2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey
File:2001Style B.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Written by	Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke Novelization: Arthur C. Clarke
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Keir Dullea Gary Lockwood William Sylvester Daniel Richter Leonard Rossiter Douglas Rain
Cinematography	Geoffrey Unsworth
Edited by	Ray Lovejoy
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Turner Entertainment)
Release date	April 6, 1968 (1968-04-06)
Running time	Premiere cut 170 minutes Theatrical cut 141 minutes
Countries	United States United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$10,500,000
Box office	$56,715,371

2001: A Space Odyssey (often referred to as simply 2001) is a 1968 epic science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, ambiguous imagery that is open-ended to a point approaching surrealism, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue.

The film has a memorable soundtrack—the result of the association that Kubrick made between the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes, which led him to use The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss II, and the famous symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, to portray the philosophical evolution of Man theorized in Nietzsche's work of the same name.

Despite initially receiving mixed reviews, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today recognized by many critics and audiences as one of the greatest films ever made; the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for visual effects. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. On 25 June 2010 a version specially remastered by Warner Bros. without the music soundtrack opened the 350th anniversary celebrations of the Royal Society at Southbank Centre in co-operation with BFI, with the score played live by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Choir.

Overview

Title

The first title imagined by Kubrick and Clarke was Journey Beyond the Stars, but Kubrick modified it later. Having the intention to give the film more pomp and grandeur, he used Homer's The Odyssey as inspiration to name the film.

Style

See also: Differences between the film and the novel

Clarke and Kubrick wrote the novel and screenplay simultaneously, but while Clarke ultimately opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and the Star Gate, Kubrick chose to keep the film mysterious and enigmatic with minimal dialogue in order to convey what many viewers have described as a powerful sense of the sublime and numinous, without specific explanations of events.

Plot

DVDs of this film restore the blank screen musical prelude that appeared in the original road-show release though this was not seen in the wider theatrical release of the film or early VHS releases. The viewer sees a blank screen while the theme music "Atmospheres" plays (the same music played during the final StarGate sequence). After about three minutes the music dies out and the MGM logo appears. The title sequence then begins with an image of the Earth rising over the Moon, while the Sun rises over the Earth, all in alignment. (This is the first of three occurrences in the film of the iconic "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" theme. See music section for further discussion of the use of music in the film.)

The film consists of four major sections, all of which except the second are introduced by title cards.

The Dawn of Man

A tribe of herbivorous ape-like early humans is foraging for food in the African desert. A leopard kills one member, and another tribe of man-apes drives them from their water hole. Defeated, they sleep overnight in a small exposed rock crater, and awake to find a black monolith has appeared in front of them. They approach it shrieking and jumping, and eventually touch it cautiously. Soon after, one of the apes (Daniel Richter) realizes how to use a bone as both a tool and a weapon, which the apes then use to kill prey for food. The next morning, they reclaim control of the water hole from the other tribe by killing its leader. Triumphant, the ape leader throws his weapon-tool into the air, switching via match cut from a bone to an orbital satellite millions of years in the future.

TMA-1

A Pan Am space plane flies Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) to Space Station V for a layover on his trip to Clavius Base, a US outpost on the moon. After making a videophone call from the station to his daughter (Vivian Kubrick), he sees a Russian scientist friend and her colleagues, who ask Floyd about "odd things" occurring at Clavius, and the rumor of a mysterious epidemic at the base. The American declines to answer any questions about the epidemic, implying that the rumor is true.

At Clavius, Floyd heads a meeting of base personnel, apologizing for the epidemic cover story but stressing secrecy. His mission is to investigate a recently found artifact, "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One" (TMA-1), "deliberately buried" four million years ago. Floyd and others ride in a Moonbus to the artifact, a black monolith identical to the one encountered by the apes. The visitors examine the monolith, and pose for a photo in front of it. While doing so, they hear a very loud radio signal coming from the monolith.

Jupiter Mission

18 months later, aboard the American spaceship Discovery One bound for Jupiter are two mission pilots and scientists—astronauts Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Francis "Frank" Poole (Gary Lockwood)—three other scientists in cryogenic hibernation, and the ship's computer HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), or "Hal", who runs most of Discovery's operations. While Bowman and Poole watch Hal and themselves being interviewed in a BBC show about the mission, the computer states that he is "foolproof and incapable of error". Hal also speaks of his enthusiasm for the mission, and how he enjoys working with humans. When asked by the host if Hal has genuine emotions, Bowman replies that he appears to, but that the truth is unknown.

Hal asks Bowman about the unusual mystery and secrecy surrounding the mission, but interrupts himself to report the imminent failure of a device which controls the ship's main antenna. After retrieving the component with an EVA pod, the astronauts cannot find anything wrong with it. HAL suggests reinstalling the part and letting it fail so the problem can be found. Mission control concurs, but advises the astronauts that results from their twin HAL 9000 indicate the ship's HAL is in error predicting the fault.

When queried, Hal insists that the problem, like all previous issues with the HAL series, is due to "human error". Concerned about Hal's behavior, Bowman and Poole enter one of the EVA pods to talk without the computer overhearing them. They both have a "bad feeling" about Hal, despite the HAL series' perfect reliability, but decide to follow his suggestion to replace the unit. As the astronauts agree to deactivate the computer if it is proven to be wrong, they are unaware that Hal is reading their lips through the pod's window.

While attempting to replace the unit during a spacewalk, Poole's EVA pod, controlled by Hal, severs his oxygen hose and sets him adrift. Bowman, not realizing the computer is responsible for this, takes another pod to attempt a rescue, leaving his helmet behind. While he is gone, Hal terminates the life functions of the crew in suspended animation. When Bowman returns to the ship with Poole's body, Hal refuses to let him in, stating that the astronaut's plan to deactivate him jeopardizes the mission. Bowman enters the ship manually through an emergency airlock, risking death from anoxia.

After donning a helmet, Bowman proceeds to HAL 9000's memory core intent on disconnecting the computer. Hal first tries to reassure Dave, then pleads with him to stop, and finally begins to express fear all in a steady voice. Dave ignores him and disconnects each of the computer's memory modules. Hal eventually regresses to his earliest programmed memory, the song "Daisy Bell", which he sings for Bowman.

When the computer is finally disconnected, a pre-recorded video message from Floyd plays. In it, he reveals the existence of the four million-year-old black monolith on the moon, "its origin and purpose still a total mystery". Floyd adds that it has remained completely inert, except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

The Star-Child into whom Dr. Bowman is transformed, looking at Earth.

At Jupiter, Bowman leaves Discovery One in an EVA pod and finds another monolith in orbit around the planet. Approaching it, he finds himself suddenly traveling through a tunnel of colored light (termed the “Star Gate” in the novel by Clarke) racing at great speed across vast distances of space, viewing strange cosmological phenomena interspersed with shots of a terrified Bowman, concluding with strange landscapes with unusual colors. He eventually finds himself standing in a bedroom containing Louis XVI-style decor. Bowman sees progressively older versions of himself, his point of view switching each time, until he appears as a very elderly man lying in the bed. At its foot a black monolith appears, and as he reaches for it, the astronaut transforms into a fetus-like being enclosed in a transparent orb of light (termed the “Star-Child” in the novel by Clarke). The new being floats in space above the Earth, gazing at it.

Cast

• Keir Dullea as Dr. David Bowman
• Gary Lockwood as Dr. Frank Poole
• William Sylvester as Dr. Heywood R. Floyd
• Douglas Rain as the voice of the HAL 9000
• Daniel Richter as the chief ape ("Moon-Watcher" in Clarke's novel)
• Leonard Rossiter as Dr. Andrei Smyslov
• Margaret Tyzack as Elena
• Robert Beatty as Dr. Ralph Halvorsen
• Sean Sullivan as Dr. Bill Michaels
• Frank Miller as mission controller
• Bill Weston as Astronaut
• Edward Bishop as Lunar shuttle captain
• Edwina Carroll as Aries stewardess
• Penny Brahms as stewardess
• Heather Downham as stewardess
• Vivian Kubrick as Floyd's daughter (uncredited)
• Glenn Beck as Astronaut
• Alan Gifford as Poole's father (uncredited)
• Ann Gillis as Poole's mother (uncredited)
• Kenneth Kendall as the BBC announcer (uncredited)
• Krystyna Marr as Russian scientist (uncredited)
• Keith Denny as an ape (uncredited)

Production

Writing

Kubrick and Clarke meet

Shortly after completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), Kubrick became fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and determined to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie". Searching for a suitable collaborator in the science fiction community, Kubrick was advised to seek out Clarke by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staffer Roger Caras. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick agreed that Caras would cable the Ceylon-based author with the film proposal. Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?"

Search for source material and title

In early conversations, Kubrick and Clarke jokingly called their project How the Solar System Was Won, an allusion to the 1962 Cinerama epic How the West Was Won. Like that film, Kubrick's production would be divided into distinct episodes. Clarke considered adapting a number of his earlier stories before selecting "The Sentinel", a 'first-contact' story he had published in 1950, as the starting point for the film. On February 22, 1965, MGM announced it was backing Kubrick's new science fiction film under the title Journey Beyond the Stars. Interviewed by The New Yorker shortly afterwards, Kubrick compared the proposed film to "a space Odyssey", and in April he officially changed the title to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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. However, in practice the cinematic ideas required for the screenplay developed parallel to the novel, with cross-fertilisation between the two. 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".

Depiction of alien life

Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his book The Cosmic Connection that Clarke and Kubrick asked his opinion on how to best depict extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan, while acknowledging Kubrick's desire to use actors to portray humanoid aliens for convenience's sake, argued that alien life forms were unlikely to bear any resemblance to terrestrial life, and that to do so would introduce "at least an element of falseness" to the film. Sagan proposed that the film suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence. He attended the premiere and was "pleased to see that I had been of some help." Sagan related that many Soviet scientists regarded the film to be the best American movie they had seen.

Depiction of computers

Clarke noted that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of HAL's name immediately preceded those of IBM. The meaning of HAL has been given both as "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and as "Heuristic ALgorithmic computer". The former appears in Clarke's novel of 2001 and the latter in his sequel novel 2010. In computer science, a heuristic is a programmable procedure producing a well-informed guess often using trial-and-error to select on-the-fly which one of several methods to solving a problem is to be used, based in part on previous experience in efforts to solve the problem. Solutions are not based on fixed rules. A heuristic may still produce erroneous results (such as in a computer program that plans optimum routes, or attempt to predict such things as the stock market, sports scores, or the weather). On the other hand, an algorithm is a programmable procedure that always produces precisely correct results using invariant established methods (such as computing square roots).

Stages of script & novel development

Arthur C. Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001. The script went through many stages of development in which various plot ideas were considered and subsequently discarded. Early in 1965, right when backing was secured for Journey Beyond the Stars, the writers still had no firm idea of what would happen to Bowman after the Star Gate sequence, though as early as October 17, 1964 Kubrick had come up with what Clarke called a "wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease". Initially all of Discovery's astronauts were to survive the journey; a decision to leave Bowman as the sole survivor and have him regress to infancy was agreed by October 3, 1965. The computer HAL was originally to have been named "Athena", after the Greek goddess of wisdom, with a feminine voice and persona.

Early drafts included having a short prologue containing interviews with scientists about extra-terrestrial life, voice-over narration (which almost all of Kubrick's previous movies had had), a stronger emphasis on the prevailing Cold War balance of terror, a slightly different and more explicitly explained scenario for HAL's breakdown, and a different appearing monolith for the "Dawn of Man" sequence. The last three of these survived into Arthur C. Clarke's final novel. More importantly, Clarke's novel also retained earlier drafts' employment of Saturn as the final destination of the Discovery mission rather than Jupiter, and the discarded finale of the Star Child exploding nuclear weapons onboard satellites orbiting the earth.

Some changes were made simply due to the logistics of filming. The production was unable to develop a convincing rendition of Saturn's rings; hence the switch to Jupiter, while early prototypes of the monolith did not photograph well. However, other changes were due to Stanley Kubrick's increasing desire to make the film more mysterious, reaching the viewer at a visual and visceral level rather than through conventional narrative. Vincent LeBrutto has noted that Clarke's novel has "strong narrative structure" which fleshes out the story, while the film is a mainly visual experience where much remains "symbolic".. Finally, while Clarke had suggested the finale of the Star Child exploding orbiting nuclear weapons, jokingly calling it "Son of Dr. Strangelove" with reference to Kubrick's previous film, Kubrick felt the similarity of this conclusion to his previous film was detrimental and opted for a more pacific conclusion.

Remnants of early drafts in final film

HAL's breakdown

While many ideas were discarded in totality, at least two remnants of previous plot ideas remain in the final film. While the film leaves HAL's breakdown mysterious, early script drafts spell out that HAL's breakdown is triggered by being ordered by authorities on Earth to withhold information from the onboard astronauts about the purpose of the mission. (This is also spelled out in the film sequel 2010.) Frederick Ordway, Kubrick's science advisor and technical consultant, working from personal copies of early drafts, states that in an earlier version Poole tells HAL that there is "...something about this mission that we weren't told. Something the rest of the crew know and that you know. We would like to know whether this is true." after which HAL enigmatically answers: "I'm sorry, Frank, but I don't think I can answer that question without knowing everything that all of you know." In this version, HAL then falsely predicts a failure of the hardware maintaining radio contact with Earth (the source of HAL's difficult orders) during the broadcast of Frank Poole's birthday greetings from his parents. While the final film drops this overt explanation, it is hinted at by having HAL querying David Bowman if the latter personally feels bothered or disturbed about the "mysteries" and "secrecy" about the mission purpose. After Bowman concludes HAL is dutifully drawing up the "crew psychology report", then HAL falsely predicts a failure of the hardware maintaining communication to Earth.

Military nature of orbiting satellites

See also in this article Orbiting weapons banned before film premiere.

Another holdover of discarded plot ideas is with regard to the satellite that appears in the famous match-cut from prehistoric bone-weapon to orbiting satellite, followed by views of three more satellites (no two seen simultaneously). Kubrick initially intended this and at least some of the others shown to be armed nuclear weapon platforms, and to have a voice-over narrator explicitly state this as such while speaking of a nuclear stalemate between the superpowers. This would foreshadow the now-discarded conclusion of the film showing the Star Child detonating them.Alexander Walker in a book he wrote with Kubrick's assistance and authorization describes the bone as "transformed into a spacecraft of the year A.D. 2001 as it orbits in the blackness around earth", and states that the idea of a nuclear stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union, each with a nuclear bomb orbiting the globe, was totally eliminated from the finished film. Kubrick dropped this aspect because it seemed to him to have "no place at all in the film's thematic development", the bombs now being an "orbiting red herring". He goes on to say that some filmgoers in the 1960's would know that agreement had already been reached between the powers not to put nuclear weapons into space, and if Kubrick suggested otherwise in his film, it would "merely have raised irrelevant queries to suggest this as a reality of the twenty-first century".

Piers Bizony, in his book 2001 Filming The Future, states that after ordering designs for orbiting nuclear weapon platforms, Kubrick became anxious to avoid too many associations with Dr. Strangelove and decided not to make it so obvious in his film that they were "war machines". Kubrick's designers, however, who worked in consultation with aerospace engineers to produce spacecraft with their designated purpose in mind, had difficulty accommodating Kubrick's changes to the screenplay after designs had been reached. Nothing in the final film calls the casual viewer's attention to their having any specific purpose, and it is not at all self-evident to mass audiences that they might be weapons. The vast majority of film critics, including noted Kubrick authority Michel Ciment, initially interpreted them as either mere generic satellites, or as spaceships (possibly moonbound). Stanley Kubrick himself, in a 1968 New York Times interview merely refers to them as "spacecraft", as does the interviewer, but observes that the match-cut from bone to spacecraft shows they evolved from "bone-as-weapon", stating "It's simply an observable fact that all of man's technology grew out of his discovery of the weapon-tool".

However, the perception that the satellites are nuclear weapons persists in the minds of some viewers (and some space scientists), due to a close examination of their appearance and statements of production staff who still refer to them as weapons. Walker in his book Stanley Kubrick, Director notes that although the bombs no longer fit in with Kubrick's revised thematic concerns (thus becoming "red herrings"), we can surmise from the national markings still visible on the first and second space vehicles we see that they are the Russian and American bombs.He does not clarify why, if the theme of nuclear stalemate was "totally eliminated" from the film, Kubrick used images of satellites originally designed with the intent to represent orbiting nuclear weapons platforms. Similarly, Walker in a recent essay (contributed to Stephanie Schwam's book The Making of 2001) states that two of the spacecraft seen circling Earth are meant to be nuclear weapons. Jerome Agel's 1970 book, written with help from Kubrick and Clarke and production staff, labels them "orbiting satellites carrying nuclear weapons" In the final film, an air force insignia, flag insignias (China and Germany) and a Maltese cross can be seen on some of the satellites, which are near-matches to the stated countries of origin in a widely circulated early draft of the script and the appearance of the satellites still matches the original concept sketches drawn for the nuclear bomb platforms in details such as the control tower, again worked out with space industry experts. A few published works by scientists on the subject of space exploration or space weapons tangentially discuss 2001: A Space Odyssey and assume at least some of the orbiting satellites are space weapons. NASA scientist Steven Pietrobon, who was a consultant on 2001 to website Starship Modeler regarding the props in the film, observes small details on the satellites such as air force insignias and what he calls "cannons". He writes "The orbital craft seen as we make the leap from the Dawn of Man to contemporary times are supposed to be weapons platforms carrying nuclear devices, though the movie does not make this clear."

Production staff who continue to refer to "bombs" include production designer Harry Lange (generally employed as an illustrator for the space industry) who has since the film's release displayed his original production sketches for all of the spacecraft including what were described by Simon Atkinson as "the orbiting bombs". Fred Ordway, the film's science consultant, sent a memo to Kubrick after the film's release listing a series of suggested changes to the film. One entry reads: "Without warning, we cut to the orbiting bombs". Arthur C. Clarke, in a 1996 documentary on Kubrick "The Invisible Man", talks about how Kubrick originally came up with the "bone to bomb" match-cut. Similarly, actor Gary Lockwood (astronaut Frank Poole) in the audio DVD commentary states (without giving a source for his view) that the first satellite is an armed weapon; this, Lockwood explains, makes the famous match-cut from bone to satellite a "weapon-to-weapon cut".

The absence of full consensus is illustrated by the way that one hand the 2001 exhibit (given in that year) at the Tech Museum in San Jose and now online (for a subscription) referred merely to satellites, while a special modeling exhibition at the exhibition hall at Porte de Versailles in Paris also held in 2001 (called "2001 l’odyssée des maquettes (2001: A Modelers Odyssey)") overtly described their reconstructions of the first satellite as the "US Orbiting Weapons Platform". Some, but not all, space model manufacturers or amateur model builders refer to these entities as bombs. Two recent reviews of the film specifically for the DVD release refer to armed satellites, possibly influenced by Gary Lockwood's comment on the audio commentary. Kubrick, frequently reluctant to spell out any explanation of his work, never stated to the general public that the orbiting satellites are nuclear weapons, but left it possible for some viewers to surmise that they might be so.

Filming

Filming of 2001 began December 29, 1965, in Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England. The studio was chosen because it could house the 60'x 120'x 60' pit for the Tycho crater excavation scene, the first to be shot. From 1966, filming was at MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, from where the production was run to facilitate special effects filming; it was described as a "huge throbbing nerve center… with much the same frenetic atmosphere as a Cape Kennedy blockhouse during the final stages of Countdown."

The film was initially planned to be photographed in 3-film-strip Cinerama (like How the West Was Won), because it was a part of a production/distribution deal between MGM and Cinerama Releasing corporation, but that was changed to Super Panavision 70 (which uses a single-strip 65 mm negative) on the advice of special photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, due to distortion problems with the 3-strip system. Color processing and 35 mm release prints were done using Technicolor's dye transfer process. The 70 mm prints were made by MGM Laboratories, Inc. on Metrocolor. In March 1968, Kubrick finished editing the film, making his final cuts just before the film's general release in April 1968. The production was $4.5 million over the initial $6.0 million budget, and sixteen months behind schedule.

Special effects

Director of Photography Geoffrey Unsworth did not want the film to be complicated with printing effects such as blue screen, so most of the special effects were done as in-camera effects.

This film pioneered retroreflective matting (front projection) in mainstream movie production. The technique was selected to produce the backdrops for the African scenes where apes learn to use tools, as traditional techniques using backdrops or back-projection did not produce a realistic looking result. Existing techniques that used painted backdrops for stills or back-projection for moving scenes simply proved not to be capable of producing the realistic effects Kubrick demanded. The technique was also used for a number of shots during the spacecraft scenes, notably to produce the images seen through windows. The technique has been used widely in the film industry since 2001 pioneered its use, although starting in the 1990s it has been increasingly replaced by green screen systems.

Front projection uses a separate scenery projector arranged at right angles to the camera. A half-silvered mirror splits the light coming out of the projector, with about half of it reflected forward where it falls onto a retroflective backdrop. The image is then reflected back to the camera, along with the normal lighting from the scene. The projected landscape is invisible on the actors because it is much dimmer than the scene illumination, and is only visible in the camera because of the high reflectivity of the background retroflective screen.

Front projection had been used in smaller settings before 2001, but mostly for still-action photography or television production, using small still images and projectors. The expansive backdrops in the African scenes required a backdrop 40 feet tall, far larger than had ever been used before. Using the largest existing projectors based on 4 by 5 inch transparencies resulted in grainy images when projected that large, so the 2001 team worked with MGM's Special Effects Supervisor, Tom Howard, to build a custom projector using 8 by 10 slides and the largest water-cooled arc lamp available. When the reflective material was applied to the backdrop, they discovered roll-to-roll variations that led to obvious visual artifacts, a problem that was solved by tearing the material into small chunks and applying it in a "camouflage" pattern.

Space travel shots were also handled in-camera. The model of the Discovery One spacecraft was moved along a track, mechanically linked to the camera. On the first pass, the model was unlit, masking the star-field. The model and film were returned to the start position, and on the second pass, the model was lit. For the third pass, motion pictures were projected onto front-projection screens in the model's windows, showing the interior of the ship. The result was a film negative that was as sharp as live footage.

For interior shots inside the spacecraft, which was shown to contain a giant centrifuge whose rotation was intended to produce artificial gravitation, Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating "ferris wheel" built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering Group at a cost of $750,000. The set was 38 feet in diameter and 10 feet wide. Various spacecraft interior shots, mostly in the Discovery, were shot by placing the set within the wheel, then rotating it while the actor walked in sync with its motion, leaving them at the bottom of the wheel. The camera could be fixed to show the actor walking "up" the set, or mounted to rotate with the actor, as in the famous jogging scene. The number of shots where the actors appear separated in the wheel are limited, because they required one of the actors to be strapped into place while the wheel moved to allow the other to walk at the bottom. The most notable case is just before Dave and Frank eat while watching the BBC special, which required Gary Lockwood to be strapped into a seat while Keir Dullea walked toward him from the opposite side of the wheel.

Another rotating set was shown in the first part of the film on board the Aries trans-lunar shuttle. A stewardess is shown heating the in-flight meal, then stepping into a circular hallway. As the camera's point of view remains constant, she then walks 90 degrees up the 'side' of the set, and walks into a connecting hallway normal to her new orientation.

Veteran technicians of previous science fiction films were puzzled by how realistic the effects of floating in space were when Dave or Frank are outside the Discovery, and the weightless scenes inside the spacecraft such as the scene with the disconnection of Hal. These were accomplished by having actors suspended from a ceiling (as was then common in simulating spacewalking) with the camera underneath them pointing straight up, thus eliminating the common effect of a notable up-down pull on an astronaut. The actors' bodies blocked the camera's view of the suspension wires, creating a very believable appearance of floating.

The "Star Gate" sequence, one of many ground-breaking visual effects.

The colored lights in the Star Gate sequence were accomplished by slit-scan photography of moving images of paintings. The shots of various nebula-like phenomena were colored paints and chemicals in a tank of water, a device known formally as a cloud tank, in a dark room.

During filming, the scene of the expanding star field was called The Manhattan Project.

Detailed instructions in relatively small print for various technological devices appear at several points in the film, of which the most notable is the lengthy instructions for the zero-gravity toilet. Similar detailed instructions for explosive bolts also appear.

An article by Douglas Trumbull about the creation of special effects for 2001 appears in the June 1968 issue of American Cinematographer.

Deleted scenes

File:2001 school class deleted scene.jpg

Painting school class scene, deleted from the film.

Kubrick filmed several scenes that were deleted from the final film. These include a schoolroom on the moon base; Floyd buying a bush baby from a department store, via videophone, for his daughter; additional space walks; and astronaut Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor. The most notable cut was a 10-minute black-and-white opening sequence featuring interviews with actual scientists, including Freeman Dyson, discussing extraterrestrial life, which Kubrick removed after an early screening for MGM executives. If the music intro and outro are included, 29 minutes of film have been excised from the theatrical version. According to Kubrick biographer Jan Harlan, the director was adamant the trims were never to be seen, and that he "even burned the negatives"—which he had kept in his garage—shortly before his death. This is confirmed by former Kubrick assistant Leon Vitalli, "I'll tell you right now, okay, on Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, some little parts of 2001, we had thousands of cans of negative outtakes and print, which we had stored in an area at his house where we worked out of, which he personally supervised the loading of it to a truck and then I went down to a big industrial waste lot and burned it. That's what he wanted."

Reuse of special effects shots

Although special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull had been unable to provide convincing footage of Saturn for 2001 (thus causing the film production to change the mission's destination to Jupiter), Trumbull had solved the technical problems reproducing Saturn's rings by the time he himself directed Silent Running 4 years later in 1972, employing effects developed but not completed for 2001.

In spite of Kubrick's tendency to destroy unused footage, unused material from the final Stargate sequence appears in the Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour during the sequence accompanied by George Harrison's instrumental song Flying.

Release

The film's world premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.. Kubrick deleted 19 minutes from the film just before the film's general release on April 6, 1968. It was released in 70mm format, with a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack, and projected in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio. The film's general release took place in autumn 1968, in 35mm anamorphic format, with either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural soundtrack.

The original 70 mm release, like many Super Panavision 70 films of the era such as Grand Prix, was advertised as being in Cinerama in cinemas equipped with special projection optics and a deeply curved screen. In standard cinemas, the film was identified as a 70 mm production. The original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70 mm Cinerama with six-track sound (via Klipschorn- and Odyssey-model cinema speakers) played continually for two years in The Glendale Theater, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, a feat cited by Arthur C. Clarke in the non-fiction book The Lost Worlds of 2001.

MGM also published letterbox laserdisc editions (including an updated edition with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound). There also was a special edition laserdisc from The Criterion Collection in the CAV format. In 1999, it was re-released in VHS, and in 2001 as part of the "Stanley Kubrick Collection" in both VHS and DVD formats with remastered sound and picture.

It has been released on Region 1 DVD four times: once by MGM Home Entertainment in 1998 and thrice by Warner Home Video in 1999, 2001, and 2007. The MGM release had a booklet, the film, trailer, and an interview with Arthur C. Clarke, and the soundtrack was remastered in 5.1 surround sound. The 1999 Warner Bros. release omitted the booklet, yet had a re-release trailer. The 2001 release contained the re-release trailer, the film in the original 2.21:1 aspect ratio, digitally re-mastered from the original 70 mm print, and the soundtrack remixed in 5.1 surround sound. A limited edition DVD included a booklet, 70 mm frame, and a new soundtrack CD of the film's actual (unreleased) music tracks, and a sampling of HAL's dialogue.

Warner Home Video released a 2-DVD Special Edition on October 23, 2007 as part of their latest set of Kubrick reissues. The DVD was released on its own and as part of a revised Stanley Kubrick box set which contains new Special Edition versions of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, and the documentary A Life in Pictures. Additionally, the film was released in high definition on both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The Imdb.com listing of this DVD and the official Warner Brothers webpage have a complete listing of all the special features but both omit a documentary entitled "What is Out There?" featuring interviews with Keir Dullea and Arthur C. Clarke.

In some video releases, three title cards were added to the three "blank screen" moments; "OVERTURE" at the beginning, "ENTR'ACTE" during the intermission, and "EXIT MUSIC" after the closing credits.

Reaction

Upon release, 2001 polarized critical opinion, receiving both ecstatic praise and vehemently negative criticism. Some critics viewed the original 160-minute cut shown at premieres in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, while others saw the 19 minutes shorter general release version that was in theaters from April 6, 1968 onwards. In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor…The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times opined that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future…it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film." Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth." Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D.W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man…Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch." The Boston Globe's review indicated that it was "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere…The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life." Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale." He later put it on his Top 10 list for Sight & Sound. Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews of the film in various issues in 1968, each one slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review dated December 27, 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."

However, Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie," and Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called it "a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull." Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring." Variety's 'Robe' believed the film was a "Big, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic…A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark." Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life…2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points." (Sarris reversed his opinion upon a second viewing of the film, and declared "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist.") John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines…and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans...2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story." It has been noted that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon its initial release.

2001 earned Stanley Kubrick an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Kubrick), and Original Screenplay (Kubrick, Clarke). Although it was not even nominated for Best Picture, 2001 is considered by many sources to be one of the greatest films of all time.

The influence of 2001 of subsequent filmmakers is considerable. The 2007 DVD release of the film has a featurette entitled Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001 discussing its impact on Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and others including many special effects technicians. Spielberg calls it his film generation's "big bang". At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott stated he believed 2001 was the unbeatable film that in a sense killed the sci-fi genre. Similarly, film critic Michel Ciment in his essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" stated "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete." Others however, believe Kubrick opened up a market (albeit a limited one) for serious science-fiction films.. Science magazine Discover's blogger Stephen Cass writes "2001: A Space Odyssey’s influence on later science fiction is impossible to underestimate, and the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000, and the ultimate alien artifact, the Monolith, have all become enduring cultural icons in their own right."

Awards and honors

Academy Awards

Award	Person
Best Visual Effects	Stanley Kubrick
Nominated:
Best Original Screenplay	Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke
Best Art Direction	Anthony Masters Harry Lange Ernest Archer
Best Director	Stanley Kubrick

No Oscar for Best makeup award existed until 1981. Nonetheless, it is considered ironic by both Arthur C. Clarke and others that in the same year that 2001 was released, a special honorary Oscar for ape makeup was given to Planet of the Apes, but the more realistic ape-makeup in 2001 was ignored. Clarke believes the committee may have not realized the apes were actors (actually professional street-mimes.)

Other awards

Won

• BAFTA Awards:
  1. Best Art Direction (Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer)
  2. Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth)
  3. Best Road Show
  4. Best Sound Track (Winston Ryder)
• Cinema Writers Circle, Spain:
  1. Best Foreign Film
• David di Donatello Awards, Italy:
  1. Best Foreign Production (Stanley Kubrick)
• Hugo Awards:
  1. Best Dramatic Presentation
• Kansas City Film Critics:
  1. Best Director (Stanley Kubrick)
  2. Best Picture
• Laurel Awards:
  1. Best Road Show

Nominated

• BAFTA Awards:
  1. Best Film (Stanley Kubrick)
  2. UN Award (Stanley Kubrick)
• Directors Guild of America (DGA):
  1. Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Stanley Kubrick)

Top film lists

2001 was number 22 on AFI's 100 Years… 100 Movies, was named number 40 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, included on its 100 Years, 100 Quotes ("Open the pod bay doors, Hal."), HAL 9000 is the #13 villain in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, is the only science fiction film to make the Sight & Sound poll for ten best movies, and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of "greatest science fiction films of all time." In 1991, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry. Other lists that include the film are 50 Films to See Before You Die (#6), The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th Century (#11), the Sight & Sound Top Ten poll (#6), and Roger Ebert's Top Ten (1968) (#2). In 1995, the Vatican named it as one of the 45 best films ever made (and included it in a sub-list of the "Top Ten Art Movies" of all time.)

American Film Institute recognition:

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (1998) - #22
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills (2001) - #40
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains (2003):
  • HAL 9000 - #13 Villain
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes (2005):
  • "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." - #78
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers (2006) - #47
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007) - #15
• AFI's 10 Top 10 (2007) - #1 Sci-Fi film

The film made number 8 on Clarke's own List of the best Science-Fiction films of all time, following The Day the Earth Stood Still at #7.

Interpretation

Main article: Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analyzed and interpreted by professional movie critics, amateur writers and science fiction fans. Kubrick encouraged people to explore their own interpretations of the film, and refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened" in the movie, preferring instead to let audiences embrace their own ideas and theories. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick stated:

You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film — and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level — but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point.

Questions about 2001 include issues of its deeper philosophical implications about humanity, to simpler questions about what drives the plot such as the causes of HAL's breakdown (which as stated above is explained in earlier drafts but kept mysterious in the final film).

Its largest and most unresolvable enigma is the monolith concerning which the final line of dialogue (long before the conclusion of the film) says "Its origin and purpose still a total mystery". The first two encounters with the monolith (the apes in the African desert and the astronauts on the moon) have clear parallelisms, both apes and later astronauts touching the monolith with their hands gingerly. Both sequences conclude with near-identical shots of the sun coming over the top of the monolith, the first with a crescent moon adjacent to it in the sky, the second with an near-identical crescent earth adjacent to it in the same position. Both remind the viewer of the sun-earth-moon alignment seen at the very beginning of the film. The first monolith encounter seems to be associated with the imparting to apes the discovery of the tool and the other seems to suggest sunlight triggers the monolith's radio signal to Jupiter. In any case, the monolith is engaged with the transformation of first apes then men, but why and to what end remains unknown.

Scientific accuracy

File:Discovery1b.JPG

Spaceship Discovery One launching an EVA pod. Note the deliberately non-aerodynamic design of both craft. In space, aerodynamics do not matter.

2001 is "perhaps the most thoroughly and accurately researched film in screen history with respect to aerospace engineering". There were several technical advisers hired for 2001, some of whom were recommended by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke, who himself had a background in aerospace. Advisors included Marshall Spaceflight Center engineer Frederick I. Ordway III, who worked on the film for two years, and I. J. Good, who advised Kubrick on Supercomputers due to his authorship of treatises such as "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" and "Logic of Man and Machine".

2001 accurately presents outer space as transmitting no sound, in sharp contrast to many films in which explosions or passing spacecraft are heard in space. 2001's portrayal of microgravitation in spaceships and outer space is notable. Tracking shots inside the rotating wheel providing artificial gravity contrast with the "weightlessness" outside the wheel during the repair and Hal disconnection scenes. (The pod bay walking scenes of the astronauts may be explained by the earlier scenes where stewardesses walk in zero gravity using velcro-equipped shoes labeled Grip Shoes.) For the sequences when the astronauts venture outside the ship, the astronauts were suspended but Kubrick filmed them from below with the camera pointing straight up providing a more realistic appearance of weightlessness than the more conventional approach of a camera to one side. Notable also is the delay of several minutes in conversations between the astronauts and Earth which the BBC announcer explicitly says have to be edited out of the broadcast, as is attention to small details such as the sound of breathing inside the spacesuits, the conflicting spatial orientation of astronauts inside a no-gravity spaceship, and the enormous size of Jupiter in relationship to the spaceship.

The general approach to how space travel is engineered is highly accurate; in particular, the design of the ships was based on engineering feasibility rather than attempts to look aesthetically "futuristic". Many other science-fiction films give spacecraft an aerodynamic shape, which is superfluous in outer space (though useful for ships that are designed to function both in atmosphere and in space). Kubrick's science advisor, Frederick Ordway, notes that in designing the spacecraft "We insisted on knowing the purpose and functioning of each assembly and component, down to the logical labeling of individual buttons and the presentation on screens of plausible operating, diagnostic and other data." Onboard equipment and panels on various spacecraft has specific purposes such as alarm, communications, condition display, docking, diagnostic and navigation. In this there was heavy reliance on NASA. Aerospace specialists were also consulted on the design of the spacesuits and space helmets. The space dock at moonbase Clavius shows multiple underground layers which could sustain high levels of air pressure typical of Earth. The mooncraft design takes into account the lower gravity and lighting conditions on the moon. The Jupiter-bound Discovery is meant to be nuclear-powered by a reactor at its rear separated by hundreds of feet of storage area from the front where the crew works in the centrifuge. Although rarely recognized as such actual nuclear reactor control panel displays appear in the astronaut's control area.

The suspended animation of three of the astronauts on board is accurately portrayed as worked out by consulting medical authorities. Such hibernation would probably be necessary to conserve resources on a flight of this kind as Clarke's novelization implies.

A great deal of attention was also paid to the look of the lunar landscape, based on detailed lunar photographs taken from observatory telescopes. The depiction of early apes was based on the writings of anthropologists such as Louis Leakey.

The film is scientifically inaccurate in minor but revealing details, many explained by the technical difficulty inherent to producing a realistic effect, with a few explainable as poetic license. It is arguable that the inaccuracies stand out precisely because the film is overall so overwhelmingly accurate.

The appearance of outer space is problematic both in terms of lighting and the alignment of astronomical bodies. With no atmosphere in outer space, stars do not twinkle, and light does not spread out to become ambient. The side of the Discovery spacecraft unlit by the sun would be virtually pitch-black. The stars would not appear to move in relation to Discovery as it traveled towards Jupiter. Proportionally, the sun, moon, and earth would not visually line up at the size ratios as shown in the opening shot, nor would the Galilean moons of Jupiter ever align as in the shot just before Bowman enters the Star Gate. Kubrick himself was aware of this latter point.(due to the perfect Laplace resonance of the orbits of the four large moons of Jupiter, the first three will never align, and the third moon, Ganymede, will always be exactly 90 degrees away from the other two whenever the two inmost moons are in perfect alignment.) Finally, the edge of the earth seems sharp in the movie, but it should be slightly blurry due to the scattering of the sunlight by the atmosphere, as we can see in many photos taken from space today.

The entire sequence in which Dave Bowman re-enters Discovery through the emergency airlock has problems. Bowman apparently holds his breath just before ejecting from the pod into the airlock. On the DVD edition of the film released in 2007, Arthur C. Clarke states in an interview that had he been on the set the day they filmed this, he would have caught this error. Before exposure to a vacuum, one must exhale, because holding in the breath would rupture the lungs. Also, the blown pod hatch simply vanishes while concealed behind a puff of smoke. At least open to question is why the EVA pod does not fly away when Dave Bowman uses explosive bolts. It may have used station keeping attitude jets, as is common with communications satellites today, but there is no indication of this occurring in the film.

While the film's portrayal of reduced or zero gravity is unusually realistic, problems remain. While Floyd sips a meal in zero gravity from liquipaks, liquid slips back down the straw when he stops sucking. When spacecraft land on the Moon, dust is shown billowing as it would in an atmosphere, not going up in a sheet as it would in the vacuum of the Lunar surface as can be seen in Apollo moonlanding footage. While on the moon, all actors move as if in normal Earth gravity, not the 1/6 G of the moon. Similarly, the behavior of Dave and Frank in the pod bay is not fully consistent with zero-Gs, as it should be since the pod bay is not in a centrifuge. The astronauts are wearing zero g 'grip shoes', but that they are leaning on the table when they try to diagnose the AE-35 unit is especially peculiar. Finally, in an environment with a radius as small as the main quarters, the simulated gravity would vary significantly from the center of the crew quarters to the 'floor', even varying between feet, waist, and head. The RPM of the crew quarters is only fast enough to generate an approximation of moon gravity, not that of the Earth. However, Clarke felt this was enough to prevent the physical atrophy that would result from complete weightlessness.

The first two appearances of the monolith, one on the Earth and one on the moon, conclude with the sun rising over the top of the monolith at the zenith of the sky. While this could happen in an African veldt anywhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, it could not happen anywhere near the crater Tycho (where the monolith is found) as it is 45 degrees south of the lunar equator.

The movement of Dr. Floyd's floating pen while en route to the station is in a circular arc (actually stuck to the edge of a rotating plastic disc), but it would either rotate around its own center of gravity (rather than a point external to it) or would move in a straight line unless the plane is rotating causing changes in centripetal force.

There are other problems that might be more appropriately described as continuity errors, such as the change of which side of Earth is lit when viewed from Clavius, and the position readout of the space station on the PanAm space plane's monitors failing to synchronize with the station's actual position.

Imagining the future

File:2001-centerfuge.jpg

The Centrifuge in Discovery One—Exercising astronaut Frank Poole jogs its circumference.

File:2001interview.jpg

Small, portable, flat-screen devices were indeed available in the year 2001.

Much was made by MGM's publicity department of the film's realism, claiming in a 1968 brochure that "Everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey can happen within the next three decades, and…most of the picture will happen by the beginning of the next millennium." This has proved to be wrong, although some of the film's predictions have indeed been realized. The primary predictions that are central to the plot, those about space travel and artificial intelligence, did not materialise by that date (and still have not). However, many secondary futuristic elements of the story that are somewhat marginal to the plot have been accurate apprehensions of the future.

Technology

One futuristic device shown in the film already under development when the film was released in 1968 was voice-print identification; the first prototype was released in 1976. A credible prototype of a chess-playing computer already existed in 1968, even though it could be defeated by experts; computers did not defeat champions until the late 1980s. While 10-digit phone numbers for long-distance national dialing originated in 1951, longer phone numbers for international dialing became a reality in 1970. Personal in-flight entertainment displays were first introduced in the 1980s strictly for the purpose of playing video games, but then broadened out for the purpose of TV broadcast and movies in a manner like that shown in the film. The film also shows flat-screen TV monitors, of which the first real-world prototype appeared in 1975. Plane cockpit integrated system displays, known as glass cockpits, were introduced in 1979. Rudimentary voice-controlled computing exists in the early 2000s, although it is still not as sophisticated as depicted in the film.

Some technologies portrayed as common in the film which have not materialized in the 2000s include commonplace space travel, space stations with hotels, moon colonization, suspended animation of humans, common (non-mobile) videophones, and strong artificial intelligence of the kind displayed by HAL.

The film portrayed videophones as common, failing to anticipate wireless telephony. When Floyd makes a videophone call to Earth, his daughter answers but he cannot talk to his wife because she is not at home.

Companies and countries

Many more BBC stations existed in 2001 than did in 1968 as shown in the film, although there is no BBC 12. The corporations IBM, Aeroflot, Howard Johnsons, and Hilton Hotels, all of which appear in the film, have survived beyond 2001. On the other hand, the film depicts a still-existing Pan Am and still-autonomous Bell System telephone company. The Bell System logo seen in the film was modified in 1969 and dropped entirely in 1983.

Filmgoers in 1968 were highly likely to think the Russian scientists met by Dr. Floyd in the space station were intended to be affiliated with the then-extant Soviet Union as do many reviewers today. Nonetheless, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

Orbiting weapons banned before film premiere

As discussed more fully in the above section remnants of early drafts, Stanley Kubrick originally intended the four satellites shown right after the "Dawn of Man" sequence to be clearly established as orbiting nuclear weapons via a voice-over narrator and he subsequently either dropped or severely downplayed this idea to the margins of the film for reasons mentioned.

In fact, in the year prior to the film's release, major superpowers signed a treaty banning nuclear weapons from space. By this time military experts had concluded this was an impractical place to put weapons compared to surface-based missiles. This was for reasons of deployment speed and lack of location secrecy. At some point before the film's release, Kubrick had arrived at the conclusion he wanted to avoid the comparisons to his previous film Doctor Strangelove (an idea which Arthur Clarke liked), but regardless of whether that was before or after the treaty, this motif in the film was out of date before the film's release.

Soundtrack

Music

Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal experience, one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during any scenes with dialogue.

The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Most feature films then and now are typically accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written especially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, on 2001 Kubrick did much of the filming and editing using, as his guides, the classical recordings which eventually became the music track. In March 1966, MGM became concerned about 2001's progress and Kubrick put together a show reel of footage to the ad hoc soundtrack of classical recordings. The studio bosses were delighted with the results and Kubrick decided to use these 'guide pieces' as the final musical soundtrack, and he abandoned North's score. Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used and, to his dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie just before its release. What survives of North's soundtrack recordings has been released as a "limited edition" CD from Intrada Records. All the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varèse Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release but before North's death.

In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick explained:

However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time? When you are editing a film, it's very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the scene…Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary tracks can become the final score.

2001 is particularly remembered for using Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube), during the extended space-station docking and lunar landing sequences, and the use of the opening from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra"), which has now become firmly associated with the film and its themes. The film also introduced the modernistic composer György Ligeti to a wide public.

The Richard and Johann Strauss pieces and Ligeti’s Requiem (the Kyrie section) act as recurring leitmotifs in the film’s storyline. Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra is first heard in the opening title which juxtaposes the sun, earth, and moon. It is subsequently heard when an ape first learns to use a tool, and when Bowman is transformed into the Star-Child at the end of the film. Zarathustra thus acts as a bookend for the beginning and end of the film, and as a motif signifying evolutionary transformations, first from ape to man, then from man to Star-Child. This piece was originally inspired by the philosopher Nietzsche’s book of the same name which alludes briefly to the relationship of ape to man and man to Superman. The Blue Danube appears in two intricate and extended space travel sequences as well as the closing credits. The first of these is the particularly famous sequence of the PanAm space plane docking at Space Station V. Ligeti’s Requiem is heard three times, all of them during appearances of the monolith. The first is its encounter with apes just before the Zarathustra-accompanied ape discovery of the tool. The second is the monolith's discovery on the Moon, and the third is Bowman's approach to it around Jupiter just before he enters the Star Gate. This last sequence with the Requiem has much more movement in it than the first two, and it transitions directly into the music from Ligeti’s Atmosphères which is heard when Bowman actually enters the Star Gate. No music is heard during the monolith's much briefer final appearance in Dave Bowman’s celestial bedroom which immediately precedes the Zarathustra-accompanied transformation of Bowman into the Star-Child. A shorter excerpt from Atmospheres is heard during the pre-credits prelude and film intermission, which are not in all copies of the film. Gayane's Adagio from Aram Khachaturian's Gayaneh ballet suite is heard during the sections that introduce Bowman and Poole aboard the Discovery conveying a somewhat lonely and mournful quality. Other music used is Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna and an electronically altered form of his Aventures, the last of which was so used without Ligeti's permission.

Since the film, Also sprach Zarathustra has been used in many other contexts, in particular by the BBC and by CTV in Canada as the introductory theme music for their television coverage of the Apollo space missions, as well as stage entrance music for multiple acts including Elvis Presley late in his career. Jazz and rock variants of the theme have also been composed, the most well known being the one by Eumir Deodato in the film Being There.

HAL's version of the popular song "Daisy Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) was inspired by a computer-synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories Murray Hill facility when he was, coincidentally, visiting friend and colleague John Pierce. At that time, a speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell" ("Bicycle Built For Two"), with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later used it in the screenplay and novel."

Many foreign language versions of the film do not use the song "Daisy." In the French soundtrack to 2001, HAL sings the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" while being disconnected. In the German version, HAL sings the children's song "Hänschen Klein" ("Johnny Little") and in the Italian version HAL sings "Giro giro tondo."

Soundtrack album

The initial MGM soundtrack album release contained none of the material from the altered and uncredited rendition of "Aventures", used a different recording of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" than that heard in the film, and a longer excerpt of "Lux Aeterna" than that in the film. In 1996, Turner Entertainment released a new soundtrack on CD which included the material from "Aventures" and restored the version of "Zarathustra" used in the film, and used the shorter version of "Lux Aeterna" from the film. As additional "bonus tracks" at the end, this CD includes the versions of "Zarathustra" and "Lux Aeterna" on the old MGM soundtrack, an unaltered performance of "Aventures", and a nine-minute compilation of all of Hal's dialogue from the film.

According to the Internet Movie Database,

The end music credits do not list a conductor and orchestra for "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Stanley Kubrick wanted the Herbert von Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic version on English Decca for the film's soundtrack, but Decca executives did not want their recording "cheapened" by association with the movie, and so gave permission on the condition that the conductor and orchestra were not named. After the movie's successful release, Decca tried to rectify its blunder by re-releasing the recording with an "As Heard in 2001" flag printed on the album cover. John Culshaw recounts the incident in "Putting the Record Straight" (1981)... In the meantime, MGM released the "official soundtrack" L.P. with Karl Böhm's Berlin Philharmonic "Also Sprach Zarathustra" discretely substituting for von Karajan's version.

Alex North's unused original score for the film has twice been released on compact disc. In 1993, a re-recording of North's score, with Jerry Goldsmith conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra, was issued by Varèse Sarabande Records. In 2008, the original score recordings, which survived only in monaural form, were released on CD by Intrada Records.

Dialogue

Alongside its use of music, the lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues in 2001 has been noted by many reviewers. There is no dialogue at all for the entirety of both the first and last 20 minutes or so of the film; the total narrative of these sections is carried entirely by images, actions, sound effects, a great deal of music (See Music) and two title cards.

Only when the film moves into the postulated future of 2000 and 2001, does the viewer encounter characters who speak. By the time shooting began, Kubrick had deliberately jettisoned much of the intended dialogue and narration, and what remains is notable for its apparent banality (making the computer HAL seem to have more human emotion than the actual humans), while it is juxtaposed with epic scenes of space. The first scenes of dialogue are Floyd's three encounters on the space station. They are preceded by the space docking sequence choreographed to Strauss' The Blue Danube waltz and followed by a second extended sequence of his travel to the moon with more Strauss, the two sequences acting as bookends to his space-station stopover. In the stopover itself, we get idle chit-chat with the colleague who greets him followed by Floyd's slightly more affectionate phone call to his daughter, and the distantly friendly but awkwardly strained encounter with Soviet scientists. Later, en route to the monolith, Floyd engages in trite exchanges with his staff while we see a spectacular journey by Earthlight across the moon's surface. Generally, the most memorable dialogue in the film belongs to the computer Hal in its exchanges with David Bowman. Hal is the only character in the film who openly expresses anxiety (primarily around his disconnection), as well as feelings of pride and bewilderment.

The first line of dialogue is the space-station stewardess addressing Heywood Floyd saying "Here you are, sir. Main level D." The final line is Floyd's conclusion of the pre-recorded Jupiter mission briefing about the monolith. "Except for a single, very powerful radio emission, aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin — and purpose — still a total mystery."

Sequels and adaptations

Kubrick did not envisage a sequel to 2001, fearing the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet). To the dismay of MGM Studios, he ordered all prints of unused scenes, sets, props, miniatures, and production blueprints destroyed. Most of these materials were lost, with several notable exceptions. Several sources suggest that a 79-inch model of the spaceship Discovery One was salvaged and appeared in modified form in Space: 1999 but this is untrue; a similar spaceship model appears in the series in the episode "Alpha Child" but this was a modified Discovery replica built by one of the series' model-makers and not one from 2001. However, a 2001 spacesuit backpack did appear in another Gerry Anderson series and can be seen in the "Close Up" episode of UFO. One of Hal's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of HAL's Legacy, David G. Stork.

Clarke went on to write three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). 3001: The Final Odyssey reconnects with Frank Poole, who has been found drifting by a ship that was looking for frozen water near the edge of the solar system. Sufficiently preserved by the vacuum of space, he is revived by the advanced medical technology of the time and becomes the novel's protagonist.

The only filmed sequel, 2010, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel and was released in 1984. Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which was directed by Peter Hyams in a straightforward style with more dialogue. Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel, and had a brief cameo appearance in the film. As Kubrick had ordered all models and blueprints from 2001 destroyed, Hyams was forced to recreate these models from scratch for 2010. Hyams also claimed that he would not make the film had he not received both Kubrick's and Clarke's blessings:

"I had a long conversation with Stanley and told him what was going on. If it met with his approval, I would do the film; and if it didn't, I wouldn't. I certainly would not have thought of doing the film if I had not gotten the blessing of Kubrick. He's one of my idols; simply one of the greatest talents that's ever walked the Earth. He more or less said, 'Sure. Go do it. I don't care.' And another time he said, 'Don't be afraid. Just go do your own movie.'

The other two novels have not been adapted for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks has expressed interest in possible adaptations of 2061 and 3001.

Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published both a Jack Kirby-written and drawn comic adaptation of the film and a Kirby-created 10-issue monthly series "expanding" on the ideas of the film and novel.

Parodies and homages

2001 has been frequently parodied, sometimes extensively and other times briefly. Parodies employ both its music and iconic imagery. Examples include:

• Mad magazine issue #125 (March 1969) included a spoof called "201 Minutes of a Space Idiocy" written by Dick DeBartolo and illustrated by Mort Drucker. It was reprinted in various special issues and in the MAD About the Sixties book.
• Apple Inc.'s 1999 "It was a bug, Dave" campaign focuses on HAL implying that its weird behaviour was caused by a Y2K bug, before driving home the point that "only Macintosh was designed to function perfectly".

See also External links.

See also

• List of spacecraft from the Space Odyssey series
• List of films about outer space
• Toynbee tiles, mysterious notices in U.S. cities mentioning "Kubrick's 2001"
• Films considered the greatest ever

References

• Agel, Jerome (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. Signet. ISBN 0-451-07139-5.
• Bizony, Piers (2001). 2001 Filming the Future. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 1-85410-706-2.
• Castle, Alison (ed.), ed. (2005). "Part 2: The Creative Process / 2001: A Space Odyssey". The Stanley Kubrick Archives. New York: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-2284-1. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Chion, Michel (2001). Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey. translated by Claudia Gorbman. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-840-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)
• Ciment, Michel (1980, 1999). Kubrick. New York: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-21108-9. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
• Clarke, Arthur C. (1972). The Lost Worlds of 2001. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 0-283-97903-8.
• Kolker, Robert (ed.), ed. (2006). Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517453-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Richter, Daniel (2002). Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-1073-X.
• Schwam, Stephanie (ed.), ed. (2000). The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. introduction by Jay Cocks. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75528-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Walker, Alexander (2000). Stanley Kubrick, Director. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0-393-32119-3.
• Wheat, Leonard F. (2000). Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3796-X.

Further reading

• Shuldiner, Herbert (1968) How They Filmed '2001: A Space Odessey', Bonnier Corporation: Popular Science, June 1968, pg. 62-67, Vol. 192, No. 6, ISSN 0161-7370

External links

• 2001: A Space Odyssey at IMDb
• 2001: A Space Odyssey at Rotten Tomatoes
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Internet Resource Archive
• Kubrick 2001: The Space Odyssey Explained
• The 2001: A Space Odyssey Collectibles Exhibit
• Roger Ebert's Essay on 2001
• Article about various video releases of the film
• The Kubrick Site including many works on 2001
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Houston Section, Tribute to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, April Issue 2008