2001: A Space Odyssey

I think you're right.

You just say that because you did not want to say what you really think.

Agreed. But with Arthur C. Clarke behind it, it's not too surprising that it came out well.

Sir Arthur Clarke is a much finer author than George Lucas. So despite George's ease of turning his story into a screen play Stanley Kubrick had much better material to work with.

To give George the credit he does deserve, there is one stellar thing he did better with Star Wars than any other movie before and arguably since, marketing. Particularly the marketing of spin-off products. This and not the quality of the literary work or movie production is what makes Star Wars such an impressive entertainment industry. Don't get me wrong, I like the Star Wars franchise and most of what George Lucas has done in the industry.

yes, george was smart enough to secure the merchandising rights.

I always felt that 2001 was more of a intellectual script where you had to think more, while Star Wars was more of a graphics presentation.

Definitely. So, what did you think of the ending of 2001? What did it mean to you?

The birth of something we do not understand is about to happen.

I don't know, but he would think of something.

You read the accompanying book by Arthur Clarke

There are three more. 2010, 2065, and 3001.

Indeed. In fact it's one of the very few books I've read more than once (about 8 times, IIRC). Although it was published after the film was released, I actually read the book before my first viewing (I've also seen the film about 8 times). IMHO, the book and film are extremely complementary (unlike many book/film pairs).

At the time I felt it ended too abrupt. too many unanswered questions, or questions that should have been address. At the time, I felt they should have went in more details.

I was looking for entertainment, not to have it end for you to form a theory or perception.

I did enjoy it, and it got me thinking not so much of where we started, but the pth of where we are losing control to technology.

I felt much the same, but just assumed that meant a sequel was coming.

yep, I just didn't say 'Sequel'

They did have '2010' of which I was disappointed in.

At 13 seeing the movie when it was released I sat entranced watching it.

I will not say that one is a better artist then the other that's not being objective. Their different. Different time, different content, a different fantasy.

The film a collaboration of both Clark and Kubrick. Shows much of what both put into it.

Heck we were going to the moon. It was an extension of the possibilities.

I don't think a star that close to Earth would be a good thing....and I don't think an alien species telling a curious species like us, to ignore their presence, would show judgement that would be commensurate with a higher intellect, but with a complete misunderstanding of not only human nature, but the science involved in the continuation of human existence....In fact a second star would throw life on Earth into total chaos...therefore the movie makes no sense at all.....imo

Your thinking about the sequel, 2010. Jupiter had yet to become our second star at the end of 2001. A second star the magnitude of Sol would certainly be a catastrophic problem for Earth and all of the bodies (Io) orbiting close to the second star but nothing in the movie said anything about it being that bright.

As for a god like species warning us to not do something, how is this different from other religious parables?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38EDhpxzn2g
The difference is it's supposedly an alien species, not humans channeling them with an agenda...the brightness from the newly created star looks roughly the same as our present Sol...You call it a sequel, I call it the whole story....and it makes no sense...but "it's just a movie"...

Phoenix 911: The theme that my daughter explored in her paper was the conflict between man and technology. She gave a quote from Kubrick: "As our machines get smarter, we get dumber". Haven't communication skills of people degraded as smart phones have gotten smarter?

Also, re your comment that you were disappointed in the sequel, 2010. Isn't the sequel always inferior to the original? Are there any exceptions anyone can think of?

That was pretty much my take on it,... from my last comment of:

"I did enjoy it, and it got me thinking not so much of where we started, but the path of where we are losing control to technology."

I correct the typo.

as far as sequels,

some of the Rambo's we pretty good.... other were dudes.

007 James bonds were pretty excellent, my girl friend loves the latest guy that plays Bond.... she says its closer to the book, which was dark.

Yes Redfred, terminator series were good.

Mostly, the Bond books were eminently readable at least, even if not intellectually challenging. I owned them all at one point.

It was difficult to forget ground-breaking characters like 'odd-job' when the 'sequels' came though. Factually they weren't sequels. Each was a stand-alone script in it's own right...even Lord of the Rings was not in sequel...the three books/ movies told a single story. OMG there aren't any actual sequels!.........OK what about The Matrix ?

Whew, glad to have found one.

I''ll be back...

Sequels? Rocky XVII was pretty good.

What were there, something like XXIV films in the series, each one more intellectually stimulating than the previous offering?

^{The Rocky film franchise pretty much 'Jumped the Shark' with Rocky I}

Rocky XVII?

Was that when North Korea blew up Stallones walker and, and he fell down and couldn't get up, and, and they blocked electrical signals to Stallones Life Alert Emergency Systems, and then, and then,.... he was left lying there for 2-1/2 weeks,.... was that it,...... yah, that was cool.

Yeah, a good right hook stimulates the brain like little else, and can be very convincing when smearing opinion onto others.

"Haven't communication skills of people degraded as smart phones have gotten smarter?"

Absolutely not...People communicate now more than ever, and in more ways, and in doing so their skills have improved vastly.....and I might add the quality and precision have also improved....

They definitely communicate more, but both the substance and the grammar have taken a nosedive.

Then how do you explain Google and Wiki and other reference sites, they are now among the largest companies that exist....These kids use these sites constantly....and I might add the mobile phone and texting has opened lines of communication between people that never existed before....Anybody ever try talking to your grandkids before the ubiquitous mobile phone and text ability, and now how does it go...?

Are you really sure you are communicating with them now?

Just because people are texting does not mean they really are communicating, at least with grace.

I think communication is simply defined as: The transfer of information between entities. It has since become obsolete with the advent of marriage.

I jokingly call Google the Wizard of Oz and I not only love it, it blows my mind in a positive way. Of course, I used Google to find the newspaper comics dealing with cell phones. Hit enter and behold

This is turning into an interesting philosophical discussion, so let me throw this out: I heard a hypothesis that a greater number of excellent theoreticians and mathematicians were developed in eastern and central Europe during the days in which those countries lagged behind in computer technology ... and precisely for that reason: they had to use their brains instead of computers.

Yeah, maybe so .. but now that I think of it, let's give the guys/gals who developed Google a little love.

We are living at a time when we are at full tilt boogie in the middle of the information age, an age that has sparked a communication frenzy that circumnavigates the globe....why more communication takes place on a single day now than happened in the first hundred years of modern civilization...Why we have conversations right here on a daily basis with people from around the world....IHS inc the multinational company that hosts this very website is an information company...Kids and adults everywhere are educating themselves on line, and teaching themselves new skills by watching real time demonstrations on Youtube and other video sources....Why we,,,,,,wait what was the question again??

Go Pats...!!

full tilt boogie in the middle of the information age So cool!

See your team won...'grats!

It use to be that only people who could communicate well were granted permission to put inked quill to paper. Particularly the paper tomes that would be preserved. Thus the communication records of the past were filtered to to show better communication skills. Today archived communication is ubiquitous and rarely filtered. Additionally there are many more tasks today that require archived communication than in the past.

Discerning which whole population has better communication skills would be tricky at best and fraught with observational skewing of the data sets.

It might be easier to tell if the planet is warming or cooling.

While I enjoyed both 2001 and 2010 films, the books were far superior. Just goes to show that Sri Lanka supports life other than Pnaban.

I once read where Sir Arthur once discussed why we didn't have colony on the moon by 2001, his response was the money was diverted to " The War on Poverty".

Whenever you read the book before the movie, the movie is always more of a disappointment.

My girlfriend who is a James Bond nut, also Indiana Jones, Monty Python,... I could continue but I'll stop there.

She was happy to see Bond return to its dark story lines... But she liked the Harry potter movie series and was comparable to the book.

Star Wars was supposed to be a childrens movie wasn't it?

Didn't we all just grow up with the franchise and now take it for granted ?

The original Star Wars, compared with 2001? No Comparison!

2001 was a feasible science fiction story, whereas Stars Wars was science fantasy. Both very entertaining.

To my mind, it was the early spaceship scenes to the sound of Strauss music of the Blue Danube that captured the vast graceful 'slowness' of space travel. Absolutely enchanting.

But I had trouble with understanding the surreal end sequences.

If memory serves IBM tried to sue for defamation over the name HAL (it's only one letter off HiAbLm)

A little off topic,.... Hormel tried to sue to have SPAM called something else, that it infringed on its trade name.

Judge ruled that the attorney for Hormel filed too late, My inside source at Hormel said that Hormel's corporate attorney was immediate discharged.... for dereliction of duty.

That's hilarious.

Hormel wanted SPAM as in SPAM emails to be called something else...... Inside Hormel, they didn't think it was very funny. When I was told that.... it makes your think..... "I suppose so".

The relationship between HAL and IBM was not planned--HAL was an acronym for Hueristic and ALgorithmic--two concepts in programming.

--JMM

Back to the movie 2001 and Star Wars.... it's interesting the special effects it had.

2001, when seen a second time, it was still believable. (with maybe the exception when HAL would let astronaut David Bowman return to the ship).

But when I saw Star Wars the second time years later from the first, I could see the graphic edits such as when they pasted the TIE fighter during the flight, as they're doing their barrel rolls and the like, I could see the edited square where it was put in the screen.

I could not believe I missed that the first time around..... I like to think I became more sophisticated to notice it.

Even with that,.... it doesn't matter, I'm still waiting for Disney to release the next sequels to Star Wars,... I'd go see it.

There were a number of FUBARs in that film.

One that I caught was when Bowman had returned to Discovery and was wearing his space suit to disable HAL, Bowman climbed through the access door and you could see that the left glove was not attached to the sleeve of the suit.

The scene where Bowman ejects himself into the open vacuum of space was actually researched by Kubrick's team with medical professionals to make that as technically real as possible. I guess it is still debatable if that is possible, but it is much better done that the scenes in other SciFi pictures where people explode like grapes.

"Spaceballs, the placemat"...

"Marchandizing, Marchandizing, Marchandizing!"

I was disappointed when I first saw 2001. What struck me was when the professor met the Russians on the space station and he told them that he was not at liberty to discuss it. Cold war continuing conditioning. It was like the author was pushing the idea that the monolith first appeared to " American " monkeys.

I think that was 2010 where the Russian wanted to play a little game called The Truth in the beginning of the movie.

Basically, the Russians were already to launch the Alexei Leonov well ahead of Discovery II and Russia wanted the expertise of the Americans and offered them a ride as part of the deal.

Incidentally, the Cold War really hasn't stopped. It's just been put on a different burner.