[the_monkey]

wow that was a wierd movie.

im very confused...

im guessing the big black thing was the alien, but whats with the ending? he just ages in that room? and is born again? sigh...

can anyone explain?

[Hlid Skjalff]

That fucking IS a weird ass movie, I'm totally clueless, would like anybody to explain it to me too...

[visual myriad]

The one thing 2001 isn't about: benign viewing.

So don't stop there, the_monkey. I agree, the monolith was a representation of an alien anomaly. And I think Bowman is born again at the end. So wouldn't that explain why he aged? It makes sense to me that to be re-born, you first must die.

So keep going...

[Red Leader]

I don't believe the monoliths were an alien lifeform, more like a communication device...
A quick and incomplete synopsis of what they were doing specifically:
The monoliths were there to test whatever species might find them in a given solar system, and worked like an encoder on their minds if they passed certain trials in order to help them advance.
For humanity, the first one was a gimme... a monolith appeared in the middle of a clearing during the "dawn of Man" and helped humanity, albeit in a pretty violent way, by giving it understanding of tools.
The next monolith could only be found if mankind could advance enough to discover it buried in the moon. Once Man "earned" it's next advance by finding the big black slab, it led man to visit another world, and eventually freed Man to go beyond the physical. Dave Bowman ended up losing his physical self and transcending time. When he is reborn at the end, I think it's a symbol for a new kind of existence, and relationship with the space time continuum.
Hal went mad by the way, because it was programmed to react to stimuli within the realms of human understanding. It was therefore unable to deal with the reality of the monolith and what it represented, and make the "intellectual leap" that the real humans involved were able to do. So it tried to kill everybody to protect them. (??)

Too bad Clarke wrote sequals, they kinda detracted from the great ending of 2001 AND the 2010 film really sucked in comparison as far as I'm concerned...

[ May 21, 2001: Message edited by: Red Leader ]

[zero21]

I liked the drug induced explanation better, but from what I know of Clarke, yeah that sounds reasonable. Thanks red leader.

(Don't feel bad, but Im still confused)

[schabe]

very nice movie. i especially like the green monkeys at the beginning. the mad computer 'hal' is another cool thing. only the psychedelic end of the film is quite not that enjoyable, imho.

[Drimmen]

Wow, thanks for going for it Red. It's been a long time since I've watched the whole thing through, but I was just reading a blurb about Stanly Kubrick that made me want to check it out again. I'll try to pay attention this time. He worked on so many levels that I'm sure he put a twist on Clarke's story.

One tidbit I can share, since no one mentioned it; HAL is taken from IBM. Each letter being the one that proceeds the letters in the big corporate giants name.

[aquamire]

Here's my question.. how the hell did they make the acid-trip like experience at the end? At the time that movie was made (please correct me if I'm wrong) I dont think computers were used all that much for visual effects. So how did they do it?

[the_monkey]

they probally hand painted each frame.


the evolution portrayed in the film is only negitive, imo. look at it this way, the monolith tells the ape to use the bones as a tool, and the ape kills other apes. Man goes on an downward spiral from there. Man makes better tools (hal) and it kills the rest of the crew. hals evolution is only downard, because he went mad, and we can assume that Daves evolution was also negitive because we have no idea what its like to be a being of pure energy.

evolutionists beleive that we are evolving into something better, but this movie seems to depict it as something worse.

[Awetopsy]

the_monkey: now there's an interesting thought.....

[wahookah]

kubrick said if someone fully understands the movie, they�ve done something wrong

[the_monkey]

what was the point of the ringing when they found the monolith on the moon?

[SpiralEye]

aquamire and the_monkey --I definitely don't think they handpainted each frame. Try 'visual feedback loop'. Like the opening of the old Dr. Who show, they point a camera at a monitor that's displaying what the camera sees, then introduce a flame or something in the middle to add some wierd tunnel-twisty looking stuff. I can't explain it well, but that's how I think they did it. Definitely NOT the handpainted cell method.

[Ian]

The other new space odyssey is cool too. All those monoliths flying around jupiter was nice imagery. Yep.

[aquamire]

That makes a lot of sense, SpiralEye. Thank you for enlightening me! I feel like watching that movie again.. I last watched it on new years.. and it was terribly hard to know what was going on. You know how new years is..

[Loki]

The weird acid trip thingy is called a 'slit-scan' effect. It was developed by Doug Trumbull.

The slit scan material was based on frames of film with two minutes exposure on each frame - of a camera tracking i and out on a piece of abstract artwork.

Trumbull:" The 65mm camera was on a track facing a narrow slit, behind which was backlit transparent artwork. As the camera approached the slit, the shutter was opened so that the time exposure was put in the film frame with focus from 15 feet to 2 inches. The light was accumulated on the film over a minute's time - not in a continuous still frame."

The whole project was done on 65mm Super Panavision - that's why everything is so crisp in that movie.

Personal observation:

Production of the vfx happened around 1967 (the movie was released in '68) before the first man landed on the moon. When you look at the mattes of the earth, they look fairly detail-less and not as good as more recent ones. My theory behind this is that there weren't too many photographs availiable that showed the earth nicely.

All they had as reference were photographs taken during the 'Mercury' and 'Gemini' missions, which weren't too good. I think most of the early photographs were 35mm because they didn't have enough space to bring bigger cameras with them (at least during Mercury).

All the good photographs came with Apollo - the shots of the whole Earth in space, with the clouds swirling on the globe were taken on the way to the moon, since no other manned craft went out that far before - and probably won't for a while.

Loki

[Etict]

Well whatever, the movie makes hellofalot more sense if you read the book beforehand.

[dead]

Daisy, Daisy
Give me your answer do
I'm half crazy all for the love of you
It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford a carriage
But you look sweet
Upon a seat
Of a bicycle built for two

[EviLToYLeT]

Funny....there's this 2001 space odyssey exhibit at the tech museum in san jose... never figured out what the hell its about either...and damn, i volunteer there