Why is 2001 a space odyssey a good movie

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How did you buy your ticket? View All Photos 3. Movie Info. An imposing black structure provides a connection between the past and the future in this enigmatic adaptation of a short story by revered sci-fi author Arthur C. When Dr. Dave Bowman Keir Dullea and other astronauts are sent on a mysterious mission, their ship's computer system, HAL, begins to display increasingly strange behavior, leading up to a tense showdown between man and machine that results in a mind-bending trek through space and time.

Stanley Kubrick. Arthur C. Clarke , Stanley Kubrick. Media maven Marshall McLuhan and filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who also damned the film, don't look so hot either. No one since has so deftly matched form and function while telling such a sophisticated and complicated story. Or told such an eventually optimistic story without a hint of sentimentality. In fact, Kubrick's dark side is evident throughout.

All this is on such glorious display with the Somerville's pristine handling of Nolan's "un-restoration" of the film, bringing back all the analog glory of the original pre-CGI film.

From the parting of the yellow curtain to the spectacular stereo soundtrack, this is the way to see a movie. If only they could find a way to keep the lobby noise from drifting into the quieter moments of Keir Dullea's transformation at the end of the film.

I own the DVD and I'll probably buy the new one that is coming out by Nolan and Leon "Filmworker" Vitali , but the Somerville and presumably the Coolidge makes you realize that there's no substitute for getting out of the house and seeing movies on the big screen.

I loved every minute of seeing it this way. And while nothing can replace the memories of that first stoned encounter with the monolith, in some ways it's even better 50 years later, knowing what's going on and that the banal dialogue is intentional. To say that every frame is painterly doesn't do justice to how each shot glides into the next. And this time, "" didn't make me want to go home and drop acid. Skip to main content.

Close close Donate. Listen Live: All Things Considered. Close Close. He just says he does what needed to be done in order to accomplish the mission. But it does not feel like that at all.

Can he succeed on his own without human contact? The three in hibernation had no clue what was going on by the way, why kill them.

And maybe he should have let the guy on board again because he must have known about the infrastructure and that the man can make it on his own again anyway. The scene when he gets switched off basically is also memorable, not really because of his his voice changes, but how he keeps talking about his memory loss. I constantly thought about the question from earlier if this computer or robot or machine or whatever you wanna call it or machines in general can have feelings and express emotions.

Did Hal? Was he disappointed when he managed to read the lips of the two wanting to switch him off? I mentioned his actions before already. It is really hard to justify all that as the accurate decision to secure the mission. So what was Hal then really? Up to you to decide.

One thing he definitely was is truly memorable. The fourth and final part is then linked to the monolith from earlier again and we find out about extraterrestrial life and how the one remaining astronaut was part of a mission that was something entirely different than he expected. This transmission sequence is maybe one reason why this won the Visual Effects Oscar. There is no denying that technically this film was far ahead of its time and probably also somewhat paved the way for many of the then following science fiction films that were on the radar and soon about to happen, especially those set in space.

I must still say this final sequence that felt a bit like an epilogue to me is not on the same level as everything before that, probably also because I had no clue what was going on in terms of the symbolism of the baby and how it is basically inside a bubble, inside a planet? Before that final sequence I was undecided if I would call this "only" a good or even great film, but I was tempted to pick the latter and give it four stars out of five.

As you see from my rating here, I eventually went with three and this was because of the ending. I wish the film could have ended with these bright colorful effects there shooting towards the man. Then I would have said this is indeed one of the best films of the year. Well, it probably still is. I have not seen too much. But I cannot be as enthusiastic about it as I would like to be, especially because I think these last minutes also will not get more interesting or memorable or easier to understand on rewatch.

But even with these occasional flaws I am glad I got to watch this film today and it has been on my watchlist really for a long, long time because I was waiting to see it on the big screen. The wait was worth it I suppose. Overall, it turned out slightly better than I thought it would because of some brilliant moments and scenes.

I would still say that a comfortable place in the imdb top is a bit too much, let alone the top where it still sits right now. However, I think that it must have been really special to see this film back in the s and it must have been a haunting watch without knowing about all the technical progress we are aware of today. So yeah, visually also those small moments, just the reflecting lights in the helmet on several occasions or HAL being constantly depicted as this red circle when talking and audibly a film that definitely deserves more than six stars out of ten.

So many haunting moments, not just the beautiful music, but also for example you could feel the explorers' pain in the second segment as they approach the monolith and are confronted with a really unpleasant sound there. By the way, what was up with the beginning? Already there a lengthy sound sequence, but no moving pictures yet before the MGM logo kicks in. Okay, I think there is a lot more to say about this film and everybody will see something different in it this description really applies here more than everywhere else , so I shall leave it at that and say that, if you haven't already, it is high time to go check this film out.

For me it is a thumbs-up and there was never really any moment right from the start where I would say I was unsure if I should give out a positive recommendation. I definitely do give this one a thumbs-up. Maybe I would not say it really flew by, but it still felt much shorter than it actually was. As this film is widely considered a classic nowadays and probably will still be years from now, I say wait till you get to see this one in a movie theater and then go for it.

Most likely you will not regret it. Even I as somebody who rarely sees a lot quality in science fiction had a pretty fun time here. This is a film that has aged quite well for sure.

Prismark10 21 February Martin Scorsese once said that certain great films need to be revisited at certain points in your life.

A film you may have watched when you were 20 years old would give you a different feeling when you are 45 years of age. Well I did watch when I was about 20 years old. I admired the film's technical achievement but the film outside its opening minutes featuring the ape like creatures left me cold. The latter part of the film being even dull, the psychedelia enjoyed only by people who had popped pills.

So after several decades I decided to heed Scorsese's advice and watched it on a high definition big widescreen TV for a more immersive experience. Again the technical achievements is outstanding and still dazzle, it leaves films like Gravity standing because nowadays these types of special effects is common with the technology available to filmmakers.

Heck even my mobile phone probably has more computing power than that was available to NASA back in This leaves the story itself with the monolith appearing in different stages of history pushing human evolution. When a monolith is discovered on the moon it leads to a manned mission to Jupiter to find another monolith. But HAL the advanced computer sabotages the mission wants to get to the monolith instead of the humans so computers can enter the next stage of evolution. With the special effects on screen we have imaginative use of classical music to give us mood.

It ranges from soothing to eerie such as when the monolith appears. Again as I get older I appreciate the music more. The film still has problems though. Obviously back in with all the effort they put into creating the visuals you cannot blame Kubrick for those lengthy shots of the space station or space ship. It does lead to pacing issues and make you feel bored. Even Star Trek - The Motion Picture did the same thing when it was released a dozen years later with all the lengthy shots of the refurbished Enterprise.

However the story still gets lost as the film gets lost with its dazzling effects as HAL has to be challenged and then the astronaut enters the monolith.

You then see the astronaut as an old man and then is reborn as a baby. I have no idea what it all means and maybe I am not supposed to know as its supposed to be all symbolism.

A group of apes feed together as a tribe, fending off other apes. The discovery of a tall black monolith, the use of a weapon and the sending of a signal see us jump into the future where a mission is being sent to the moon. The mission is in response to the discovery of an unnatural monolith that had been deliberately buried under the surface. When the monolith emits a high pitch signal we jump 18 months forward to a mission on its way to Jupiter. Drs Bowman and Poole lead, with the rest of the crew in hibernation and the ship under the control of a HAL series computer.

Things are strange enough with the mysterious nature of the mission but an apparent error in HAL creates more immediate worries. If you will humour me for a moment I will state my interpretation of the plot before looking at the film. To me the set up is about evolution of man, here being either guided or monitored by an alien race for reasons we can only wonder about.

Obviously the monoliths mark times where we have advanced to a point where we can go to the next step, with Bowman's eventual journey just being the next step in man's evolution.

Now what HAL's malfunction has to do with this is beyond me, in fact I'd say that it is actually unrelated but is just a separate part of the same story. However this is not a problem because both parts of the story are full of interesting ideas and strands that more than fill what is, lets be honest, a rather slow and unnecessarily long film.

The film does have several sections that could have been significantly trimmed or lost altogether and it is hard to see why some of them were there other than to fill out the running time the bit about the rumour of "infection" on the moon could have been lost as we are told this much briefer in the meeting in the next scene; and the apes could have been shorter and this is always a problem to me while those scenes are on.

The evolution thread is never fully answered and, for that reason, is interesting throughout even if some viewers will baulk at the idea of being left to make their own conclusions and not having it all neatly explained for them. This makes up the beginning and end of the film, but the middle 80 minutes have little to do with it and instead are more about a view of the dangers inherent in a cold future where computers are given too much trust, credit and responsibility.

Looking back, this view has only become more and more relevant and is now such a part of sci-fi that it is so easy to forget how influential this film has been. I won't ramble on, but it provides so much food for thought that it more than makes up for the very cold, stretched plot and running time. Again there are probably too many long scenes of craft moving silently through space but generally they are interesting. The first cut form bone to ship to the Blue Danube is iconic and will be known even to those who have never seen the film; meanwhile the silence of space is well used.

The Stargate scene is well known as a "trippy" scene but even straight it works and despite being overlong and slightly dated is imaginative and interesting.

Performances are very much secondary in this cold film but Dullea is suitably restrained even if part of me wanted him to be more human in the face of HAL. Douglas Rain only provides a voice but comes out as the single most memorable "actor" in the film as he plays HAL with cold, logical and unmeaning menace. Outside of these two nobody else really shines as they are never the focus, although it always amuses me to see Rossiter in there!

Overall this is deservedly regarded as a classic and "must see" film. It is not a perfect film as it is overlong, is not edited as tightly as it could have been and does sometimes focus on visuals while leaving us to work out the substance ourselves, but these are minor complaints as the film is filled with imagination both visually and idea-wise.

Its status and reputation mean it is a "must see" for cinema fans, it is just as well then, that it is a brilliant and intelligent "must see" to boot. I won't go so much into the plot or try to answer questions that you might have about the movie or what it's about. This is something you have to figure out yourself and it will be difficult or search for some explanation on the internet. Although I don't think there is a definitive one!

It's a lot of guessing, but not so much knowing what Kubrick was saying. But what I want to talk about, is how the movie was made. Everything is genius, from the fact, that there is no noise in space and there isn't despite almost every other movie telling you there is, e. A shot where it seems the camera is spinning around, it's actually the set that is build like a "spinning wheel", the camera is set in one position. But my favorite piece is the sound design! I can't compliment the movie enough on this matter!

When the astronaut is breathing in one scene, I suddenly realized, that my breathing was controlled by him. My breathing was identical to the rhythmic sound of the movie. And I don't believe this was an accident, this was Kubricks genius. Of course if you watch it for the first time, you might not realize that, but if you focus on it, you will see that you breathe in the same way as the man on screen!

Enough said! Notwithstanding Kubrick's status as a legendary director and the film's reputation as a visionary achievement of the genre, I find myself pretty much right in the middle on this picture. For , there is no doubt that '' set some high bars for sci-fi in film, but watching today with the passage of four decades, there is a lot that works against it's being the monumental must see that it was when first released.

I'm thinking about the extended opening with the ape tribes, and the long psychedelic sequence near the finale that certainly wowed audiences back in the day. Sure, I get it, the picture was portraying one man's interpretation of the evolutionary stages of man, but there's a lot to sit through to get to the point.

The best part of the picture for me was the confrontation between HAL and Dr. Bowman Keir Dullea , but even there, I find myself with some conflicting ideas about what happened in the story, on two points. For one, I find it difficult to believe that enlightened computer programmers of the future would have given HAL the ability to violate an essential code of human conduct, to commit murder in the interest of self preservation.

A machine does not have priority over humanity. Secondly, HAL should have recognized this flaw in his programming, and acted to either repair it or terminate his own existence. William Shatner actually talked a few of his computer adversaries into committing suicide in a handful of Star Trek episodes when it appeared they were going out of control.

Those stories also came out in the late 's and played out to a much more logical conclusion than having HAL stand his ground only to be terminated by Dave's back door sabotage.

Even with my misgivings though, I can say that my appreciation for the picture has grown with repeated viewings, and I will wind up watching it again as time goes by. However I don't expect something to click in a way that makes me see it as the kind of masterpiece many give it credit for. That rocket has left the launchpad. Humanity finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, object buried beneath the Lunar surface and, with the intelligent computer H.

Saying that "" is overrated is the sort of statement that can bring down hatred and vitriol from science fiction fans, Kubrick fans and more. Of course, it is possible to be a Kubrick fan and still generally dislike this film. Nobody can deny that this film is visually stunning, and a landmark in imagery. It also has the advantage of being the last film about space travel to be released before the moon landing, making it somewhat prescient in a way. But yet, does it need to be so long, so grand, with the music and long shots?

Perhaps not quite "pretentious", but the film presents itself as being more important than it really is. Critics at the time denounced the film, and perhaps they were right. At the very least, two cuts could be made: a longer one for die-hard fans, and a shorter one for casual viewers. Most people probably know the story. One group of apes forces another away from a water hole.

The other group then comes across the monolith, which seems to imbue them with a new ability. One of the apes realizes that he can use a bone as a weapon, and forces the other group away from the water hole. Millions of years later, a bunch of people on the moon discover the monolith, which has indeterminate effects on their equipment.

When the failure never happens, Dave and his co-astronaut Frank Poole Gary Lockwood realize that HAL may be malfunctioning and get into a pod so that they can talk about disabling him. But HAL can read their lips, and begins plotting against them. He kills Poole, and so Dave quickly disables him. After coming across the monolith, Dave then goes through a time-space continuum, which ends with him seeing an elderly version of himself.

The elderly version then sees an even older version. The older version sees the monolith, which then portrays a fetus, which seems to introduce a new stage of humanity. It goes without saying that " A Space Odyssey" is a thinking person's movie, but what is it saying? Knowing that insanity is a frequent theme in Stanley Kubrick's movies, let's address it here.

We would jump to say that HAL is insane, but is he? He was programmed to complete the mission, and he would probably see fit to eliminate any perceived impediments. In Kubrick's "Paths of Glory", the soldiers disobeyed orders because they knew that it would be insane to obey; HAL cannot disobey orders because he is just a series of chips, wires and electronic impulses.

So in a way, the people who designed him were the insane ones. What about the humans-vs-machines issue? Dave is human and HAL is a machine, right? Well think about it. When Dave tries to retrieve Poole after HAL kills him, the claws almost look like they're cradling Poole, while Dave doesn't seem to express any emotion. As for relations to other Kubrick movies, technology is going out of control, like in "Dr. Strangelove", and they are completely trapped, like in "The Shining".

For its time, the visual and audio magnificence of this film has never differed, even if there is not much story, it is still an inspirational film from Oscar nominated director Stanley Kubrick A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket. The film opens with the fantastic iconic theme score, Richard Strauss's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" as the planets move.

The tossed bone image matches the next hour and a half in outer space, starting with all space crafts including the cart wheel one orbiting to the score of Johann Strauss's "Blue Danube Waltz". The story seems to be the members of Discovery 1, with the treacherous brain of the ship, HAL voiced by Douglas Rain have found the mysterious monolith, and the mission is ruined by the evil betrayal and disobeying of HAL. Also starring Gary Lockwood as Dr.

Frank Poole and William Sylvester as Dr. Heywood R. Very good! This has really become a classic film, not just a sci-fi classic. In my college-age crowd at the time, all anyone could talk about was the famous "light show scene" late in the film on the trip to Jupiter. Admittedly, there are a few things that make this film less than appealing to some, and I've always found that understandable: mainly, the slowness of many scenes and the secular agenda. I've never let either one bother me.

First-time viewers are warned: don't expect a fast-moving film. And don't worry about figuring out the ending. I don't know if anyone has an answer to that. The visuals - the "light show," modern furniture, immense space craft, the ending bedroom scene, the apes learning to use weapons to fight each other, etc - are all fascinating aspects of this movie, but there is more.

The soundtrack, the more one hears it, is extremely impressive especially as technology improves and he we hear it on a good DVD and surround system.

The Blu-Ray is fantastic. Now that's the way to hear classical music! Strauss' "Blue Danube" never sounded better! Played during many of the slower parts of the film, the dramatic music enhances the feel of the immensity of space itself. Then, audibly, we hear these eerie chants whenever the mysterious monolith appears, whether its on earth, out in space, or in Jupiter. In other words, this film offers a fantastic assortment of visual and audio "trips" for the senses.