2001: A Space Odyssey--Let's take another look

Originally posted by Carreau
I agree with the OP about everything he stated about 2001, but I can't pick it as my favorite Kubrick film. That title for me is Eyes Wide Shut.

Eyes Wide Shut was especially amazing, I concur. It's really tough to pick a favorite film though. Some days The Killing is my favorite, other days it's Clockwork Orange. Heck, even Barry Lyndon is a very engrossing film.

Kubrick made not one...but about 10 completely brilliant artistic films in his career. Who else can make that claim?

I'd say Lolita and Killer's Kiss are not quite on par with Strangelove and Paths of Glory. I have never seen Fear and Desire!

I love 2001 but I suggest that if you love this movie, you give a good chance to Terrence Mallick's The Tree of Life which people also didn't understand and which also is a participatory experience and indeed shares a few similarities with 2001.

reply to post by raypsi13


HAL is also three letters that are all exactly one letter away from IBM.

reply to post by foodstamp


Dark CIty (1998) made me think "what if there is some substance to this assertion"
The Matrix and Blade Runner come to mind
2001 remains a favourite, I try to watch it at least once a year

2001 is still my all-time favorite. Close Encounters is up there...My Mom took me to the opening and I fell in love with sci-fi as well as ufo's.

Some of my all time favs; Blade Runner, West World, Logan's Run, Soylent Green, They Live, Wizards, Rollerball, The Thing (82), Donnie Darko, Mad Max, District 9.

I liked The Objective. Felt like I was watching a Twilight Zone episode.

Intelligent Artifact Buried in the Moon

I have a theory about the moon, namely that it's an astronengineered object, at core, like a seed of life because without the unique earth-moon-sun relationship, life as we know it would not be possible. There are even a whole series of special coincidences about this relationship between the moon, the earth and the sun which almost support this idea. Anyway, it could be that someday, we will drill down into the moon's core or somehow analyze the composition, and I'm all but convinced for a whole variety of reasons that an artificially designed object, like some sort of metatrone cube or platonic solid will be found at it's core. The moon rings like a bell when hit, proven during the Apollo 13 Mission, it's largely HOLLOW with very low density interior mass, and it situated in it's orbit at a location that makes is do unusual things like imitate the sun near solstices, I could go on and on.

If my suspicions are correct, then some day Kubrick will be hailed as some sort of prophet of some kind for this film, even though it's a buried alien object and not the actual core of the moon.

Anyway, he picked up on the lunar oddities, and in part I think that's what inspired the film where he was attempting to capture an actual possible future representation of a historical event to be.

If interested here's where I started laying out the idea in a thread contest for a truly original or unique philosophical idea, for which my idea took the top prize

Moon-seed by Intelligent Design


From the thread Contest with prize by me.

P.S. Love the fikn and your OP. S&F.

reply to post by TheConstruKctionofLight


Dark City is a good, trippy sci-fi movie. I love it for its dark, gritty atmosphere. The sets on that film were really good and you really felt like you knew and lived in Dark City yourself. While I found the movie weak on a few other points, it was a pretty enjoyable movie.

Ever since I have told everyone about my experience and attitudes towards 2001, they have been trying to recommend other films for me, which is great! However, I find that most of them are just dramatically different in their approach (maybe they didn't have the sci-fi innocence of the 1960's)

Dark City, The Abyss, Stargate et al the contemporaries are good movies in their own right and are very thought-provoking sci-fis (and those are always the best!)

But, I find that most sci-fiction movies are just built on the shoulders of what 2001 achieved. And heck, couldn't we say that about movies like 1927's Metropolis? arguably, the first sci-fi movie ever made..

I don't know what makes one movie along the line better than its predecessors or descendents, but I think Kubrick definitely had something to do with that.

While most other movies are aiming for blockbuster status, I think ole Stanley was in the very unique position as a filmmaker where he had total creative control, and could easily make the movie exactly the way he wanted without studios breathing down his neck.

Kubrick wasn't the first "indie" film-maker, but he was kind of the first of the successful independent film-makers!

reply to post by NewAgeMan


I remember in my senior year of high school we had a substitute teacher one day. And the class was pretty low maintenance. He didn't really need to instruct us or anything. We just worked on our projects and he played babysitter.

But I noticed he was reading a book called "Who Built the Moon?" I started asking him about it and we ended up having a class-long discussion while the rest of the students snickered at us for the absurdity. That was probably the most I ever learned in one classroom! Why is it that substitute teachers are either incredibly boring or incredibly fascinating haha. There is no middle-ground for substitutes.

My mind has been open to the extreme possibilities ever since. I have been trying to find that book for a while now.

Originally posted by raypsi13
HAL and the Starchild are straight out of the gnostic scriptures, HAL is the computer that runs the Milky Way Galaxy Matrix
Archons trying to become human fail to do so and get as far as a Starchild and then die.

Explain please...

especially after turning into a starchild and dying.