Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Big Rich C — 13 Apr 2016

I found Stanley Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey" interesting. The beginning was very slow and the ending didn't answer much at all. The entire movie seemed to be comprised of four separate movies: the monkey part, the moon part, the HAL part and the trippy space dream part. The monkey part didn't fit well or hold much significance to the overall story. I found it difficult to understand and very little happened in a very long period, I saw it as a waste of time. The only interesting part was the slab. The moon part was completely unnecessary and the only part that held significance was the slab signaling to Jupiter. The HAL part was excellent. The whole Rogue AI part was great, and, if expanded would have made a great solo movie. HAL was an interesting character and the plot line was great. Then there was the Trippy Space Dream. This entire section was drawn out and way too long. The importance was the ending which held some intense beliefs and detail Stanley Kubrick decided to include.

As explained in paragraph 1, this movie can easily be divided into four parts; the monkey part, the moon trip part, the HAL part and the trippy space dream part. The monkey part consists of two monkey groups fighting over a water hole. One group claims it and the others are forced out. The monkeys that are forced out wallow a lot but are soon confronted with a black slab. The monkey's are confused by its presence and the next thing we know the monkeys have developed a primitive weapon known as the "Smacky Bone". They use the "Smacky Bones" to smack the other monkeys' group leader to death. The monkeys now reign over the water hole. In the moon part, a doctor goes to the moon where people are hiding the existence of a mysterious black slab. The guy goes to the black slab with other scientist-y people and the slab makes a very loud noise. In the HAL part, there is a voyage to Jupiter and the ship on the journey is composed of 5 people (2 awake, 3 in cryosleep) and HAL, the AI robot controlling most of the ship. Upon a malfunction in HAL's programming the 2 awake crew members plan to shut HAL down if his situation worsens. HAL gets wind of the plan and kills off the three members in cryosleep along with one of the members who are awake. Only Dave survives. Dave succeeds in shutting down Dave and learning that in the moon part of the movie. The slab sent a signal to Jupiter, hence Dave's mission. In the trippy space dream part Dave arrives at Jupiter and has a 30 minute drug trip. The trip finishes with him in a futuristic house. Looking outside his pod, Dave sees an older Dave. We begin to follow older Dave and the pod has disappeared. Older Dave finds and older Dave who is eating. The point of view switches to him. Older Dave is gone. Even Older Dave is eating and then notices dying Dave the bed next to him. The point of view now follows dying Dave who doesn't see Even Older Dave, but instead sees the Black Slab. We go to the point of view of the black slab which doesn't see dying Dave, but sees Space Baby Dave. And Space Baby Dave looks at Earth. ROLL CREDITS.

The actors do a pretty good job of portraying their roles; people placed in odd circumstances and being confused by them. I feel like Dave was the main character and did a reasonable job portraying a guy being screwed over by a rogue AI and black slab. I would summarize to say the acting was sufficient, but nothing special.

The music was amazing and there can be no doubt as to why it is so famous. The music was so influential in my feelings that a lack of music gave me an odd feeling. An eerie, silent, lonely feeling. However, other than the music, there were many special effects, or overall effects I found unnecessary or straight up stupidly placed in the film. The extremely loud beep was extremely annoying and completely unnecessary. I understand that it was meant to put you on edge, however, it was used too many times, drawn out too long and altogether too loud. Another effect that was unnecessary was Kubrick's odd fascination with Dave's drug trip. Kubrick went way too far and the 30 minute drug trip was 29 minutes too long. His use of negative coloring or just weird coloring, gave me a feeling of "time-filler". Which, by the way, is not necessary in a 2.5 hour movie. One final flaw in Kubrick's Space Odyssey was his limited knowledge of gravity. I don't mean to sound ignorant, since this movie was created, however, Zero gravity is rather straightforward. In every space scene Kubrick screwed up some aspect of space physics. This became less annoying as the movie went on, however, it was still aggravating.

I personally found Kubrick to use "The Sentinel" as a foundation, I see it as getting his thoughts moving on the matter and then he went and made a movie about his ideas, totally ditching "The Sentinel's" entire story. All in all, I prefered the book to the movie as the book provided a very thought provoking idea and left us with that. Kubrick seemingly decided to one up the story and come up with about 5 ideas and not provide even a hint of an answer, not giving me a thought-provoking experience, but more of a annoyed feeling. A feeling like: "Why did you introduce so many points and then move onto something totally irrelevant to said point.".

I think this film is entertaining, if you've got 2.5 hours to spare, I would wholeheartedly suggest you watch it. I found it an enlightening experience that I enjoyed to a good degree. My final thoughts on it would definitely be as follows. If Stanley Kubrick came and pitched this idea to me, I would respond with "Great! I love it! Give me some time to trim out the fat and we can shoot." In conclusion, given Kubrick's ideas, I could produce a much better movie. No offence, Stanley.