2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey
File:2001Style B.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Written by	Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke Novelization: Arthur C. Clarke
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Keir Dullea Gary Lockwood William Sylvester Daniel Richter Leonard Rossiter voice of Douglas Rain
Cinematography	Geoffrey Unsworth
Edited by	Ray Lovejoy
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	April 6, 1968 (1968-04-06)
Running time	Premiere cut 170 minutes Theatrical cut 141 minutes
Countries	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	$10,500,000
Box office	$191,000,000

2001: A Space Odyssey (occasionally referred to as simply 2001) is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, ambiguous imagery that is open-ended to a point approaching surrealism, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue.

The film has a memorable soundtrack—the result of the association which Kubrick made between the rotary motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes, which led him to use the The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss II, and the famous symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, to portray the philosophical evolution of Man theorized in Nietzsche's homonymous work.

Despite receiving mixed reviews upon release, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today recognized by many critics and audiences as one of the greatest films ever made; the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for visual effects. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in The National Film Registry.

Overview

Title

The first title imagined by Kubrick and Clarke was Journey Beyond the Stars, but Kubrick modified it later. Having the intention to give the film more pomp and grandeur, he used Homer's The Odyssey as inspiration to name the film.

Style

See also: Differences between the film and the novel

Clarke and Kubrick wrote the novel and screenplay simultaneously, but while Clarke ultimately opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and the Star Gate, Kubrick chose to keep the film mysterious and enigmatic with minimal dialogue in order to convey what many viewers have described as a powerful sense of the sublime and numinous, without specific explanations of events. For this reason, an encyclopedic plot summary of this film is difficult.

Plot

DVDs of this film restore the blank screen musical prelude that appeared in the original road-show release though this was not seen in the wider theatrical release of the film or early VHS releases. The viewer sees a blank screen while the theme music "Atmospheres" plays (the same music played during the final StarGate sequence). After about three minutes the music dies out and the MGM logo appears. The title sequence then begins with an image of the Earth rising over the Moon, while the Sun rises over the Earth, all in alignment. (This is the first of three occurrences in the film of the iconic "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" theme. See music section for further discussion of the use of music in the film.)

The Dawn of Man

Over images of an African desert, a caption reads "The Dawn of Man." A tribe of herbivorous apes is foraging for food. One of them is attacked and killed by a leopard. They are driven from their water hole by another tribe. Defeated, they sleep overnight in a small exposed rock crater. Waking at sunrise, they find that a black monolith has appeared in front of their shelter. They approach it shrieking and jumping, and eventually cautiously touch it. Soon after that, one of the apes (Daniel Richter) realizes how to use a bone as both a tool and a weapon. The apes have now learned how to take down prey, and are seen eating meat in a subsequent scene. The next morning, they wrest control of the water hole from the other tribe, killing its leader in the process. Triumphant, the ape leader throws his bone into the air, which switches via match cut from a close-up of the bone to a long shot of an orbital satellite millions of years in the future. This satellite and three more immediately following it are generally identified as orbiting nuclear weapons.

TMA-1

A Pan American space plane flies Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) to Space Station 5 in an elaborate rendezvous and docking sequence, which include iconic and stylized representations of life on a space station. (See Music.) After clearing voice print identification, Floyd makes a videophone call to his daughter (Vivian Kubrick), to wish her a happy birthday. Strolling down the main corridor, he joins a group of Soviet scientists, telling them that he is on his way to Clavius Base, a US base on the moon. One of the scientists, Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter), queries him about what has been going on there, but Floyd declines to answer any more questions when they press him about the rumor that an epidemic has broken out at the US base.

Floyd travels to Clavius in a moon shuttle. There he heads a debriefing session, apologizing for the epidemic cover story. Floyd’s mission is to investigate an artifact dug up on the moon, initially detected by its magnetic signal and named "TMA-1" ("Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One"). Geological evidence shows it was deliberately buried four million years ago. Floyd rides in a Moonbus to the site. In a large pit dug around it, the artifact is a monolith identical to the one encountered by the apes. The visitors examine the monolith and pose for a photo in front of it. As they do, the sun rises over the top of the monolith, which emits an ear-splitting tone.

Jupiter Mission

A title caption reads "Jupiter Mission: Eighteen Months Later." On board the spaceship Discovery One, bound for Jupiter, are two mission pilots, astronauts Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Francis "Frank" Poole (Gary Lockwood), and three scientists in cryogenic hibernation. Bowman and Poole watch a BBC television story about the mission, in which the TV audience is introduced to the ship’s on-board computer HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), which they address as "Hal", who runs most of the ship’s operations. BBC newsreader Kenneth Kendall notes that Hal seems to take pride in his work, as if he has genuine emotions. This is followed by another broadcast of a message from Frank’s parents wishing him a happy birthday.

Later, while Dave is showing Hal some sketches of the hibernating astronauts, Hal asks Dave about the air of mystery and secrecy surrounding the mission. Hal then interrupts himself to state that the AE-35 unit, which controls the antenna that provides communications with Earth, is going to fail within 72 hours. Dave takes an excursion outside of the ship in an EVA pod to replace the unit with a spare. Frank and Dave examine the unit but they are unable to find anything wrong with it. They contact Earth-based ground control, and are told that their on-board HAL 9000 computer is in error predicting the fault. This is shocking, since the 9000 series has a perfect operational record.

Hal insists the problem can only be due to "human error." He suggests placing the unit back and waiting for it to fail. On a pretext, Dave and Frank go into one of the EVA pods to talk without Hal overhearing them. Frank says he has “a bad feeling about it.” They decide to follow Hal's suggestion and replace the unit. Frank says that if Hal is proven to be wrong, he will have to be deactivated. Unbeknownst to them, Hal is reading their lips through the window of the spacepod.

Intermission

The movie resumes with a shorter prelude excerpt from "Atmospheres", again with a blank, black screen. As Frank attempts to replace the AE-35, his spacepod, controlled by Hal, turns and accelerates towards him, severing his oxygen hose and setting him adrift. Dave, not realizing HAL is responsible for Poole's mishap, goes out in another EVA pod, but without his helmet or gloves, to recover Frank. While Dave is gone, the life functions of the crew in suspended animation are terminated. When Dave returns to the ship, he asks Hal to open the pod bay doors to let him inside. Hal refuses to do so, stating that Dave’s plan to disconnect him jeopardizes the mission, with his famous line "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that". Risking death from anoxia, Dave enters the ship manually through the emergency air lock. In his full spacesuit, Dave makes his way to HAL's LOGIC MEMORY CENTER in order to disconnect Hal. Hal tries to reassure him that everything will be all right, but Dave ignores him.

As Dave disconnects one memory module after another from Hal’s circuitry, Hal continues to protest. Eventually he ends up repeating, “My mind is going.” Hal regresses to his earliest memories, singing the song ("Daisy Bell") his instructor taught him on his first operational day. When Hal is disconnected, a monitor displays a pre-recorded message from Dr. Heywood Floyd:

Good day, gentlemen. 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 40 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.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

The Star-Child into whom Dr. Bowman is transformed, looking at Earth.

Dave leaves Discovery One in an EVA pod, and encounters another monolith in orbit around Jupiter. Approaching it, he finds himself suddenly traveling through a tunnel of colored light (termed the “Star Gate” in the novel by Clarke) racing at great speed across vast distances of space viewing strange astronomical phenomena interspersed with shots of a terrified Bowman, concluding with landscapes with altered colors. He eventually finds himself in a bedroom containing Louis XVI-style decor. He repeatedly sees older versions of himself, with the film's points of view each time switching to the older Dave. Finally an elderly and dying David Bowman is lying on the bed. At its foot a monolith appears. It transforms him into a fetus-like being enclosed in a transparent orb of light (termed the “Star-Child” in the novel by Clarke). The final shot shows the “Star-Child” floating in space next to the Earth.

Cast

• Keir Dullea as Dr. David Bowman
• Gary Lockwood as Dr. Frank Poole
• William Sylvester as Dr. Heywood R. Floyd
• Douglas Rain as the voice of the HAL 9000
• Daniel Richter as the chief ape ("Moon-Watcher" in Clarke's novel)
• Leonard Rossiter as Dr. Andrei Smyslov
• Margaret Tyzack as Elena
• Robert Beatty as Dr. Ralph Halvorsen
• Sean Sullivan as Dr. Bill Michaels
• Frank Miller as mission controller
• Bill Weston as Astronaut
• Edward Bishop as Lunar shuttle captain
• Edwina Caroll as Aries stewardess
• Penny Brahms as stewardess
• Heather Downham as stewardess
• Vivian Kubrick as Floyd's daughter (uncredited)
• Glenn Beck as Astronaut
• Alan Gifford as Poole's father (uncredited)
• Ann Gillis as Poole's mother (uncredited)
• Kenneth Kendall as the BBC announcer (uncredited)
• Krystyna Marr as Russian scientist (uncredited)
• Keith Denny as an ape (uncredited)

Production

Writing

Shortly after completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), Kubrick became fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and determined to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie". Searching for a suitable collaborator in the science fiction community, Kubrick was advised to seek out Clarke by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staffer Roger Caras. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick agreed that Caras would cable the Ceylon-based author with the film proposal. Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?"

In early conversations, Kubrick and Clarke jokingly called their project How the Solar System Was Won, an allusion to the 1962 Cinerama epic How the West Was Won. Like that film, Kubrick's production would be divided into distinct episodes. Clarke considered adapting a number of his earlier stories before selecting "The Sentinel", a 'first-contact' story he had published in 1950, as the starting point for the film. The collaborators originally planned to develop a novel first, free of the constraints of a normal script, and then to write the screenplay; they envisaged that the final writing credits would be "Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick", to reflect their preeminence in their respective fields. However, in practice the cinematic ideas required for the screenplay developed parallel to the novel, with cross-fertilisation between the two. In the end, the screenplay credits were shared while the novel, released shortly after the film, was attributed to Clarke alone, but Clarke wrote later that "the nearest approximation to the complicated truth" is that the screenplay should be credited to "Kubrick and Clarke" and the novel to "Clarke and Kubrick".

Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his book The Cosmic Connection that Clarke and Kubrick asked his opinion on how to best depict extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan, while acknowledging Kubrick's desire to use actors to portray humanoid aliens for convenience's sake, argued that alien life forms were unlikely to bear any resemblance to terrestrial life, and that to do so would introduce "at least an element of falseness" to the film. Sagan proposed that the film suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence. He attended the premiere and was "pleased to see that I had been of some help." Sagan related that many Soviet scientists regarded the film to be the best American movie they had seen.

On February 22, 1965, MGM announced it was backing Kubrick's new science fiction film under the title Journey Beyond the Stars. Interviewed by The New Yorker shortly afterwards, Kubrick compared the proposed film to "a space Odyssey", and in April he officially changed the title to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Arthur C. Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001. Clarke's diary reveals that by the time backing was secured for Journey Beyond the Stars in early 1965, the writers still had no firm idea of what would happen to Bowman after the Star Gate sequence, though as early as October 17, 1964 Kubrick had come up with what Clarke called a "wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease". Initially all of Discovery's astronauts were to survive the journey; a decision to leave Bowman as the sole survivor and have him regress to infancy was agreed by October 3, 1965. The computer HAL was originally to have been named "Athena", after the Greek goddess of wisdom, with a feminine voice and persona. Clarke noted that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of HAL's name immediately preceded those of IBM. The meaning of HAL has been given both as "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and as "Heuristic ALgorithmic computer". The former appears in Clarke's novel of 2001 and the latter in his sequel novel 2010.

Filming

Filming of 2001 began December 29, 1965, in Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England. The studio was chosen because it could house the 60'x 120'x 60' pit for the Tycho crater excavation scene, the first to be shot. From 1966, filming was at MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, from where the production was run to facilitate special effects filming; it was described as a "huge throbbing nerve center… with much the same frenetic atmosphere as a Cape Kennedy blockhouse during the final stages of Countdown."

The film was planned to be photographed in 3-film-strip Cinerama (like How the West Was Won), but was changed to Super Panavision 70 (which uses a single-strip 65 mm negative) on the advice of special photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, due to distortion problems with the 3-strip system. Color processing and 35 mm release prints were done using Technicolor's dye transfer process. The 70 mm prints were made by MGM Laboratories, Inc. on Metrocolor. In March 1968, Kubrick finished editing the film, making his final cuts just before the film's general release in April 1968. The production was $4.5 million over the initial $6.0 million budget, and sixteen months behind schedule.

Special effects

Director of Photography Geoffrey Unsworth did not want the film to be complicated with printing effects such as blue screen, so most of the special effects were done as in-camera effects.

This film pioneered retroreflective matting (front projection) in mainstream movie production. The technique was selected to produce the backdrops for the African scenes where apes learn to use tools, as traditional techniques using backdrops or back-projection did not produce a realistic looking result. Existing techniques that used painted backdrops for stills or back-projection for moving scenes simply proved not to be capable of producing the realistic effects Kubrick demanded. The technique was also used for a number of shots during the spacecraft scenes, notably to produce the images seen through windows. The technique has been used widely in the film industry since 2001 pioneered its use, although starting in the 1990s it has been increasingly replaced by green screen systems.

Front projection uses a separate scenery projector arranged at right angles to the camera. A half-silvered mirror splits the light coming out of the projector, with about half of it reflected forward where it falls onto a retroflective backdrop. The image is then reflected back to the camera, along with the normal lighting from the scene. The projected landscape is invisible on the actors because it is much dimmer than the scene illumination, and is only visible in the camera because of the high reflectivity of the background retroflective screen.

Front projection had been used in smaller settings before 2001, but mostly for still-action photography or television production, using small still images and projectors. The expansive backdrops in the African scenes required a backdrop 40 feet tall, far larger than had ever been used before. Using the largest existing projectors based on 4 by 5 inch transparencies resulted in grainy images when projected that large, so the 2001 team worked with MGM's Special Effects Supervisor, Tom Howard, to build a custom projector using 8 by 10 slides and the largest water-cooled arc lamp available. When the reflective material was applied to the backdrop, they discovered roll-to-roll variations that led to obvious visual artifacts, a problem that was solved by tearing the material into small chunks and applying it in a "camouflage" pattern.

Space travel shots were also handled in-camera. The model of the Discovery One spacecraft was moved along a track, mechanically linked to the camera. On the first pass, the model was unlit, masking the star-field. The model and film were returned to the start position, and on the second pass, the model was lit. For the third pass, motion pictures were projected onto front-projection screens in the model's windows, showing the interior of the ship. The result was a film negative that was as sharp as live footage.

For interior shots inside the spacecraft, which was shown to contain a giant centrifuge whose rotation was intended to produce artificial gravitation, Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating "ferris wheel" built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering Group at a cost of $750,000. The set was 38 feet in diameter and 10 feet wide. Various spacecraft interior shots, mostly in the Discovery, were shot by placing the set within the wheel, then rotating it while the actor walked in sync with its motion, leaving them at the bottom of the wheel. The camera could be fixed to show the actor walking "up" the set, or mounted to rotate with the actor, as in the famous jogging scene. The number of shots where the actors appear separated in the wheel are limited, because they required one of the actors to be strapped into place while the wheel moved to allow the other to walk at the bottom. The most notable case is just before Dave and Frank eat while watching the BBC special, which required Gary Lockwood to be strapped into a seat while Keir Dullea walked toward him from the opposite side of the wheel.

Veteran technicians of previous science fiction films were puzzled by how realistic the effects of floating in space were when Dave or Frank are outside the Discovery, and the weightless scenes inside the spacecraft such as the scene with the disconnection of Hal. These were accomplished by having actors suspended from a ceiling (as was then common in simulating spacewalking) with the camera underneath them pointing straight up, thus eliminating the common effect of a notable up-down pull on an astronaut. The actors' bodies blocked the camera's view of the suspension wires, creating a very believable appearance of floating.

The "Star Gate" sequence, one of many ground-breaking visual effects.

The colored lights in the Star Gate sequence were accomplished by slit-scan photography of moving images of paintings. The shots of various nebula-like phenomena were colored paints and chemicals in a tank of water, a device known formally as a cloud tank, in a dark room.

During filming, the scene of the expanding star field was called The Manhattan Project.

Detailed instructions in relatively small print for various technological devices appear at several points in the film, of which the most notable is the lengthy instructions for the zero-gravity toilet. Similar detailed instructions for explosive bolts also appear.

An article by Douglas Trumbull about the creation of special effects for 2001 appears in the June 1968 issue of American Cinematographer.

Deleted scenes

File:2001 school class deleted scene.jpg

Painting school class scene, deleted from the film.

Kubrick filmed several scenes that were deleted from the final film. These include a schoolroom on the moon base; Floyd buying a bush baby from a department store, via videophone, for his daughter; additional space walks; and astronaut Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor. The most notable cut was a 10-minute black-and-white opening sequence featuring interviews with actual scientists, including Freeman Dyson, discussing extraterrestrial life, which Kubrick removed after an early screening for MGM executives. If the music intro and outro are included, 29 minutes of film have been excised from the theatrical version. According to Kubrick biographer Jan Harlan, the director was adamant the trims were never to be seen, and that he "even burned the negatives"--which he had kept in his garage—shortly prior to his death. This is confirmed by former Kubrick assistant Leon Vitalli, "I'll tell you right now, okay, on Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, some little parts of 2001, we had thousands of cans of negative outtakes and print, which we had stored in an area at his house where we worked out of, which he personally supervised the loading of it to a truck and then I went down to a big industrial waste lot and burned it. That's what he wanted."

Release

The film's world premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.. Kubrick deleted 19 minutes from the film just before the film's general release on April 6, 1968. It was released in 70mm format, with a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack, and projected in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio. The film's general release took place in autumn 1968, in 35mm anamorphic format, with either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural soundtrack.

The original 70 mm release, like many Super Panavision 70 films of the era such as Grand Prix, was advertised as being in Cinerama in cinemas equipped with special projection optics and a deeply curved screen. In standard cinemas, the film was identified as a 70 mm production. The original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70 mm Cinerama with six-track sound (via Klipschorn- and Odyssey-model cinema speakers) played continually for two years in The Glendale Theater, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, a feat cited by Arthur C. Clarke in the non-fiction book The Lost Worlds of 2001.

MGM also published letterbox laserdisc editions (including an updated edition with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound). There also was a special edition laserdisc from The Criterion Collection in the CAV format. In 1999, it was re-released in VHS, and in 2001 as part of the "Stanley Kubrick Collection" in both VHS and DVD formats with remastered sound and picture.

It has been released on Region 1 DVD four times: once by MGM Home Entertainment in 1998 and thrice by Warner Home Video in 1999, 2001, and 2007. The MGM release had a booklet, the film, trailer, and an interview with Arthur C. Clarke, and the soundtrack was remastered in 5.1 surround sound. The 1999 Warner Bros. release omitted the booklet, yet had a re-release trailer. The 2001 release contained the re-release trailer, the film in the original 2.21:1 aspect ratio, digitally re-mastered from the original 70 mm print, and the soundtrack remixed in 5.1 surround sound. A limited edition DVD included a booklet, 70 mm^ frame, and a new soundtrack CD of the film's actual (unreleased) music tracks, and a sampling of HAL's dialogue.

Warner Home Video released a 2-DVD Special Edition on October 23, 2007 as part of their latest set of Kubrick reissues. The DVD was released on its own and as part of a revised Stanley Kubrick box set which contains new Special Edition versions of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, and the documentary A Life in Pictures. Additionally, the film was released in high definition on both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The Imdb.com listing of this DVD and the official Warner Brothers webpage have a complete listing of all the special features but both omit a documentary entitled "What is Out There?" featuring interviews with Keir Dullea and Arthur C. Clarke.

In some video releases, three title cards were added to the three "blank screen" moments; "OVERTURE" at the beginning, "ENTR'ACTE" during the intermission, and "EXIT MUSIC" after the closing credits.

Reaction

Upon release, 2001 polarized critical opinion, receiving both ecstatic praise and vehemently negative criticism. Some critics viewed the original 160-minute cut shown at premieres in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, while others saw the 19 minutes shorter general release version that was in theaters from April 6, 1968 onwards. In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor…The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times opined that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future…it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film." Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth." Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D.W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man…Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch." The Boston Globe's review indicated that it was "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere…The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life." Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale." He later put it on his Top 10 list for Sight & Sound. Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews of the film in various issues in 1968, each one slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review dated December 27, 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."

However, Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie," 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." Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring." Variety's 'Robe' believed the film was a "Big, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic…A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark." Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life…2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points." (Sarris reversed his opinion upon a second viewing of the film, and declared "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist.") John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines…and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans...2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story.". It has been noted that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon its initial release.

2001 earned Stanley Kubrick an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Kubrick), and Original Screenplay (Kubrick, Clarke). Considered one of the greatest films of all time by many sources, it was not even nominated for Best Picture of its year.

Awards and honors

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

Other awards

Won

• BAFTA Awards:
  1. Best Art Direction (Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer)
  2. Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth)
  3. Best Road Show
  4. Best Sound Track (Winston Ryder)
• Cinema Writers Circle, Spain:
  1. Best Foreign Film
• David di Donatello Awards, Italy:
  1. Best Foreign Production (Stanley Kubrick)
• Hugo Awards:
  1. Best Dramatic Presentation
• Kansas City Film Critics:
  1. Best Director (Stanley Kubrick)
  2. Best Picture
• Laurel Awards:
  1. Best Road Show

Nominated

• BAFTA Awards:
  1. Best Film (Stanley Kubrick)
  2. UN Award (Stanley Kubrick)
• Directors Guild of America (DGA):
  1. Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Stanley Kubrick)

Top film lists

2001 was number 22 on AFI's 100 Years… 100 Movies, was named number 40 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, included on its 100 Years, 100 Quotes ("Open the pod bay doors, Hal."), HAL 9000 is the #13 villain in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, is the only science fiction film to make the Sight & Sound poll for ten best movies, and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of "greatest science fiction films of all time." In 1991, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry. Other lists that include the film are 50 Films to See Before You Die (#6), The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th Century (#11), the Sight & Sound Top Ten poll (#6), and Roger Ebert's Top Ten (1968) (#2). In 1995, the Vatican named it as one of the 45 best films ever made (and included it in a sub-list of the "Top Ten Art Movies" of all time.)

American Film Institute recognition:

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (1998) - #22
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills (2001) - #40
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains (2003):
  • HAL 9000 - #13 Villain
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes (2005):
  • "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." - #78
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers (2006) - #47
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007) - #15
• AFI's 10 Top 10 (2007) - #1 Sci-Fi film

The film made number 8 on Clarke's own List of the best Science-Fiction films of all time, following The Day the Earth Stood Still at #7.

Interpretation

Main article: Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analyzed and interpreted by professional movie critics, amateur writers and science fiction fans. Kubrick encouraged people to explore their own interpretations of the film, and refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened" in the movie, preferring instead to let audiences embrace their own ideas and theories. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick stated:

You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film — and such speculation is one 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

File:Discovery1b.JPG

Spaceship Discovery One launching an EVA pod. Note the deliberately non-aerodynamic design of both craft. In space, aerodynamics do not matter.

2001 is highly realistic when compared with other science fiction films, particularly its predecessors. There were several technical advisers hired for 2001, some of whom were recommended by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke, who himself had a background in aerospace. Advisors included Marshall Spaceflight Center engineer, Frederick I. Ordway III. (Detailed design information is given by Ordway in the American Astronautical Society History Series. ) and I. J. Good (who advised Kubrick on Supercomputers due to his authorship of treatises such as "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" and "Logic of Man and Machine").

2001 accurately presents outer space as transmitting no sound, in sharp contrast to many films in which explosions or passing spacecraft are heard in space. 2001's portrayal of microgravitation in spaceships and outer space is notable. Tracking shots inside the rotating wheel providing artificial gravity contrast with the "weightlessness" outside the wheel during the repair and Hal disconnection scenes. (The pod bay walking scenes of the astronauts may be explained by the earlier scenes where stewardesses walk in zero gravity using velcro-equipped shoes labeled Grip Shoes.) The general approach to how space travel is engineered is highly accurate; in particular, the design of the ships was based on engineering feasibility rather than attempts to look aesthetically "futuristic". Many other science-fiction films give spacecraft an aerodynamic shape, which is superfluous in outer space. Notable also is the delay of several minutes in conversations between the astronauts and Earth which the BBC announcer explicitly says have to be edited out of the broadcast. The suspended animation of three of the astronauts on board is accurately portrayed and would probably be necessary to conserve resources on a flight of this kind. Notable also is attention to small details such as the sound of breathing inside the spacesuits and the conflicting spatial orientation of astronauts inside a no-gravity spaceship.

The film is scientifically inaccurate in minor but revealing details, many explained by the technical difficulty inherent to producing a realistic effect. It is arguable that the inaccuracies stand out precisely because the film is, overall, so overwhelmingly accurate.

The appearance of outer space is problematic both in terms of lighting and the alignment of astronomical bodies. With no atmosphere in outer space, stars do not twinkle, and light does not spread out to become ambient. The side of the Discovery spacecraft unlit by the sun would be virtually pitch-black. The stars would not appear to move in relation to Discovery as it traveled towards Jupiter. Proportionally, the sun, moon, and earth would not visually line up at the size ratios as shown in the opening shot, nor would the moons of Jupiter in the shot just before Bowman enters the Star Gate. (In fact, due to the perfect Laplace resonance of the orbits of the four large moons of Jupiter, the first three will never align, and the third moon, Ganymede, will always be exactly 90 degrees further around the planet whenever the two inmost moons are in perfect alignment.) Finally, the edge of the earth seems sharp in the movie, but it should be slightly blurry due to the scattering of the sunlight by the atmosphere, as we can see in many photos taken from space today.

The entire sequence in which Dave Bowman re-enters Discovery through the emergency airlock has problems. Bowman apparently holds his breath just before ejecting from the pod into the airlock. Before exposure to a vacuum, NASA states, one must exhale, because holding in the breath would rupture the lungs. On the DVD edition of the film released in 2007, Arthur C. Clarke states in an interview that had he been on the set the day they filmed this, he would have caught this error. Also, the blown pod hatch simply vanishes while concealed behind a puff of smoke. At least open to question is why the EVA pod does not fly away when Dave Bowman uses explosive bolts. It may have used station keeping attitude jets, as is common with communications satellites today, but there is no indication of this occurring.

While the film's portrayal of reduced or zero gravity is unusually realistic, problems remain. While Floyd sips a meal in zero gravity from liquipaks, liquid slips back down the straw when he stops sucking. When spacecraft land on the Moon, dust is shown billowing as it would in an atmosphere, not the vacuum of the Lunar surface. While on the moon, all actors move as if in normal Earth gravity, not the 1/6 G of the moon. Similarly, the behavior of Dave and Frank in the pod bay is not fully consistent with zero-Gs, as it should be since the pod bay is not in a centrifuge. The astronauts are wearing zero g 'grip shoes', but that they are leaning on the table when they try to diagnose the AE-35 unit is especially peculiar. Finally, in an environment with a radius as small as the main quarters, the simulated gravity would vary significantly from the center of the crew quarters to the 'floor', even varying between feet, waist, and head. The RPM of the crew quarters is only fast enough to generate an approximation of moon gravity, not that of the earth. However, Clarke felt this was enough to prevent the physical atrophy that would result from complete weightlessness.

The first two appearances of the monolith, one on the Earth and one on the moon, conclude with the sun rising over the top of the monolith at the zenith of the sky. While this could happen in an African veldt anywhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, it could not happen anywhere near the crater Tycho (where the monolith is found) as it is 45 degrees south of the lunar equator.

The movement of Dr. Floyd's floating pen while en route to the station is in a circular arc (actually stuck to the edge of a rotating plastic disc), but it would either rotate around its own center of gravity (rather than a point external to it) or would move in a straight line unless the plane is rotating causing changes in centripetal force.

There are other problems that might be more appropriately described as continuity errors, such as which side of Earth is lighted when viewed from Clavius, and the time lag of the position readout on the PanAm plane's monitors.

Imagining the future

File:2001-centerfuge.jpg

The Centrifuge in Discovery One—Exercising astronaut Frank Poole jogs its circumference.

File:2001interview.jpg

Small, portable, flat-screen devices were indeed available in the year 2001.

Much was made by MGM's publicity department of the film's realism, claiming in a 1968 brochure that "Everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey can happen within the next three decades, and…most of the picture will happen by the beginning of the next millennium." This has proved to be wrong, although some of the film's predictions have indeed been realized. The primary predictions that are central to the plot, those about space travel and artificial intelligence, did not materialise by that date (and still have not). However, many secondary futuristic elements of the story that are somewhat marginal to the plot have been accurate apprehensions of the future.

Technology

One futuristic device shown in the film already under development when the film was released in 1968 was voice-print identification, although the first prototype was not released until 1977. A credible prototype of a chess-playing computer already existed in 1968, even though it could be defeated by experts. Computers did not defeat champions until the late 1980s. While 10-digit phone numbers for long-distance national dialing originated in 1951, longer phone numbers for international dialing became a reality in 1970. Personal in-flight entertainment displays were first introduced in the 1980s strictly for the purpose of playing video games, but then broadened out for the purpose of TV broadcast and movies in a manner like that shown in the film. The film also shows flat-screen TV monitors, of which the first real-world prototype appeared in 1975. Plane cockpit integrated system displays, known as glass cockpits, were introduced in 1979. Rudimentary voice-controlled computing exists in the early 2000s, although it is still not as sophisticated as depicted in the film.

Some technologies portrayed as common in the film which have not materialized in the 2000s include commonplace space travel, space stations with hotels, moon colonization, suspended animation of humans, common (non-mobile) videophones, and strong artificial intelligence of the kind displayed by HAL.

Corporate and political realities

In terms of corporate realities, many more BBC stations existed in 2001 than did in 1968 as shown in the film, although there is no BBC 12. The corporations IBM, Aeroflot, Howard Johnsons, and Hilton Hotels, all of which appear in the film, have survived till 2001 and beyond. On the other hand, the film depicts a still-existing Pan Am and still-autonomous Bell System telephone company. Pan Am declared bankruptcy in 1991. The Bell System logo seen in the film was modified in 1969 and dropped entirely in 1983. Political realities are also quite different. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is alive and well in the film, but was dissolved in 1991.

Soundtrack

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. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line.

The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Most feature films then and now are typically accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written especially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, 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 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. Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used and, to his dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie just prior to its release. What survives of North's soundtrack recordings has been released as a "limited edition" CD from Intrada Records. All the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varese Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release but before North's death.

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.

2001 is particularly remembered for using Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube), during the extended space-station docking and lunar landing sequences, and the use of the opening from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra"), which has now become firmly associated with the film and its themes. The film also introduced the modernistic composer György Ligeti to a wide public.

The Richard and Johann Strauss pieces and Ligeti’s Requiem (the Kyrie section) act as recurring leitmotifs in the film’s storyline. Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra is first heard in the opening title which juxtaposes the sun, earth, and moon. It is subsequently heard when an ape first learns to use a tool, and when Bowman is transformed into the Star-Child at the end of the film. Zarathustra thus acts as a bookend for the beginning and end of the film, and as a motif signifying evolutionary transformations, first from ape to man, then from man to Star-Child. This piece was originally inspired by the philosopher Nietzsche’s book of the same name which alludes briefly to the relationship of ape to man and man to Superman. The Blue Danube appears in two intricate and extended space travel sequences as well as the closing credits. The first of these is the particularly famous sequence of the PanAm space plane docking at Space Station V. Ligeti’s Requiem is heard three times, all of them during appearances of the monolith. The first is its encounter with apes just prior to the Zarathustra-accompanied ape discovery of the tool. The second is the monolith's discovery on the Moon, and the third is Bowman's approach to it around Jupiter just before he enters the Star Gate. This last sequence with the Requiem has much more movement in it than the first two, and it transitions directly into the music from Ligeti’s Atmosphères which is heard when Bowman actually enters the Star Gate. No music is heard during the monolith's much briefer final appearance in Dave Bowman’s celestial bedroom which immediately precedes the Zarathustra-accompanied transformation of Bowman into the Star-Child. A shorter excerpt from Atmospheres is heard during the pre-credits prelude and film intermission, which are not in all copies of the film. Gayane's Adagio from Aram Khachaturian's Gayaneh ballet suite is heard during the sections that introduce Bowman and Poole aboard the Discovery conveying a somewhat lonely and mournful quality. Other music used is Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna and an electronically altered form of his Aventures, the last of which was so used without Ligeti's permission.

Since the film Also sprach Zarathustra has been used in many other contexts, in particular by the BBC and by CTV in Canada as the introductory theme music for their television coverage of the Apollo space missions, as well as stage entrance music for multiple acts including Elvis Presley late in his career. Jazz and rock variants of the theme have also been composed, the most well known being the one by Eumir Deodato in the film Being There.

HAL's version of the popular song "Daisy Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) 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 speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell" ("Bicycle Built For Two"), with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later used it in the screenplay and novel."

Many foreign language versions of the film do not use the song "Daisy." In the French soundtrack to 2001, HAL sings the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" while being disconnected. In the German version, HAL sings the children's song "Hänschen Klein" ("Johnny Little") and in the Italian version HAL sings "Giro giro tondo."

Soundtrack album

The initial MGM soundtrack album release contained none of the material from the altered and uncredited rendition of "Aventures", used a different recording of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" than that heard in the film, and a longer excerpt of "Lux Aeterna" than that in the film. In 1996, Turner Entertainment released a new soundtrack on CD which included the material from "Aventures" and restored the version of "Zarathustra" used in the film, and used the shorter version of "Lux Aeterna" from the film. As additional "bonus tracks" at the end, this CD includes the versions of "Zarathustra" and "Lux Aeterna" on the old MGM soundtrack, an unaltered performance of "Aventures", and a nine-minute compilation of all of Hal's dialogue from the film.

According to the Internet Movie Database,

The end music credits do not list a conductor and orchestra for "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Stanley Kubrick wanted the Herbert von Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic version on English Decca for the film's soundtrack, but Decca executives did not want their recording "cheapened" by association with the movie, and so gave permission on the condition that the conductor and orchestra were not named. After the movie's successful release, Decca tried to rectify its blunder by re-releasing the recording with an "As Heard in 2001" flag printed on the album cover. John Culshaw recounts the incident in "Putting the Record Straight" (1981)... In the meantime, MGM released the "official soundtrack" L.P. with Karl Böhm's Berlin Philharmonic "Also Sprach Zarathustra" discretely substituting for von Karajan's version.

Alex North's unused original score for the film has twice been released on compact disc. In 1993, a re-recording of North's score, with Jerry Goldsmith conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra, was issued by Varèse Sarabande Records. In 2008, the original score recordings, which survived only in monaural form, were released on CD by Intrada Records.

Dialogue

Alongside its use of music, the lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues in 2001 has been noted by many reviewers. There is no dialogue at all for the entirety of both the first and last 20 minutes or so of the film; the total narrative of these sections is carried entirely by images, actions, sound effects, a great deal of music (See Music) and two title cards.

Only when the film moves into the postulated future of 2000 and 2001, does the viewer 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 apparent banality (making the computer HAL seem to have more human emotion than the actual humans), while it is juxtaposed with epic scenes of space. The first scenes of dialogue are Floyd's three encounters on the space station. They are preceded by the space docking sequence choreographed to Strauss' The Blue Danube waltz and followed by a second extended sequence of his travel to the moon with more Strauss, the two sequences acting as bookends to his space-station stopover. In the stopover itself, we get idle chit-chat with the colleague who greets him followed by Floyd's slightly more affectionate phone call to his daughter, and the distantly friendly but awkwardly strained encounter with Soviet scientists. Later, en route to the monolith, Floyd engages in trite exchanges with his staff while we see a spectacular journey by Earthlight across the moon's surface. Generally, the most memorable dialogue in the film belongs to the computer Hal in its exchanges with David Bowman. Hal is the only character in the film who openly expresses anxiety (primarily around his disconnection), as well as feelings of pride and bewilderment.

The first line of dialogue is the space-station stewardess addressing Heywood Floyd saying "Here you are, sir. Main level D." The final line is Floyd's conclusion of the pre-recorded Jupiter mission briefing about the monolith. "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."

Sequels and adaptations

Kubrick did not envisage a sequel to 2001, fearing the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet). To the dismay of MGM Studios, he ordered all prints of unused scenes, sets, props, miniatures, and production blueprints destroyed. Most of these materials were lost, with several notable exceptions. Several sources suggest that a 79-inch model of the spaceship Discovery One was salvaged and appeared in modified form in Space: 1999 but this is untrue; a similar spaceship model appears in the series in the episode "Alpha Child" but this was a modified Discovery replica built by one of the series' model-makers and not one from 2001. However, a 2001 spacesuit backpack did appear in another Gerry Anderson series and can be seen in the "Close Up" episode of UFO. One of Hal's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of HAL's Legacy, David G. Stork.

Clarke went on to write three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). 3001: The Final Odyssey reconnects with Frank Poole, who has been found drifting by a ship that was looking for frozen water near the edge of the solar system. Sufficiently preserved by the vacuum of space, he is revived by the advanced medical technology of the time and becomes the novel's protagonist.

The only filmed sequel, 2010, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel 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 with more dialogue. Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel, and had a brief cameo appearance in the film. As Kubrick had ordered all models and blueprints from 2001 destroyed, Hyams was forced to recreate these models from scratch for 2010. Hyams also claimed that he would not make the film had he not received both Kubrick's and Clarke's blessings:

"I had a long conversation with Stanley and told him what was going on. If it met with his approval, I would do the film; and if it didn't, I wouldn't. I certainly would not have thought of doing the film if I had not gotten the blessing of Kubrick. He's one of my idols; simply one of the greatest talents that's ever walked the Earth. He more or less said, 'Sure. Go do it. I don't care.' And another time he said, 'Don't be afraid. Just go do your own movie.'

There has been no discussion of filmmakers adapting the other two for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks has expressed interest in possible adaptations of 2061 and 3001.

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

Parodies and homages

2001 has been frequently parodied, sometimes extensively and other times briefly. Parodies employ both its music and iconic imagery.

Extended parodies would include the following

• Mad magazine issue #125 (March, 1969) included a spoof called "201 Minutes of a Space Idiocy" written by Dick DeBartolo and illustrated by Mort Drucker. It was reprinted in various special issues and in the "MAD About the Sixties" book.
• In 2002, the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket" parodied numerous plot elements concerning the 2001 Jupiter mission and the HAL 9000. Planet Express Ship's on-board A.I. is replaced. The A.I. panel design, the general plot, and numerous details track the 2001 Jupiter mission plot. Planet Express Ship attempts to kill its crew; there is a sequence where the crew confers about the ship's A.I. in an enclosed glass chamber; "Daisy Bell" is in the soundtrack; and several references occur during the A.I. shutdown sequence near the end. Another Futurama episode refers to "HAL's Institute for Criminally Insane Robots".
• The Simpsons episode "Deep Space Homer" makes several references to 2001, the Treehouse of Horror episode "House of Whacks" parodies the computer HAL, the episode "Lisa's Pony" has a Homer dream-sequence parodying 2001's "Dawn of Man" sequence, and the episode "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" has a sequence of colorful images that Homer sees when sitting in the Spinemelter chair similar to the "Star Gate" sequence.
• The film 2001: A Space Travesty contains parodies of several scenes although the overall plot has no resemblance to Space Odyssey.
• The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Laserblast", Experiment #706, ends with an extensive parody of the final sequence of the film, in which Dr. Forrester ages rapidly in a secluded room, eventually laying in a bed pointing at a monolith that resembles a gigantic video tape labeled "The Worst Movie Ever Made". He becomes a star child with his iconic tossled hair, moustache, and glasses, after which his mother appears and holds him, elated at the opportunity to raise her son all over again.

Parodies of the dawn of man sequence include:

• Mel Brooks devotes the short pre-title sequence of History of the World, Part 1 to the dawn of man, parodying Kubrick's cave men and using the Zarathustra soundtrack.
• A Monty Python's Flying Circus episode features an ape touching a mysterious red line, then thinking (visualized as a light bulb over his head) before getting a bone from nearby animal skeleton, smashing it and throwing the bone high into space. The bone blends into a satellite, which finally crashes onto the ape.
• The 2008 video game Spore contains a sequence activated if a player's species achieves sentience. In it the creature smashes a stick and throws it in the air, set to Also Sprach Zarathustra. The music is interrupted when the stick comes back down and hits the creature on the head.
• The 1972 comedy The Groove Tube opens with humanoids discovering a TV (in place of a monolith).
• The "ee" Monolith cartoon from The Electric Company involves a chimp in the jungle (Moon Walker) waking up and becoming excited at seeing the monolith, which cracks as he touches it and finally reveals "ee".
• In the video game Startopia, an early human finds a doughnut which he throws into the air and the camera follows it before it turns into a spinning space station (where the game takes place) which resembles the space station from 2001
• In 2008, The Big Bang Theory episode "The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization", the main characters use the internet to control their stereo to play Also Sprach Zarathustra, while jumping around in a manner echoing the apes from the 'Dawn of Man' sequence.
• In the 3rd episode of the anime series Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, one of the lead characters, Satoshi Imamiya, finds the monolith in a hand-held size. He then explains to the other lead, Arumi Asahina, how you'll get smarter if you rub it. This is followed promptly by the dawn of man sequence, where Satoshi becomes the monkey, still wearing his cowboy hat.

Parodies focused on the monolith include:

• In the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there is a scene where they visit the TV Room and the TV is playing 2001. When Willy Wonka sends the chocolate bar through TV, the chocolate bar appears where the monolith was located. The main title for 2001 is also played in this scene.
• Sesame Workshop's The Electric Company had a series of animated spoofs of 2001 called the "Monolith" cartoons, featuring the Einleitung movement of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (followed by an infinite sound loop of tympani thumping) and a white monolith, that would break up and crumble down revealing some letter dipthong or a small word, subsequently pronounced by a deistic voice; i.e. "oo", "ow", "all", "alk", "was", etc. (Two such cartoons, "me" and "amor" were made for Sesame Street.) Many of these cartoons were interpretations of actual scenes from the movie; in addition to the aforementioned "ee" cartoon referring to the beginning, the "Dawn of Man", the "ow" cartoon was a reference to Dave Bowman floating in space right after the movie's intermission, the "alk" cartoon was an homage to the "Stargate" sequence, and the "all" cartoon was a spoof of the end of the movie, with the elderly version of Dave Bowman eating dinner at a table.
• In addition to the aforementioned two "Monolith" cartoons ("me" and "amor"), Sesame Street also had an episode in which Telly saw two tall monoliths (actually two 1's, meant to represent the number 11) fade in on Sesame Street, to a variation of the "Also Sprach Zarathustra" music. Telly later described it to Luis as "It makes you feel so...elevenny."
• The Nickelodeon animated series The Angry Beavers parodied 2001 in the episode "Mission to the Big Hot Thingy", using The Blue Danube and showing a monolith floating through space as the Beavers build a dam to keep from spiralling into the sun.
• The 2008 video game Spore also contains a device which may be acquired late in the game referred to as a Monolith. It is a black Monolith with a circular hole running through it around 3/5ths of the way up. It performs the function of increasing the intelligence of local species on the planet it is placed on. similar to the apparent function seen in the Dawn of Man sequence of 2001.
• Spore also pays homage by whenever the player reaches the center of the Galaxy, the ending scene heavily resembles the ending scene.
• In the 2009 Japanese Animation Toaru Kagaku no Railgun an encounter with a monolith was featured in the 13th episode during a hologram-simulated trip to the moon. One of the characters (Kuroko) also ends up holding a bone, parodying the cavemen who first encountered a monolith.
• In the movie Peacekeeper Wars John Crichton is standing in the room at the end of 2001, between the bed and the monolith. Scorpius is laying in the bed as an older gray version of himself and reaches out toward John just as Dave does.

Parodies of HAL include:

• A sketch from Square One Television in which two astronauts can't stand "HAL" repeatedly singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" (a reference, of course, to "Daisy" in the actual movie), so one of them gives him a program to run, that can never be finished, thus teaching the concept of infinity.
• The 2008 film WALL-E has an artificial intelligence autopilot robot named Auto with an eye similar to that of HAL 9000. The music Also Sprach Zarathustra is used in a pivotal sequence when a ship's captain who (like all humans in the film) is obese and has severe bone loss manages to stand up and stop Auto from taking over the spaceship.
• In 2001, South Park satirized the final disconnect of HAL 9000 in season 4, episode 13. The episode titled "Trapper Keeper" has Kyle going into the Trapper Keeper to perform the disconnect before it destroys the world.
• An episode of the cartoon Recess titled "Schoolworld" parodies HAL with a computer called SAL 3000 being installed in the elementary school, and eventually taking over and having to be stopped.
• The nature and design of the computer "Ariia" (sic) in the 2008 film Eagle Eye is an homage to HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its final disconnect is also accomplished by a character named Bowman. The Ariia supercomputer has a red eye like HALs, takes actions against humanity based on a draconian interpretation of its programming, and detects plots against it by lip-reading.
• The 2005 film Robots includes a reference to 2001. When Mr. Bigweld gets hit in the head and loses his memory, he starts singing the song "Daisy Bell," which is the same song that Hal starts to sing as his memory is removed.
• The Bionic Woman two-part story "Doomsday Is Tomorrow" has Jaime Sommers confronting a honey-voiced, artificial intelligence nemesis called Alex 7000 which is clearly modeled on HAL 9000.
• In the animated series Duckman episode "Gripes of Wrath", a supercomputer is overloading from paradoxical comments made by Duckman, and begins to sing "Daisy, Daisy" as does Hal when David Bowman is disconnecting him.
• In 2006, the Rock Opera "ODYSSEY!", a parody/homage/Rock Opera was released on CD and performed live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
• Apple Inc.'s 1999 It was a bug, Dave campaign focuses on HAL implying that its weird behaviour was caused by a Y2K bug, before driving home the point that 'only Macintosh was designed to function perfectly'.
• The Venture Bros Episode 2, Season 1, Careers in Science featured a "Problem Light" that resembled HAL's eye, which came on when any malfunction aboard the space station, Gargantua-1, occurred. The closing scene ominously cuts to the light coming back on after being previously disabled.
• The syndicated comic strip Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! ran a strip on January 20, 2010 in which one of the characters (named Dave) is annoyed because his "personal GPS System," insists on giving him unsolicited and unwanted advice. In the final panel he says, "You're awfully bossy for a GPS! I'm turning you off!", to which it replies: "I'm afraid I can't allow that, Dave."
• Woody Allen - a great admirer of the film - included a HAL-like computer in his science-fiction spoof Sleeper, casting HAL's voice-actor Douglas Rain for the voicework.

Parodies of other miscellaneous scenes include:

• The 2004 film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Sellers (while being resuscitated in a Los Angeles hospital) dreams he is in a starscape surrounded by various characters he had played. The Blue Danube plays as soundtrack music.
• In the 1999 video game Final Fantasy VIII, the characters are sent into space. A CGI full motion video shows the arrival at the space station, very reminiscent of the "Blue Danube" scene in 2001. In place of the "Blue Danube," Nobuo Uematsu's original composition Waltz for the Moon is played, verifying the homage. The space station utilizes centrifugal force to simulate gravity as in 2001. Within the space station, unique camera angles are used, similar to the ones used on the Discovery by Kubrick, to show the centrifugal rotation.
• The 1994 film The Stoned Age. The protagonist flashes back to a hallucination he experienced at a Blue Öyster Cult concert. He is seen eating at a table (where he knocks over his can of beer), dying in bed, and reborn as the "Star-Child". Similar visual effects are used, as is the famous section of Also sprach Zarathustra.
• In the 2010 video game Mass Effect 2, the character Jeff "Joker" Moreau, is asked by the SSV Normandy on board A.I., named E.D.I., to hand over control of the ship during an attack, causing him to reply "You start singing 'Daisy Bell' and I'm done!"

Homage to the film: Roger Water's album "Amused to Death" makes a couple of references to the film; notably in the lyics of the song "Perfect Sense" and the cover artwork. Roger Waters used a sound-clip of HAL's final words in the live intro to Perfect Sense; the story is that Kubrick refused permission for clips to be used in the original recording.

• In Kubrick's own 1971 film Clockwork Orange, the protagonist Alex waits at the counter of a record shop and we see a record displaying 2001's title and iconic image of Earth as seen from space.

• See also External links

See also

• List of films about outer space
• Toynbee tiles, mysterious notices in U.S. cities mentioning "Kubrick's 2001"
• Films considered the greatest ever

The Mystery Science Theater episode "Laserblast"(Experiment #706) ends with an extensive parody of the final sequence of the film, in which Dr. Forrester ages rapidly in a secluded room, eventually laying in a bed pointing at a monolith that resembles a gigantic video tape labeled "The Worst Movie Ever Made". He becomes a star child with his iconic tossled hair, moustache, and glasses, after which his mother appears and holds him, elated at the opportunity to raise her son all over again.

References

• Agel, Jerome (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. Signet. ISBN 0-451-07139-5.
• Bizony, Piers (2001). 2001 Filming the Future. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 1-85410-706-2.
• Castle, Alison (ed.), ed. (2005). "Part 2: The Creative Process / 2001: A Space Odyssey". The Stanley Kubrick Archives. New York: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-2284-1. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Chion, Michel (2001). Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey. translated by Claudia Gorbman. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-840-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)
• Clarke, Arthur C. (1972). The Lost Worlds of 2001. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 0-283-97903-8.
• Kolker, Robert (ed.), ed. (2006). Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517453-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Richter, Daniel (2002). Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-1073-X.
• Schwam, Stephanie (ed.), ed. (2000). The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75528-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)
• Wheat, Leonard F. (2000). Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3796-X.

Further reading

• Shuldiner, Herbert (1968) How They Filmed '2001: A Space Odessey', Bonnier Corporation: Popular Science, June 1968, pg. 62-67, Vol. 192, No. 6, ISSN 0161-7370

External links

• 2001: A Space Odyssey at IMDb
• 2001: A Space Odyssey at Rotten Tomatoes
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Internet Resource Archive
• Kubrick2001: Explaining the movie in detail
• The 2001: A Space Odyssey Collectibles Exhibit
• Article about various video releases of the film
• The Kubrick Site including many works on 2001
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Houston Section, Tribute to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, April Issue 2008
• A list of cultural references, homages, and parodies