If 2001 is your #1 movie, tell me why

IMO, It's the ultimate sci-fi movie because it works the gray matter better than most any other I've seen. I don't want answers to everything. Kubrick

Ultimately, the only movie sequence I found to be imperfect was the travel through special effect colors and shapes. Too lengthy. Lost my interest.
Kubrick placed one of those enormous question marks above our heads. One of the key attributes.
Personally, it made me delve into questions of spirituality, time, space, reincarnation, mortality, immortality and evolution.
And as T. Rex sang..."For a meanwhile I'm still thinking"

I'm going to preface this by saying this most recent sit through of this movie was without AD. Now, I have sat through this film perhaps 3-4 times over the course for 35 years, back when I could see and once with the aid of AD since I lost my sight/ On this most recent occasion this evening, the screening at the cinema did not have the AD working. As such, with so many large sections of the film that are without dialogue and left with just the score, soundtrack and soundscape to work from, it left me with time to ponder this question and I'm curious what others think of this also - is this still a good movie?

I don't mean to diminish it's importance as a landmark piece of cinematic history alongside the likes of Jazz Singer, The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane etc, and that can never be taken away. Let alone how pioneering and influential it has been to so many films that have been influenced and entire genre for that matter that have followed in it's footsteps - or indeed inspired so many film-makers of a generation, and it does something that so few movies do nowadays, in that Kubrick trusts his audience to think.

But for all that was completely visionary and revolutionary in 1969, is it still a good movie in 2024?

There are other movies that have been landmarks and likewise, impossible to ignore for their place in film history. For example, the Jazz Singer as the first to feature sound or The Broadway Melody, the first sound movie to win the Best Picture Oscar, as much for it's technical advances as anything et al, and has not aged particularly well and are not particularly great movies and am curious, is 2001 possibly sliding into this catagory also?

I don't know what side I come down on in this bercause I am aware because of my personal situation I was left with those long stretches where I was left to my own thoughts amid the soundscape alone etc because the film is so much more thanjust it's score, soundscape and soundtrack etc, so it's not fair of me to say one way or another under the circumstances. And if this is your all time favourite film or whatever please don't take offence, I'm sinply asking a question and for people's thoughts.

It’s not even my #1 Kubrick film.
However, one can’t deny its influence.

Interesting post Taz and I appreciate you giving your viewpoint from your own experience. You asked for people's thoughts on 2001 and our thoughts on your reaction, so I will post my thoughts below I can understand how a long and slow movie with large blocks of silence could be a challenge for someone who had lost their sight. To answer your question I find those large blocks without dialogue a challenge too, but as they have lots of visual information it never looses me or causes me to disengage from it. But yes it is slow, slow, slow.

I'm of the opinion that movies are timeless. If a film was a masterpiece or great in it's day, I don't see that changing over time. Though I do know films trend and then fall in and out of favor. So sure 2001 might end up like The Jazz Singer, appreciated for it's ground breaking technical and artistic achievements, but not something people rush to go and see.

2001 is a film I rate highly, a film I respect. It's not a film that I would say I love and I don't think it's perfect. I do think it gets a free pass because Kubrick has been placed on a pedestal and it's one of those films we're suppose to like if we are film buffs. I think the opening sequences with the proto human apes goes on too long. The sequence on the moon, which should set up the mystery as the humans ponder what they have found buried on the dark side of the moon, is too short...It needed more scene time to flesh out the emotion of that discovery which causes us to realize we are not alone. Finally, the trip through the time/dimension tunnel with all the flashy lights and strange shapes also goes on too long. I believe that scene is so long as to give people of 1969 the idea of what an acid trip would be like, and so people on acid can really trip out!
Sill I'd rate the film ++

The short answer for me is, yes, it's still great in 2024. It moves at a pace for the full duration that most movies aren't willing to attempt anymore. Or possibly any movies. I can't imagine it's a great film if you've lost your sight though. A more extreme example of this is probably Derek Jarman's Blue (1993). If you're visually impaired, it's great meditative essay on losing your sight, your body, your friends (and probably other things. It's been a year and I've only seen it once), and if you can still imagine the color blue, a blue like the light from endless eye exams, then you can still imagine the visuals. If you're deaf and don't have closed-captioning turned on however, it's just a blank blue screen for 79 minutes followed by credits.

I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen back in the day. Yes, it was an amazing movie... but it is not even my favourite movie with HAL the computer. I am not saying it's a great movie, but I am far more likely to re-watch 2010: The Year We Made Contact

Why? Because like Homer's Odyssey, 2010 is a comedy, in the Ancient Greek sense. 2001 is closer to tragedy -- certainly, so, in the case of the HAL storyline.

Metropolis (1927) has inspired decades of films. Then came 2001: A Space Odyssey with its innovative vision, deep meaning and stunning effects. I like 2001 but it's nowhere near my #1 choice. To be honest, I prefer Alien (1979) & Blade Runner (1982) by a long long shot!

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" I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies."

I've seen lots of movies that were considered to be "great", but 2001 clearly landed with a thud for me. It seemed overblown and pretentious, way too long without any interesting content. It ended with a visual bang (cool, psychedelic, man), reminding me of the visual experience of certain ingestible substances, but, so what. What did I get out of that? After several viewings, not much. The film version was not as satisfying as the chemical one.

It reminded me a lot of how, if you listen to that great opening fanfare music by Richard Strauss that happens in the beginning of the movie, and then listen to the rest of Also Sprach Zarathustra, the fanfare was great but the rest of the music is fairly bland. The whole movie seemed like a lot of pretend profundity without much inside. I'll take a Metropolis re-run any day of the week.

Color me shocked that you didn't get 2001.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Got it is a curious way to put that, kind of like my English Lit professor that told me that I didn't get Tom Sawyer. I think I got it, but the other half of the question is whether it's worth getting and who it is that gets to say what constitutes "get it". I gave up way back on reading various interpretations of what it meant. If they wanted it to "mean something", maybe they could have said it rather than leaving me puzzling about whether they meant Nietzsche or Schopenhauer.

Was discussing this with someone recently: Why did Hal sabotage the mission and kill the crew?

Okay, many believe the movie suggests he gained sentience, and with that he acquired emotions and developed jealousy and retaliated against the idea of being shut down.
But Hal reported the false fault of equipment in the first place (which is why the 2 crewmen discuss disconnecting him) - what was his motivation for doing that? Did he want the mission to fail? Did he want to complete it on his own and somehow get credit?

If it had been a human who sabotaged the mission and killed the rest of the crew they'd have to have a motivation and a reason in the story, otherwise the story would be missing a key plot point.

Spoken exactly like someone who definitely didn't get 2001.


Or Tom Sawyer.

Apparently, not getting much of anything out of a film is akin to pretentiousness. The fault isn't on you but somehow on the film. Man, film analysis is much easier than I thought!

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You people will really be the death of me.

What got into you today, spouting so many terrible takes, not getting a thing, mistaking getting for understanding, bragging about absolute zero taste etc.?

And I am to engage in a conversation now? Trying to find the mythical meaning of what it constitutes to get a movie?

I sincerely hope you just decided to keep trolling me because that'd be the only explanation that would save your honor.

It's one thing to say 2001 doesn't say what it wants to. I think it does, but who knows, maybe it fails in ways I never thought of.


But its another to say it is only pretending to say something, without even being able to pinpoint what is pretending to say, or how it failed in saying it.


If someone doesn't like thinking about things, fine, continue to not waste your time understanding whatever it is you don't want to understand. Your business. But when you start to consider thinking is the enemy, and those that bother to think are just silly dupes, and then wade into conversations where people are thinking and you somehow think you know something they don't by being proud of how you never think....seriously...read a ****ing book...or a takeout menu...or something...and stop acting like your proudly no thinking ass is contributing something here.

I don't think it's as explicitly told in the film, but from what I've read from the book, HAL begins to show signs of malfunction (like reporting the faulty equipment) as a result of the conflict of providing accurate information to the crew while also keeping classified information from them. But even if it's not laid out in the film, it just shows that it's not as infallible as it was thought. This prompts the crew to consider deactivating HAL, which makes it feel threatened, thus sabotaging the rest of the mission.

That said, I can also see grounds to think that HAL sabotaged the whole mission to prevent humanity from reaching the monolith, and making the next evolutionary step, which would probably result in it being replaced by something more advanced. No matter how you look at it, it's the threat of "death" that motivates HAL, thus making it more human than the scientists thought.

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Yeah, this.

As overused as a word as pretentious is, I don't think it's entirely without merit. The issue though is when people give no indication that they had any idea what the film was going for, what it was pretending to be, and why it fell short of achieving those goals. These are fairly important points to nail down when assigning that word and when your best line of defense for your case is "I didn't get anything out of the film, in spite of the sources I referred to", I find it very easy to dismiss that. Which isn't to imply that there haven't been some films I've seen over the years where I felt I didn't get much out of. My immediate reaction though wasn't to assume that there was nothing in there to "get" but that the issue was with me and I needed to try again down the road.

Ah, so HAL may have suffered from an internal programing paradox (much like the one Captain Kirk poses to the mechanical "Nomad" which causes the machine to self destruct).

The only problem I have with the explanation in the 2nd paragraph is it would require quite a bit of unfounded speculation and extrapolation on HAL's part to just assume that simply contacting an alien object would advance humanity in its evolution. After all, HAL was not present at the "dawn of man" nor are the specific advances at that time part of any recorded history.

For all we or HAL know (before making contact), the monolith (either the one on the moon or one near Jupiter) might just be an obnoxiously noisy (what with the disturbing choir accompaniment) black rectangle... nothing more than an abandoned alien transmitter or receiver: a piece of space junk. Then again, if HAL is malfunctioning who knows what he might speculate about?

The explanation in the second paragraph is mostly me speculating (about HAL's speculation ) so yeah, it might not hold up. Or perhaps HAL knows more than we think. Who knows?

HAL knows everything Bob Balaban taught him!