Comments on: 2001: Kubrick’s Space Edifice

By: milo

milo — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:51:34 +0000

2061 was pretty disappointing, though I remember I liked the illustration on the book cover, which showed a monolith with a HAL-eye attached to it. But Arthur C Clarke had, by this point, jumped the shark (despite his wheelchair).
I think the role of conflict in driving evolution in 2001 is an interesting question, whether the monolith provokes it or whether it’s innate.
But it’s clearly set in motion by the first monolith, which teaches the naughty monkeys how to use tools. From that point, the race is on.
As I see it, the monolith on the moon is the ‘prize’ which the Americans win, not by killing anyone, but via Cold War chicanery (ie, lying to Leonard Rossiter). Their reward is the location of the third monolith.
The Jupiter monolith is the final prize which Dave Bowman claims after ‘killing’ HAL.
The interesting question is, what would have happened if things had gone the other way? What if another species had been curious enough to touch the first monolith? What if the Russians had discovered the second monolith? And what if HAL, not Dave Bowman, had survived to reach the third?

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:28:32 +0000

I think I will have to disagree with your interpretation, Milo.

The monolith is driving evolution, but thanks to good ol’ human nature, we have a tendency to mess things up (or it may be the monolith’s intention in the first place). The monolith teaches the apes to use tools and then the apes realise the tool can be a weapon and fight over the power of the monolith. You may want to enter a discussion as to the necessity of conflict in driving progress at this point.

The symmetry at the end of the film makes more sense if you think of HAL as the tool, the 21st century bone. The end result of the monolith’s education all those millennia ago, humankind has now developed tools to reach the stars and the next stage of evolution (as symbolised by the Starchild). What causes HAL to go wrong is the monolith’s influence, propagating conflict and setting in motion the events that give Dave the impetus to enter the monolith. The joy of this theory is that the monolith only needs to give a slight nudge here and there. Teach the apes to use bones as a tool and they will work out how to brain people with it. Convince HAL that an antenna is malfunctioning and paranoia will do the rest.

Of course, this may all be wrong.

P.S. While I do have the occasional soft spot for 2010, I am very, very glad that no one has decided to film A C Clarke’s 2061 where they kill the monolith with a computer virus. Now that is sacrilege.

By: Dan Hughes

Dan Hughes — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:54:07 +0000

Having had the privilege of seeing ‘2001- A Space Odyssey’ at the cinema on its original release, I cleary recall it as an exciting and profound sci-fi experience. I think it has survived well over the intervening years on video and dvd format, which speaks for its quality. It obviously stands comparison against an overwhelming tide of egregious sc-fi rubbish that has been produced ever since. For me, in my lifetime, the watershed sci-fi movies were and still are, in chronological order: - Destination Moon; The Thing from Outer Space; Forbidden Planet; 2001; Alien; BladeRunner. I also have in my dvd library - Dark Star; Outland; Dune; Solaris; Metropolis; Silent Running; La Jetee; 2046; War of the Worlds (1952) - in no particular order of preference. There are some others, such as ‘Mission to Mars’ and ‘Event Horizon’ which contain good sequences but are not in the end, in my opinion, worthy of the genre. There is also a shedload of sci-fi ‘B-movies’ from the 1950’s which have been known to occupy some of my viewing time, but I’ll leave that for another film buff to deal with…..