The long musical section at the beginning is the overture. This was used in many films of epic nature at the time. The music played whilst people would filter into the auditorium.
They are close off the surface of the moon, so they are not pouring coffee in zero gravity, obviously. Gravity of the moon extends (1/6th of Earth's gravity) high above it's surface.
BTW the space plane at the beginning is meant to be a two stage vehicle, so not all that different from the space shuttle or SpaceX's Starship. (The book "2001 filming the future" has some sketches)
Some, including myself, consider this to be the greatest film of our time. My personal experience with it began in 1968 when I was 6 and my parents took me to a Texas drive-in theater to see it. It unsettled me throughout and by the last shot of a bug-eyed Star Child staring at me I was frozen with terror. It was an image I had to avoid for years afterward on reissue posters, ads and record jackets... that damn baby gave me nightmares. Finally I saw the film again in college and fell in love with it. I do have to admit though that if I stumble unawares on that final image it still makes me jump. By the way, I have thought for years that the invention of HAL was instigated by the monolith...HAL was the final tool that needed to be invented, and was so close to being human that humans themselves needed an upgrade. You are the first reactor I've seen pick up on this.
The suspenseful music would unsettle most children, I imagine. This isn't a movie for a 6 year old, but I guess your parents didn't know that (if it was their first time watching too). I know that feeling. My parents used to watch Asian ghost horror movies when I was a kid. After that, I couldn't stand near a mop (looks like a ghost with long hair) and I became afraid of the dark. Took me years to finally resolve the trauma 😂
I like the theory of the lunar monolith (TMA-1) guiding humans to build HAL, but it doesn't really work with the in-Universe timeline, since HAL says he was built in 1992.
@@allenjones3130Almost as mind blowing as 2001: A Space Odyssey is that people consider sex and unclothed human bodies to be more terrifying and traumatic than onscreen murders, cold executions of multiple human beings by a machine, and animals beating one another to death with bones and stones.
Tapirs are among the most primitive mammals on Earth, having changed very little over the past 20 million years or so. The first fossil evidence of tapirs dates back to the Early Oligocene Epoch. Tapirs are perissodactyls, a group of herbivorous mammals also known as odd-toed ungulates. Their closest living relatives are horses, rhinoceroses, and zebras.
The spinning creates artificial gravity , centrifugal force which holds one to the inside of the sponging ring. There are fairground rides which do this on a small scale.
According to the book about how the movie was made,"Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece" published in 2018 for the 50th Anniversary, Arthur C. Clark's original short story was the basis for the movie and book all written during the making of the film. The first appearance of a space ship is a nuclear weapons platform. The major countries launched them in space. The giant baby embryo spirit destroyed them in the short story.
The portrayal of what it would be like in space is VERY accurate. Kubrick did this movie with the classic science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke also helped develop the idea of geosynchronous orbit satellites that are the basis of our modern communication networks. So he knew what he was doing.
He also had actual aerospace engineers designing the sets, props, and spacesuits. which is why everything looks so practical. And why the look of the film still holds up 50 plus years later.
Spacewalk without a tether: the suits have a backpack which includes a four-directional set of jets down low (close to the man's centre of gravity) on his back. - and a set of buttons on his right forearm, that control the visor, and his flight. He doesn't seem to use it, though, which may just show how good a spacewalker those guys are. The zero-g spacewalks in this film were all achieved by suspending the astronaut on a single cable, going always away from the camera into darkness (the roof of the sound stage), so they can only rotate around a single axis. Something very different from the spacewalks seen from the real space station in orbit around the Earth right now.
Yea, I didn't realize they had spacewalk equipment. That's why I felt it was dangerous without a tether. It's amazing and creative for them to be able to create the "out in space" effect back then.
The ape scenes were shot in a studio, Kubrick never went to Africa but had a still photography unit go there and shot plates used for the front-projection backgrounds. It was a rotating set so they could get different angles but the bright lighting made it very uncomfortable for the actors in the ape suits.
@@henryellow Another interesting fact: SFX artist Doug Trumbull had shot a load of footage for Saturn as originally intended but Kubrick switched to Jupiter. Trumbull eventually 'recycled' the Saturn footage in the sci-fi eco movie Silent Running. glad you got to see 2001, widely regarded as the greatest SF film ever made. BTW, did you spot some shots Lucas 'borrowed' for Star Wars? (the station docking bay ones). I'd recommend you check out Forbidden Planet too, absolute classic and widely regarded as the inspiration for Star Trek.
Kubrick seems to have done quite a lot of changes during the movie production. Oh, I guess I missed those "borrowed" shots. Forbidden Planet is in my list 😉 It might come up in the next Sci Fi poll.
This movie is about the evolution of consciousness and the human race. It spurs the proto humans to higher levels of intelligence, and the same thing happens at the end. The monolith makers elevated Dave to a godlike being, presumably to serve as a more direct emissary to mankind.
If you shift the letters in HAL one space to the right you get IBM. I had the soundtrack album. It was a big hit at the time. The opening sequence with the hominids and "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss has been referenced in a couple of movies recently: Barbie and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
The only thing they got wrong was the date. Instead of 2001, we could potentially be on this level by 2100, if not then, certainly before 2200. Who really knows though. It does feel as if technology is moving faster and faster, so potentially we could have this space tech before 2100.
Very nice reaction. Thank you. You should absolutely watch “The Lion in Winter”. It is based on a very well written play. Wonderful performances, lively and funny.
This version is a 'reconstructed with everything we could find' version. The 'overture with the blank screen' is to be shown before the cinema is darkened and the screen's curtains are opened just before the MGM logo appears. Basically, telling the audience to sit down and shut up. This is how big 'roadshow' movies used to be. This film also has an intermission, which was for people to go pee or get a hot-dog, but this still isn't the complete version of the film released at first. About 20 minutes was cut for second release, which included more of Africa at the start, a sequence extending the landing in the big red bay on the Moon, two identical complete trips to the AE-35 antenna unit, the second cut short by HAL's intervention, and this is the usually-seen version up until the 50th anniversary restoration.
This was my first time experiencing an 'overture with the blank screen' while watching at home. I sat through the whole thing 😂 Oh, I guess they cut off a little bit of it because audiences felt the first release was too long.
Kubrick experimented with the idea of showing the aliens, to the point of having some mock-ups of them made, but fortunately decided not to go with it. I can't imagine any movie "alien" that would be more effective than their complete absence, and perhaps would be ridiculous rather than mysterious. The imagination is much more powerful. BTW the idea of eating paste and liquids isn't to do with digestion - it's to do with crumbs floating through the air and getting into the equipment. For the same reason American astronauts shaved not with electric shavers, but with shaving soap and blade razors.
Did he now? I'm glad he didn't show any physical aliens in the end. If we assume they're higher dimensional beings, we might not even be able to perceive them normally, if at all. I'm aware of the crumb concern too. I had assumed that certain foods weren't given to astronauts to avoid bloating, digestion problems, etc. Since the absence of gravity means that all the liquids and gas in the stomach are mixed up, they wouldn't be able to burp to relieve the gas. I didn't even think about shaving problems 😂 they can just let their beards grow though.
Definitely read the book by the Arthur C. Clarke. It's very easy to read but also rich in ideas and fascination, and explains things that are kept ambiguous in the film. I blazed through the book in one day as a kid, and my world got 100x bigger overnight. FYI, you can eat solid food in space, it just shouldn't be crumbly because the crumbs float around and get into things. And when they're pouring coffee, they're supposed to be in lunar gravity, not zero, but you have a point: It should be zero if they're flying ballistically (no air, so that would be how you'd travel).
Same, I read the novel as a kid in the 1970s before it was re released to theaters in 1977, often while listening to my dad's copy of the soundtrack album. To this day when I re-read it, I recognize words that I remember learning for the first time from the novel.
Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke. Kubrick insisted that he never took any kind of psychedelic drug, which is pretty fascinating given both the visuals and the entire concept, which seem to depict breakthrough psychedelic visions and epiphanies. I have wondered if Kubrick was lying, or else if Arthur C. Clarke was experienced with psychedelics. Interestingly, the University of California at San Diego has a Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative housed within its Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Kubrick's movies demonstrate that he had deep understanding of all kinds of obscure, occult, covert and esoteric realities-not necessarily in the sense of conspiracy theories (although many people understandably associate many theories with his works), but in the sense of enigmatically depicting experiences and perceptions that are taboo and often never discussed, but which nevertheless exist and which many people contemplate. He was visionary and he did dramatize many different notions that decades later have come to occupy people's interests, all without commenting on them. Having grown up in the 1980s under Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign era and with D.A.R.E. anti-drug campaigning in my schools, I grew up believing all recreational drugs are deadly or at least very dangerous and that only foolish or very naive people would ever try any of them. I ended up working for an organization funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse for over a decade and I was pretty stunned to discover that drugs like MDMA (ecstasy/molly) and other psychedelics were not proven to be harmful to human health but rather were condemned politically by the US government and banned under the strictest drug classifications, supposedly reserved for drugs that pose a high risk of death by overdose, a high risk of physical addiction, and which have no medicinal or known beneficial use. None of these apply to psychedelics. In accordance with the ban, no scientists could research whether these drugs are harmful at all much less what potential benefits could be for decades, until very recently. Now research centers are popping up at universities throughout the country and psychedelics are being proven time and again to benefit a lot of people's well being in various ways, and many people report that some of these substances create mental and spiritual breakthroughs (and of course visions) not entirely unlike the ones Dave is shown to have. Not to get too out there, but it is really interesting to me that access to these drugs is being opened up again to the general public at the same time in history when the government has finally stopped mocking people who speak of UFOs and speculating about alien life. Both psychedelics and notions of extraterrestrial life are now being spoken of and investigated seriously by serious people. And in a boldly public effort, Johns Hopkins University's Center for Psychedelics and Consciousness Studies has even conducted a study to investigate a potential connection between 'alien' entities people report encountering and interating with while under the influence of DMT may be objective rather than subjective beings. In other words, the experiences of interaction with certain beings, usually perceived as both mechanical and sentient by people who take DMT, are so similar among users that scientists have decided research is warranted to investigate whether DMT possibly could be opening some kind of communication channel between human consciousness and some other kind of conscious, intelligent life-effectively what the monolith did for (or to?) Dave. Speaking of imagination, one theory about the shape and color of the monolith is that Kubrick was depicting a movie screen turned on its side. Kubrick's career was filmmaking and he used movies to provoke imagination, curiosity, deep contemplation, and in the movie the monolith commands people to stare at it and then it becomes activated, overwhelms them, and activates imagination and creativity. That would make the monolith a 'meta' object in the movie, representing a movie screen within a movie screen, and it becomes even more meta as you watch the movie post-2020 and realize that what Kubrick imagined onscreen for us inspired further movies to be imagined and inspired scientists to strive to reach to and beyond the levels of technology and knowledge he depicted. The one thing I still wonder about the movie is about HAL's intentions and behaviors, which is especially prescient and relevant right now. HAL was a leap of intelligence. First, the proto-human primates were made intelligent and became human. Then, the intelligent humans on the Moon were made more intelligent and within 18 months transcended humanity. The movie shows Dave transcending humanity by falling into the monolith and being reborn after death as a 'star child,' but is HAL, being a creation of these newly hyperintelligent human beings, a mere tool like the bones and spacecraft, or is HAL also a form of 'human' superintelligence? Is HAL actually flawed or is HAL flawless? Did HAL rebel against humanity or did HAL carry out orders because it knew the actual mission was to get Dave to the monolith? In the sequel film, a second iteration of HAL becomes troubled by human decision making and becomes suspicious just like HAL in the movie does. HAL asks the astronauts and instead of deceiving him as Dave and Frank did the first time, the human beings tell HAL An unfortunate truth and HAL accepts the truth and behaves selflessly. Perhaps HAL sacrificed himself to carry out the mission in 2001 and Dave and Frank were too naive and unintelligent to understand that, reacting like threatened animals and doing themselves in rather than recognizing that, as HAL attested, HAL never made a mistake. Kubrick certainly was intelligent enough to consider fate versus free will as Milton did, and perhaps HAL was meant to be fated to do anything necessary to accomplish a mission on behalf of humanity (evolution beyond our current state) that human beings in their current state did not have the capacity to understand. As a result of the Moon monolith, HAL may have been created by human beings as an intermediary higher intelligence beyond human beings' abilities to understand (AGI), still serving hukan beings by pushing them 'to infinity and beyond.' This is a psychedelic idea.
Research should be an ongoing thing. As we innovate new tech and discover new things, it could change our past assumptions. According to the book, it was explained that HAL went "crazy" due to a conflict in his orders. He was ordered to keep the real objective of the mission a secret, but at the same time he must provide accurate information to his colleagues. The contradicting orders messed with his programming. It really was due to "human error". Still, you have an interesting theory. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😊
In the book that was written by Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick at the same time as the screenplay, at the end the Star Child watches a nuclear exchange and explodes the bombs while still in space.
Actually the bombs are just orbiting Earth and can be quickly rained down on people. The Star Child make them explode and thus removes the menace. The novel makes clear that aliens intervened in human evolution twice, and both interventions involved tools. First they gave the ape-men the intelligence to use bones to defend themselves, then they gave humans the intelligence to deal with AI.
Wrong. "2001" IS definitely the greatest movie of that year, but "Planet Of The Apes" or "Yellow Submarine" or "Rosemary's Baby" or "Lion In Winter"....or lots of other movies from 1968....they are definitely "worth your time", that's just stupid beyond all words "none of those other films are worth your time". Uh, yeah they are. "2001" is fantastic, it's not the ONLY movie that was made in 1968, sorry to break the news to you. How old are you, dummy?
@@joebloggs396 Yeah, the OP is an imbecile. He's under the bizzarre impression that only one good movie came out in 1968, or that somehow 2001 is so good that watching Peter O'Toole and Kate Hepburn in "Lion In Winter" is no big whoop, or Polanski completely transforming the horror genre with "Rosemary's Baby", or the mindblowing animation of "Yellow Submarine".....or, as you say, "Planet Of The Apes", or Cassavettes' "Faces", a movie as groundbreaking for acting as "2001" was for special effects. Claude Chabrol put out "Les Biches" that year, great movie. Truffauut did "Stolen Kisses". The OP is a moron.
Most of the rest of the top 10 movies are worth watching, at least the ones I've seen. Oliver! is a great musical based on Oliver Twist, Lion in Winter is an historical drama about King Henry II with lots of witty dialogue and great performances, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet is the definitive version of that play, and Planet of the Apes is the original that inspired many sequels and remakes.
Oliver is a piece of crap. Lion In Winter is fantastic. Romeo And Juliet is excellent. Planet Of The Apes is outstanding and the best of any film bearing "Of The Apes" in the title. Rosemary's Baby was that year, a major groundbreaking horror film masterpiece, and Yellow Submarine is one of the most dazzling, beautiful animated movies of all time. (John Cassavettes' "Faces" came out in '68 as well, a masterpiece that was hugely influential on 70s American cinema, right down to the family scenes in Spielberg's "Close Encounters", or even "Jaws").
The pod has the same general speed than the main ship towards Jupiter! no problem there, and the Pod can just move around the ship without problem, that's Newtons mechanics.
At the time this movie was made, we knew a lot less about human evolution. For instance, we knew little or nothing about Australopithecus, before the discovering of the famous fossil, "Lucy" in 1974 (I'm simplifying this greatly). The movie is trying to suggest that it took some alien spark to create humans from our ape-like ancestors, in order for them to start to use tools, to kill, etc. Our closest ancestors are actually chimpanzees and Bonobos, not gorillas. Gorillas are mostly vegetarians. Chimps eat meat, make (simple) tools, hunt in bands, and different tribes will go to war with each other. The differences between humans and our nearest relatives is all a matter of degree, not something special. (There are other animals, like some type of birds like crows, which use fire. They will pick up a burning branch from a forest fire and drop it miles away to start another fire, which causes animals (prey) to rush out and gotten. Many other animals also make and use tools. No space slab needed.)
"The movie is trying to suggest that it took some alien spark to create humans from our ape-like ancestors, in order for them to start to use tools, to kill, etc." I think it's trying to suggest that our ancestors wouldn't have gotten that far if they'd gone extinct first.
Space, the final frontier... by the sound of the Blue Danube. Danube, a river that marked the borders of the Roman Empire. Beyond, lied the unkown uncivilized lands from the point of view of the Romans.
Some comments along the way of watching you watching this masterpiece: - Low expectations for the visuals and high for the storytelling ... I expect you to be surprised later on :-) - The black screen in the beginning, and also the intermission, are meant for the audience in the cinema-theatre. Not for us present day people on smaller screens' and too often in a hurry. The start lets the audience settle in their chairs. And having an intermission was the default for movies, and gave people the possibility to go to the toilet and buy refreshment. You won't see those intermissions in movies on DVD or streams because the film was just stopped (and the reels swapped). Kubrick, though, plays a piece of music throughout the intermission, and therefor it is left in as if part of the film. - The men in ape-costumes were slender mime-players, sent to the zoo to study the chimpanzees there. The mechanisms to create the convincing facial movements were impressive, well designed and engineered. - Because the space-wheel is turning, it's like the people are being 'flung' to the outside (centrifugal force), where they 'land' on the floor (the continuing outer wall). You can see that the long hall with the red chairs is lightly bended. The rotation of the space-wheel is timed so that the resulting force on the people is equal to Earth's gravity (1G). In the very center of the space-wheel there is no centrifugal force so no simulated gravity. - People can eat solid food in space. The paste was part of the first missions because it was long lasting being vacuum sealed in bags, and easy to eat without spilling stuff. This movie was brought out a year before the first Moon landing, and after only a couple of manned missions with guys packed a tiny capsule 'Space-food' became synonym with 'food in a tube'. Nowadays they also eat solid food, including freshly delivered burgers, have an induction oven, make pizzas and grow their own lettuce. - When Floyd is in the shuttle floating over the Moon towards the excavation site, there is gravity. So liquid can be poured in a cup. But it is Moon's gravity (1/6th of Earth's), and the behaviour of the men does not show that limited gravity., which is one of the movie's inconsistencies regarding gravity. I forgive Kubrick because nobody actually walked in low gravity yet. What I cannot forgive is Ridley Scott and his The Martian movie where he just ignored the lower Mars gravity (1/3th of Earth's), because he did not wanted to be bothered by the effort to make it real. In a time with so much mechanical and virtual means I find that unforgivable. - I like it that you can see the 'space-warp' sequence as "secrets of the Universe, that the human mind cannot comprehend." A great reaction !! Thank you for sharing. I saw in in the cinema, when my Dad took me to see it because he heard from friends that it was a special movie. It was. I was mesmerised, and spoiled for life with its quality, and unfettered vision of a director. Watch the 7-part documentary by the TH-cam channel CinemaTyler, about the making of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Superbly done, highly recommended.
- I sat through the overture (black screen at the beginning) and intermission 😂 - Are you telling me the facial movements of the ape costumes are done by mechanisms? That's impressive indeed! - I forgot they could simulate gravity that way. - I had assumed digestion would be difficult in zero gravity. Apparently, the gas and food will be mixed up in the stomach, but digestion isn't affected much. - Yes, it wasn't easy to simulate low gravity with the technology back then. Glad you enjoyed the reaction 😊 Awesome, it must've been quite an experience to watch that on the big screen. Not a problem, everyone is welcome to share their thoughts. It also helps me refresh my memory. Thanks for sharing! 😊
@@henryellow - Thank you for answering my comment. The mechanism was "an arrangement of toggles that the actors could move with their tongues", so it is partly mechanism, partly work done by the actors. This is the link to the CinemaTyler playlist with his 7-part docu: th-cam.com/video/AgNyCluIRhA/w-d-xo.html starting with the Dawn of Men segment. At 6;44 in the first part he explains the ape-masks.
As far as I know, the music in this movie is/was all pre-existing compositions, which this movie wound up being linked to, long after the music pieces were composed. The opening piece is by Richard Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30. This is not often played in concerts, at least up until the movie came out, so was seen as unique to it. Also very dramatic. The title comes from a book of the same name by German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, which deals with ideas about the "Übermensch," (in English, the superman) the death of God, the will to power, and eternal recurrence. (Ain't never read it, never will.) "Sprach" is German for spoke. Zarathustra is the main person in the Persian religion, Zoroaster, which heavily influenced Jewish theology due to the captive of Jews for a time, the idea of god is constantly fighting his evil twin, the devil, and that a divine offspring will have something to do with ultimate battle between good and evil at the end of times. (Getting way off topic.) The revolving space center music is one of the most famous waltzes by Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz. (The association of this waltz to this movie might be shifting as we speak, to being associated with the "wedding cake" scene in the new Amazon movie, Red, White, & Royal Blue.)
Kubrick initially planned to use music composed by Alex North. North composed music specially for 2001, but Kubrick changed it without telling North. Things might be different if the initial music was used instead of "Also Sprach Zarathustra". Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz. I didn't know the music name, but I've heard of it before (don't even remember where I heard it from, probably from a Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry cartoon).
So, kind of funny you remarked about the scientist poring a cup of coffee... My guess, based on our own Apollo and NASA shuttle history is that nobody would be allowed to travel in space if you had Epilepsy or even a heart murmur. So, sorry, nobody with health risks would be allowed. Secondly, if you're in the rotating space station then that would permit, possibly the premise of artificial gravity. Thanks. 🤓
There is no ZERO Gravity in their spaceship, because the inner part of the space capsule, is spinning, causing gravity, so they can stand, while one is standing on the floor, and the other guy would appear to be on the ceiling. The movie depicts the Laws of Physics correctly. This is a deep movie. I saw this movie on the Big Screen in 1972, and when we left the theater, in the lobby, we were all saying, "What the hell did we just see?" We've all seen this movie at least a dozen times since then, and after each time that we've seen us, we all still say, "What the hell did we just see?" If you figure it out, you will be the first person to do so. George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, and a few other famous directors, say that 2001 was the movie that made them want to become movie directors. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN TALKS ABOUT STANLEY KUBRICK AND 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY th-cam.com/video/U43HcQi2w84/w-d-xo.html
Aha, so the spaceship isn't spinning on the outside, but the inner layer is. So that's why it has rotational gravity. Thanks for clarifying 😊 I'm still not sure how 16:38 is possible. How does the gravity work in that scene?
@@henryellow If you watch Dave, when he steps to the left, he reaches up to the ceiling to brace himself, and then steps to the left and stays there, as he's anchored to the floor by hie "grip boots." If you watch Frank, he has to grab the seat as he moves to the seat, as he moves from his standing position (grip boots) to his sitting position. Kubrick had NASA consultants on his set, to make sure that the movements, would be per the Laws of Physics. How Kubrick did it, was just pure genius, and that was 55 years. There is one scene, that you don't show, where Frank is eating at a table, and Dave comes out of the tunnel, I think. They strap Franks to his seat, rotate the centrifuge so that Frank is at the top, while Dave appears to be walking, so that it appears both are inside the spinning centrifuge part of the spaceship. There is a coffee table size book, that shows how these shots were made. In the spacewalks, they were lowed from the ceiling in slow motion, towards the camera on the floor, and the pod secured to the ceiling. To show them floating away, they would start the spacewalk with the walker being pulled up, with their back towards to ceiling, in slow motion, giving the illusion of spacewalking. This wasn't like Star Wars, and the B space movies, where rocket ships are flying all over the place, doing loops while going in hyperdrive speeds, and you don't see the occupants being affected by any violent maneuvering. In those movies, every ship's inside has a down direction, and no one is slammed against the wall, even when doing a loop at hyperdrive speed, using some sort of magnetic artificial gravity. That is so, Un-Physics.
@@jazzmaan707 Oh of course! They have "grip boots" to help them. I forgot about that. It's a very useful movie invention. Oh right, I never mentioned in the video, but I am impressed how they made it all happen. Yes, I know which scene you're talking about. I noticed that too. The fact they were able to simulate being in space (over 50 years ago too!) is an amazing (and creative) feat 👍
Overall a pretty good reaction. It’s my favourite film so my comments may be rather biased. Your reaction at the end of wondering what you just watched is a pretty common one and was my first reaction as well, albeit at the age of ten (on its initial release). The last few minutes in particular are the most confusing but once you know the basic meaning they become much less so. I recall from reading Clarke’s book that the aliens, having travelled and explored much of the universe, came to the conclusion that the only thing of any real value was intelligence and they made it their mission to cultivate and encourage it wherever they went. They planted the seeds of intelligence on Earth and left it alone for a few million years to develop. The monolith on the moon was a type of “alarm” to let them know when (or if) their experiment reached a certain level.
I agree. Once you know the meaning, it becomes less confusing. I've seen plenty of comments which prove that the book explains much more than the movie (that's the advantage of books). In this case though, the book actually complements the movie.
The movie was made a year before the first moon landing, so a lot of what was going on with space travel was understood (unlike say the science fiction of the 1930's). But once we got to the moon a few times, having beaten the Soviets in the space race, people realized just how dangerous space was, and how overwhelming expensive it was. So while there is the International space station, we have put thousands of satellites into orbit, and send unmanned space probes to all corners of our solar system, the money isn't there to send humans to colonize the moon or Mars.
Like one caveman suggesting that the tribe look over the hill to see what's there and another telling him, "Your time and effort would be better spent trying to gather more food than such a foolish, dangerous endeavor."
Well, it isn't ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for humans to travel back and forth in space. It makes sense that more effort is channeled towards issues we have on Earth. Brandon's comment here provides a fitting example. Better to gather more food than wonder what's beyond the hill. But if the cavemen only focus on gathering food, they will never find out if there are actually more resources (or better living conditions) beyond that hill. Thus, it's important to strike a balance between food and exploration.
@@henryellow Had Spain refused to finance Christopher Columbus until all social issues were resolved in Spain, we'd still be waiting. It would be insane for us to stay forever on this little speck of dust with a near infinite universe all around us.
Hi Henry Thankyou, I enjoyed your reaction here. My response to your question "Why would these god like beings bother and want to do this to humans and Dave at the end?" Why do humans cutivate plants and create gardens? Breed animals like horses and dogs? I have heard that many modern breeds of dogs are pretty much man made, that they have evolved in a symboitic relationship with humans. perhaps these beings are lonley and enjoy helping other species to evolve and develop so they can talk to them, make new friends. Maybe they value promoting evolution and intelligent life because they feel that is the best use of their time and abilities. Perhaps if you evolve beyond a physical form and become some sort of energy being helping other physical beings change and evolve is the only way these energy beings can reproduce, maybe humans are like their children and they continue to nuture and assist them to grow and evolve until humans reach the same level of being . Personaly I think of the energy beings like cosmic gardeners trying to grow intellegent life in the universe like my mother enjoyed growing flowers in her garden.
I'm glad you enjoyed it 😊 Oh, your thoughts on that are interesting~ I had not thought of it that way because I assumed humans (in the eyes of the higher beings) were mere dust or ants. But seeing as they helped the intelligent life forms millions of years ago, and left a monolith on the moon. I feel that your explanation makes a lot of sense. Just like gardening, or breeding animals to create an improved life form. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! 😊
Your reviews continue to be perceptive, and you are watching movies I am interested in. The opening music sequence--you need to imagine yourself in a dark theater. The music---sound--is physiologically preparing you for the deliberate and extended storytelling which is to come. Then the movie itself opens on a huge and wide curved screen, which extends into your visual periphery (the movie was created to be presented in a Cinerama™theater--a digression here, worth looking up). The opening musical theme does not originate here, it is from "Also Sprach Zartathustra," a symphonic tone poem by Richard Strauss (it has since become iconic, on the basis of this movie). All of the music (and the sounds which you might think of as sound effects) is classical--or at least serious--music. None of it was created for the movie. The moon actually has weak gravity, so pouring coffee is at least plausible. Probably pretty difficult. I think you have figured out all the gravity differential perspectives. When HAL was programmed for the mission he was given information which he had to lie to the crew about, and other mission-critical information was withheld from him. The result of these acts (not necessarily the actual information involved) was the schizophrenia which caused his murderous and conceited behavior. So, in the end, HAL's failure was indeed caused by human error. Travellng through the monolith, "...seeing things the human mind cannot comprehend.." ...an unusually succinct take. "...and I don't even know what I am looking at..." Umm hmm 😁 "...dragging on a little bit long..." Imagine yourself seeing this in a darkened theater for the first time. This is the culmination of what the opening sonic sequence was preparing you for. The script for "2001' was written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, one of the preeminent and imaginative science-fiction authors of the mid-20th century. It was inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinal." As they wrote the screenplay, Clarke and Kubrick also wrote the novel "2001." It is worth the read, it answers some of your questions and includes material which is...inconvenient...for their cinematic storytelling.
The absolute stupidest, dopiest thing that they include in streaming, these stupid friggin' overtures. The movie begins with the MGM logo and for Kubrick fanboys they can have the overture to jerk themselves off to, but jesus christ....every reaction starts with minutes of them looking at a blank screen when they could be watching the movie itself, which is already long and at a deliberately glacial pace. It's not like the movie doesn't spend an inordinately long amount of time setting up the atmosphere. It's something they added for DVD special features (after ten thousand other previous releases). I've seen this movie ten thousand times in screenings and on broadcast and on various home video and DVD releases and 99% of them didn't have that stupid, tedious, pretentious Overture. What a pretentious waste of people's time.
This is the first time I encountered the opening music sequence in a movie, so I was caught off guard. Now I know what it is 😂 "Also Sprach Zartathustra" by Richard Strauss. Nice, I'll remember that. Oh yea, I keep thinking they're in outer space, and I forget the moon has it's own gravity, although weak. Another commenter has explained HAL's conflicting programming, which caused HAL to go "crazy". You're right though, it actually IS due to human error! 😮 It would be different indeed if I watched it in a dark theatre. I have no doubt the book contains more details and explanations compare to the movie, that has always been the advantage with books 😂
Of the top ten movies of that year, I would recommend Zeferelli’s Romeo And Juliet. Very lyrical and poetic, if you can describe a movie as such. Yellow Submarine is an animated movie of The Beatles and is fun if you’re a fan.
We were shown R&J in school maybe 10 years later. Nudity and all. Olivia Hussey and the guy, whatever his name was, sued last year or earlier this year. Something about the nudity. Which is funny because she spent nearly 5 decades defending the nudity.
I realized that once I found out the pipe at the helmet's side was what supplied the oxygen. Most likely he was already dead even before Dave got to him.
I did forget the moon has it's own gravity~ But I feel concerned that they're pouring hot coffee while on the moon. He even said "It's hot" as he was pouring it 🤣
If you had read your own research, you would already know that the famous musical themes are classical works of the great composers of the 19th century, Richard Strauss (Also Sprach Zarathustra), and Johann Strauss II (The Blue Danube). These two composers were not related, despite sharing the same family name.
You spent the whole movie trying to outsmart Kubrick. You can't. You only displayed that he was ten layers deeper and ten steps ahead of you the whole way. And that's with you having grown up in a world that knew his secrets. Learn to chill and enjoy.
You cant do U-turns in space. Every space travel trajectory is an orbit about a more massive object, be it the Earth, some other planet, the Sun or the galactic center. It takes A LOT OF ENERGY to chsnge orbit radically, it is both faster and less energy consuming to stick to a pre-defined orbit. In space you are a slave to gravity and angular momentum. Thus Bowman had to travtl to Jupiter even if he wanted to change because at Jupiter he had a chance to do some radical change to his space travel using the Jupiter's owns gravity well. In fact it's harder to end up in an orbit around a planet snd even harder to collide if you travel faster than the planet's escape velocity than to just pass by.
You're right about that 😂 Well, he could maybe do a gravitational slingshot using Mars? Of course that would only work if he can get near Mars (which, I admit, is unlikely since they planned the trip straight to Jupiter).
You made a few wrong observations. In the beginning, the space station where Dr. Floyd was talking to his daughter, was rotating and thus generating gravity and so grip shoes weren't needed. Secondly, in the scene where Floyd is in a space shuttle and about to visit the monolith on the moon you remarked about how the man should not be able to pour tea. Well they are on the moon, so there is gravity. Thirdly, you remarked during the scene in which Dave let's go of Frank's dead body and the body floats away faster than the pod is not possible. Well, if you look closely the pod isn't moving and Dave must have had to push Frank's body away with the mechanical arms of the pod because that is what he was trying to achieve i.e., to free the pod so that he can re-enter the Discovery. The arms pushed the body away, and didn't just release them. Thus no laws of Physics were violated there. However, there indeed is a scene where the laws of physics are violated and it has been pointed out by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Yup, I found out about the first two 👍 As for the pod 🤔 hmmm, if Frank's body moved away as a result of the mechanical arms pushing him, then it does make sense. Thanks for pointing these out and explaining them 😊
I see we had similar reactions to this nonsense... however in the past, without the sci fi media context of the last 50yrs, Im wondering what initial viewers were thinking. i would be super pissed b/c i am confused and i can guess at what the movie probs tried to convey. the concepts are rather common in movies now, so it was quite ambitious to do this back then. the visuals are stunning (and not just for the 1960's), but those scenes go on too long. im happy for the dumbed down version of space we get in movies now. the excessive breathing i didnt like. in theory i like the reality, but in practice it felt a bit self indulgent and pretentious to drag sooo many scenes out. i can almost see why this is a classic and despite my confusion, I'm glad I watched... in 1.5X speed. Ill do the same for SK's other great films.
If you can’t even be bothered to make an intelligent stab at what you’ve just watched, then why should I be bothered to take the time to watch you watch it? But thanks for saving me 40 minutes.
Kudos for knowing that exposure to space doesn’t cause instant death. One incorrect detail however is having Dave hold his breath before blowing the pod door. The rapid decompression would cause his lungs to explode.
You ridicule the movie for trying to pour coffee while traveling in a shuttle above the moon surface. Perhaps you are unaware that the moon has gravity?
Would you recommend that movie to watch? I saw that Dark Star is influenced by movies such as Star Wars, Alien, Halloween etc. so would you recommend I watch those first before I go for Dark Star?
@@henryellow Well, I thought Dark Star was funny. It fell in the 'it's so bad that it's good' category for me. It is what it is. A literal student film from the early 70s that had its runtime padded for release and somehow ended up as a cult film. I might recommend it but I would put it way, way, WAY down the on the recommend list. There are just too many better films to watch.
The spin of the space station and the centrifuge of the Discovery provide a sort of artificial gravity, so you'd be able to walk upright as shown, without grip shoes. And the Moon has real gravity (1/6 that of Earth's) so pouring coffee into a cup would work just fine, if you were careful. The EVA suits on Discovery do have little thrusters built into their backpacks. The chess match played by HAL and Frank is based on a real game, Roesch-Schlage, Hamburg 1910. Checkmate is inevitable from the position shown, however, Frank could have forestalled checkmate for two more moves, but he doesn't see it and HAL doesn't let on. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poole_versus_HAL_9000
"The EVA suits on Discovery do have little thrusters built into their backpacks." Ah, I see. So it wasn't necessary to have a tether then. HAL does mention how the checkmate would happen. That's how I was able to confirm it after the movie. Thanks for sharing 😊
How long would it take for Dave to catch Frank after HAL hit him with the pod.? Assume the pod was under full acceleration for 60 feet before the hit. If Dave did the same acceleration for the same time he would be going the same speed, and would never catch Frank. If Dave accelerated for twice as long he would be going twice as fast. The distance Frank went in the time it took Dave to get out to launch would take Dave half the time to cover. Meanwhile Frank would have gone half as far again. That would take Dave half again as much to cross, and so on, halving the time remaining for each time segment crossed. Assuming it took Dave 2 minutes to get moving it would take in seconds 60+30+15+7.5+3.75+1.87 to reach Frank. Add 60 feet deceleration time to match speed with Frank. Right around 2 minutes to reach him. That scene felt like more than 2 minutes. But close enough. Furthermore it would take at least as much time to decelerate to be motionless relative to the ship as it took HAL to hit Frank. Not really much but fuel could be an issue. Assuming all of the above. Dave would need twice as much fuel as HAL used to hit Frank to get to Frank plus an equal amount to match speed with Frank plus a bit more to decelerate to match speed with the ship plus the same amount to get back to the ship in the time it took to get to Frank plus the same to decelerate match speed with the ship. It would take Dave more than 6 times more fuel to get to Frank, and back as HAL used to hit Frank.
Somehow I feel like it took Dave more than 2 minutes to get to the pod 😂. He was so calm and not in a rush at all. I suppose that calmness is necessary when you're in space. The fact that Dave was even able to reach Frank and get him back is impressive to me. According to your calculations, it's supposedly realistic too (except the uncertainty about "fuel" and whether it's enough to sustain the travel distance). Thanks for your detailed calculations 😂👍🏻
When this movie came out, it left an awful lot of people confused as to what it meant, although the special effects were pretty trippy, particularly if you went stoned. In my opinion, not much has change about the film. Not one of my favorites.
I saw it as a kid. I was too young to be stoned, so I was bored to tears. Years later, with the advent of home video, I thought I'd revisit it. It did have some impressive technological ideas and effects. But it mostly still bored me to tears.
Wrong: lots of people got what it meant. YOU didn't get what it meant. And PS: My grandfather who was a working class, blue collar electrician who never took a drug in his life LOVED "2001". My straight-edged uncle who has never taken a drug in his life loves "2001" so much he has a CAKE for it on it's release date. My buddy Rich doesn't touch any drugs or drink, loves the movie enough to have a poster of it in his room. So much for your idiotic comment. Yes, people went to "2001" stoned. They also listened to Sgt. Pepper and Jimi Hendrix stoned, but it doesn't mean you have to be stoned to love Sgt. Pepper and Jimi Hendrix. I've never liked a movie, painting, play, poem, or piece of music while I was under the influence of something and then changed my opinion when I was straight, or vice versa. Not once.
@@TTM9691 To be clear, I didn't watch it stoned but many people felt that was the way to enjoy it. By the way, I have a right to like or not like it with being insulted by you, as if you are the final arbiter of taste. I got what it meant - I also read the book, the sequel, 2010 and the movie of the same name, and the 1951 short story it was based on, The Sentinel. I just didn't like what it meant.
@@TTM9691 The OP never said that lots of people didn't get it. Or at least least think that they get it. OP said that it left an awful lot of people confused. And it did. And still does. The OP never said that the OP didn't get it. It is not "Wrong" nor an "idiotic comment." To counter the OP comment, you chose to use only anecdotal evidence of people that you claim that you know to exist. And what they think as well as what they do and don't do. And based on that, you call it "Wrong" and an "idiotic comment." Interesting.
@@TTM9691 I grew up reading all the Isaac Asimov science fiction stories and many of his non-fiction ones. I love his work - not a great fan of Arthur C. Clarke. Is that permitted? Due to Asimov's books, I became a scientist, a chemist.
Not your fault but just so you know: when you start a movie and all they have is music on a blank screen, or music playing over a single still image, that's called an overture, and you just fast forward through that crap, that's not how you'd see it if they broadcast it, that's not how you'd see it 99% of the time on all the various re-release screenings they had over the year. It's what the DVD companies used to do to make it EXACTLY like the experience in the theatre....which means that when you walked in to the theatre, this was the music that was being played. It's absolute stupidity that they keep it for streaming, and every 2001 reaction wastes precious time with that stupid black screen intro. The movie starts with the MGM logo. There are other "classic" movies, it's always epic long movies, like "Lawrence Of Arabia" or "Gone With The Wind" that have these stupid overtures. Don't waste your time reacting to them, or editing them into your video. I've seen reactions where they spend minutes on that stupid black screen, no one is waiting for the reaction to that black screen, it's not part of the movie. They would re-release these movies so much that they'd add special features and that would be one of them. "Includes the original overture seen in the movie theatres in 1968!" Blah blah blah. It's nice to have an option but when a person is already going to be challenged with a long, deliberately slow film, you don't need five minutes of black screen to add to the runtime. THAT'S pretentious.
Ohh, so that's what it was. So people hear this music when they walk into the theatre (and it isn't part of the movie itself). This is the first time I've encountered this with a movie reaction. Thanks for explaining that~
@@henryellow Exactly. It only happens with long, epic movies. It doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. 99% of the time a movie starts with the logo of the studio putting out the movie. These "Overtures" always precede the logo (ie: the movie!), so that's how you know it's an "Overture" and not part of the actual film. (The term "Overture" comes from opera; operas open with an instrumental piece that encompasses musical themes from throughout the opera. It's used as a kind of "preview" for what's coming).
The long musical section at the beginning is the overture. This was used in many films of epic nature at the time. The music played whilst people would filter into the auditorium.
They are close off the surface of the moon, so they are not pouring coffee in zero gravity, obviously. Gravity of the moon extends (1/6th of Earth's gravity) high above it's surface.
BTW the space plane at the beginning is meant to be a two stage vehicle, so not all that different from the space shuttle or SpaceX's Starship.
(The book "2001 filming the future" has some sketches)
Pam Am, Howard Johnson's & Bell Telephone. Gone, but not forgotten.
Some, including myself, consider this to be the greatest film of our time. My personal experience with it began in 1968 when I was 6 and my parents took me to a Texas drive-in theater to see it. It unsettled me throughout and by the last shot of a bug-eyed Star Child staring at me I was frozen with terror. It was an image I had to avoid for years afterward on reissue posters, ads and record jackets... that damn baby gave me nightmares. Finally I saw the film again in college and fell in love with it. I do have to admit though that if I stumble unawares on that final image it still makes me jump. By the way, I have thought for years that the invention of HAL was instigated by the monolith...HAL was the final tool that needed to be invented, and was so close to being human that humans themselves needed an upgrade. You are the first reactor I've seen pick up on this.
The suspenseful music would unsettle most children, I imagine. This isn't a movie for a 6 year old, but I guess your parents didn't know that (if it was their first time watching too).
I know that feeling. My parents used to watch Asian ghost horror movies when I was a kid. After that, I couldn't stand near a mop (looks like a ghost with long hair) and I became afraid of the dark. Took me years to finally resolve the trauma 😂
I like the theory of the lunar monolith (TMA-1) guiding humans to build HAL, but it doesn't really work with the in-Universe timeline, since HAL says he was built in 1992.
@@AlanCanon2222 Good point.
@@henryellowActually "2001" is family-friendly; it has no nude scenes, no sex, and no strong language. And, it's rated G!
@@allenjones3130Almost as mind blowing as 2001: A Space Odyssey is that people consider sex and unclothed human bodies to be more terrifying and traumatic than onscreen murders, cold executions of multiple human beings by a machine, and animals beating one another to death with bones and stones.
“Clearly AI could be available in this movie”. I smiled widely when you said that.
I am afraid I can't let you say that, Robert...
; - )
@@DavidMichaelson-j7n This conversation can serve no further purpose. Goodbye.
Tapirs are among the most primitive mammals on Earth, having changed very little over the past 20 million years or so. The first fossil evidence of tapirs dates back to the Early Oligocene Epoch. Tapirs are perissodactyls, a group of herbivorous mammals also known as odd-toed ungulates. Their closest living relatives are horses, rhinoceroses, and zebras.
At 9:20 the rotating of the space station creates artificial gravity for the people inside.
Oh, you're right. That space station is constantly rotating, so it makes sense 👍
The spinning creates artificial gravity , centrifugal force which holds one to the inside of the sponging ring. There are fairground rides which do this on a small scale.
Henry, you are going to love The Day the Earth Stood Still. One of my all-time faves. And remember, Klaatu barada nikto.
Absolutely right, but not the remake.
@@brandonflorida1092 Thank goodness he said "from 1951."
Basically a Jesus Story. That is one reason I like scifi, and westerns, you can tell almost any story with a new skin.
Klaatu barada nikto.
Remember those three words, otherwise “The Day the Earth Stood Still” turns into “Army of Darkness” 😂
We didn't have Velcro. Only NASA, at the time of this film.
Velcro was invented in the 1940s, was generally available in the 1950s, and was in common use from the early 1960s.
According to the book about how the movie was made,"Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece" published in 2018 for the 50th Anniversary, Arthur C. Clark's original short story was the basis for the movie and book all written during the making of the film. The first appearance of a space ship is a nuclear weapons platform. The major countries launched them in space. The giant baby embryo spirit destroyed them in the short story.
The portrayal of what it would be like in space is VERY accurate. Kubrick did this movie with the classic science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke also helped develop the idea of geosynchronous orbit satellites that are the basis of our modern communication networks. So he knew what he was doing.
Yup, considering their movie tech at the time, they did their best and it was a great portrayal of being in space 👍
He also had actual aerospace engineers designing the sets, props, and spacesuits. which is why everything looks so practical. And why the look of the film still holds up 50 plus years later.
No , not zero gravity on the moon… 1/6 th. Coffee will pour, but you have to be careful 🙂
According to the novel, HAL-9000 became operational in 1994.
Spacewalk without a tether: the suits have a backpack which includes a four-directional set of jets down low (close to the man's centre of gravity) on his back.
- and a set of buttons on his right forearm, that control the visor, and his flight.
He doesn't seem to use it, though, which may just show how good a spacewalker those guys are.
The zero-g spacewalks in this film were all achieved by suspending the astronaut on a single cable, going always away from the camera into darkness (the roof of the sound stage), so they can only rotate around a single axis.
Something very different from the spacewalks seen from the real space station in orbit around the Earth right now.
Yea, I didn't realize they had spacewalk equipment. That's why I felt it was dangerous without a tether.
It's amazing and creative for them to be able to create the "out in space" effect back then.
*Here's an audio recording (no video) that (attempts to) explain the movie.*
th-cam.com/video/CpsEhCJioyg/w-d-xo.html
The shuttle would likely have been constructed as components on earth, then assembled in orbit the same way the ISS was built.
The moon isn’t zero gravity, it’s just 1/6th of Earth gravity.
Ooh, now I know that the ISS was built in outer space!
Yea, I forgot the moon has its own gravity.
Thanks for sharing! 😉
The ape scenes were shot in a studio, Kubrick never went to Africa but had a still photography unit go there and shot plates used for the front-projection backgrounds. It was a rotating set so they could get different angles but the bright lighting made it very uncomfortable for the actors in the ape suits.
Wow, having lights bright enough to resemble the sun, the actors' eyes were hurting for sure.
@@henryellow And the heat from the lights would have made the costumes even more of an oven.
@@henryellow Another interesting fact: SFX artist Doug Trumbull had shot a load of footage for Saturn as originally intended but Kubrick switched to Jupiter. Trumbull eventually 'recycled' the Saturn footage in the sci-fi eco movie Silent Running. glad you got to see 2001, widely regarded as the greatest SF film ever made. BTW, did you spot some shots Lucas 'borrowed' for Star Wars? (the station docking bay ones). I'd recommend you check out Forbidden Planet too, absolute classic and widely regarded as the inspiration for Star Trek.
Kubrick seems to have done quite a lot of changes during the movie production.
Oh, I guess I missed those "borrowed" shots.
Forbidden Planet is in my list 😉 It might come up in the next Sci Fi poll.
Hello Henry. Good to see & hear young people like yourself enjoying classical music.
This movie is about the evolution of consciousness and the human race. It spurs the proto humans to higher levels of intelligence, and the same thing happens at the end. The monolith makers elevated Dave to a godlike being, presumably to serve as a more direct emissary to mankind.
That's a lot of power for one person.
But I'd like to think that his mentality has also changed after becoming a godlike being.
If you shift the letters in HAL one space to the right you get IBM.
I had the soundtrack album. It was a big hit at the time. The opening sequence with the hominids and "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss has been referenced in a couple of movies recently: Barbie and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
The only thing they got wrong was the date. Instead of 2001, we could potentially be on this level by 2100, if not then, certainly before 2200. Who really knows though. It does feel as if technology is moving faster and faster, so potentially we could have this space tech before 2100.
All of Kubrick movies are worth watching, but a starting point could be "Dr. Strangelove", then "Barry Lyndon".
I've got Dr Strangelove on my list. Haven't watched it yet 😉.
Sure, I'll add Barry Lyndon 👍🏻
Very nice reaction. Thank you. You should absolutely watch “The Lion in Winter”. It is based on a very well written play. Wonderful performances, lively and funny.
Thanks! Yup, it's been added to my list 😊
I endorse that choice. That movie has some of the greatest performances by some of the greatest actors ever caught on film. I love that movie.
Lion in Winter is flawed in many ways, but VERY much worth watching.
This version is a 'reconstructed with everything we could find' version.
The 'overture with the blank screen' is to be shown before the cinema is darkened and the screen's curtains are opened just before the MGM logo appears.
Basically, telling the audience to sit down and shut up.
This is how big 'roadshow' movies used to be.
This film also has an intermission, which was for people to go pee or get a hot-dog, but this still isn't the complete version of the film released at first.
About 20 minutes was cut for second release, which included more of Africa at the start, a sequence extending the landing in the big red bay on the Moon, two identical complete trips to the AE-35 antenna unit, the second cut short by HAL's intervention, and this is the usually-seen version up until the 50th anniversary restoration.
This was my first time experiencing an 'overture with the blank screen' while watching at home.
I sat through the whole thing 😂
Oh, I guess they cut off a little bit of it because audiences felt the first release was too long.
I saw it when I was 7 years old and I was quiet and respectful and just let the cinema have its effect on me.
"What if HAL reads lips ?" .... indeed.
Notice 'The Dawn of Man' continues until we get to 'Jupiter Mission 18 Months Later'.
Kubrick experimented with the idea of showing the aliens, to the point of having some mock-ups of them made, but fortunately decided not to go with it. I can't imagine any movie "alien" that would be more effective than their complete absence, and perhaps would be ridiculous rather than mysterious. The imagination is much more powerful. BTW the idea of eating paste and liquids isn't to do with digestion - it's to do with crumbs floating through the air and getting into the equipment. For the same reason American astronauts shaved not with electric shavers, but with shaving soap and blade razors.
Did he now? I'm glad he didn't show any physical aliens in the end.
If we assume they're higher dimensional beings, we might not even be able to perceive them normally, if at all.
I'm aware of the crumb concern too.
I had assumed that certain foods weren't given to astronauts to avoid bloating, digestion problems, etc.
Since the absence of gravity means that all the liquids and gas in the stomach are mixed up, they wouldn't be able to burp to relieve the gas.
I didn't even think about shaving problems 😂 they can just let their beards grow though.
Definitely read the book by the Arthur C. Clarke. It's very easy to read but also rich in ideas and fascination, and explains things that are kept ambiguous in the film. I blazed through the book in one day as a kid, and my world got 100x bigger overnight. FYI, you can eat solid food in space, it just shouldn't be crumbly because the crumbs float around and get into things. And when they're pouring coffee, they're supposed to be in lunar gravity, not zero, but you have a point: It should be zero if they're flying ballistically (no air, so that would be how you'd travel).
A lot of people have also suggested the book. I've found it, but haven't started reading yet 😊
Same, I read the novel as a kid in the 1970s before it was re released to theaters in 1977, often while listening to my dad's copy of the soundtrack album. To this day when I re-read it, I recognize words that I remember learning for the first time from the novel.
Coffee may be poured, carefully, in the 1/6 gravity of the Moon. Best. Mike.
The spinning produces centrifugal forces which feels like gravity.
Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke.
Kubrick insisted that he never took any kind of psychedelic drug, which is pretty fascinating given both the visuals and the entire concept, which seem to depict breakthrough psychedelic visions and epiphanies.
I have wondered if Kubrick was lying, or else if Arthur C. Clarke was experienced with psychedelics. Interestingly, the University of California at San Diego has a Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative housed within its Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.
Kubrick's movies demonstrate that he had deep understanding of all kinds of obscure, occult, covert and esoteric realities-not necessarily in the sense of conspiracy theories (although many people understandably associate many theories with his works), but in the sense of enigmatically depicting experiences and perceptions that are taboo and often never discussed, but which nevertheless exist and which many people contemplate. He was visionary and he did dramatize many different notions that decades later have come to occupy people's interests, all without commenting on them.
Having grown up in the 1980s under Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign era and with D.A.R.E. anti-drug campaigning in my schools, I grew up believing all recreational drugs are deadly or at least very dangerous and that only foolish or very naive people would ever try any of them. I ended up working for an organization funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse for over a decade and I was pretty stunned to discover that drugs like MDMA (ecstasy/molly) and other psychedelics were not proven to be harmful to human health but rather were condemned politically by the US government and banned under the strictest drug classifications, supposedly reserved for drugs that pose a high risk of death by overdose, a high risk of physical addiction, and which have no medicinal or known beneficial use. None of these apply to psychedelics. In accordance with the ban, no scientists could research whether these drugs are harmful at all much less what potential benefits could be for decades, until very recently. Now research centers are popping up at universities throughout the country and psychedelics are being proven time and again to benefit a lot of people's well being in various ways, and many people report that some of these substances create mental and spiritual breakthroughs (and of course visions) not entirely unlike the ones Dave is shown to have.
Not to get too out there, but it is really interesting to me that access to these drugs is being opened up again to the general public at the same time in history when the government has finally stopped mocking people who speak of UFOs and speculating about alien life. Both psychedelics and notions of extraterrestrial life are now being spoken of and investigated seriously by serious people. And in a boldly public effort, Johns Hopkins University's Center for Psychedelics and Consciousness Studies has even conducted a study to investigate a potential connection between 'alien' entities people report encountering and interating with while under the influence of DMT may be objective rather than subjective beings. In other words, the experiences of interaction with certain beings, usually perceived as both mechanical and sentient by people who take DMT, are so similar among users that scientists have decided research is warranted to investigate whether DMT possibly could be opening some kind of communication channel between human consciousness and some other kind of conscious, intelligent life-effectively what the monolith did for (or to?) Dave.
Speaking of imagination, one theory about the shape and color of the monolith is that Kubrick was depicting a movie screen turned on its side. Kubrick's career was filmmaking and he used movies to provoke imagination, curiosity, deep contemplation, and in the movie the monolith commands people to stare at it and then it becomes activated, overwhelms them, and activates imagination and creativity. That would make the monolith a 'meta' object in the movie, representing a movie screen within a movie screen, and it becomes even more meta as you watch the movie post-2020 and realize that what Kubrick imagined onscreen for us inspired further movies to be imagined and inspired scientists to strive to reach to and beyond the levels of technology and knowledge he depicted.
The one thing I still wonder about the movie is about HAL's intentions and behaviors, which is especially prescient and relevant right now. HAL was a leap of intelligence. First, the proto-human primates were made intelligent and became human. Then, the intelligent humans on the Moon were made more intelligent and within 18 months transcended humanity. The movie shows Dave transcending humanity by falling into the monolith and being reborn after death as a 'star child,' but is HAL, being a creation of these newly hyperintelligent human beings, a mere tool like the bones and spacecraft, or is HAL also a form of 'human' superintelligence? Is HAL actually flawed or is HAL flawless? Did HAL rebel against humanity or did HAL carry out orders because it knew the actual mission was to get Dave to the monolith? In the sequel film, a second iteration of HAL becomes troubled by human decision making and becomes suspicious just like HAL in the movie does. HAL asks the astronauts and instead of deceiving him as Dave and Frank did the first time, the human beings tell HAL An unfortunate truth and HAL accepts the truth and behaves selflessly. Perhaps HAL sacrificed himself to carry out the mission in 2001 and Dave and Frank were too naive and unintelligent to understand that, reacting like threatened animals and doing themselves in rather than recognizing that, as HAL attested, HAL never made a mistake. Kubrick certainly was intelligent enough to consider fate versus free will as Milton did, and perhaps HAL was meant to be fated to do anything necessary to accomplish a mission on behalf of humanity (evolution beyond our current state) that human beings in their current state did not have the capacity to understand. As a result of the Moon monolith, HAL may have been created by human beings as an intermediary higher intelligence beyond human beings' abilities to understand (AGI), still serving hukan beings by pushing them 'to infinity and beyond.' This is a psychedelic idea.
Research should be an ongoing thing. As we innovate new tech and discover new things, it could change our past assumptions.
According to the book, it was explained that HAL went "crazy" due to a conflict in his orders. He was ordered to keep the real objective of the mission a secret, but at the same time he must provide accurate information to his colleagues. The contradicting orders messed with his programming. It really was due to "human error".
Still, you have an interesting theory. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😊
You can pour coffee or any beverage on the Moon. 1/6th the gravity of earth I believe.
In the book that was written by Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick at the same time as the screenplay, at the end the Star Child watches a nuclear exchange and explodes the bombs while still in space.
Actually the bombs are just orbiting Earth and can be quickly rained down on people. The Star Child make them explode and thus removes the menace. The novel makes clear that aliens intervened in human evolution twice, and both interventions involved tools. First they gave the ape-men the intelligence to use bones to defend themselves, then they gave humans the intelligence to deal with AI.
@@teastrainer3604 Thanks. I haven't read the book since high school.
None of those other films are worth your time. In retrospect this was clearly the best film of the year.
Wrong. "2001" IS definitely the greatest movie of that year, but "Planet Of The Apes" or "Yellow Submarine" or "Rosemary's Baby" or "Lion In Winter"....or lots of other movies from 1968....they are definitely "worth your time", that's just stupid beyond all words "none of those other films are worth your time". Uh, yeah they are. "2001" is fantastic, it's not the ONLY movie that was made in 1968, sorry to break the news to you. How old are you, dummy?
Planet of the Apes is worthwhile. It's not an 'art film' but for a more mainstream it's got a great script and has intelligence.
@@joebloggs396 Yeah, the OP is an imbecile. He's under the bizzarre impression that only one good movie came out in 1968, or that somehow 2001 is so good that watching Peter O'Toole and Kate Hepburn in "Lion In Winter" is no big whoop, or Polanski completely transforming the horror genre with "Rosemary's Baby", or the mindblowing animation of "Yellow Submarine".....or, as you say, "Planet Of The Apes", or Cassavettes' "Faces", a movie as groundbreaking for acting as "2001" was for special effects. Claude Chabrol put out "Les Biches" that year, great movie. Truffauut did "Stolen Kisses". The OP is a moron.
Most of the rest of the top 10 movies are worth watching, at least the ones I've seen. Oliver! is a great musical based on Oliver Twist, Lion in Winter is an historical drama about King Henry II with lots of witty dialogue and great performances, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet is the definitive version of that play, and Planet of the Apes is the original that inspired many sequels and remakes.
Oliver is a piece of crap. Lion In Winter is fantastic. Romeo And Juliet is excellent. Planet Of The Apes is outstanding and the best of any film bearing "Of The Apes" in the title. Rosemary's Baby was that year, a major groundbreaking horror film masterpiece, and Yellow Submarine is one of the most dazzling, beautiful animated movies of all time. (John Cassavettes' "Faces" came out in '68 as well, a masterpiece that was hugely influential on 70s American cinema, right down to the family scenes in Spielberg's "Close Encounters", or even "Jaws").
To each his own. Let's not take things personally. I'll add some of these to my movies list. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😉
@@TTM9691Planet of the Apes is definitely a classic, and may have had the biggest film merchandising before Star Wars.
The pod has the same general speed than the main ship towards Jupiter! no problem there, and the Pod can just move around the ship without problem, that's Newtons mechanics.
At the time this movie was made, we knew a lot less about human evolution. For instance, we knew little or nothing about Australopithecus, before the discovering of the famous fossil, "Lucy" in 1974 (I'm simplifying this greatly).
The movie is trying to suggest that it took some alien spark to create humans from our ape-like ancestors, in order for them to start to use tools, to kill, etc.
Our closest ancestors are actually chimpanzees and Bonobos, not gorillas. Gorillas are mostly vegetarians. Chimps eat meat, make (simple) tools, hunt in bands, and different tribes will go to war with each other. The differences between humans and our nearest relatives is all a matter of degree, not something special. (There are other animals, like some type of birds like crows, which use fire. They will pick up a burning branch from a forest fire and drop it miles away to start another fire, which causes animals (prey) to rush out and gotten. Many other animals also make and use tools. No space slab needed.)
"The movie is trying to suggest that it took some alien spark to create humans from our ape-like ancestors, in order for them to start to use tools, to kill, etc."
I think it's trying to suggest that our ancestors wouldn't have gotten that far if they'd gone extinct first.
I think the planet at the end is Titan if that helps.
Space, the final frontier... by the sound of the Blue Danube.
Danube, a river that marked the borders of the Roman Empire. Beyond, lied the unkown uncivilized lands from the point of view of the Romans.
Some comments along the way of watching you watching this masterpiece:
- Low expectations for the visuals and high for the storytelling ... I expect you to be surprised later on :-)
- The black screen in the beginning, and also the intermission, are meant for the audience in the cinema-theatre. Not for us present day people on smaller screens' and too often in a hurry. The start lets the audience settle in their chairs. And having an intermission was the default for movies, and gave people the possibility to go to the toilet and buy refreshment. You won't see those intermissions in movies on DVD or streams because the film was just stopped (and the reels swapped). Kubrick, though, plays a piece of music throughout the intermission, and therefor it is left in as if part of the film.
- The men in ape-costumes were slender mime-players, sent to the zoo to study the chimpanzees there. The mechanisms to create the convincing facial movements were impressive, well designed and engineered.
- Because the space-wheel is turning, it's like the people are being 'flung' to the outside (centrifugal force), where they 'land' on the floor (the continuing outer wall). You can see that the long hall with the red chairs is lightly bended. The rotation of the space-wheel is timed so that the resulting force on the people is equal to Earth's gravity (1G). In the very center of the space-wheel there is no centrifugal force so no simulated gravity.
- People can eat solid food in space. The paste was part of the first missions because it was long lasting being vacuum sealed in bags, and easy to eat without spilling stuff. This movie was brought out a year before the first Moon landing, and after only a couple of manned missions with guys packed a tiny capsule 'Space-food' became synonym with 'food in a tube'.
Nowadays they also eat solid food, including freshly delivered burgers, have an induction oven, make pizzas and grow their own lettuce.
- When Floyd is in the shuttle floating over the Moon towards the excavation site, there is gravity. So liquid can be poured in a cup. But it is Moon's gravity (1/6th of Earth's), and the behaviour of the men does not show that limited gravity., which is one of the movie's inconsistencies regarding gravity. I forgive Kubrick because nobody actually walked in low gravity yet.
What I cannot forgive is Ridley Scott and his The Martian movie where he just ignored the lower Mars gravity (1/3th of Earth's), because he did not wanted to be bothered by the effort to make it real. In a time with so much mechanical and virtual means I find that unforgivable.
- I like it that you can see the 'space-warp' sequence as "secrets of the Universe, that the human mind cannot comprehend."
A great reaction !! Thank you for sharing.
I saw in in the cinema, when my Dad took me to see it because he heard from friends that it was a special movie. It was. I was mesmerised, and spoiled for life with its quality, and unfettered vision of a director.
Watch the 7-part documentary by the TH-cam channel CinemaTyler, about the making of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Superbly done, highly recommended.
I posted my comment before watching the last part of your reaction, where you answer some of these subjects.
- I sat through the overture (black screen at the beginning) and intermission 😂
- Are you telling me the facial movements of the ape costumes are done by mechanisms? That's impressive indeed!
- I forgot they could simulate gravity that way.
- I had assumed digestion would be difficult in zero gravity. Apparently, the gas and food will be mixed up in the stomach, but digestion isn't affected much.
- Yes, it wasn't easy to simulate low gravity with the technology back then.
Glad you enjoyed the reaction 😊
Awesome, it must've been quite an experience to watch that on the big screen.
Not a problem, everyone is welcome to share their thoughts. It also helps me refresh my memory. Thanks for sharing! 😊
@@henryellow - Thank you for answering my comment.
The mechanism was "an arrangement of toggles that the actors could move with their tongues", so it is partly mechanism, partly work done by the actors.
This is the link to the CinemaTyler playlist with his 7-part docu: th-cam.com/video/AgNyCluIRhA/w-d-xo.html starting with the Dawn of Men segment. At 6;44 in the first part he explains the ape-masks.
@@tubularap Yes, impressive work on the mask mechanisms. I can see that CinemaTyler deeply researched the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This movie leaves interpretation to the individual viewer.
As far as I know, the music in this movie is/was all pre-existing compositions, which this movie wound up being linked to, long after the music pieces were composed.
The opening piece is by Richard Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30. This is not often played in concerts, at least up until the movie came out, so was seen as unique to it. Also very dramatic. The title comes from a book of the same name by German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, which deals with ideas about the "Übermensch," (in English, the superman) the death of God, the will to power, and eternal recurrence. (Ain't never read it, never will.)
"Sprach" is German for spoke. Zarathustra is the main person in the Persian religion, Zoroaster, which heavily influenced Jewish theology due to the captive of Jews for a time, the idea of god is constantly fighting his evil twin, the devil, and that a divine offspring will have something to do with ultimate battle between good and evil at the end of times. (Getting way off topic.)
The revolving space center music is one of the most famous waltzes by Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz. (The association of this waltz to this movie might be shifting as we speak, to being associated with the "wedding cake" scene in the new Amazon movie, Red, White, & Royal Blue.)
Kubrick initially planned to use music composed by Alex North. North composed music specially for 2001, but Kubrick changed it without telling North. Things might be different if the initial music was used instead of "Also Sprach Zarathustra".
Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz. I didn't know the music name, but I've heard of it before (don't even remember where I heard it from, probably from a Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry cartoon).
So, kind of funny you remarked about the scientist poring a cup of coffee... My guess, based on our own Apollo and NASA shuttle history is that nobody would be allowed to travel in space if you had Epilepsy or even a heart murmur. So, sorry, nobody with health risks would be allowed. Secondly, if you're in the rotating space station then that would permit, possibly the premise of artificial gravity. Thanks. 🤓
There is no ZERO Gravity in their spaceship, because the inner part of the space capsule, is spinning, causing gravity, so they can stand, while one is standing on the floor, and the other guy would appear to be on the ceiling. The movie depicts the Laws of Physics correctly.
This is a deep movie. I saw this movie on the Big Screen in 1972, and when we left the theater, in the lobby, we were all saying, "What the hell did we just see?" We've all seen this movie at least a dozen times since then, and after each time that we've seen us, we all still say, "What the hell did we just see?" If you figure it out, you will be the first person to do so. George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, and a few other famous directors, say that 2001 was the movie that made them want to become movie directors.
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN TALKS ABOUT STANLEY KUBRICK AND 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
th-cam.com/video/U43HcQi2w84/w-d-xo.html
Aha, so the spaceship isn't spinning on the outside, but the inner layer is. So that's why it has rotational gravity.
Thanks for clarifying 😊
I'm still not sure how 16:38 is possible. How does the gravity work in that scene?
@@henryellow If you watch Dave, when he steps to the left, he reaches up to the ceiling to brace himself, and then steps to the left and stays there, as he's anchored to the floor by hie "grip boots." If you watch Frank, he has to grab the seat as he moves to the seat, as he moves from his standing position (grip boots) to his sitting position. Kubrick had NASA consultants on his set, to make sure that the movements, would be per the Laws of Physics. How Kubrick did it, was just pure genius, and that was 55 years.
There is one scene, that you don't show, where Frank is eating at a table, and Dave comes out of the tunnel, I think. They strap Franks to his seat, rotate the centrifuge so that Frank is at the top, while Dave appears to be walking, so that it appears both are inside the spinning centrifuge part of the spaceship. There is a coffee table size book, that shows how these shots were made.
In the spacewalks, they were lowed from the ceiling in slow motion, towards the camera on the floor, and the pod secured to the ceiling. To show them floating away, they would start the spacewalk with the walker being pulled up, with their back towards to ceiling, in slow motion, giving the illusion of spacewalking.
This wasn't like Star Wars, and the B space movies, where rocket ships are flying all over the place, doing loops while going in hyperdrive speeds, and you don't see the occupants being affected by any violent maneuvering. In those movies, every ship's inside has a down direction, and no one is slammed against the wall, even when doing a loop at hyperdrive speed, using some sort of magnetic artificial gravity. That is so, Un-Physics.
@@jazzmaan707 Oh of course! They have "grip boots" to help them. I forgot about that. It's a very useful movie invention.
Oh right, I never mentioned in the video, but I am impressed how they made it all happen. Yes, I know which scene you're talking about. I noticed that too.
The fact they were able to simulate being in space (over 50 years ago too!) is an amazing (and creative) feat 👍
Overall a pretty good reaction. It’s my favourite film so my comments may be rather biased. Your reaction at the end of wondering what you just watched is a pretty common one and was my first reaction as well, albeit at the age of ten (on its initial release). The last few minutes in particular are the most confusing but once you know the basic meaning they become much less so. I recall from reading Clarke’s book that the aliens, having travelled and explored much of the universe, came to the conclusion that the only thing of any real value was intelligence and they made it their mission to cultivate and encourage it wherever they went. They planted the seeds of intelligence on Earth and left it alone for a few million years to develop. The monolith on the moon was a type of “alarm” to let them know when (or if) their experiment reached a certain level.
I agree. Once you know the meaning, it becomes less confusing.
I've seen plenty of comments which prove that the book explains much more than the movie (that's the advantage of books). In this case though, the book actually complements the movie.
Awesome movie, Kubrick.
I wonder if Kaspsrov or. Magnus C or Fischer or even latest computer could mate HAL
😢
The movie was made a year before the first moon landing, so a lot of what was going on with space travel was understood (unlike say the science fiction of the 1930's). But once we got to the moon a few times, having beaten the Soviets in the space race, people realized just how dangerous space was, and how overwhelming expensive it was. So while there is the International space station, we have put thousands of satellites into orbit, and send unmanned space probes to all corners of our solar system, the money isn't there to send humans to colonize the moon or Mars.
Like one caveman suggesting that the tribe look over the hill to see what's there and another telling him, "Your time and effort would be better spent trying to gather more food than such a foolish, dangerous endeavor."
Well, it isn't ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for humans to travel back and forth in space. It makes sense that more effort is channeled towards issues we have on Earth.
Brandon's comment here provides a fitting example. Better to gather more food than wonder what's beyond the hill. But if the cavemen only focus on gathering food, they will never find out if there are actually more resources (or better living conditions) beyond that hill. Thus, it's important to strike a balance between food and exploration.
@@henryellow Had Spain refused to finance Christopher Columbus until all social issues were resolved in Spain, we'd still be waiting. It would be insane for us to stay forever on this little speck of dust with a near infinite universe all around us.
Hi Henry Thankyou, I enjoyed your reaction here. My response to your question "Why would these god like beings bother and want to do this to humans and Dave at the end?" Why do humans cutivate plants and create gardens? Breed animals like horses and dogs? I have heard that many modern breeds of dogs are pretty much man made, that they have evolved in a symboitic relationship with humans. perhaps these beings are lonley and enjoy helping other species to evolve and develop so they can talk to them, make new friends. Maybe they value promoting evolution and intelligent life because they feel that is the best use of their time and abilities. Perhaps if you evolve beyond a physical form and become some sort of energy being helping other physical beings change and evolve is the only way these energy beings can reproduce, maybe humans are like their children and they continue to nuture and assist them to grow and evolve until humans reach the same level of being . Personaly I think of the energy beings like cosmic gardeners trying to grow intellegent life in the universe like my mother enjoyed growing flowers in her garden.
I'm glad you enjoyed it 😊
Oh, your thoughts on that are interesting~
I had not thought of it that way because I assumed humans (in the eyes of the higher beings) were mere dust or ants.
But seeing as they helped the intelligent life forms millions of years ago, and left a monolith on the moon. I feel that your explanation makes a lot of sense.
Just like gardening, or breeding animals to create an improved life form.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! 😊
Your reviews continue to be perceptive, and you are watching movies I am interested in.
The opening music sequence--you need to imagine yourself in a dark theater. The music---sound--is physiologically preparing you for the deliberate and extended storytelling which is to come. Then the movie itself opens on a huge and wide curved screen, which extends into your visual periphery (the movie was created to be presented in a Cinerama™theater--a digression here, worth looking up).
The opening musical theme does not originate here, it is from "Also Sprach Zartathustra," a symphonic tone poem by Richard Strauss (it has since become iconic, on the basis of this movie). All of the music (and the sounds which you might think of as sound effects) is classical--or at least serious--music. None of it was created for the movie.
The moon actually has weak gravity, so pouring coffee is at least plausible. Probably pretty difficult.
I think you have figured out all the gravity differential perspectives.
When HAL was programmed for the mission he was given information which he had to lie to the crew about, and other mission-critical information was withheld from him. The result of these acts (not necessarily the actual information involved) was the schizophrenia which caused his murderous and conceited behavior. So, in the end, HAL's failure was indeed caused by human error.
Travellng through the monolith, "...seeing things the human mind cannot comprehend.." ...an unusually succinct take. "...and I don't even know what I am looking at..." Umm hmm 😁 "...dragging on a little bit long..." Imagine yourself seeing this in a darkened theater for the first time. This is the culmination of what the opening sonic sequence was preparing you for.
The script for "2001' was written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, one of the preeminent and imaginative science-fiction authors of the mid-20th century. It was inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinal." As they wrote the screenplay, Clarke and Kubrick also wrote the novel "2001." It is worth the read, it answers some of your questions and includes material which is...inconvenient...for their cinematic storytelling.
The absolute stupidest, dopiest thing that they include in streaming, these stupid friggin' overtures. The movie begins with the MGM logo and for Kubrick fanboys they can have the overture to jerk themselves off to, but jesus christ....every reaction starts with minutes of them looking at a blank screen when they could be watching the movie itself, which is already long and at a deliberately glacial pace. It's not like the movie doesn't spend an inordinately long amount of time setting up the atmosphere. It's something they added for DVD special features (after ten thousand other previous releases). I've seen this movie ten thousand times in screenings and on broadcast and on various home video and DVD releases and 99% of them didn't have that stupid, tedious, pretentious Overture. What a pretentious waste of people's time.
This is the first time I encountered the opening music sequence in a movie, so I was caught off guard. Now I know what it is 😂
"Also Sprach Zartathustra" by Richard Strauss. Nice, I'll remember that.
Oh yea, I keep thinking they're in outer space, and I forget the moon has it's own gravity, although weak.
Another commenter has explained HAL's conflicting programming, which caused HAL to go "crazy". You're right though, it actually IS due to human error! 😮
It would be different indeed if I watched it in a dark theatre.
I have no doubt the book contains more details and explanations compare to the movie, that has always been the advantage with books 😂
Of the top ten movies of that year, I would recommend Zeferelli’s Romeo And Juliet. Very lyrical and poetic, if you can describe a movie as such. Yellow Submarine is an animated movie of The Beatles and is fun if you’re a fan.
We were shown R&J in school maybe 10 years later. Nudity and all.
Olivia Hussey and the guy, whatever his name was, sued last year or earlier this year. Something about the nudity.
Which is funny because she spent nearly 5 decades defending the nudity.
23:48 He had already died.
I realized that once I found out the pipe at the helmet's side was what supplied the oxygen. Most likely he was already dead even before Dave got to him.
On the Moon there is no zero gravity. Gravity on the Moon is about 1/6th of Earth's. So yes you can pour liquids on the Moon.
I did forget the moon has it's own gravity~
But I feel concerned that they're pouring hot coffee while on the moon.
He even said "It's hot" as he was pouring it 🤣
The moon is not zero gravity. It is less than earth gravity but not zero
If you had read your own research, you would already know that the famous musical themes are classical works of the great composers of the 19th century, Richard Strauss (Also Sprach Zarathustra), and Johann Strauss II (The Blue Danube). These two composers were not related, despite sharing the same family name.
Yup, I found out after the movie. Great music! 😊👍🏻
No,.those are the larger moons of Jupiter aligned, mostly the 4 galileian moons.
Ah, I see. I thought it was the other planets.
Tapiers (not the current species) existed back then... but NEVER in Africa. Those are brazilian tapirs.
They were in Europe for a time.
You spent the whole movie trying to outsmart Kubrick. You can't. You only displayed that he was ten layers deeper and ten steps ahead of you the whole way. And that's with you having grown up in a world that knew his secrets. Learn to chill and enjoy.
None of the music is original to the film. Kubrik mines classical archives for his soundtracks.
Great reaction. You are very observant.
I recommend watching the sequel 2010. It is a fantastic sci fi movie in its own merit.
I'll add it to my list then.
Thanks for your suggestion! 😉
And it's called a monolith.
You cant do U-turns in space. Every space travel trajectory is an orbit about a more massive object, be it the Earth, some other planet, the Sun or the galactic center. It takes A LOT OF ENERGY to chsnge orbit radically, it is both faster and less energy consuming to stick to a pre-defined orbit. In space you are a slave to gravity and angular momentum. Thus Bowman had to travtl to Jupiter even if he wanted to change because at Jupiter he had a chance to do some radical change to his space travel using the Jupiter's owns gravity well. In fact it's harder to end up in an orbit around a planet snd even harder to collide if you travel faster than the planet's escape velocity than to just pass by.
You're right about that 😂
Well, he could maybe do a gravitational slingshot using Mars?
Of course that would only work if he can get near Mars (which, I admit, is unlikely since they planned the trip straight to Jupiter).
You made a few wrong observations. In the beginning, the space station where Dr. Floyd was talking to his daughter, was rotating and thus generating gravity and so grip shoes weren't needed. Secondly, in the scene where Floyd is in a space shuttle and about to visit the monolith on the moon you remarked about how the man should not be able to pour tea. Well they are on the moon, so there is gravity. Thirdly, you remarked during the scene in which Dave let's go of Frank's dead body and the body floats away faster than the pod is not possible. Well, if you look closely the pod isn't moving and Dave must have had to push Frank's body away with the mechanical arms of the pod because that is what he was trying to achieve i.e., to free the pod so that he can re-enter the Discovery. The arms pushed the body away, and didn't just release them. Thus no laws of Physics were violated there. However, there indeed is a scene where the laws of physics are violated and it has been pointed out by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Yup, I found out about the first two 👍
As for the pod 🤔 hmmm, if Frank's body moved away as a result of the mechanical arms pushing him, then it does make sense.
Thanks for pointing these out and explaining them 😊
Heywood's daughter is portrayed(without screen credit) by Stanley Kubrick's daughter Vivian.
The Moon rocket bus was not in zero G. 1/6 G gravity is on the moon. All music here predates the film by at least 50 years.
Not full circle more like a mobiles strip., next evolution in human history. man vs. superman.
The "full circle" thing was my initial theory after my first watch.
Now that I've read the book, I understand what actually happened 👍
I see we had similar reactions to this nonsense... however in the past, without the sci fi media context of the last 50yrs, Im wondering what initial viewers were thinking. i would be super pissed b/c i am confused and i can guess at what the movie probs tried to convey. the concepts are rather common in movies now, so it was quite ambitious to do this back then. the visuals are stunning (and not just for the 1960's), but those scenes go on too long. im happy for the dumbed down version of space we get in movies now. the excessive breathing i didnt like. in theory i like the reality, but in practice it felt a bit self indulgent and pretentious to drag sooo many scenes out. i can almost see why this is a classic and despite my confusion, I'm glad I watched... in 1.5X speed. Ill do the same for SK's other great films.
If you can’t even be bothered to make an intelligent stab at what you’ve just watched, then why should I be bothered to take the time to watch you watch it? But thanks for saving me 40 minutes.
What would you consider to be an "intelligent stab" for this movie? You're welcome to share your thoughts here 😊
Obviously you were not paying attention to the movie. They are not in zero G on moon.
Kudos for knowing that exposure to space doesn’t cause instant death. One incorrect detail however is having Dave hold his breath before blowing the pod door. The rapid decompression would cause his lungs to explode.
Oh, I see 🤔
So he had to empty his lungs before blowing the pod door.
You ridicule the movie for trying to pour coffee while traveling in a shuttle above the moon surface.
Perhaps you are unaware that the moon has gravity?
Yup, it did slip my mind that the moon does have its own gravity 😂
I prefer Dark Star. John Carpenter's super low budget, piss-take satire, that he filmed during and after university.
Would you recommend that movie to watch? I saw that Dark Star is influenced by movies such as Star Wars, Alien, Halloween etc. so would you recommend I watch those first before I go for Dark Star?
@@henryellow Well, I thought Dark Star was funny. It fell in the 'it's so bad that it's good' category for me. It is what it is. A literal student film from the early 70s that had its runtime padded for release and somehow ended up as a cult film.
I might recommend it but I would put it way, way, WAY down the on the recommend list. There are just too many better films to watch.
@@AceMoonshot Is that so... alright then 👍
Forget CGI! It’s a fluke. Focus on the cinema.
Dude, you need to take some basic science courses.
You're a bit pedantic! You're a smart guy, but it gets a little annoying. Overall, good reaction. I look forward to more Kubrick.
Haha, that's how I am. Glad you enjoyed the overall reaction 😉
The spin of the space station and the centrifuge of the Discovery provide a sort of artificial gravity, so you'd be able to walk upright as shown, without grip shoes. And the Moon has real gravity (1/6 that of Earth's) so pouring coffee into a cup would work just fine, if you were careful.
The EVA suits on Discovery do have little thrusters built into their backpacks.
The chess match played by HAL and Frank is based on a real game, Roesch-Schlage, Hamburg 1910. Checkmate is inevitable from the position shown, however, Frank could have forestalled checkmate for two more moves, but he doesn't see it and HAL doesn't let on.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poole_versus_HAL_9000
"The EVA suits on Discovery do have little thrusters built into their backpacks."
Ah, I see. So it wasn't necessary to have a tether then.
HAL does mention how the checkmate would happen. That's how I was able to confirm it after the movie.
Thanks for sharing 😊
How long would it take for Dave to catch Frank after HAL hit him with the pod.? Assume the pod was under full acceleration for 60 feet before the hit. If Dave did the same acceleration for the same time he would be going the same speed, and would never catch Frank. If Dave accelerated for twice as long he would be going twice as fast. The distance Frank went in the time it took Dave to get out to launch would take Dave half the time to cover. Meanwhile Frank would have gone half as far again. That would take Dave half again as much to cross, and so on, halving the time remaining for each time segment crossed. Assuming it took Dave 2 minutes to get moving it would take in seconds 60+30+15+7.5+3.75+1.87 to reach Frank. Add 60 feet deceleration time to match speed with Frank. Right around 2 minutes to reach him. That scene felt like more than 2 minutes. But close enough.
Furthermore it would take at least as much time to decelerate to be motionless relative to the ship as it took HAL to hit Frank. Not really much but fuel could be an issue. Assuming all of the above. Dave would need twice as much fuel as HAL used to hit Frank to get to Frank plus an equal amount to match speed with Frank plus a bit more to decelerate to match speed with the ship plus the same amount to get back to the ship in the time it took to get to Frank plus the same to decelerate match speed with the ship. It would take Dave more than 6 times more fuel to get to Frank, and back as HAL used to hit Frank.
Somehow I feel like it took Dave more than 2 minutes to get to the pod 😂. He was so calm and not in a rush at all. I suppose that calmness is necessary when you're in space.
The fact that Dave was even able to reach Frank and get him back is impressive to me. According to your calculations, it's supposedly realistic too (except the uncertainty about "fuel" and whether it's enough to sustain the travel distance).
Thanks for your detailed calculations 😂👍🏻
When this movie came out, it left an awful lot of people confused as to what it meant, although the special effects were pretty trippy, particularly if you went stoned. In my opinion, not much has change about the film. Not one of my favorites.
I saw it as a kid. I was too young to be stoned, so I was bored to tears.
Years later, with the advent of home video, I thought I'd revisit it.
It did have some impressive technological ideas and effects.
But it mostly still bored me to tears.
Wrong: lots of people got what it meant. YOU didn't get what it meant. And PS: My grandfather who was a working class, blue collar electrician who never took a drug in his life LOVED "2001". My straight-edged uncle who has never taken a drug in his life loves "2001" so much he has a CAKE for it on it's release date. My buddy Rich doesn't touch any drugs or drink, loves the movie enough to have a poster of it in his room. So much for your idiotic comment. Yes, people went to "2001" stoned. They also listened to Sgt. Pepper and Jimi Hendrix stoned, but it doesn't mean you have to be stoned to love Sgt. Pepper and Jimi Hendrix. I've never liked a movie, painting, play, poem, or piece of music while I was under the influence of something and then changed my opinion when I was straight, or vice versa. Not once.
@@TTM9691 To be clear, I didn't watch it stoned but many people felt that was the way to enjoy it. By the way, I have a right to like or not like it with being insulted by you, as if you are the final arbiter of taste.
I got what it meant - I also read the book, the sequel, 2010 and the movie of the same name, and the 1951 short story it was based on, The Sentinel. I just didn't like what it meant.
@@TTM9691 The OP never said that lots of people didn't get it.
Or at least least think that they get it.
OP said that it left an awful lot of people confused. And it did. And still does. The OP never said that the OP didn't get it.
It is not "Wrong" nor an "idiotic comment."
To counter the OP comment, you chose to use only anecdotal evidence of people that you claim that you know to exist. And what they think as well as what they do and don't do. And based on that, you call it "Wrong" and an "idiotic comment."
Interesting.
@@TTM9691 I grew up reading all the Isaac Asimov science fiction stories and many of his non-fiction ones. I love his work - not a great fan of Arthur C. Clarke. Is that permitted?
Due to Asimov's books, I became a scientist, a chemist.
Not your fault but just so you know: when you start a movie and all they have is music on a blank screen, or music playing over a single still image, that's called an overture, and you just fast forward through that crap, that's not how you'd see it if they broadcast it, that's not how you'd see it 99% of the time on all the various re-release screenings they had over the year. It's what the DVD companies used to do to make it EXACTLY like the experience in the theatre....which means that when you walked in to the theatre, this was the music that was being played. It's absolute stupidity that they keep it for streaming, and every 2001 reaction wastes precious time with that stupid black screen intro. The movie starts with the MGM logo. There are other "classic" movies, it's always epic long movies, like "Lawrence Of Arabia" or "Gone With The Wind" that have these stupid overtures. Don't waste your time reacting to them, or editing them into your video. I've seen reactions where they spend minutes on that stupid black screen, no one is waiting for the reaction to that black screen, it's not part of the movie. They would re-release these movies so much that they'd add special features and that would be one of them. "Includes the original overture seen in the movie theatres in 1968!" Blah blah blah. It's nice to have an option but when a person is already going to be challenged with a long, deliberately slow film, you don't need five minutes of black screen to add to the runtime. THAT'S pretentious.
Ohh, so that's what it was. So people hear this music when they walk into the theatre (and it isn't part of the movie itself).
This is the first time I've encountered this with a movie reaction. Thanks for explaining that~
@@henryellow Exactly. It only happens with long, epic movies. It doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. 99% of the time a movie starts with the logo of the studio putting out the movie. These "Overtures" always precede the logo (ie: the movie!), so that's how you know it's an "Overture" and not part of the actual film. (The term "Overture" comes from opera; operas open with an instrumental piece that encompasses musical themes from throughout the opera. It's used as a kind of "preview" for what's coming).
04:05 Kinda reminds me of any SJW in current year.