Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Anthony M — 13 Apr 2016

The movie 2001, A Space Odyssey is a sci-fi dramatic movie about a space adventure, as some would say; space mission. The title refers to the movie because of knowing "odyssey" means a voyage or adventure which happens to take place in this film. The main director of the movie is Stanley Kubrick and the key crew that acted out parts of the movie was Keir Dullea as Dr. Dave Bowman, Gary Lockwood who played as Dr. Frank Poole and William Sylvester who starred as Dr. Heywood R. Floyd. These key actors made the movie what it was and acted out the parts extremely well. Their facial expressions and emotions really give the viewer a dramatic take on things, for example when they're voices got louder or softer in specific parts of the movie when action is happening or something is building up.

The plot begins with the scene of an African desert many years ago with apes that were driven from their original location. They sleep and are startled by a large black slab that appears before them. One of the apes picks up the bones of a carcass and destroys it and suddenly learns how to kill and rebels against the leader and their rivals and reclaims their water hole. Millions of years later Dr. Heywood R. Floyd is orbiting earth for a trip he has to accomplish. After a call with his daughter, Floyd's co-workers talk to him about something that could happen at Clavius and warns him of continuing on.

The actors in the movie portrayed their specific character roles very well. They each had their own personalities when playing their roles and had different types of dialogue and emotions which made it easier to tell the characters in the movie apart. The characters in the movie did a very good job of satisfying average viewers expectations to the movie. Again, they did a super good job at playing their parts and roles and I wouldn't change a thing from start to finish.

Many film effects were used in key scenes that included a dramatic emotion to the scene and had the viewers more interested in what was about to happen or happening at the time when building emphasis. Extreme close ups were used many times on different facial expressions and especially on HAL. This type of film technique put a terrifying feel on how the computer was responding to Dave Bowman when he was entering the ship.

This type of film technique led to a terrifying and scary effect on the film. This would make the viewer feel like something bad was going to happen because of the quick transitions between Dave and HAL and slow paced awkward tone of their voices as Dave was getting closer to the ship and entering to shut down HAL.

The film represents the novel closely, I don't believe it was dead on to what was expecting. I think the film was slightly better than the original novel. The novel had a lot of detail involved and seemed too slow paced. Overall, the movie was very enjoyable and worth the time to view.