Watched 2001: A space odyssey for the first time

[xclusiv8]

So I just watched the film. I know, I know, a little late right. But better late than never. Anyway, I don\'t really know what to think about it. I think of myself as a major sci-fi fan but this was just weird. Sure the special effects and models are all great and the start is great and has some mystery over it but what the hell is up with the ending. That freaking acid trip during the last 30 minutes?? Bunch of colours and shapes for like 20 minutes and then the end scene. The rooms, Dave seeing himself. Nothing is really explained.

If Dave is all alone in this place, where does he get his food from. Is he a lab rat for some super advanced alien species??? The all powered mice from the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy???? AHHH BRAIN CANNOT COMPUTE!!! What\'s up with the freaking monolith. AHHHHH BRAIN OVERLOAD ??? ??? ??? ???

Anyways, dont see the greatness in this movie. The cinematics are great, the production values are great but the story is..... I dont know, weird.

What do you guys think? What are your explanations?

[sal_vager]

Read the book, I cannot stress this enough:

Read the book

The effects in the movie are old for sure, but you can\'t really understand what\'s up with the ending unless you see what it was based on.

[RedDwarfIV]

It\'s Stanly Kubrick\'s interpretation of \'My God, it\'s full of stars!\'

Because, of course, Stanly Kubrick doesn\'t know what stars look like unless there is a spacecraft sitting in front of them.

What. Where is this line of thought going?

Terminate/

[colmo]

Best. Soundtrack. Ever.

Kubrick had a record of pissing off writers with his directorial style, which is something of an acquired taste. His treatment of actors was sometimes interesting too - Malcolm McDowell still has a phobia to this day of eye-drops due to a scene in A Clockwork Orange.

[DeviouslyDeviant]

When I saw this with my mum earlier this year I was liek OMGWTFBBQ!! STARCHILD?

[Candre]

I really wanna get my hands on a copy of the book.

It connects to the beginning scene. Think evolution

[Pluto100]

2001: A space odyssey was one of the best books made by Arthur C. Clarke. My personal favorite was Rendevous with Rama.

P.S The movie was good too.

[DeviouslyDeviant]

2001: A space odyssey was one of the best books made by Arthur C. Clarke. My personal favorite was Rendevous with Rama.

P.S The movie was good too.

Even though I\'m only 12 I\'ve read the book and see the movie movie weird, book good!

[Endeavour]

I loved the rendezvous with the space station and the lunar landing scenes. My family thought they were long and boring, but I loved every minute of it. It all felt so plausible.

[RedDwarfIV]

The book has the Monolith show some apemen images of humans sitting on a sofa, being fat, clothed and lazy.

Why did that not make it into the film?

[simplemunrockets]

The sequel (2010) at least explains why HAL malfunctioned.

[samstarman5]

During its main release, most of 2001\'s ticket sales were by those taking LSD and other hallucinogens because the stargate scene made the trip all the better. That even helped the movie do an extended limited release. Most people who watched the movie sober were wondering what the hell they watched by the end.

This was mosty helped by the fact the book was practically released the same time as the movie. Both the book and movie were made simultaneously, with Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick putting their heads together on bits of the story.

Since people weren\'t able to read the book before the movie, it left them feeling rather high and dry at the end of the movie. Hence the movie didn\'t do so well during its main release except to the acid-tripper crowd.

It wasn\'t until later after people could read the book and make sense out of most of what was going on, that the movie started to become truly appreciated. The special effects were a great leap forward from everything else made at the time. It wouldn\'t be for almost another decade before they made another leap on the screen with Battlestar Galactica. (And then those other movies a little later that people talk a bit about, Star Wars and Star Trek:The Motion Picture). The soundtrack was a true treat, as well. One has to wonder how many thought The Blue Danube was a fitting piece of music for a space setting before 2001 came out.

The book is an excellent read. It is a mind expansion of its own, but you don\'t need to BYO acid. Once you read the book the movie should become better for you.

[dogon11]

So far, I\'ve seen the movie, and not the book. I\'m going to see 2010: The Year We Make Contact tomorrow.

[Richy teh space man]

2001 has a lot of scenes with very little happening in it, which for your average movie goer is gonna make their attention start to wane. Imo Hal made the 2001 film a lot more watchable..

Overall I think 2010 is a better film then 2001 because theres more going on in the story, and unlike the first film it actually answers some questions about whats going on

[sal_vager]

And the 2010 book has even more, the last transmission of the Tsien is not to be missed.

[The Doctor]

BTW: 2001 was a co-project between Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The Book came out right after the movie, so it going to be a lot of differences

Parallel development of film and novelization

The collaborators originally planned to develop a novel first, free of the constraints of a normal script, and then to write the screenplay; they envisaged that the final writing credits would be 'Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick' to reflect their preeminence in their respective fields.[34] In practice, however, the cinematic ideas required for the screenplay developed parallel to the novel, with cross-fertilization between the two. In a 1970 interview with Joseph Gelmis, Kubrick explained:

There are a number of differences between the book and the movie. The novel, for example, attempts to explain things much more explicitly than the film does, which is inevitable in a verbal medium. The novel came about after we did a 130-page prose treatment of the film at the very outset. This initial treatment was subsequently changed in the screenplay, and the screenplay in turn was altered during the making of the film. But Arthur took all the existing material, plus an impression of some of the rushes, and wrote the novel. As a result, there\'s a difference between the novel and the film...I think that the divergences between the two works are interesting.[35]

In the end, the screenplay credits were shared while the novel, released shortly after the film, was attributed to Clarke alone, but Clarke wrote later that 'the nearest approximation to the complicated truth' is that the screenplay should be credited to 'Kubrick and Clarke' and the novel to 'Clarke and Kubrick'.[36]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)#Writing

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