Quicknation    2001: A Space Odyssey

Images of: 2001: A Space OdysseyG Y AOL AV MSN Desc of: 2001: A Space Odyssey IMDb  Y! DVD: DVD

2001: A Space Odyssey is an influential 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick. The story is based in part on various short stories by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke, most notably "The Sentinel" (1951). Kubrick collaborated with Clarke, and together they first concurrently produced the novel version that was released alongside the film (which eventually grew into the so-called series of books), and then towards the end Kubrick simultaneously wrote the screenplay. For an elaboration of their collaborative work on this project, see , Arthur C. Clarke, Signet., 1972.

The film is notable for combining episodes contrasting high levels of scientific and technical realism with transcendental mysticism. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 1972, "Quite early in the game I went around saying, not very loudly, 'MGM doesn't know this yet, but they're paying for the first $10,000,000 religious movie.'" This film won the Academy Award for visual effects in 1968.

table was shot in Technicolor with a 65mm film negative format. The film process was Super Panavision 70. Although billed as a "Cinerama" production, the film did not employ the Cinerama three camera

The US premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC. The UK premiere was on May 10, 1968, at the Casino Cinerama Theater in London. The original roadshow release was in a 70mm projection format with a six-track magnetic soundtrack. The projection aspect ratio was 2.21:1. The film was also released in a 35mm format for general release beginning in the fall of 1968.

The original 70mm release was billed as a "Cinerama" production in theaters such as the Indian Hills Theater in Omaha, Nebraska, which were built for the Cinerama process with a deeply curved screen. In other non-Cinerama theaters the release was simply identified as a "70mm" production.

Due to the fact that this film conveys almost all its ideas visually and ambiguously, it can be interpreted in many ways. The following synopsis is merely one interpretation.

In early conversations, director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke jokingly called their project is composed of distinct episodes. Three of the four major sections are introduced with the use of title cards: the lack of a title card between the first and second sections listed below has been seen by some to imply that Dr. Floyd's trip to the Moon and the discovery of TMA-1 merely continue the action of Moon Watcher's discovery of the monolith in the Dawn of Man sequences, without introducing a new phase in the development of humanity. The four sections are:

Between 15 and 5 million years ago early ape men known as Australopithecus become endowed with their first intelligence after encountering a black monolith.

In the background to the story in the book, an ancient and unseen alien race uses a mechanism with the appearance of a large black monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life. The film shows one such monolith appearing briefly in ancient Africa, four million B.C., where it influences a group of hominids to learn how to use weapons, the first tools.

The film then leaps millions of years to the year 1999 (via a startling, widely famous, and much-parodied jump cut) from a murder-weapon thigh bone, tossed high in the air by an ape-man, to an orbital weapons platform circling the Earth. The film then shows humans travelling to an orbiting space station and then on to Clavius base on the Moon to investigate a magnetic anomaly in the Tycho crater, dubbed (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly #1). When excavations there uncover a second monolith and expose it to sunlight, it emits a powerful signal aimed at Jupiter. As Kubrick told interviewer Joseph Gelmis, "you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe—a kind of cosmic burglar alarm." The movie then focuses on a manned mission to Jupiter to investigate the signal's receiver, taking place eighteen months later in the year 2001.

The ship is manned by a crew of two astronauts, David Bowman and Frank Poole, and an on-board computer called HAL 9000, designed to function as an artificial intelligence, which sees through multiple distinctive fish-eye cameras located around the spacecraft and speaks with a warm, mannered human-like voice. The three scientists sent to investigate the signal's destination have been placed in suspended animation. The live crew—unlike Mission Control, HAL, and the sleeping scientists—are unaware of the discovery of the Tycho monolith or the nature of their mission.

On the outbound trip, after discussing apparent anomalies in the ship's mission with the ship's captain, David Bowman, HAL reports an unverifiable error in the ship's antenna control system. After the apparently malfunctioning unit is retrieved it is found to be without error suggesting that the fault lies with the onboard HAL 9000.

An earth-based HAL 9000 also disagreed with the onboard HAL 9000's conclusion meaning that one (or both) could be in error. Bowman and Poole discuss the possibility that HAL might be malfunctioning and should therefore have his higher mental functions disabled. Despite the fact that Poole and Bowman take special precautions to discuss HAL's fate in a sealed pod where HAL can not hear them, HAL is able to read their lips through the pod window and discovers their plans. Realizing the threat of disconnection from the crew members, coupled with the contradictions in his mission plans and directives, HAL decides to eliminate all the humans on board. Kubrick explained, "In the specific case of HAL, he had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility... Such a machine could eventually become as incomprehensible as a human being, and could, of course, have a nervous breakdown— as HAL did in the film."

To this end, HAL first kills Frank Poole by teleoperating a space-pod whilst Poole is on extra-vehicular activity to replace the communications unit. While Bowman attempts to recover Poole's , HAL kills the hibernating crew by shutting down their life support systems and then refuses to allow Bowman back into the ship.

These events gave rise to the catch phrases "Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL" and "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that", when Bowman requests that HAL open the ship.

Bowman manages to outwit HAL and regains entry to the ship, and proceeds to shut down HAL's mental faculties one by one. HAL's gradual shutdown triggers an incremental regression into his 'childhood': he plaintively informs Bowman that he can feel his mind 'going', and, eventually, he is reduced to singing the music hall song Daisy Bell, which he was taught by his instructor, Doctor Langley. (Dr. Chandra in the novelization of .)

HAL´s disconnection triggers a pre-recorded video informing Bowman of the truth about the mission. Months later, he proceeds to complete it in one of the most memorable film conclusions ever. In a special-effects-laden sequence he travels through a stargate and arrives in what appears to be a hotel room.

Kubrick explained, "When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death."

The creators are never seen directly: Bowman arrives in the hotel room, which has since become a science fiction cliché for situations where a vastly powerful being must construct a benign environment for a human. He undergoes a transcendence, ending the story as a "star child" with some of the godlike powers of the monolith creators. According to Kubrick, "He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny."

However, many interpret the imagery towards the end of the film as ambiguous and metaphoric, ignoring the literal account in Clarke's novelization.

"Many of the film's space scenes were given a new sense of depth and intrigue, due to the use of a classical score for the film's soundtrack." Many of the film's space scenes were given a new sense of depth and intrigue, due to the use of a classical score for the film's soundtrack., 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. In many respects, harks back to the central power that music had in the era of silent film.

The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial records. Major feature films were (and still are) typically accompanied by elaborate film scores andor songs written especially for them by professional composers. But although Kubrick started out by commissioning an original orchestral score, he later abandoned this, opting instead for pre-recorded tracks sourced from existing recordings, becoming one of the first major movie directors to do so, and beginning a trend that has now become commonplace.

In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick explained:

dl"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." ballet suite) and famously used Johann Strauss II's best known waltz, 'On The Beautiful Blue Danube', during the spectacular space-station rendezvous and lunar landing sequences. (or "Thus spake Zarathustra" in English), which has become inextricably associated with the film and its imagery and themes. The film's soundtrack also did much to introduce the modern classical composer György Ligeti to a wider public, using extracts from his .

In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the stirring score for Kubrick did much of the filming and editing, using as his guides the classical recordings which eventually became the music track. In March of 1966 MGM became concerned about 2001's progress and Kubrick put together a showreel of footage to the adhoc 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. Unfortunately Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used, and to his great dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie at the première. North's soundtrack has since been recorded commercially and was released shortly before his death. Similarly, Ligeti was unaware that his music was in the film until alerted by friends. He was at first unhappy about some of the music used, and threatened legal action over Kubrick's use of an electronically "treated" recording of in the "interstellar hotel" scene near the end of the film.

Hal's haunting version of the popular song "Daisy Daisy" (Daisy Bell) was inspired by computer synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard at Bell Laboratories.

is another notable feature, although the relative lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues has baffled many viewers. One of the film's most striking features is that there is no dialogue whatsoever for the first twenty minutes or the entire last segment (23 minutes) of the film—the entire narrative of these sections is carried by images, actions, sound effects, and two title cards.

Only when the film moves into the postulated "present" of 2001 do we 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 apparently banal nature—an announcement about the lost cashmere sweater, the awkwardly polite chit-chat between Floyd and the Russian scientists, or his comments about the sandwiches en route to the monolith site. The exchanges between Poole and Bowman on board the "Discovery" are similarly flat, unemotional and generally lack any major narrative content. Kubrick clearly intended that the subtext of these exchanges—what is not said, that is—should be the real, meaningful content. It may be noted that, at one point during the film, HAL lip-reads a conversation between Poole and Bowman (they have secured themselves in one of the ship's pods for this conversation, wishing HAL not to hear them, his apparent failure being the object of their discussion). This further indicates the centrality of silence and 'subtextual speaking' to the film.

is perhaps best exemplified by the scene in which the HAL-9000 computer murders the three hibernating astronauts while Bowman is outside the ship trying to rescue Poole. The inhuman nature of the murders is conveyed with chilling simplicity, in a scene that contains only three elements.

When HAL disconnects the life support systems, we see a flashing warning sign, COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, shown full-screen and accompanied only by the sound of a shrill alarm beep; this is intercut with static shots of the hibernating astronauts, encased in their sarcophagus-like pods, and close-up full-screen shots of the life-signs monitor of each astronaut. As the astronauts begin to die, the warning changes to LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL and we see the vital signs on the monitors beginning to level out. Finally, when the three sleeping astronauts are dead, there is only silence and the ominously banal flashing sign, LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED. Other than the alarm sound and the constant background hiss of the ship's environmental system, the entire scene is enacted with no dialogue, no music, and no physical movement of any kind.

The Monolith in the movie represents monumental transitions of time in the history of human evolution or the journey of many from ape-like beings to beyond infinity - and hence an odyssey. The monolith resembles the stone slabs at Stonehenge which is regarded as an ancient system used to monitor time. Each time the monolith is shown, man transcends time on to a different level of cognition.

The first appearance of the monolith occurs at the threshold of the invention of tool and the beginning of language to form groups in order to defend a particular group against another. The first killing in the movie occurs here, that of an ape-like being killed in inter group conflict.

The second appearance of the monolith is after 4 million years but this time on the moon. (Prophetically a year after the release of the movie, man landed on moon). Thus the period of transition between ape-like man and a time traveller is embedded between the appearance of the monolith. The second killing (of Poole) occurs here. After David Bowman disconnects HAL, the killing ceases. Thus all the killing in the movie occurs between the first invention of language and the destruction of the greatest creation of man (i.e.: HAL the artificial intelligence computer that can communicate in natural language).

The first speech in the movie appears after almost 25 minutes of the movie, similarly the last speech in the movie occurs before the last 25 minutes of the movie. Thus the monolith marks transition and transcendence of language and time in the odyssey of man.

The third time the monolith is shown is between Jupiter and beyond. David Bowman transcends through this time warp through the monolith (representing it as time itself) to breakdown traditional concept of life and meaning.

The fourth time all that was seen and lived turns into a germ of life or a fetus. It further transcends the monolith to emerge as an embryo that looks back at earth from which it arose and evolved. Thus returning to the basic creation on a highly evolved level.

HAL's killing of almost all of the astronauts in the film, while well known in popular culture even among people who have not seen , is quite a shocking plot twist. We are told that HAL is infallible early in the film, and HAL establishes itself as competent and an entity that in its own words "enjoy[s] working with humans" and "has a stimulating relationship" with the two conscious astronauts. There are early signs, however, that all is not well with HAL: when playing chess with one of the astronauts, he claims that the game is over and then describes the remaining moves. His analysis is not quite correct: his opponent would not have to make one of the moves he describes, and he outlines one of the moves from the wrong perspective. Since Kubrick was a chess expert, and the game an actual match (an obscure one played years before by two relatively unknown players), this has to be a deliberate error and a clue for those who can spot it that all is not well with HAL. That being so, it is slightly at odds with Kubrick's own explanation for HAL's breakdown (see next para), because HAL had not then wrongly diagnosed the AE35 unit.

Kubrick suggested that HAL suffered a nervous breakdown due to his faulty diagnosis of the AE35 unit {needs source}. Alternatively, Clarke has suggested in interviews, in his original novel, and in a rough draft of the shooting that HAL's orders to lie to the astronauts (more specifically, concealing the true nature of the mission) drove him 'insane'. The novel does include the phrase "He [HAL] had been living a lie"—a difficult situation for an entity programmed to be as reliable as possible. (Immediately before misdiagnosing the AE35 unit, HAL seems to hint to the intractable Bowman that there is more to the mission than a simple human expedition to Jupiter-space. Perhaps before then, at the time of the chess error, he was becoming nervous about the mission given that the alien artifact might have been beyond even his levels of comprehension, which fact alone would threaten his self-stated infallibility.)

A more developed explanation, similar to the one attributed to Clarke above, hinted at in the follow-up film , is that while HAL was under orders to deny the true mission with the crew, he was programmed at a deep level to be completely accurate and infallible. This conflict between two key directives led to him taking any measures to prevent Bowman and Poole finding out about this deception. Once Poole had been killed, others were eliminated to remove any witnesses to his failure to complete the mission.

One interesting aspect of HAL's plight is that he, as the supposedly perfect computer, actually behaves in the most human fashion of all of the characters. He has reached human intelligence levels, and seems to have developed human traits of paranoia, jealousy and other emotions. By contrast, the human characters act like machines, cooly performing their tasks in a mechanical fashion, whether they be mundane tasks of operating their craft or even under extreme duress as Dave must be following HAL's murder of Frank. For instance, Frank Poole watches a birthday transmission from his parents with what appears to be complete apathy.

"Spaceship USSS Discovery launching an EVA pod. Note the deliberately non-aerodynamic design of both craft."

In general, the film is extremely realistic: it is one of the few science-fiction films to accurately portray space (an approximate vacuum) as having no sound and to have spaceships producing no sound while travelling through space.

Much has also been made of the reality of . The film itself draws attention to this, with impressive tracking shots inside the rotating "wheel" which provides artificial gravity, contrasting it with the weightlessness outside the wheel such as during the repair or the HAL disconnection scenes. The scenes in the pod bay where the astronauts are walking may be explained by a 'velcro'-like coating of the floor, which explains the oddly slow pace of the walk.

The film does, however, have a number of minor failures of scientific accuracy such as:

of lunar mountains was overestimated, as the film was made before the lunar expeditions of the Apollo program, and because meteoric erosion was underestimated., originally intended to be included, were eventually removed from the design because Kubrick felt they looked too much like wings.In the EVA shots of "Discovery One," the background stars are seen to be slowly moving in relation to the ship. This is inaccurate -- the stars are too far away and the ship's speed too slow in relation to them for them to appear to move. Kubrick was aware of the inaccuracy of these shots but ignored the issue for artistic license, because if presented accurately the shots lacked visual movement, looking like still images. However, another interpretation is that the entire Discovery stack rotates due to counter-torque from the motors driving the centrifuge (the way a helicopter would if its tail rotor failed), and the "camera" is rotating synchronously with Discovery against the fixed stars.The dust blown up by the exhaust of the lunar shuttle is seen to billow up from the landing pad, rather than radiate out in straight lines, as would happen in the near-vacuum of the lunar surface.A further inaccuracy seemingly ignored by many commentators is the varying phases of the Earth as seen from the Moon during the landing manoeuvres of the Aries 1B moonship (an error of continuity as well as science). However, there are various places in the film where planets "magically" align, for artistic purposes, in defiance of reality.In the sequence in which David Bowman blows the hatch on his space pod to regain entry to Discovery's airlock, there is a shot with Dave rebounding in the airlock chamber, while his space pod is still sitting just outside the airlock door. Since the pod is not fixed to , the blowing of the hatch would have caused the pod to move away on the thrust of its escaping atmosphere—though rather slowly, given a rough estimation of the mass and speed of ejected air, and mass of the pod. This being said, it is not impossible that the ejection procedure involves automatic compensation by the thruster of the pod, as in stationkeeping.There is a somewhat famous, though small, technical error when Heywood Floyd is flying to the moon. Supposedly in a weightless state, he sips through a straw, and when he lets go of it, the fluid slides back into the container. This is not necessarily an error, however. Although there would be no gravitational force to pull the fluid in space, Floyd might have created a slight vacuum in the container when his lips were on the straw. This could have been sufficient to pull the liquid back into the container. Another explaination for this might be that the tips of the straws seem to be outfitted with some types of small valves which, ideally, would prevent the liquid from escaping once the sipping was over. are arranged in a rotating wheel to simulate gravity, the wheel's small radius would require a fairly rapid RPM (five to ten RPM depending on the actual radius) to produce earth-like gravity. It is suggested that the human becomes dizzy, nauseated and disoriented when exposed to high Coriolis forces, and few if any humans could become accustomed to high levels of rotation. In addition, the amount of gravity exerted on the human would vary between the feet, waist and head. A better design to reduce the gradient of centripetal force would have been to rotate the entire ship, and have the crew section and the drive section swinging from the central AE-35

Some of the film's predictions of the then future turned out to be inaccurate:

Space travel is incorrectly portrayed as being commonplace by 2001. In the film, colonies have been established on the moon, manned missions to Jupiter are feasible, and technology is available to place humans in "suspended animation"HAL's speech, understanding and self-determining abilities exceed the actual year 2001 state of the art by orders of magnitude.

The ship's computer interfaces, with numerous small screens displaying FORTRAN code and merely schematic drawings, are often seen as a failure to predict multiple "windows" and graphical user interfaces. However, as embedded systems applications often have spartan interfaces, this claim is disputed.

received mostly positive reviews, and quickly gained a cult following (its psychedelic visual imagery was quickly embraced by the counterculture). Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale" [1] Yet the movie also had its detractors. Critic Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie"[2], 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"[3].

earned one Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. It was nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Kubrick), and Original Screenplay (Kubrick, Clarke). The film was not nominated, however, for Costume Design, despite the fact that did receive a nomination for its ape suits, which are generally considered less convincing than those in ("Open the pod bay doors, HAL."), and been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Clarke went on to write three sequel novels. Though the first of his sequel novels was adapted into a film, to date there has yet to be any serious discussion of filmmakers adapting either of the other two for the screen.

and was released in 1984. However, Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which was presented literally rather than "mystically", and generally did not have the impact of the original. It has been reported, however, that Clarke saw the sequel film as a fitting adaptation of his sequel novel.

Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published both a Jack Kirby-written and drawn adaptation of the film and a Kirby-created 10-issue monthly series "expanding" on the ideas of the film and novel. For more information, 2001: A Space Odyssey (comics).

Many an influential and popular work of art are subject to imitation and parody, and have spoofed many different parts of the movie, especially [1F13] "Deep Space Homer", which contains many references to 2001, not the least of which the famous potato chip-eating scene. The stargate sequence was parodied in a season 2 episode when Homer tests a massage chair. Another example is the episode where Homer was a trucker and he was driving a truck with a built-in device that normally would get him out of trouble, but he was approaching the Convoy and it said, "I'm afraid I can't let you do this, Red!" Instead of trying to stop Homer however, the box simply jettisoned itself out the truck's sunroof. were printed within the colon of the title). The actual film ran 139 minutes, after the 156 minute premiere version was recut. Appearing among the ape-men in the first scene is Fred Flintstone, in a furry costume. In a nod to the numerous corporate logos appearing in the movie, nearly every panel includes a brand name, and instead of going through a complicated disconnection procedure, Dave simply pulls out HAL's power plug. The monolith is revealed to be a book, titled in which an ape man after seeing the monolith throws a bone into the air which then collides with an orbiting spacecraft that crashes to the ground killing the ape man., except that the ape-men are more self-absorbed. The movie Simon, starring Alan Arkin also mimicked the "ape using a bone as a weapon" sequence....one of the apes is playing solitaire with animal-skin "playing cards"!). The monolith is revealed to be a 1960s-vintage console TV set, "Move On Up" by Curtis Mayfield replaces the Ligeti- chorale on the soundtrack, one of the apes invents music by banging a bone on the ground, and in all the excitement one of the dancing apes accidentally rubs two sticks together and discovers fire! were prominently used to bring Elvis Presley on stage in his concert tours towards the end of his career. this was later copied by the wrestler Ric Flair. This music has also been used in countless TV commercials, concerts, and other media events. was playing in theatres) shows Hagar and Lucky Eddie encountering a huge black monolith, wondering if it might be there to show them new knowledge and higher planes of existence—then when it falls on them a moment later, wondering if it might be a trap. features a segment in which two of the main characters reenact the scene in which the monolith is discovered by the ape men, with the monolith replaced by a computer. During this sequence, Richard Strauss' episode "Frankendoodle", a giant pencil appears in a similar way as the monolith, and SpongeBob and Patrick react similarly to the early humans in the movie. and features music used in the movie (Also Sprach Zarathustra), as well as a recreation of the "apes discovering the monolith sequence" from the beginning of the movie. In spoof, the monolith is replaced by a Wonka Bar teleported though the television. The eerie, distinctive wailing music from the film is audible, and later on a recreation of the beginning of the "Moon-Watcher discovers tools" sequence is seen.A short, light-hearted stop-motion animation spoof of the behavior of some of the film's characters (as well as some slapstick) has been created using lego blocks and figures, called One: A Space Odyssey.The cartoon series "Recess" did an episode spoofing, where a robot named SAL 3000 takes over the school (while being deactivated it sings a song similar to "daisy") Eris sticks her head into a bowl of punch and when she comes out she screams "Open the pod gates Hal". starts in an interstellar garbage scow containing many spacecraft from sci-fi movies, and TV shows. For example there is the Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space, the ACME rocket from The Road Runner Show and many others including a pod from 2001. If you examine the pod there is some graffiti that reads "For a good time, don't call HAL".on more than one occasion. One skit featured a talk show interview with the HAL 9000 computer. Another skit depicted a bad B-movie sequel to, starring Ernest Borgnine and Art Garfunkel (both played by SCTV cast members). This second spoof was aired before the release of the actual sequel,, Denis, the friend of Alex, made a wedding movie in which there is a scene where a flying flowers bouquet changes to a cake. features a scene in which a cellphone is shown in a similar way as the monolith is, also featuring "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (An obvious play on the true title), there is a scene with a howling ape-man and a monolith in which the narrator says "And then God came, and He spoke," as a hand of God appears on the top of the screen. God says "Shut up, you stupid monkey." and pushes the monolith over, crushing the ape-man., a video by the British rock group Genesis, a bone is thrown up in the air, the camera following the movement as in the opening scene of episode "Landmine", when Hotshot is on the racetrack on Earth and is about to give away his true identity as a Cybertronian, Optimus Prime says "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it!", when on a spaceship, Eek says, "Open the pod bay doors, HAL!" and then there is a HAL that says "I'm sorry Dave, but I'm afraid I can't do that!" Eek replies with, "Dave? Who's Dave? I'm Eek!" and then HAL says, "Oh, sorry." have compared the scene in the season one episode "Whatever the Case May Be" where Sawyer, in an attempt to open the mysterious suitcase throws said suitcase from a tree to open it via impact velocity to the opening scenes of quote, "Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL" [5] as his voice password to gain access to his computer., by 3D Realms, there is a level where the hero of the game fights aliens in the moon. There is a cave where he runs to find a black monolith. And he can enter the monolith to be teleported to another part of the level. featured a talking computer named 'Al' that was revealed to be an animated Al Gore hiding in the computer. After being revealed, he said "I have the utmost confidence in this administration," parodying a line of HAL 9000's about his "mission." (2002) a poster for the film with the Starchild and the tag line, "The Ultimate Trip" appears. A miniature of the space pod also appears in the background during this scene. characters are Hal and David. This is found out near the end of the game (Otacon ending) and both characters apparently know of 2001: A Space Oddyssey, and enjoy a good laugh. Solid Snake (David) comments that that's a good joke and that maybe they should go to Jupiter sometime. monolith is present at and is even the catalyst for many events that change mankind profoundly. The first game in the has a sequence where Sheila, the artificial intelligence in an M808B Main Battle Tank, sings "Daisy Bell" and asks, "Will I dream, Dave?" are played when Capt. John Yossarian, (bombardier), sees an amazingly attractive italian women walk past. The film was made in 1970 two years after 2001.Stanley Kubrick and his team tried several variants of the alien artifacts. One of the early favored designs was a tetrahedron, but Kubrick later rejected this because people would believe there was a connection with the pyramids. A transparent version of the familiar rectangular monolith was also constructed out of perspex, but it proved too difficult to light and shoot effectively and Kubrick then had the prop remade in its final form, which was cast in black lucite. at the 1964 New York World's Fair, Kubrick hired one of its special effects technicians, Douglas Trumbull, to work on It has been claimed that the psychedelic "stargate sequence" that concludes the film, entitled "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite", matches perfectly with the Pink Floyd song, "Echoes", just as Pink Floyd's The first portion of the psychedelic "stargate sequence" was made using Slit-Scan photography, a camera technique in which bands of color from a thin slit are projected onto photographic film. [7] The images used for this sequence can be viewed in their original form using Slit-Scan unraveling techniques. [8] Some of the revealed images appear to be photographs from nature (flowers, coral, etc.) and geometric light shapes.It has been frequently noted that "HAL" is "IBM", shifted one letter back (to indicate that he does Big Blue one better). Clarke insists that this is a coincidence; HAL is an amalgam of "heuristic" and "algorithmic," the two main processes of learning. However, the light blue color around the word resembles IBM's own blue color. See HAL 9000.ion of the moon Iapetus curiously closely describes another Saturnian moon, Mimas; this was a coincidence, as close-up images of Saturn's moons did not become available until 1980. According to Clarke, in the foreword to the 30th anniversary edition of , this destination was removed from the movie version because Kubrick felt the special effects created to depict Saturn and its rings were not realistic enough. Special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull eventually re-used much of his early designs for Saturn in his 1972 film , and Arthur C. Clarke is believed to have made a brief non-speaking cameo appearance in one scene of the latter film. In addition, the TV series On the morning of January 1, 2001, visitors of Seattle, Washington's Magnuson Park discovered a metallic monolith atop Kite Hill. The oblong object measured approximately three feet wide by nine feet tall and appeared to be hollow. It did not stand for long. Sometime during the wee hours of January 3, the monolith disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived. At the same time, artist and Blue Moon Tavern regular Caleb Schaber revealed that he and a band of anonymous collaborators calling themselves "Some People" had fabricated the device and several smaller versions placed around Seattle.Almost all of the American actors featured were expatriates who happened to be living in London, making it cheaper to hire them.Comedian Ronnie Corbett was employed for the make up tests for the Ape Men; it is reported that the results were too disturbing, and a much revised approach is seen in the film. Corbett did not act in the film.The "Dawn of Man" scenes (except for "Moonwatcher" demolishing the tapir skeleton with a bone) were all filmed in the studio using a system of front projection for the backgrounds as this would not show up on the Ape costumes. The technique is given away during the scene with the leopard -- when it turns its head towards the camera its retinas reflect the light from the projector and appear to glow. This may have been a fortuitous glitch when later scenes depict another predator, HAL, himself surveying his prey with a glowing eye.With the exception of two baby chimpanzees, all of the apes in the beginning of the film were played by mimes, dancers and actors in costumes.Many different techniques were tried to achieve the effect of the pen floating in zero gravity on the flight to the space station. In the end a sheet of clear perspex was placed in front of the camera to which the pen was glued. The actress playing the crew attendant simply pulled the pen off the plastic. Small scratches in the plastic occasionally can be seen on some high definition sets playing a DVD copy. A similar technique was used in filming The line of dialogue "See you next Wednesday", spoken by Frank Poole's parents in the transmitted birthday greeting, has become a famous in-joke in the films of John Landis. was built by aircraft manufacturer Vickers-Armstrong inside a 12-meter by two-meter drum designed to rotate at five km per hour. A camera could operate through a slot in the centre of the set while Kubrick directed the action from outside, using a closed-circuit TV system. It cost $750,000, nearly 10% of the whole budget, but due to cuts made by Kubrick is only used to its full effect in a small number of scenes.The English actor Nigel Davenport was hired to read the dialogue for HAL but Kubrick dismissed him as the accent was too distracting. Martin Balsam was also tried for the voice of HAL but Kubrick found his voice too emotional. Sometime during post-production, Canadian actor Douglas Rain was hired to voice HAL. It is believed that Keir Dullea (David Bowman) and Rain have never actually met in person.ed ending has the Star Child set off the orbiting nuclear devices seen (though not explained) in the "Blue Danube" sequence. Kubrick concluded this was too similar to the ending of and so opted for the more ambiguous and optimistic ending scene. The author of a "Making of 2001" book explained this, and added the quip, "We WON'T Meet Again!"At Kubrick's request, first assistant director Derek Cracknell had his baby daughter Sarah screen-tested to be the Star Child. The footage ultimately went unused, and a model of the baby appears in the finished film. Sarah Cracknell, however, would go on to a different sort of stardom as singer with the British indie band Saint Etienne. When asked in interviews why her footage was not used, Sarah has joked that she looked "too cute".. Kubrick came up with the present title 8 months into productions after going over many other suggested titles like used in the film was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and originally released on Decca. It is uncredited in because Decca didn't want to be associated with a "sci-fi" movie (although it did license the piece for the film). Deutsche Grammophon, who supplied the rest of the music in the film, was happy to be credited and ended up with the best-selling soundtrack album (throughout Europe; in the US the album was released on MGM Records). However, on that album DG was forced to substitute Karajan's In the French version of the film, HAL is referred to as CARL, for "Cerveau Analytique de Recherche et de Liaison" ("Analytic Research and Communication Brain"), and "Daisy Bell", the song HAL sings, is replaced by "Au Clair de la Lune".In the Italian version of the film, "Daisy Bell", the song HAL sings, is replaced by "Giro giro tondo".George Lucas, known for creating homages to earlier films in his own films, stated in his DVD commentary to his most recent film Clavius Base. It is when the establishing shot of Polis Massa is seen. Polis Massa was specifically designed to be an asteroid base that looked very similar to the Clavius Base seen in as a direct copy of Kubrick's striking visual of a gigantic spaceship moving overhead. Lucas did the same in The composition of the Clavius landscape scene is itself an almost exact copy of a smiliar moonbase scene from an earlier Soviet sci-fi film directed by Pavel Kluzantsev, and there is evidence to suggest that Kubrick lifted several other plot, scenic and design elements from Kluzantsev's work, notably from was released on DVD on June 12, 2001. Presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the film was digitally remastered from the original 70mm print, and the audio was remixed in 5.1 surround sound.