synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories Murray Hill facility when he was coincidentally visiting friend and colleague John Pierce. At that time, a remarkable speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr who created one of the most famous moments in the history of Bell Labs by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell", with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later told Kubrick to use it in the film.

Dialogue

Alongside its use of music, the dialogue in 2001 is another notable feature, although the relative lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues has baffled many viewers. One of the film's most striking features is that there is no dialogue whatsoever for the first twenty minutes or the entire last segment (23 minutes) of the film—the entire narrative of these sections is carried by images, actions, sound effects, and two title cards.

Only when the film moves into the postulated "present" of 2000 and 2001 do we encounter characters who speak. By the time shooting began, Kubrick had deliberately jettisoned much of the intended dialogue and narration, and what remains is notable for its apparently banal nature—an announcement about the lost cashmere sweater, the awkwardly polite chit-chat between Floyd and the Russian scientists, or his comments about the sandwiches en route to the monolith site. The exchanges between Poole and Bowman on board the "Discovery" are similarly flat, unemotional and generally lack any major narrative content. Kubrick clearly intended that the subtext of these exchanges—what is not said, that is—should be the real, meaningful content. At one point during the film, HAL lip-reads a conversation between Poole and Bowman (they have secured themselves in one of the ship's pods for this conversation, wishing HAL not to hear them, his apparent failure being the object of their discussion). This further indicates the centrality of silence and 'sub textual speaking' to the film.

Narrative through Ambient Sound

Kubrick's unique treatment of narrative in 2001 is perhaps best exemplified by the scene in which the HAL-9000 computer murders the three hibernating astronauts while Bowman is outside the ship trying to rescue Poole. The inhuman nature of the murders is conveyed with chilling simplicity, in a scene that contains only three elements.

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Other than the alarm sounds and the constant background hiss of the ship's environmental system, the entire scene is enacted with no dialogue, no music, and no physical movement of any kind.

When HAL disconnects the life support systems, we see a flashing warning sign, COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, shown full-screen and accompanied only by the sound of a shrill alarm beep; this is intercut with static shots of the hibernating astronauts, encased in their sarcophagus-like pods, and close-up full-screen shots of the life-signs monitor of each astronaut. As the astronauts begin to die, the warning changes to LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL and we see the vital signs on the monitors beginning to level out. Finally, when the three sleeping astronauts are dead, there is only silence and the ominously banal flashing sign, LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED.

"The film combines eerie contemporary music with classical waltzes and ballet suites, grunts and snarls with pneumatic hisses and synthesized beeps. One character has a rough, throaty voice but a computer talks with a soft, mellifluous tone (the classic characterization of a smooth-talking villain). Space is accurately depicted as a truly silent vacuum, but Technological Man fills this world with the sound of circulating air systems, humming computers and hissing doors. 2001 is alive with sound, and most of it is environmental. That is, most of it is ambient."

"The legacy of 2001's Ambient music sound design is clear in later films such as George Lucas's THX 1138, Carroll Ballard's Never Cry Wolf, David Lynch's The Elephant Man (film), Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Filmmakers became far more conscious of the revolutionary possibilities that effective sound editing offered. Noise, quiet, eclectic effects, all contribute to a scene's power, but treating a film as an extended sonic performance, as well as visual, expanded the art." -- D.B. Spalding [2]

Academy Awards

Award	Person
Best Visual Effects	Stanley Kubrick
Nominated:
Best Original Screenplay	Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke
Best Art Direction	Anthony Masters Harry Lange Ernest Archer
Best Director	Stanley Kubrick

Interpretation of the Film

Main article: Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analyzed and interpreted by multitudes of people ranging from professional movie critics to amateur writers and science fiction fans. Film criticism has existed since the earliest days of the motion picture, but 2001 holds a place unique in film history due to its openness to interpretation by audiences.

Due to a Spartan use of dialogue, powerful imagery, realistic special effects and a use of ambient sound far ahead of its time, Kubrick created a film that can be interpreted in many ways by different people. He encouraged people to create their own interpretations of the film, and he refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened" in the movie, preferring instead to let audiences embrace their own ideas and theories. In an interview with Playboy magazine, in 1968, Kubrick stated, "You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophy and allegorical meaning of the film -- and such speculation is indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point."

Scientific accuracy

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Spaceship USSS Discovery launching an EVA pod. Note the deliberately non-aerodynamic design of both craft.

In general, the film is extremely realistic: it is one of the few science-fiction films to accurately portray space (an approximate vacuum) as having no sound and to have spaceships producing no sound while traveling through space.

Much has also been made of the reality of 2001 with regard to its accurate portrayal of weightlessness on board the Discovery. The film itself draws attention to this, with impressive tracking shots inside the rotating "wheel" which provides artificial gravity, contrasting it with the weightlessness outside the wheel such as during the repair or the HAL disconnection scenes. The scenes in the pod bay where the astronauts are walking may be explained by a 'velcro'-like coating of the floor, which explains the oddly slow pace of the walk.

The film does, however, have a number of minor failures of scientific accuracy such as:

• The height of lunar mountains was overestimated, as the film was made before the lunar expeditions of the Apollo program, and because meteoric erosion was underestimated.
• The gravity in Clavius base simulates that of Earth's rather than lunar gravity, although it is conceivable that the briefing takes place in a centrifuge, simulating normal gravity.
• The thermal radiators on Discovery One, originally intended to be included, were eventually removed from the design because Kubrick felt they looked too much like wings.
• In the EVA shots of "Discovery One," the background stars are seen to be slowly moving in relation to the ship. This is inaccurate -- the stars are too far away and the ship's speed too slow in relation to them for them to appear to move. Kubrick was aware of the inaccuracy of these shots but ignored the issue for artistic license, because if presented accurately the shots lacked visual movement, looking like still images. However, another interpretation is that the entire Discovery stack rotates end-over-end and the "camera" is rotating synchronously with Discovery against the fixed stars.
• The dust blown up by the exhaust of the lunar shuttle is seen to billow up from the landing pad, rather than radiate out in straight lines, as would happen in the near-vacuum of the lunar surface.
• A further inaccuracy seemingly ignored by many commentators is the varying phases of the Earth as seen from the Moon during the landing maneuvers of the Aries 1B moon ship (an error of continuity as well as science).
• There are various places in the film where planets "magically" align, for artistic purposes, in defiance of reality.
• In the sequence in which David Bowman blows the hatch on his space pod to regain entry to Discovery's airlock, there is a shot with Dave rebounding in the airlock chamber, while his space pod is still sitting just outside the airlock door. Since the pod is not fixed to Discovery, the blowing of the hatch would have caused the pod to move away on the thrust of its escaping atmosphere—though rather slowly, given a rough estimation of the mass and speed of ejected air (and Bowman), and mass of the pod. This being said, it is not impossible that the ejection procedure involves automatic compensation by the thruster of the pod, as in stationkeeping.
• There is a somewhat famous, though small, technical error when Heywood Floyd is flying to the moon. Supposedly in a weightless state, he sips through a straw, and when he lets go of it, the fluid slides back into the container. This is not necessarily an error, however. Although there would be no gravitational force to pull the fluid in space, Floyd might have created a slight vacuum in the container when his lips were on the straw. This could have been sufficient to pull the liquid back into the container. Another explanation for this might be that the tips of the straws seem to be fitted with some types of small valves which, ideally, would prevent the liquid from escaping once the sipping was over.

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The Centrifuge in Discovery One – seen here, astronaut Frank Poole is jogging around its circumference like a hamster in a cage.

• Though the crew quarters in the spaceship Discovery are arranged in a rotating wheel to simulate gravity, the wheel's small radius would require a fairly rapid RPM (five to ten RPM depending on the actual radius) to produce earth-like gravity. It is suggested that the human body becomes dizzy, nauseated and disoriented when exposed to high Coriolis forces, and few if any humans could become accustomed to high levels of rotation. In addition, the amount of gravity exerted on the human body would vary between the feet, waist and head. A better design to reduce the gradient of centripetal force would have been to rotate the entire ship, and have the crew section and the drive section swinging from the central AE-35/Antenna structure tethered by strong cables. However, this is assuming the crew quarters rotate to simulate Earth gravity. Were the purpose to simulate, say, lunar gravity, the section could rotate much more slowly.
• In one scene, a flight attendant grabs the pen of a sleeping Heywood Floyd as it floats in zero gravity inside a spaceship cabin. The pen is rotating, but it is not rotating about its own center of mass; instead, it is rotating about a center that is significantly external to the pen. This happens because, in reality, the pen was mounted on a large, transparent, rotating disk from which the actress playing the flight attendant plucked it, and it was not mounted at the center of the disk. In an actual zero-gravity environment, some force would have to be acting upon the pen in order to compel it to rotate around anything other than its own center of mass.

Predictions

Some of the film's predictions of the then future turned out to be inaccurate:

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This vision of a giant underground moonbase is the most inaccurate of Kubrick's predictions. The political and financial commitment necessary to build such a place would exceed the GNP of the entire world.

• Space travel is incorrectly portrayed as being commonplace by 2001. In the film,
  • colonies have been established on the moon,
  • manned missions to Jupiter are feasible,
  • and technology is available to place humans in "suspended animation".
• HAL's speech, understanding and self-determining abilities exceed the actual year 2001 state of the art by orders of magnitude.
• The survival of Pan Am airlines, Howard Johnson's restaurants, and the Bell System to the year 2001.

Accurate predictions, however, include:

• Ubiquitous computers.
• Flat-screen computer monitors (these were simulated by rear projection in the film).
• Small, portable, flat-screen televisions.
• In-flight television screens with a wide aspect.
• The tedium of space travel.
• Glass cockpits in spacecraft.
• The proliferation of TV stations (the BBC's channels numbering at least 12).
• Telephone numbers with more digits than in the 1960s.
• The survival of corporations like IBM and Hilton Hotels to the year 2001.
• The ability of a computer to beat an average human player easily at a game of chess.
• The use of credit cards with data stripes, for use as with ATM machines. (The card Heywood Floyd inserts into the telephone is an American Express card; a close-up photo of the prop reveals that it contained a barcode rather than a magnetic strip, but the principle is the same.)

The ship's computer interfaces, with numerous small screens displaying FORTRAN code and merely schematic drawings, are often seen as a failure to predict multiple "windows" and graphical user interfaces. However, as embedded systems applications often have Spartan interfaces, this claim is disputed.

Acclaim

Upon release, 2001 received mostly positive reviews, and quickly gained a cult following (its psychedelic visual imagery was quickly embraced by the counterculture). Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale" [3] Yet the movie also had its detractors. Critic Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie"[4], and Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called it "a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull"[5].

2001 earned one Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. It was nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Kubrick), and Original Screenplay (Kubrick, Clarke). The film was not nominated, however, for Costume Design, despite the fact that Planet of the Apes did receive a nomination for its ape suits, which are generally considered less convincing than those in 2001 (some believe the Academy thought that they used REAL apes in the film, as evidenced by the chimpanzees). 2001: A Space Odyssey is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was number 22 on AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movies, number 40 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills included on its 100 Years, 100 Quotes ("Open the pod bay doors, HAL."), and been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In 2002, the international association of the leading Internet-based cinema journalists, The Online Film Critics Society (OFCS), celebrated the first century of science fiction filmmaking with a list of the Top 100 Sci-Fi Films of the Past 100 Years. Number one on the list, is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. [6]

Sequels and offshoots

Kubrick did not envisage or plan on a sequel to 2001. Fearing that the props from his project would be recycled in other science-fiction films, he ordered the destruction of the film's sets and unused footage, to the dismay of MGM Studios ("2001: Filming the Future", by Piers Bizony). However, Clarke eventually created three sequels, including one film.

Novels

Clarke went on to write three sequel novels. The first was subsequently adapted into a film, but there has been no serious discussion of filmmakers adapting the other two for the screen.

• 2010: Odyssey Two (1982)
• 2061: Odyssey Three (1987)
• 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)

Film

A sequel film, entitled 2010: The Year We Make Contact, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two and was released in 1984. Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which was directed by Peter Hyams in a straightforward style, without Kubrick's mysticism. The film is generally considered to lack the impact of the original, although Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel. (interview with STARLOG magazine)

Comics

Main article: 2001: A Space Odyssey (comics)

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Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published both a Jack Kirby-written and drawn adaptation of the film, and a Kirby-created 10-issue monthly series "expanding" on the ideas of the film and novel.

Filmed but unused scenes

Kubrick actually filmed scenes which did not make the first cut. These include a schoolroom scene at the Clavius moon base in which Kubrick's own daughter appeared in the cast, and the purchase of a bush baby in a futuristic department store for Heywood Floyd's little girl who appeared in the video phone scene. Arthur C. Clarke's non-fiction memoir The Lost Worlds of 2001 recounts a number of versions that did not make it to celluloid. A notorious perfectionist like Orson Welles, Kubrick insisted on a final cut of 2001 which left about 10 minutes on the floor after the April 1968 premiere. This footage includes some redundant spacewalk material and a scene where Bowman retrieves a spare antenna part from a hexagonal corridor. MGM made publicity still from this which was used as a lobby card. Since Kubrick was afraid of the later exploitation of his material, all prints of unused scenes are said to have been burned -- and thus lost forever.

Trivia

Note: This section is for trivia concerning the movie itself. For external references to the movie, see the section below entitled "Spoofs and references."

• Bowman's arrival in the hotel room has since become a science fiction cliché for situations where a vastly powerful being must construct a benign environment for a human. Kubrick and Clarke were not the first to use the motif of a commonplace earth environment being presented to an earthman by aliens:

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The motif of a commonplace earth environment being presented to an earthman by aliens was not uniqe to 2001, as in The Twilight Zone episode People Are Alike All Over

• • In Mars is Heaven (Planet Stories, Fall 1948) by Ray Bradbury, when an expidition arrives on Mars, the crew find a typical town of the 1920s filled with their long lost loved ones. The Martians have used the memories of the astronauts to lure them into their old houses to be murdered in the middle of the night.
  • In The Twilight Zone episode "People Are Alike All Over," a scientist named Samuel Conrad (Roddy McDowall) survives his ship's crashlanding on the planet Mars. He discovers that Martians are human in appearance, friendly, and seemingly just like us. The Martians present Conrad with a surprise: a house built exactly like one on Earth. Conrad is left alone inside, but soon realizes that the building has no windows and all the doors are locked. Suddenly, a wall slides upward, revealing that he is now a specimen in a zoo. This episode was broadcast three years before Clarke was contacted by Kubrick to begin work on 2001.

• Some people have compared the shape of Discovery One to a human sperm, with Jupiter being an ovum. They emphasize this by the birth of the Star Child at the end. Douglas Trumbul, in an interview, refuted this statement. According to Jerome B. Agel's Making of Kubrick's 2001, the ship was modeled after a human skeleton (head, spine, and hip). This can be seen in the scenes when Bowman takes out B-pod for EVA—the ship resembles a person opening his/her mouth to protrude the tongue. [7]
• Stanley Kubrick and his team tried several variants of the alien artifacts. One of the early favored designs was a tetrahedron, but Kubrick later rejected this because people would believe there was a connection with the pyramids. A transparent version of the familiar rectangular monolith was also constructed out of perspex, but it proved too difficult to light and shoot effectively and Kubrick then had the prop remade in its final form of a black slab.
• After seeing a documentary entitled To the Moon and Beyond at the 1964 New York World's Fair, Kubrick hired one of its special effects technicians, Douglas Trumbull, to work on 2001.
• It has been claimed that the psychedelic "stargate sequence" that concludes the film, entitled "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite", matches perfectly with the Pink Floyd song, "Echoes", just as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is believed to synchronize well with the movie The Wizard of Oz. [8]
• The first portion of the psychedelic "stargate sequence" was made using Slit-Scan photography, a camera technique in which bands of color from a thin slit are projected onto photographic film. [9] The images used for this sequence can be viewed in their original form using Slit-Scan unraveling techniques. [10] Some of the revealed images appear to be photographs from nature (flowers, coral, etc.) and geometric light shapes.
• When Frank Poole's parents sing "Happy Birthday" in a transmission to the Discovery, each sings in tune - but in different keys (his father in E Major, his mother in A Major).

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The logos for HAL and IBM for compaison.

• It has been frequently noted that "HAL" is "IBM", shifted one letter back (to indicate that he does Big Blue one better). Clarke insists that this is a coincidence; HAL is an amalgam of "heuristic" and "algorithmic," the two main processes of learning. However, the light blue color around the word resembles IBM's own blue color. See HAL 9000.

• In the French version of the film, HAL is referred to as CARL, for "Cerveau Analytique de Recherche et de Liaison" ("Analytic Research and Communication Brain"), and "Daisy Bell", the song HAL sings, is replaced by "Au Clair de la Lune".
• In the German version of the film, "Daisy Bell", the song HAL sings, is replaced by Hänschen Klein.
• In the Italian version of the film, "Daisy Bell", the song HAL sings, is replaced by "Giro giro tondo".

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Douglas Trumbull eventually re-used much of his early designs for the planet Saturn in his 1972 film Silent Running.

• The book's description of the moon Japetus curiously closely describes another Saturnian moon, Mimas; this was a coincidence, as close-up images of Saturn's moons did not become available until 1980. According to Clarke, in the foreword to the 30th anniversary edition of 2001, this destination was removed from the movie version because Kubrick felt the special effects created to depict Saturn and its rings were not realistic enough. Special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull eventually re-used much of his early designs for Saturn in his 1972 film Silent Running.

• 2001 was filmed at the same time and in the same studios as the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice, and Arthur C. Clarke is believed to have made a brief non-speaking cameo appearance in one scene of the latter film. In addition, the TV series The Prisoner was also being filmed next door, and series star/executive producer Patrick McGoohan borrowed a piece of special effects footage made for 2001 (namely an image of stars in the night sky) for use in a scene for his show.
• Almost all of the American actors featured were expatriates who happened to be living in London, making it cheaper to hire them.
• Comedian Ronnie Corbett was employed for the make up tests for the Ape Men; it is reported that the results were too disturbing, and a much revised approach is seen in the film. Corbett did not act in the film.
• The "Dawn of Man" scenes (except for "Moonwatcher" demolishing the tapir skeleton with a bone) were all filmed in the studio using a system of front projection for the backgrounds as this would not show up on the Ape costumes.
• With the exception of two baby chimpanzees, all of the apes in the beginning of the film were played by mimes, dancers and actors in costumes.
• Many different techniques were tried to achieve the effect of the pen floating in zero gravity on the flight to the space station. In the end a sheet of clear perspex was placed in front of the camera to which the pen was glued. The actress playing the crew attendant simply pulled the pen off the plastic. Small scratches in the plastic occasionally can be seen on some high definition sets playing a DVD copy, or when the film is screened in theatres. An attempt was made to use a similar technique in filming 2010, when Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) demonstrates how the Alexei Leonov can escape Jupiter space ahead of the launch schedule, but never could work right. Special effects were used instead.
• The line of dialogue "See you next Wednesday", spoken by Frank Poole's parents in the transmitted birthday greeting, has become a famous in-joke in the films of John Landis.

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The living quarters set for the Discovery seen from the outside.

• The living quarters for the Discovery was built by aircraft manufacturer Vickers-Armstrong inside a 12-meter by two-meter drum designed to rotate at five km per hour. A camera could operate through a slot in the centre of the set while Kubrick directed the action from outside, using a closed-circuit TV system. It cost $750,000, nearly 10% of the whole budget, but due to cuts made by Kubrick is only used to its full effect in a small number of scenes.
• The English actor Nigel Davenport was hired to read the dialogue for HAL but Kubrick dismissed him as the accent was too distracting. Martin Balsam was also tried for the voice of HAL but Kubrick found his voice too emotional. Sometime during post-production, Canadian actor Douglas Rain was hired to voice HAL. It is believed that Keir Dullea (David Bowman) and Rain have never actually met in person.
• The original scripted ending has the Star Child set off the orbiting nuclear devices seen (though not explained) in the "Blue Danube" sequence. Kubrick concluded this was too similar to the ending of Dr. Strangelove and so opted for the more ambiguous and optimistic ending scene. The author of a "Making of 2001" book explained this, making note of the meaning of the song sung at the ending of Dr. Strangelove: "We WON'T Meet Again!"
• At Kubrick's request, first assistant director Derek Cracknell had his baby daughter Sarah screen-tested to be the Star Child. The footage ultimately went unused, and a model of the baby appears in the finished film. Sarah Cracknell, however, would go on to a different sort of stardom as singer with the British indie band Saint Etienne. When asked in interviews why her footage was not used, Sarah has joked that she looked "too cute".
  • Also, in Robert Bloch's autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, he recalls that, upon seeing the Space Baby while visiting the set in the company of Arthur C. Clarke, he exclaimed "Arthur! it looks just like you!"
• The main working title for the film was Journey Beyond the Stars. Kubrick came up with the present title 8 months into productions after going over many other suggested titles like Universe, Tunnel to the Stars, How The Solar System Was Won, and Planetfall. [11]
• The version of Also Sprach Zarathustra used in the film was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and originally released on Decca. It is unaccredited in 2001 because Decca didn't want to be associated with a "sci-fi" movie (although it did license the piece for the film). Deutsche Grammophon, who supplied the rest of the music in the film, was happy to be credited and ended up with the best-selling soundtrack album (throughout Europe; in the US the album was released on MGM Records). However, on that album DG was forced to substitute Karajan's Zarathustra with a version by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Karl Böhm.

File:2001 pnone call.jpg

Floyd makes a picturephone call to his young daughter, played by a four-year-old Vivian Kubrick

• Vivian Kubrick, his daughter, had an unaccredited guest role as Squirt (Floyd's daughter).

• The Korean version of the film's title translates to "Planet of the Monkeys"

• The composition of the Clavius landscape scene is itself an almost exact copy of a similar moon base scene from an earlier Soviet sci-fi film directed by Pavel Klushantsev, and there is evidence to suggest that Kubrick lifted several other plot, scenic and design elements from Kluzantsev's work, notably from Planeta Bur (1962).

References in Other Kubrick Films

• The album cover of the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey is clearly visible in the record-shop scene of A Clockwork Orange, another film directed by Stanley Kubrick.
• In Eyes Wide Shut, an advertisement on the side of a building seen in the exterior New York sequences reads "BOWMAN."

Spoofs and references

Many an influential and popular work of art is subject to imitation and parody, and 2001 is no exception:

• HAL/S is an aerospace-oriented computer language used in the Space Shuttle.
• On the morning of January 1, 2001, visitors of Seattle, Washington's Magnuson Park discovered a metallic monolith atop Kite Hill. The oblong object measured approximately three feet wide by nine feet tall and appeared to be hollow. It did not stand for long. Sometime during the wee hours of January 3, the monolith disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived. At the same time, artist and Blue Moon Tavern regular Caleb Schaber revealed that he and a band of anonymous collaborators calling themselves "Some People" had fabricated the device and several smaller versions placed around Seattle.
• George Lucas, known for creating homages to earlier films in his own films, stated in his DVD commentary to his most recent film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, that he made a homage to the 2001 Clavius Base. It is when the establishing shot of Polis Massa is seen. Polis Massa was specifically designed to be an asteroid base that looked very similar to the Clavius Base seen in 2001. In fact, two people in space suits are shown in Revenge of the Sith in similar positions on the asteroid as the scene in 2001. The opening shot of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope may have been not so much an affectionate "homage" to 2001 as a copy of Kubrick's striking visual of a gigantic spaceship moving overhead. Lucas did the same in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace where an object in Watto's salvage yard was the pod used on the Discovery in the film 2010.
• A good portion of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is inspired by 2001, including:
  • Opening overture over a black screen (replaced by an animated star field in the director's edition)
  • The slow entry of the new Enterprise without any dialogue is similar to the first shots of the space stations in 2001.
  • The Enterprise's journey through the V'Ger cloud is very similar to some of the stargate sequence.
  • Mr. Spock's "V'ger Spacewalk" contains similar shots, camera angles and lighting effects to that of Bowman's stargate voyage.
  • When Mr. Spock floats back to the Enterprise after the mind-meld, the camera angle used is similar to that used in 2001 when Bowman catches Poole with the pod claws.
• In Star Trek: First Contact it is revealed that the magnetic-constrictor-locks that hold the ship's deflector dish in place are designated "AE-35" units after the device in 2001.
• A truncated version of the hotel room from 2001 can also be seen at the end of the Farscape miniseries The Peacekeeper Wars when Harvey (mimiking the Bowman deathbed scene) reaches out to John telling him that he has to leave him.
• In the Futurama episode Love and Rocket, the Planet Express Ship's computer is upgraded. The appearance of the new AI unit is identical to HAL.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 spoofed 2001 on several occasions.

1. during episode #512, "Mitchell" (the last to star Joel Hodgson), Gypsy learns of the Mad’s' plot to kill Joel similarly to how HAL learns of the plan to disconnect him, in a clone of the "lip-reading" scene from 2001 (albeit with audible dialogue).
2. The theatrical film opens with a sequence that mocks the scene of Frank Poole jogging through Discovery's carousel; Mike Nelson is shown similarly jogging inside a hamster wheel-like device covered with the same pattern of floor tile as the centrifuge, and afterward he drinks from a giant water bottle.
3. A running-gag on the show occurs whenever the films they watch cut to black (for seemingly too long) someone will quip, "18 months later."
4. And finally, episode #706, "Laserblast" (the final Comedy Central-era episode), ends with Dr. Forrester living through the "transcendental hotel room" sequence from the end of 2001; the Monolith is replaced in this scene by a giant videocassette labeled "The Worst Movie Ever Made" (presumably not a comment on 2001 itself).

• The Japanese video game developer HAL Laboratory, Inc. took its name from the HAL 9000 computer.
• In the Jimmy Neutron episode "Men at Work" Jimmy, the consummate inventor, creates a computerized fast food restaurant that is meant to satisfy everyone's desires. It contains the same characteristic "red camera" as the HAL 9000 and also goes berserk when Jimmy's father isn't completely satisfied, destroying all competition in town.

File:Deep Space Homer1f13.jpg

Homer Simpson as the Star Child.

• Various episodes of The Simpsons have spoofed many different parts of the movie, especially [1F13] "Deep Space Homer", which contains many references to 2001, not the least of which the famous potato chip-eating scene. The stargate sequence was parodied in a season 2 episode when Homer tests a massage chair. Another example is the episode Maximum Homerdrive, where Homer is driving a truck with a built-in device that normally would get him out of trouble, but he was approaching the Convoy and it said, "I'm afraid I can't let you do this, Red!" Instead of trying to stop Homer however, the box simply jettisoned itself out the truck's sunroof. Another reference occurs in the episode "House of Whacks" in the Treehouse of Horror XII episode where the Simpson house is fitted with a HAL-like computer (red fish-eye lens included), voiced by Pierce Brosnan, that falls in love with Marge and tries to murder Homer. Also, the season three episode, Lisa's Pony, starts off with a Dawn of Man seqeunce in which there are a bunch of ape-men, one looking like Homer. The ape-men see the monolith and then it cuts to one monkey making a tool, the next one starting a fire, and a third making a wheel. The Homer ape, however, leans against the monolith and falls asleep.

• Sesame Workshop made several references to 2001, particularly animated cartoon references used on The Electric Company, which featured a truncated version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (just the opening fanfare and repetitive kettledrum thumping) and a white version of the monolith which, during the thumping of the kettledrum, would break up and crumble away revealing a small word or a letter combination subsequently pronounced by a deep deistic voice, i.e.. "oo, "ow", "all", "alk", etc. One such cartoon, "ee", was a reference to the "Dawn of Man" sequence with a chimpanzee acting as Moon Walker and even touching the monolith like him. Another, "alk", used the stargate sequence with the deistic voice repeating "alk", "Ow" spoofed the monolith and astronaut Dave Bowman in space (he stubs his toe on the monolith right as the kettledrum solo begins and yells "OW" several times just before it crumbles down to reveal "ow"), and "all" was a vague reference to the last scene of the movie, only with elderly Dave Bowman at the table eating dinner, not in his bed. Square One Television, another Sesame Workshop production, had a live action skit spoofing HAL9000, who sings ad nauseam, "Row Row Row Your Boat" until one of the astronauts gives him an unfinishable program; This skit was designed to teach the concept of infinity. And Sesame Street, in addition to two animated cartoons using the 2001 theme and white monolith, "me" and "amor", had a whole episode spoofing the monolith and the "Also Sprach Zarathustra" theme, in which Telly Monster sees two monoliths suddenly appear on the street to the Zarathustra theme; these monoliths are actually meant to resemble the number eleven, which was that episode's featured number.
• In an episode of Dexter's Laboratory titled "Ultra-Jerk 2000", Dexter creates a robot that is an obvious spoof of HAL9000.
• In the Sci-fi Channel show Tripping the Rift, an entire episode is based around Darph Bobo using a monolith of his own creation to subjugate a race of simpler aliens. After he is defeated, it is replaced by a white monolith by the Star Trek Federation look-alikes. The monolith is also parodied in the opening sequence by having the back of a chair loom over the camera with a lamp in place of the sun.
• Airplane II: The Sequel spoofs many parts of 2001 including a computer named "ROK" that tries to kill the crew. Several lines of dialogue are also taken from 2001.
• History of the World, Part I, Mel Brooks' satire of the history of humanity, begins with a scene similar to 2001, except that the ape-men are more self-absorbed. The movie Simon, starring Alan Arkin also mimicked the "ape using a bone as a weapon" sequence.
• Mad Magazine did their obligatory takeoff, titled 201: (Min. of) A Space Idiocy (the words Min. and of were printed within the colon of the title). The actual film ran 139 minutes, after the 156 minute premiere version was recut. Appearing among the ape-men in the first scene is Fred Flintstone in a furry costume. In a nod to the numerous corporate logos appearing in the movie, nearly every panel includes a brand name, and instead of going through a complicated disconnection procedure, Dave simply pulls out HAL (renamed "SID")'s power plug. The monolith is revealed to be a book titled How to Make an Incomprehensible Science Fiction Movie and Several Million Dollars, written by Stanley Kubrick.
• Terry Gilliam spoofed the film in episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus:
  • In an animation sequence an ape-man, after seeing the monolith, throws a bone into the air which then collides with an orbiting spacecraft that crashes to the ground killing the ape man.
  • In another episode, protesters at The Hague are halted by a giant constable head. Also sprach Zarathustra plays, the head lowers to reveal Jupiter, which lowers to reveal Earth, which is kicked by a soccer player, headed by others, and finally bounces into a pedestal for the title screen of a "World Forum" game show.
• A Hägar the Horrible comic strip from 1985 (when 2010: Odyssey Two was playing in theatres) shows Hagar and Lucky Eddie encountering a huge black monolith, wondering if it might be there to show them new knowledge: then it falls on them a moment later.
• A Japanese anime "Magical Shopping Arcade Abenoshi" episode: While the characters explore the space shopping arcade Sasshi grabs several monoliths on display, and exclaims how these monoliths makes you smarter and begins acting like moon-watcher.
• A short, light-hearted stop-motion animation spoof of the behavior of some of the film's characters (as well as some slapstick) has been created using lego blocks and figures, called ONE: A Space Odyssey [12].
• An episode of Animaniacs featured a talking computer named 'Al' that was revealed to be an animated Al Gore hiding in the computer. After being revealed, he said "I have the utmost confidence in this administration," parodying a line of HAL 9000's about his "mission."
• An episode of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show featured a miniature pizza maker designed to look like HAL 9000, which was given to Mario and Luigi as a gift from a kooky scientist. The pizza maker works fine for a while, churning out pizzas with conventional toppings until it begins to go haywire and start making pizzas with bizarre toppings (like pencils, sneakers, etc.). When the scientists finally shuts it down, it even begins to sing "Daisy Bell"...just like HAL 9000 did in the movie, except it replaced one of the lines with "Gimme my stinkin' toothbrush now!"
• Fans of ABC's hit Lost have compared the scene in the season one episode "Whatever the Case May Be" where Sawyer, in an attempt to open the mysterious suitcase throws said suitcase from a tree to open it via impact velocity to the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey where the man-apes are shown smashing objects against rocks.
• In Good bye, Lenin!, Denis, the friend of Alex, made a wedding movie in which there is a scene where a flying flowers bouquet changes to a cake in an explicit homage to the famous match cut in The Dawn of Man.
• In a January, 2001 FoxTrot comic, Jason stands dressed in an ape suit in front of a large wall made of snow (similar to the monolith). He throws bones in the air several times before stating that "I thought 2001 would be more futuristic"
• In Land of Confusion, a video by the British rock group Genesis, a bone is thrown up in the air, the camera following the movement as in the opening scene of 2001. As it comes down, it becomes a phone which the singer picks up and in which he starts talking.
• In one episode of Eek! the Cat, when on a spaceship, Eek says, "Open the pod bay doors, HAL!" and then there is a HAL that says "I'm sorry Dave, but I'm afraid I can't do that!" Eek replies with, "Dave? Who's Dave? I'm Eek!" and then HAL says, "Oh, sorry."
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Frankendoodle", a giant pencil appears in a similar way as the monolith, and SpongeBob and Patrick react similarly to the early humans in the movie.
• In the Transformers: Cybertron episode "Landmine", when Hotshot is on the racetrack on Earth and is about to give away his true identity as a Cybertronian, Optimus Prime says "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it!"
• In the 1996 blockbuster movie Independence Day, as Jeff Goldblum's character David Levinson activates his laptop computer on board the alien craft, it welcomes him with a very HAL-like "Good morning, Dave" and has a HAL themed desktop wallpaper.
• In the beginning of Shaolin Soccer, an alignment of the Sun, Moon, Earth, and a Buddhist monk's head is seen.
• In the beginning of the movie 2001: A Space Travesty (An obvious play on the true title), there is a scene with a howling ape-man and a monolith in which the narrator says "And then God came, and He spoke," as a hand of God appears on the top of the screen. God says "Shut up, you stupid monkey." and pushes the monolith over, crushing the ape-man.
• In the Fox series Millennium (1996-1999), [13] the main character, Frank Black, uses the 2001 quote, "Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL" [14] as his voice password to gain access to his computer.
• In the movie Catch-22, the music from the opening strains of Also sprach Zarathustra are played when Capt. John Yossarian sees an amazingly attractive Italian woman walk past. The film was made in 1970, two years after 2001.
• In the movie Spaceballs, the long slow opening shot where the ship slowly floats by is supposedly a spoof of the Discovery from 2001.
• In the PC Game Duke Nukem 3D, by 3D Realms, there is a level where the hero of the game fights aliens in the moon. There is a cave where he runs to find a black monolith. And he can enter the monolith to be teleported to another part of the level.
• In the penultimate scene of Irréversible (2002) a poster for the film with the Starchild and the tag line, "The Ultimate Trip" appears. A miniature of the space pod also appears in the background during this scene.
• One of the first scenes of "Werner: Beinhart" contains a parody on the "Dawn of Man" sequence, instead of using the bone as a tool, the apes find a bottle of beer
• Recently on The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy Eris sticks her head into a bowl of punch and when she comes out she screams "Open the pod gates Hal".
• The machinima comedy series Red vs Blue has a scene in which Sheila, the artificial intelligence in an M808B Main Battle Tank, sings "Daisy Bell" and asks, "Will I dream, Dave?", after being hit by an air strike.
• The 1980's Sierra computer game SpaceQuest III starts in an interstellar garbage scow containing many spacecraft from sci-fi movies, and TV shows. For example there is the Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space, the ACME rocket from The Road Runner Show and many others including a pod from 2001. If you examine the pod there is some graffiti that reads "For a good time, don't call HAL".
• The 2005 film based on the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory contains a lengthy sequence that parodies the monolith from 2001 and features music used in the movie (Also Sprach Zarathustra), as well as a the scene of the "apes discovering the monolith sequence" from the beginning of 2001. In spoof, the monolith is replaced by a Wonka Bar teleported though the television. The eerie, distinctive wailing music from the film is audible, and later on a recreation of the beginning of the "Moon-Watcher discovers tools" sequence is seen.
• The Canadian sketch-comedy show SCTV, spoofed 2001 on more than one occasion. One skit featured a talk show interview with the HAL 9000 computer. Another skit depicted a bad B-movie sequel to 2001, starring Ernest Borgnine and Art Garfunkel (both played by SCTV cast members). This second spoof was aired before the release of the actual sequel, 2010, and was not based on that film.
• The cartoon series "Recess" did an episode spoofing, where a robot named SAL 3000 takes over the school (while being deactivated it sings a song similar to "daisy")
• The film Zoolander features a segment in which two of the main characters reenact the scene in which the monolith is discovered by the ape men, with the monolith replaced by a computer. During this sequence, Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra is played.
• The HAL9000 brain room is often spoofed in such cartoons as South Park and Futurama.
• The intro video to the PC game Startopia is a spoof of the "Dawn of Man" sequence from the movie.
• The movie Clueless features a scene in which a cell phone is shown in a similar way as the monolith is, also featuring "Also Sprach Zarathustra"
• The opening of Ken Shapiro's cult favorite The Groove Tube begins with an almost spot-on recreation of the "Dawn of Man" sequence (almost...one of the apes is playing solitaire with animal-skin "playing cards"!). The monolith is revealed to be a 1960s-vintage console TV set, "Move On Up" by Curtis Mayfield replaces the Ligeti-style chorale on the soundtrack, one of the apes invents music by banging a bone on the ground, and another accidentally rubs two sticks together and discovers fire!
• The opening strains of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra were prominently used to bring Elvis Presley on stage in his concert tours towards the end of his career. This was later copied by the wrestler Ric Flair. This music has also been used in many TV commercials, concerts, and other media events, though, oddly, almost none during the year 2001 itself.
• The real names of two Metal Gear Solid characters are Hal and David. This is found out near the end of the game (Otacon ending) and both characters apparently know of ‘’2001: A Space Odyssey’’, and enjoy a good laugh. David comments that that's a good joke and that maybe they should go to Jupiter sometime.
• The RPGs Xenogears and the Xenosaga series revolve around a mysterious golden monolith referred to as the Zohar, which like the 2001 monolith is present at and is even the catalyst for many events that change mankind profoundly. The first game in the Xenosaga series, Episode I begins when humanity first discovers the Zohar. Episode III, the last game in the series, is titled Also sprach Zarathustra.
• Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973) contains a scene which spoofs HAL in which the evil computer voice is that of Douglas Rain.

DVD release

File:2001dvd.jpeg

The cover of the 2001 DVD release.

2001: A Space Odyssey was released on DVD on June 12, 2001. Presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.20:1, the film was digitally re-mastered from the original 70mm print, and the audio was remixed in 5.1 surround sound.

Reference works about the fim

1. Daniel Richter (Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke). Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Jerome Agel. The Making of Kubrick's 2001. The Agel Publishing Company, 1970. (out of print)
3. Michel Chion. Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. BFI Pub, 2001.
4. Piers Bizony. 2001 Filming the Future
5. Robert Kolker. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey -- New Essays
6. Stephanie Schwam (Editor), Jay Cocks (Introduction). The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. Wheat Leonard F. Kubrick's "2001"

See also

• List of fictional computers
• Movies that have been considered the greatest ever
• Toynbee tiles
• Space colonization in popular culture
• Poole - HAL 9000, an examination of the human vs. computer chess game seen in the film

External links

• Template:Filmsite
• 2001: A Space Odyssey at IMDb
• 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list
• 2001: A Space Odyssey in 3D
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Internet Resource Archive
• 2001 and Beyond the Infinite: Web-based analysis of the film published online in 1996
• 2001 quotes at MovieWavs.com
• A Space Odyssey in Minehead
• Alchemical Kubrick - A favorable review of 2001
• Flash animation offering an analysis of the film
• In depth analysis of the film's deeper meaning
• Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory by Leonard F. Wheat
• Notes on Alex North's 2001 soundtrack (note that this review comments on the "Main Theme" track, which was later identified to be from a different North score, Africa (1967)
• On-line screenplay
• Original news article about Magnuson Park monolith
• Reproduction of the original printed programme
• The Kubrick Site General - Kubrick site with substantial amounts of information about 2001
• Two Views of 2001
• The 2001: A Space Odyssey Collectibles Exhibit