Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Delta_Assault — 27 Sep 2011

I recently rewatched 2001 to reassess it. Give it another fair shake. It's still just... not good. The pace is still excruciatingly slow, and that 15-20 minute MP3 visualizer sequence still looks dumb.

You can tell that by the end, they aren't even trying anymore, and just started showing footage of the Grand Canyon with loopy colors. The monkey sequence at the beginning's probably the best part of the film, it's not quite as bad.

It's not quite as slow and dull. The makeup work they did on those apesuits was great, you can stand back a bit from the television and if you didn't know it was a film, you might actually think it was documentary footage.

I've read all four 2001 novels by Arthur C. Clarke. The 2001 novel's great. The story's very well told in that book. But Kubrick's storytelling just kills this story. Just kills it. It's an epic journey, a literal Space Odyssey.

I just don't think Kubrick's storytelling conveys that in a satisfying manner. And again, nobody needs to sit in a theater and stare at a visualizer sequence for 15 minutes. That's just torture. It was just aimless, tedious and boring.

Whereas I think a human being traveling through a stargate and observing the wonders of the universe, stars being birthed, supernovas exploding, interstellar exchange systems, etc, would be awed and amazed.

I was not awed and amazed by what they showed me. It did not look like the wonders of the universe while traveling at a high speed. It looked like colorful garbage. Followed by some footage of the Grand Canyon and an ocean with color substitution.

That's not the majesty of the universe. Wearing the audience down with tedious rubbish is not the same as wearing Bowman down with amazing galactic sights. The latter is what's supposed to be going on in the story.

Some might argue that the rubbish is supposed to be rubbish because what Bowman is going through can't actually be processed, his mind won't accept it, and so it has to be shown as a jumble of rubbish.

Well, that's just not good film-making. You can't just throw up your arms and declare it unfilmable, and show us a lot of **** onscreen. Film is a visual medium, we need to see stuff. That stuff should generally be interesting to watch.

Showing us really awful visuals and declaring it to be the point and that it's supposed to be really awful visuals, well... that might be the intent, but it doesn't change the fact that the viewer has just seen really awful visuals.

That's not fair to the audience. If your whole concept is to have something that's unimaginable and incomprehensible and unknowable, just stop right there. Don't make the **** film, at all. There's nothing to be done with that, just don't go on the endeavor.