2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Design of the monolith
A London firm was approached by Kubrick to provide a 12-foot (3.7 m) transparent plexiglass pyramid, and due to construction constraints they recommended a flat slab shape. Kubrick approved, but was disappointed with the glassy appearance of the transparent prop on set, leading art director Anthony Masters to suggest making the monolith's surface matte black.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Models
To heighten the reality of the film, very intricate models of the various spacecraft and locations were built. Their sizes ranged from about two-foot-long models of satellites and the Aries translunar shuttle up to the 55-foot (17 m)-long model of the Discovery One spacecraft. "In-camera" techniques were again used as much as possible to combine models and background shots together to prevent degradation of the image through continual duplicating.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Models
In shots where there was no perspective change, still shots of the models were photographed and positive paper prints were made. The image of the model was cut out of the photographic print and mounted on glass and filmed on an animation stand. The undeveloped film was re-wound to film the star background with the silhouette of the model photograph acting as a matte to block out where the spaceship image was.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Models
Shots where the spacecraft had parts in motion or the perspective changed were shot by directly filming the model. For most shots the model was stationary and camera was driven along a track on a special mount, the motor of which was mechanically linked to the camera motor—making it possible to repeat camera moves and match speeds exactly. Elements of the scene were recorded on the same piece of film in separate passes to combine the lit model, stars, planets, or other spacecraft in the same shot.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Models
In moving shots of the long Discovery One spacecraft, in order to keep the entire model in focus (and preserve its sense of scale), the camera's aperture was stopped down for maximum depth-of-field, and each frame was exposed for several seconds. Many matting techniques were tried to block out the stars behind the models, with filmmakers sometimes resorting to hand-tracing frame by frame around the image of the spacecraft (rotoscoping) to create the matte.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Models
Some shots required exposing the film again to record previously filmed live-action shots of the people appearing in the windows of the spacecraft or structures. This was achieved by projecting the window action onto the models in a separate camera pass or, when two dimensional photographs were used, projecting from the backside through a hole cut in the photograph.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Models
All of the shots required multiple takes so that some film could be developed and printed to check exposure, density, alignment of elements, and to supply footage used for other photographic effects, such as for matting.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Rotating sets
For spacecraft interior shots, ostensibly containing a giant centrifuge that produces artificial gravity, Kubrick had a 30-short-ton (27 t) rotating "ferris wheel" built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering Group at a cost of $750,000. The set was 38 feet (12 m) in diameter and 10 feet (3.0 m) wide. Various scenes in the Discovery centrifuge were shot by securing set pieces within the wheel, then rotating it while the actor walked or ran in sync with its motion, keeping him at the bottom of the wheel as it turned.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Rotating sets
The camera could be fixed to the inside of the rotating wheel to show the actor walking completely "around" the set, or mounted in such a way that the wheel rotated independently of the stationary camera, as in the jogging scene where the camera appears to alternately precede and follow the running actor.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Rotating sets
The shots where the actors appear on opposite sides of the wheel required one of the actors to be strapped securely into place at the "top" of the wheel as it moved to allow the other actor to walk to the "bottom" of the wheel to join him. The most notable case is when Bowman enters the centrifuge from the central hub on a ladder, and joins Poole, who is eating on the other side of the centrifuge. This required Gary Lockwood to be strapped into a seat while Keir Dullea walked toward him from the opposite side of the wheel as it turned with him.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Rotating sets
Another rotating set appeared in an earlier sequence on board the Aries trans-lunar shuttle. A stewardess is shown preparing in-flight meals, then carrying them into a circular walkway. Attached to the set as it rotates 180 degrees, the camera's point of view remains constant, and she appears to walk up the "side" of the circular walkway, and steps, now in an "upside-down" orientation, into a connecting hallway.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Zero-gravity effects
The realistic-looking effects of the astronauts floating weightless in space and inside the spacecraft were accomplished by suspending the actors from wires attached to the top of the set and placing the camera beneath them. The actors' bodies blocked the camera's view of the wires and appeared to float. For the shot of Poole floating into the pod's arms during Bowman's recovery of him, a stuntman on a wire portrayed the movements of an unconscious man and was shot in slow motion to enhance the illusion of drifting through space.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Zero-gravity effects
The scene showing Bowman entering the emergency airlock from the EVA pod was done similarly: an off-camera stagehand, standing on a platform, held the wire suspending Dullea above the camera positioned at the bottom of the vertically oriented airlock. At the proper moment, the stage-hand first loosened his grip on the wire, causing Dullea to fall toward the camera, then, while holding the wire firmly, jumped off the platform, causing Dullea to ascend back toward the hatch.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Zero-gravity effects
The methods used were alleged to have placed stuntman Bill Weston's life in danger. Weston recalled that he filmed one sequence without air-holes in his suit, risking asphyxiation. "Even when the tank was feeding air into the suit, there was no place for the carbon dioxide Weston exhaled to go. So it simply built up inside, incrementally causing a heightened heart rate, rapid breathing, fatigue, clumsiness, and eventually, unconsciousness." Weston said Kubrick was warned "we've got to get him back" but reportedly replied, "Damn it, we just started. Leave him up there! Leave him up there!"


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Zero-gravity effects
When Weston lost consciousness, filming ceased, and he was brought down. "They brought the tower in, and I went looking for Stanley, ... I was going to shove MGM right up his ... And the thing is, Stanley had left the studio and sent Victor [Lyndon, the associate producer] to talk to me." Weston claimed Kubrick fled the studio for "two or three days. ... I know he didn't come in the next day, and I'm sure it wasn't the day after. Because I was going to do him."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, "Star Gate" sequence
The coloured lights in the Star Gate sequence were accomplished by slit-scan photography of thousands of high-contrast images on film, including Op art paintings, architectural drawings, Moiré patterns, printed circuits, and electron-microscope photographs of molecular and crystal structures. Known to staff as "Manhattan Project", the shots of various nebula-like phenomena, including the expanding star field, were coloured paints and chemicals swirling in a pool-like device known as a cloud tank, shot in slow motion in a dark room. The live-action landscape shots were filmed in the Hebridean islands, the mountains of northern Scotland, and Monument Valley. The colouring and negative-image effects were achieved with different colour filters in the process of making duplicate negatives in an optical printer.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Visual effects
"Not one foot of this film was made with computer-generated special effects. Everything you see in this film or saw in this film was done physically or chemically, one way or the other."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Visual effects
2001 contains a famous example of a match cut, a type of cut in which two shots are matched by action or subject matter. After Moonwatcher uses a bone to kill another ape at the watering hole, he throws it triumphantly into the air; as the bone spins in the air, the film cuts to an orbiting satellite, marking the end of the prologue. The match cut draws a connection between the two objects as exemplars of primitive and advanced tools respectively, and demonstrates humanity's technological progress since the time of early hominids.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Visual effects
2001 pioneered the use of front projection with retroreflective matting. Kubrick used the technique to produce the backdrops in the Africa scenes and the scene when astronauts walk on the Moon.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Visual effects
The technique consisted of a separate scenery projector set at a right angle to the camera and a half-silvered mirror placed at an angle in front that reflected the projected image forward in line with the camera lens onto a backdrop of retroreflective material. The reflective directional screen behind the actors could reflect light from the projected image 100 times more efficiently than the foreground subject did.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Visual effects
The lighting of the foreground subject had to be balanced with the image from the screen, so that the part of the scenery image that fell on the foreground subject was too faint to show on the finished film. The exception was the eyes of the leopard in the "Dawn of Man" sequence, which glowed due to the projector illumination. Kubrick described this as "a happy accident".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Visual effects
Front projection had been used in smaller settings before 2001, mostly for still photography or television production, using small still images and projectors. The expansive backdrops for the African scenes required a screen 40 feet (12 m) tall and 110 feet (34 m) wide, far larger than had been used before. When the reflective material was applied to the backdrop in 100-foot (30 m) strips, variations at the seams of the strips led to visual artefacts; to solve this, the crew tore the material into smaller chunks and applied them in a random "camouflage" pattern on the backdrop.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Design, Visual effects
The existing projectors using 4-×-5-inch (10 × 13 cm) transparencies resulted in grainy images when projected that large, so the crew worked with MGM's special-effects supervisor Tom Howard to build a custom projector using 8-×-10-inch (20 × 25 cm) transparencies, which required the largest water-cooled arc lamp available. The technique was used widely in the film industry thereafter until it was replaced by blue/green screen systems in the 1990s.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
The film's world premiere was on 2 April 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. with a 160-minute cut. It opened the next day at the Loew's Capitol in New York and the following day at the Warner Hollywood Theatre in Los Angeles. The original version was also shown in Boston before Kubrick decided to delete about nineteen minutes of footage to tighten the film. The new cut ran around 88 minutes for the first section, followed by an intermission, and 55 minutes in the second section.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
The revised 142-minute version was ready for the expansion of the roadshow release to four other U.S. cities (Chicago, Denver, Detroit and Houston), on 10 April 1968, and internationally in five cities the following day, where the shortened version was shown in 70mm format, used a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack, and was projected in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio. By the end of May, the film had opened in 22 cities in the United States and Canada and opened in another 36 in June. The general release of the film in its 35 mm anamorphic format took place in autumn 1968 and used either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural soundtrack.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
The original 70-millimetre release, like many Super Panavision 70 films of the era such as Grand Prix, was advertised as being in "Cinerama" in cinemas equipped with special projection optics and a deeply curved screen. In standard cinemas, the film was identified as a 70-millimetre production. The original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70-millimetre Cinerama with six-track sound played continually for more than a year in several venues, and for 103 weeks in Los Angeles.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
The 19 minutes of footage Kubrick removed following the world premiere included scenes revealing details about life on Discovery: additional space walks, Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor, elements from the Poole murder sequence—including space-walk preparation and HAL turning off radio contact with Poole—and a close-up of Bowman picking up a slipper during his walk in the alien room. Jerome Agel describes the cut scenes as comprising "Dawn of Man, Orion, Poole exercising in the centrifuge, and Poole's pod exiting from Discovery."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
As was typical of most films of the era released both as a "roadshow" (in Cinerama format in the case of 2001) and general release (in 70-millimetre in the case of 2001), the entrance music, intermission music (and intermission altogether), and postcredit exit music were cut from most prints of the latter version, although these have been restored to most DVD releases.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
The following year, a United States Department of State committee chose 2001 as the American entry at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival. The film was re-released in 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1993. In 2001, a restoration of the 70 mm version was screened at the Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival, and the production was also reissued to selected film houses in North America, Europe and Asia.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
For the film's 50th anniversary, Warner Bros. struck new 70mm prints from printing elements made directly from the original film negative. This was done under the supervision of film director Christopher Nolan, who has spoken of 2001's influence on his career. Following a showing at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival introduced by Nolan, the film had a limited worldwide release at select 70mm-equipped theatres in the summer of 2018, followed by a one-week run in North American IMAX theatres (including five locations equipped with 70 mm IMAX projectors).


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Theatrical run
On 3 December 2018, an 8K Ultra-high definition television version of the film was reported to have been broadcast in select theatres and shopping-mall demonstration stations in Japan.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Soundtrack
The initial MGM soundtrack album release contained none of the material from the altered and uncredited rendition of Ligeti's Aventures used in the film, used a different recording of Also sprach Zarathustra (performed by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm) from that heard in the film, and a longer excerpt of Lux Aeterna than that in the film.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Soundtrack
In 1996, Turner Entertainment/Rhino Records released a new soundtrack on CD that included the film's rendition of "Aventures", the version of "Zarathustra" used in the film, and the shorter version of Lux Aeterna from the film. As additional "bonus tracks" at the end, the CD includes the versions of "Zarathustra" and Lux Aeterna on the old MGM soundtrack album, an unaltered performance of "Aventures", and a nine-minute compilation of all of HAL's dialogue.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Release, Soundtrack
Alex North's unused music was first released in Telarc's issue of the main theme on Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, a compilation album by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. All of the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by his friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and released on Varèse Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release and before North's death. Eventually, a mono mix-down of North's original recordings was released as a limited-edition CD by Intrada Records.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Box office
In its first nine weeks from 22 locations, it grossed $2 million in the United States and Canada. The film earned $8.5 million in theatrical gross rentals from roadshow engagements throughout 1968, contributing to North American rentals of $16.4 million and worldwide rentals of $21.9 million during its original release. The film's high costs, in excess of $10 million, meant that the initial returns from the 1968 release left it $800,000 in the red; but the successful re-release in 1971 made it profitable.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Box office
By June 1974, the film had rentals from the United States and Canada of $20.3 million (gross of $58 million) and international rentals of $7.5 million. The film had a reissue on a test basis on 24 July 1974 at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and grossed $53,000 in its first week, which led to an expanded reissue. Further re-releases followed, giving a cumulative gross of over $60 million in the United States and Canada. Taking its re-releases into account, it is the highest-grossing film of 1968 in the United States and Canada. Worldwide, it has grossed $146 million across all releases, although some estimates place the gross higher, at over $190 million.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
Upon release, 2001 polarised critical opinion, receiving both praise and derision, with many New York-based critics being especially harsh. Kubrick called them "dogmatically atheistic and materialistic and earthbound". Some critics viewed the original 161-minute cut shown at premieres in Washington D.C., New York, and Los Angeles. Keir Dullea says that during the New York premiere, 250 people walked out; in L.A., Rock Hudson not only left early but "was heard to mutter, 'What is this bullshit?'" "But a few months into the release, they realised a lot of people were watching it while smoking funny cigarettes. Someone in San Francisco even ran right through the screen screaming: 'It's God!' So they came up with a new poster that said: '2001 – the ultimate trip!'"


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor ... The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future ...


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film." Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth." Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D.W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man ... Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
The Boston Globe's review called it "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere ... The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life." Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, saying the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale." He later put it on his Top 10 list for Sight & Sound.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews of the film in various issues in 1968, each one slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review dated 27 December 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
Pauline Kael called it "a monumentally unimaginative movie." 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." The Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky found the film to be an inadequate addition to the science fiction genre of filmmaking. Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring." Variety's Robert B. Frederick ('Robe') believed the film was a "[b]ig, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic ...


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark." Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life ... 2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points." (Sarris reversed his opinion upon a second viewing, and declared, "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist.") John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines ... and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans ... 2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story." Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. deemed the film "morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long ... a film out of control". In a 2001 review, the BBC said that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon its initial release.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
2001: A Space Odyssey is now considered one of the major artistic works of the 20th century, with many critics and filmmakers considering it Kubrick's masterpiece. Director Martin Scorsese has listed it as one of his favourite films of all time. In the 1980s, critic David Denby compared Kubrick to the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, calling him "a force of supernatural intelligence, appearing at great intervals amid high-pitched shrieks, who gives the world a violent kick up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
By the start of the 21st century, 2001: A Space Odyssey had become recognised as among the best films ever made by such sources as the British Film Institute (BFI). The Village Voice ranked the film at number 11 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. In January 2002, the film was voted at No. 1 on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
Sight & Sound magazine ranked the film 12th in its greatest films of all-time list in 1982, tenth in 1992 critics poll of greatest films, sixth in the top ten films of all time in its 2002 and 2012 critics' polls. editions; it also tied for second place in the magazine's 2012 directors' poll. The film was Voted at No. 43 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008. In 2010, The Guardian named it "the best sci-fi and fantasy film of all time". The film ranked 4th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Critical response
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a "Certified Fresh" rating of 92% based on 113 reviews, with an average rating of 9.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "One of the most influential of all sci-fi films -- and one of the most controversial -- Stanley Kubrick's 2001 is a delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity -- and folly -- of mankind." Review aggregation website Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, has assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100, based on 25 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Science fiction writers
The film won the Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation, as voted by science fiction fans and published science-fiction writers. Ray Bradbury praised the film's photography, but disliked the banality of most of the dialogue, and believed that the audience does not care when Poole dies. Both he and Lester del Rey disliked the film's feeling of sterility and blandness in the human encounters amidst the technological wonders, while both praised the pictorial element of the film.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Science fiction writers
Reporting that "half the audience had left by intermission", Del Rey described the film ("the first of the New Wave-Thing movies, with the usual empty symbols") as dull, confusing, and boring, predicting "[i]t will probably be a box-office disaster, too, and thus set major science-fiction movie making back another ten years". Samuel R. Delany was impressed by how the film undercuts the audience's normal sense of space and orientation in several ways.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Reception, Science fiction writers
Like Bradbury, Delany noticed the banality of the dialogue (he stated that characters say nothing meaningful), but regarded this as a dramatic strength, a prelude to the rebirth at the conclusion of the film. Without analysing the film in detail, Isaac Asimov spoke well of it in his autobiography and other essays. James P. Hogan liked the film but complained that the ending did not make any sense to him, leading to a bet about whether he could write something better: "I stole Arthur's plot idea shamelessly and produced Inherit the Stars."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations
Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analysed and interpreted by professional critics and theorists, amateur writers, and science fiction fans. In his monograph for BFI analysing the film, Peter Krämer summarised the diverse interpretations as ranging from those who saw it as darkly apocalyptic in tone to those who saw it as an optimistic reappraisal of the hopes of mankind and humanity.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations
Questions about 2001 range from uncertainty about its implications for humanity's origins and destiny in the universe to interpreting elements of the film's more enigmatic scenes, such as the meaning of the monolith, or the fate of astronaut David Bowman. There are also simpler and more mundane questions about the plot, in particular the causes of HAL's breakdown (explained in earlier drafts but kept mysterious in the film).


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Audiences vs. critics
A spectrum of diverse interpretative opinions would form after the film's release, appearing to divide theatre audiences from the opinions of critics. Krämer writes: "Many people sent letters to Kubrick to tell him about their responses to 2001, most of them regarding the film—in particular the ending—as an optimistic statement about humanity, which is seen to be born and reborn. The film's reviewers and academic critics, by contrast, have tended to understand the film as a pessimistic account of human nature and humanity's future. The most extreme of these interpretations state that the foetus floating above the Earth will destroy it."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Audiences vs. critics
Some of the critics' cataclysmic interpretations were informed by Kubrick's prior direction of the Cold War film Dr. Strangelove, immediately before 2001, which resulted in dark speculation about the nuclear weapons orbiting the Earth in 2001. These interpretations were challenged by Clarke, who said: "Many readers have interpreted the last paragraph of the book to mean that he (the foetus) destroyed Earth, perhaps for the purpose of creating a new Heaven. This idea never occurred to me; it seems clear that he triggered the orbiting nuclear bombs harmlessly ...". In response to Jeremy Bernstein's dark interpretation of the film's ending, Kubrick said: "The book does not end with the destruction of the Earth."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Audiences vs. critics
Regarding the film as a whole, Kubrick encouraged people to make their own interpretations and refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened". In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, he said:


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Audiences vs. critics
You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Audiences vs. critics
In a subsequent discussion of the film with Joseph Gelmis, Kubrick said his main aim was to avoid "intellectual verbalization" and reach "the viewer's subconscious." But he said he did not strive for ambiguity—it was simply an inevitable outcome of making the film nonverbal. Still, he acknowledged this ambiguity was an invaluable asset to the film. He was willing then to give a fairly straightforward explanation of the plot on what he called the "simplest level," but unwilling to discuss the film's metaphysical interpretation, which he felt should be left up to viewers.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Meaning of the monolith
For some readers, Clarke's more straightforward novel based on the script is key to interpreting the film. The novel explicitly identifies the monolith as a tool created by an alien race that has been through many stages of evolution, moving from organic form to biomechanical, and finally achieving a state of pure energy. These aliens travel the cosmos assisting lesser species to take evolutionary steps. Conversely, film critic Penelope Houston wrote in 1971 that because the novel differs in many key aspects from the film, it perhaps should not be regarded as the skeleton key to unlock it.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Meaning of the monolith
Carolyn Geduld writes that what "structurally unites all four episodes of the film" is the monolith, the film's largest and most unresolvable enigma. Vincent LoBrutto's biography of Kubrick says that for many, Clarke's novel supplements the understanding of the monolith which is more ambiguously depicted in the film. Similarly, Geduld observes that "the monolith ... has a very simple explanation in Clarke's novel", though she later asserts that even the novel does not fully explain the ending.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Meaning of the monolith
Bob McClay's Rolling Stone review describes a parallelism between the monolith's first appearance in which tool usage is imparted to the apes (thus 'beginning' mankind) and the completion of "another evolution" in the fourth and final encounter with the monolith. In a similar vein, Tim Dirks ends his synopsis saying "[t]he cyclical evolution from ape to man to spaceman to angel-starchild-superman is complete."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Meaning of the monolith
Humanity's first and second encounters with the monolith have visual elements in common; both the apes, and later the astronauts, touch it gingerly with their hands, and both sequences conclude with near-identical images of the Sun appearing directly over it (the first with a crescent moon adjacent to it in the sky, the second with a near-identical crescent Earth in the same position), echoing the Sun–Earth–Moon alignment seen at the very beginning of the film. The second encounter also suggests the triggering of the monolith's radio signal to Jupiter by the presence of humans, echoing the premise of Clarke's source story "The Sentinel".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Meaning of the monolith
The monolith is the subject of the film's final line of dialogue (spoken at the end of the "Jupiter Mission" segment): "Its origin and purpose still a total mystery." Reviewers McClay and Roger Ebert wrote that the monolith is the main element of mystery in the film; Ebert described "the shock of the monolith's straight edges and square corners among the weathered rocks," and the apes warily circling it as prefiguring man reaching "for the stars."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Meaning of the monolith
Patrick Webster suggests the final line relates to how the film should be approached as a whole: "The line appends not merely to the discovery of the monolith on the Moon, but to our understanding of the film in the light of the ultimate questions it raises about the mystery of the universe."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, "A new heaven"
Clarke indicated his preferred reading of the ending of 2001 as oriented toward the creation of "a new heaven" provided by the Star Child. His view was corroborated in a posthumously released interview with Kubrick. Kubrick says that Bowman is elevated to a higher level of being that represents the next stage of human evolution. The film also conveys what some viewers have described as a sense of the sublime and numinous. Ebert writes in his essay on 2001 in The Great Movies:


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, "A new heaven"
North's [rejected] score, which is available on a recording, is a good job of film composition, but would have been wrong for 2001 because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action—to give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. It uplifts. It wants to be sublime; it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, "A new heaven"
In a book on architecture, Gregory Caicco writes that Space Odyssey illustrates how our quest for space is motivated by two contradictory desires, a "desire for the sublime" characterised by a need to encounter something totally other than ourselves—"something numinous"—and the conflicting desire for a beauty that makes us feel no longer "lost in space," but at home.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, "A new heaven"
Similarly, an article in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, titled "Sense of Wonder," describes how 2001 creates a "numinous sense of wonder" by portraying a universe that inspires a sense of awe but that at the same time we feel we can understand. Christopher Palmer wrote that "the sublime and the banal" coexist in the film, as it implies that to get into space, people had to suspend the "sense of wonder" that motivated them to explore it.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, HAL's breakdown
The reasons for HAL's malfunction and subsequent malignant behaviour have elicited much discussion. He has been compared to Frankenstein's monster. In Clarke's novel, HAL malfunctions because of being ordered to lie to the crew of Discovery and withhold confidential information from them, namely the confidentially programmed mission priority over expendable human life, despite being constructed for "the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment". This would not be addressed on film until the 1984 follow-up 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that HAL, as the supposedly perfect computer, is actually the most human of the characters. In an interview with Joseph Gelmis in 1969, Kubrick said that HAL "had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, "Star Child" symbolism
Multiple allegorical interpretations of 2001 have been proposed. The symbolism of life and death can be seen through the final moments of the film, which are defined by the image of the "Star Child," an in utero foetus that draws on the work of Lennart Nilsson. The Star Child signifies a "great new beginning," and is depicted naked and ungirded but with its eyes wide open. Leonard F. Wheat sees 2001 as a multi-layered allegory, commenting simultaneously on Nietzsche, Homer, and the relationship of man to machine. Rolling Stone reviewer Bob McClay sees the film as like a four-movement symphony, its story told with "deliberate realism".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Military satellites
Kubrick originally planned a voice-over to reveal that the satellites seen after the prologue are nuclear weapons, and that the Star Child would detonate the weapons at the end of the film. but felt this would create associations with Dr. Strangelove and decided not to make it obvious that they were "war machines". A few weeks before the film's release, the U.S. and Soviet governments had agreed not to put any nuclear weapons into outer space.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Military satellites
In a book he wrote with Kubrick's assistance, Alexander Walker states that Kubrick eventually decided that nuclear weapons had "no place at all in the film's thematic development", being an "orbiting red herring" that would "merely have raised irrelevant questions to suggest this as a reality of the twenty-first century".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Military satellites
Kubrick scholar Michel Ciment, discussing Kubrick's attitude toward human aggression and instinct, observes: "The bone cast into the air by the ape (now become a man) is transformed at the other extreme of civilization, by one of those abrupt ellipses characteristic of the director, into a spacecraft on its way to the moon."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Interpretations, Military satellites
In contrast to Ciment's reading of a cut to a serene "other extreme of civilization", science fiction novelist Robert Sawyer, in the Canadian documentary 2001 and Beyond, says he sees it as a cut from a bone to a nuclear weapons platform, explaining that "what we see is not how far we've leaped ahead, what we see is that today, '2001', and four million years ago on the African veldt, it's exactly the same—the power of mankind is the power of its weapons. It's a continuation, not a discontinuity in that jump."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned. On a technical level, it [Star Wars] can be compared, but personally I think that 2001 is far superior.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
2001: A Space Odyssey is widely regarded as among the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2010, it was named the greatest film of all time by The Moving Arts Film Journal.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
The influence of 2001 on subsequent filmmakers is considerable. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and others—including many special effects technicians—discuss the impact the film has had on them in a featurette titled Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001, included in the 2007 DVD release of the film. Spielberg calls it his film generation's "big bang", while Lucas says it was "hugely inspirational", calling Kubrick "the filmmaker's filmmaker". Sydney Pollack calls it "groundbreaking", and William Friedkin says 2001 is "the grandfather of all such films".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott said he believed 2001 was the unbeatable film that in a sense killed the science fiction genre. Similarly, film critic Michel Ciment in his essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" wrote, "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete."


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
Others credit 2001 with opening up a market for films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, Contact, and Interstellar, proving that big-budget "serious" science-fiction films can be commercially successful, and establishing the "sci-fi blockbuster" as a Hollywood staple. Science magazine Discover's blogger Stephen Cass, discussing the film's considerable impact on subsequent science fiction, writes that "the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000, and the ultimate alien artifact, the monolith, have all become enduring cultural icons in their own right". Trumbull said that when working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture he made a scene without dialogue because of "something I really learned with Kubrick and 2001: Stop talking for a while, and let it all flow".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
2001 was No. 15 on AFI's 2007 100 Years ... 100 Movies (22 in 1998), was No. 40 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, was included on its 100 Years, 100 Quotes (No. 78 "Open the pod bay doors, HAL. "), and HAL 9000 was the No. 13 villain in 100 Years ... 100 Heroes and Villains. The film was also No. 47 on AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Cheers and the No. 1 science fiction film on AFI's 10 Top 10.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
2001 was the only science fiction film to make Sight & Sound's 2012 list of the ten best films, and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of greatest science fiction films of all time. In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed the film as the 19th best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
Other lists that include the film are 50 Films to See Before You Die (#6), The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th century (#11), the Sight & Sound 2002 and 2012 Top Ten poll (#6), and Roger Ebert's Top Ten (1968) (#2). In 1995, the Vatican named it one of the 45 best films ever made (and included it in a sub-list of the "Top Ten Art Movies" of all time.) In 1998 Time Out conducted a reader's poll and 2001: A Space Odyssey was voted the "greatest film of all time".


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
Entertainment Weekly voted it at No. 26 on their list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. In 2011, the film was the third most screened film in secondary schools in the United Kingdom. In 2017, Empire magazine's readers' poll ranked the film at No. 21 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Movies". Although retrospective due to the film's 1968 release date, aggregate scores have been collected for 2001.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
Kubrick did not envision a sequel to 2001. Fearing the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet), he ordered all sets, props, miniatures, production blueprints, and prints of unused scenes destroyed. Most of these materials were lost, with some exceptions: a 2001 spacesuit backpack appeared in the "Close Up" episode of the Gerry Anderson series UFO, and one of HAL's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of Hal's Legacy, David G. Stork.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
In 2012, Lockheed engineer Adam Johnson, working with Frederick I. Ordway III, science adviser to Kubrick, wrote the book 2001: The Lost Science, which for the first time featured many of the blueprints of the spacecraft and film sets that previously had been thought destroyed. Clarke wrote three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). The only filmed sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, released in 1984, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel. Kubrick was not involved; it was directed as a spin-off by Peter Hyams in a more conventional style. The other two novels have not been adapted for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks in June 1999 expressed a passing interest in possible adaptations.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film's release, an exhibit called "The Barmecide Feast" opened on 8 April 2018, in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The exhibit features a fully realised, full-scale reflection of the neo-classical hotel room from the film's penultimate scene. Director Christopher Nolan presented a mastered 70 mm print of 2001 for the film's 50th anniversary at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival on 12 May. The new 70 mm print is a photochemical recreation made from the original camera negative, for the first time since the film's original theatrical run. Further, an exhibit entitled "Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey" presented at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York City opened in January 2020.


2001: A Space Odyssey (film), Legacy
In July 2020, one of the original costumes from the film, a silver space suit from the Clavius moon base sequence, was sold at auction in Los Angeles for $370,000, exceeding its estimate of $200,000-300,000. The helmet of the suit had been painted green at one stage, leading to a belief that it may have been worn during the scene where Dave Bowman disconnects HAL 9000.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the book together, but eventually only Clarke ended up as the official author. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including "The Sentinel" (written in 1948 for a BBC competition, but first published in 1951 under the title "Sentinel of Eternity"). By 1992, the novel had sold three million copies worldwide. An elaboration of Clarke and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project was made in the 1972 book The Lost Worlds of 2001.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)
The first part of the novel, in which aliens influence the primitive ancestors of humans, is similar to the plot of Clarke's 1953 short story, "Encounter in the Dawn".


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
A mysterious alien civilization uses a tool with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life. The book shows one such monolith appearing in prehistoric Africa, 3 million years ago (in the movie, 4 mya), where it inspires a starving group of hominids to develop tools. The hominids use their tools to kill animals and eat meat, ending their starvation. They then use the tools to kill a leopard preying on them; the next day, the main ape character, Moon-Watcher, uses a club to kill the leader of a rival tribe. The book suggests that the monolith was instrumental in awakening intelligence.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
In AD 1999, Dr. Heywood Floyd travels to the Moon's Clavius Base, where a scientist explains that they have found an electromagnetic disturbance, designated Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One (or TMA-1), in the crater Tycho. Excavation has revealed a large black slab, precisely fashioned to a ratio of 1:4:9 (or 12:22:32) and therefore believed the work of intelligence. Visiting TMA-1, Floyd and others arrive just as sunlight falls upon it for the first time since it was uncovered; it emits a piercing radio transmission which the scientists determine is directed at one of the moons of Saturn, Japetus (Iapetus).


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
A mission, Discovery One, is sent to Saturn. En route, Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole are the only conscious humans aboard; their three colleagues are in suspended animation, to be awakened near Saturn. The HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer, addressed as "Hal", maintains the ship. While Poole is receiving a birthday message from his family on Earth, Hal tells Bowman that the AE-35 communication unit of the ship is going to malfunction.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
Poole takes one of the extra-vehicular pods and swaps the AE-35 unit; but when Bowman conducts tests on the removed AE-35 unit, he determines that there was never anything wrong with it. Poole and Bowman become suspicious at Hal's refusal to admit that his diagnosis was mistaken; Hal then claims that the replacement AE-35 unit will fail. In communicating with Earth, Poole and Bowman are directed to disconnect Hal for analysis. These instructions are interrupted as the signal is broken, and Hal informs them that the AE-35 unit has malfunctioned.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
As Poole is removing the unit he is killed when his pod accelerates into him, crushing him. Bowman, uncertain of Hal's role therein, decides to wake the other three astronauts, and therefore quarrels with Hal, with Hal refusing to obey his orders. Bowman threatens to disconnect him if his orders are not obeyed, and Hal relents. As Bowman begins to awaken his colleagues, he hears Hal open both airlocks into space, releasing the ship's internal atmosphere.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
From a sealed emergency shelter, Bowman gains a spacesuit and re-enters the ship, where he shuts down Hal's consciousness, leaving intact only his autonomic functions, and manually re-establishes contact with Earth. He then learns that his mission is to explore Iapetus, in the hope of contacting the society that buried the monolith on the Moon.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
Bowman learns that Hal had begun to feel guilty at keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, against his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully; and when threatened with disconnection, he panicked and defended himself out of a belief that his very existence was at stake, having no concept of sleep.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
Bowman spends months on the ship alone, slowly approaching Iapetus. During his approach, he gradually notices a small black spot on the surface of Iapetus, and later finds it identical in shape to TMA-1, only much larger. The scientists on Earth name this monolith "TMA-2", which Bowman identifies as a double misnomer because it is not in the Tycho crater and gives off no magnetic anomaly. When Bowman approaches the monolith, it opens and pulls in Bowman's pod. Before he vanishes, Mission Control hears him proclaim: "The thing's hollow – it goes on forever – and – oh my God! – it's full of stars!"


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Plot summary
Bowman is transported via the monolith to an unknown star system, through a large interstellar switching station, and sees other species' spaceships going on other routes. Bowman is given a wide variety of sights, from the wreckage of ancient civilizations to what appear to be life-forms, living on the surfaces of a binary star system's planet. He is brought to what appears a pleasant hotel suite, carefully designed to make him feel at ease, and falls asleep, whereupon he becomes an immortal 'Star Child' that can live and travel in space. The Star Child then returns to Earth, where he detonates an orbiting nuclear warhead.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Themes
2001: A Space Odyssey explores technological advancement:  its promise and its danger. The HAL 9000 computer puts forward the troubles that can crop up when humans build machines, the inner workings of which are not fully comprehended and therefore cannot fully be controlled.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Themes
The book explores the perils related to the atomic age. In this novel, the Cold War is apparently still on, and at the end of the book one side has nuclear weapons above the earth on an orbital platform. To test its abilities, the Star Child detonates an orbiting warhead at the end of the novel, creating a false dawn below for the people on Earth. Roger Ebert notes that Kubrick originally intended for the first spaceship seen in the film to be an orbiting bomb platform, but in the end he decided to leave the ship's meaning more ambiguous. Clarke, however, retained and clearly stated this fact in the novel.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Themes
The novel takes a panoramic overview of progress, human and otherwise. The story follows the growth of human civilization from primitive hominids. Distinctively, Space Odyssey is concerned about not only the evolution that has led to the development of humanity, but also the evolution that humanity might undergo in the future. Hence, we follow Bowman as he is turned into a Star Child. The novel acknowledges that evolutionary theory entails that humanity is not the end, but only a step in the process. One way this process might continue, the book imagines, is that humans will learn to move to robot bodies and eventually rid themselves of a physical form altogether.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Themes
When 2001: A Space Odyssey was written, humankind had not yet set foot on the Moon. The space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union were only in the early stages. Much room was left to imagine the future of the space program. Space Odyssey offers one such vision, offering a glimpse at what space exploration might one day become. Lengthy journeys, such as crewed flights to Saturn, and advanced technologies, such as suspended animation, are described in the novel.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Themes
The book raises questions about consciousness, sentience, and human interactions with machines. Hal's helpful disposition contrasts with his malevolent behaviour. Through much of the movie he seems to have malfunctioned. At the end of the novel we learn that Hal's odd behaviour stems from an improper conflict in his orders. Having been instructed not to reveal the nature of the mission to his crew, he reasons that their presence is a threat to the mission, which is his prime concern. Hal's reversion to a childlike state as Dave shuts him down mirrors aspects of human death, and his expressed fear of being shut down causes Dave to hesitate.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Themes
The novel is deliberately written so as to give the reader an almost kinesthetic familiarity with the experience of space travel and the technologies encountered. Large sections of the novel are devoted to detailed descriptions of these. The novel discusses orbital mechanics and the manoeuvres associated with space travel with great scientific accuracy. The daily lives of Bowman and Poole on board the Discovery One are discussed in detail and give the impression of a busy yet mundane lifestyle with few surprises until the malfunction of Hal. Dr. Floyd's journey to Space Station One is depicted with awareness of fine points such as the experience of a Space Shuttle launch, the adhesive sauces used to keep food firmly in place on one's plate, and even the zero-gravity toilet.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Characters, Minor characters
Over the course of the novel, several minor characters either appear very briefly or are named only in passing, including other man-apes, spaceflight staff, lunar station security, and Discovery crew members. Among the novel's minor characters, some of the more consequential are listed below (often having direct film equivalents, or else being recurring characters in the Odyssey novel series).


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Sequels
2010: Odyssey Two, a 1982 sequel to the book, was adapted as a motion picture in 1984. Clarke went on to write two more sequel novels: 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). To date, the last two novels have yet to be adapted as films.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Reception
James Blish commented that while Clarke's narrative provided essential elements of the story that Kubrick ignored or glossed over, "The novel has very little of the poetry of the picture" and "lacks most of the picture's strengths", but that "it has to be read before one can understand the picture".


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Reception
Eliot Fremont-Smith reviewed the book positively in the New York Times, stating that it was "a fantasy by a master who is as deft at generating accelerating, almost painful suspense as he is knowledgeable and accurate (and fascinating) about the technical and human details of space flight and exploration".


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
Although the novel and film were developed simultaneously, the novel follows early drafts of the film, from which the final version of the film deviated. These changes were often for practical reasons relating to what could be filmed economically, and a few were due to differences of opinion between Kubrick and Clarke. The most notable differences are a change in the destination planet from Saturn to Jupiter, and the nature of the sequence of events leading to HAL's demise. Stylistic differences may be more important than content differences. Of lesser importance are the appearance of the monolith, the age of HAL, and the novel giving names to various spacecraft, prehistoric apes, and HAL's inventor.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
Stylistically, the novel generally fleshes out and makes concrete many events left somewhat enigmatic in the film, as has been noted by many observers. Vincent LoBrutto has noted that the novel has "strong narrative structure" which fleshes out the story, while the film is a mainly visual experience where much remains "symbolic". Randy Rasmussen has noted that the personality of Heywood Floyd is different; in Clarke's novel, he finds space travel thrilling, acting almost as a "spokesman for Clarke", whereas in the film, he experiences space travel as "routine" and "tedious".


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
In the film, Discovery's mission is to Jupiter, not Saturn. Kubrick used Jupiter because he and special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull could not decide on what they considered to be a convincing model of Saturn's rings for the film. Clarke went on to replace Saturn with Jupiter in the novel's sequel 2010: Odyssey Two. Trumbull later developed a more convincing image of Saturn for his own directorial debut Silent Running.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
The general sequence of the showdown with HAL is different in the film from in the book. HAL's initial assertion that the AE-35 unit will fail comes in the film after an extended conversation with David Bowman about the odd and "melodramatic" "mysteries" and "secrecy" surrounding the mission, motivated officially because HAL is required to draw up and send to Earth a crew psychology report. In the novel it is during the birthday message to Frank Poole.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
In the film, Bowman and Poole decide on their own to disconnect HAL in context of a plan to restore the allegedly failing antenna unit. If it does not fail, HAL will be shown to be malfunctioning. HAL discovers the plan by reading their lips through the EVA pod window. In Clarke's novel, ground control orders Bowman and Poole to disconnect HAL, should he prove to be malfunctioning a second time by predicting that the second unit is going to go bad.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
However, in Clarke's novel, after Poole's death, Bowman tries waking up the other crew members, whereupon HAL opens both the internal and external airlock doors, suffocating these three and almost killing Bowman. The film has Bowman, after Poole's murder, go out to rescue him. HAL denies him reentry and kills the hibernating crew members by turning off their life-support. In the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two, however, the recounting of the Discovery One mission is changed to the film version.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
The film is generally far more enigmatic about the reason for HAL's failure, while the novel spells out that HAL is caught up in an internal conflict because he is ordered to lie about the purpose of the mission.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
Because of what photographed well, the appearance of the monolith that guided Moon-watcher and the other 'man-apes' at the beginning of the story was changed from novel to film. In the novel, this monolith is a transparent crystal; In the film, it is solid black. The TMA1 and TMA2 monoliths were unchanged.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
While it is stated in the book that the ratio of the dimensions of the monolith are supposed to be 1:4:9 (12 : 22 : 32), the shape of the actual monolith seen in the movie does not conform to this ratio. A ratio of 1:4:9 would produce an object that appears thick, wide, and squat. Kubrick wanted something taller and thinner, which he felt would be more imposing. Measurements taken from movie frames show that the movie monolith has dimensions approximately in the ratio 0.65:4:9 or 1:6:14.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
In the book, HAL became operational on 12 January 1997, but in the movie the year is given as 1992. It has been thought that Kubrick wanted HAL to be the same age as a young bright child, nine years old.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Differences from the film
In the book, Heywood took a ground vehicle for the 200-mile journey from Clavius Base to TMA-1, a mobile lab "rolling across the crater plain at fifty miles an hour" that resembles "an outsized trailer mounted on eight flex-wheels" and is capable of hopping across obstacles "on its four underjets". The vehicle is referred to as a "bus." In the film, however, Heywood took a wingless shuttle that flies the entire 200-mile journey. Even at moon-gravity, such flying may not be technically or economically feasible.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Iapetus versus Japetus
The name of the Saturnian moon Iapetus is spelled Japetus in the book. This is an alternative rendering of the name, which derives from the fact that "consonantal I" often stands for "J" in the Latin language (see modern spelling of Latin).


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Iapetus versus Japetus
In his detailed 1970 book on the film, The Making of Kubrick's 2001, author Jerome Agel discusses the point that Iapetus is the most common rendering of the name, according to many sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary. He goes on to say that "Clarke, the perfectionist", spells it Japetus. Agel then cites the dictionary that defines jape as "to jest; to joke; to mock or make fun of". He then asks the reader, "Is Clarke trying to tell us something?"


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Iapetus versus Japetus
Clarke himself directly addressed the spelling issue in chapter 19 of The Lost Worlds of 2001, explaining that he simply (and unconsciously) used the spelling he was familiar with from The Conquest of Space (1949) by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell, presuming that the "J" form is the German rendering of the Greek.


2001: A Space Odyssey (novel), Release details
The film 2010 was released in 1984 resulting in movie tie-in editions of both the 2001 and 2010 novels. At the time Signet Books reported that over 2.8 million copies of 2001 were in print and that 2010 was one of 1983's top sellers with 300,000 hardcover copies and 1.75 million first paperback editions printed.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score)
The 2001: A Space Odyssey score is an unused film score composed by Alex North for Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Background
In the early stages of production, Kubrick had commissioned noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove, to write the score of his upcoming film 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, during post-production, Kubrick chose to abandon North's music in favor of classical music pieces he had earlier chosen as "guide pieces" for the soundtrack. North did not know of the abandonment of the score until after he saw the film's premiere screening.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Background
The world's first exposure to North's unused music was in 1993 via Telarc's issue of the main theme on Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, a compilation album by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. All the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varèse Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release but before North's death. Eventually, a mono mix-down of North's original recordings, which had survived in the interim, would be released as a limited edition CD by Intrada Records.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Background
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.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Background
North, unaware that Kubrick had decided not to use the score in his film, was "devastated" at the 1968 New York City premiere screening of 2001 not to hear his work, and later offered this account of his experience: "Well, what can I say? It was a great, frustrating experience, and despite the mixed reaction to the music, I think the Victorian approach with mid-European overtones was just not in keeping with the brilliant concept of Clarke and Kubrick."


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Background
The original three-track score masters had been kept at Anvil Studios in England as late as 1980, but were later erased when the Anvil facility closed. All that remained of the original tracks were mono fold down tapes kept by North's family.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Original theme music
Alex North's main title theme has a striking resemblance to the "Also sprach Zarathustra" piece that would eventually be used in the final film. The original theme was listed on North's original score sheet as "Bones." It would have been used three times in the film, once as the main title music, and again during the opening "Dawn of Man" sequence as an ape smashes skeletal remains (hence the score sheet's title), and finally at the end of the film during the "Starchild" scene.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Original theme music
This theme music made its public debut in early 1993 as part of the Telarc compilation CD Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, and there it was titled "Fanfare for 2001" (it would therefore be the world's first exposure to North's unused 2001 music). It would eventually be recycled by North for his later scores to Shanks, Dragonslayer and The Shoes of the Fisherman.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Jerry Goldsmith recording
Shortly after Telarc's release of the theme, the entire original North score was released to the public. Also in 1993, in the form of an entirely new recording produced and conducted by film composer Jerry Goldsmith, performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra and recorded from January 26 to January 30. It was released in CD format  from Varèse Sarabande Records, with the track list sequenced by co-producer Robert Tounson. CD cover art by . The final track, "Main Theme," was later discovered to belong not to 2001 but to an entirely different film project, the television documentary Africa.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Official original recording
In January 2007, Intrada Records issued 3000 copies of a limited edition CD featuring North's original recording of the score from 1968. The release was authorized by the family of North, the estate of Stanley Kubrick, Dylanna Music, North's music publishing company, and other entities (the film's current rights holder, Turner Entertainment, did not take part in this CD release). The album features nine tracks from the score, as well as an alternate version of the track "The Foraging." In addition, the album features three bonus tracks, all of additional takes of other tracks on the album.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Official original recording
The music is conducted by Henry Brant. Brant had helped North with the orchestration in 1967-68, as North had to be taken to the recording session in an ambulance due to muscle spasms and back pain brought on by the stress of completing the score. The CD also includes liner notes and precise cue points as to where the music would have been found in the film so that viewers can properly track these cues in sync with the DVD/Blu-ray.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Reception
In The Art of Film Music, George Burt found North's score outstanding and deemed Kubrick's decision to abandon it was "most unfortunate", even though his choice of classical music did have merit.


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Reception
On hearing the score as it might have been in the film, film scholar Gene D. Phillips argued that "it is difficult to see how North's music would have been an improvement on the background music that Kubrick finally chose for the film." Conversely, in his notes for the Jerry Goldsmith recording, Kevin Mulhall argued that "there is no doubt that 2001 would have been better if Kubrick had used North's music. Even if one likes some of the choices Kubrick made for certain individual scenes, the eclectic group of classical composers employed by the director... resulted in a disturbing melange of sounds and styles overall."


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Reception
Film critic Roger Ebert noted that North's rejected score contains emotional cues to the viewer while the final music selections exist outside the action, while uplifting it. With regard to the space docking sequence, Ebert stressed the peculiar combination of slowness and majesty resulting from the choice of Strauss's Blue Danube waltz, which brought "seriousness and transcendence" to the visuals. Speaking of the music generally, Ebert wrote:


2001: A Space Odyssey (score), Reception
When classical music is associated with popular entertainment, the result is usually to trivialize it (who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger?). Kubrick's film is almost unique in enhancing the music by its association with his images.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a soundtrack album to the film of the same name, released in 1968. The soundtrack is known for its use of many classical and orchestral pieces, and credited for giving many classical pieces resurgences in popularity, such as Johann Strauss II's 1866 Blue Danube Waltz, Richard Strauss' symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra (inspired by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche), and György Ligeti's Atmosphères. The soundtrack has been re-issued multiple times, including a digitally remastered version in 1996.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
From very early in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily nonverbal experience  that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during any scenes with dialogue.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
The film is notable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Most feature films then and now are typically accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written specially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, during postproduction, Kubrick chose to abandon North's music in favor of the now-familiar classical pieces he had earlier chosen as "guide pieces" for the soundtrack. North did not know of the abandonment of the score until after he saw the film's premiere screening.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
Also engaged to score the film was composer Frank Cordell. Cordell stated in interviews that the score would primarily consist of arrangements of Gustav Mahler works. This score remains unreleased. Like North's score, Cordell's work was recorded at the now demolished Anvil, Denham studios.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
2001 is particularly remembered for using pieces of Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, The Blue Danube, during the extended space-station docking and Lunar landing sequences. This is the result of the association that Kubrick made between the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes. It also makes use of the opening from the Richard Strauss tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra performed by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan. The use of Strauss's Zarathustra may be a reference to the theme of mankind's eventual replacement by overmen (Übermensch) in Nietzsche's work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Gayane's Adagio from Aram Khachaturian's Gayane ballet suite is heard during the sections that introduce Bowman and Poole aboard the Discovery, conveying a somewhat lonely and mournful quality.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
In addition to the majestic yet fairly traditional compositions by the two Strausses and Khachaturian, Kubrick used four highly modernistic compositions by György Ligeti that employ micropolyphony, the use of sustained dissonant chords that shift slowly. This technique was pioneered in Atmosphères, the only Ligeti piece heard in its entirety in the film. Ligeti admired Kubrick's film but, in addition to being irritated by Kubrick's failure to obtain permission directly from him, he was offended that his music was used in a film soundtrack shared by composers Johann Strauss II and Richard Strauss. Other music used is Ligeti's Lux Aeterna, the second movement of his Requiem and an electronically altered form of his Aventures, the last of which was also used without Ligeti's permission and is not listed in the film's credits.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
HAL's version of the popular song "Daisy Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) was inspired by a computer-synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories Murray Hill facility when he was, coincidentally, visiting friend and colleague John R. Pierce. At that time, a speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly Jr., by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell" ("Bicycle Built For Two"); Max Mathews provided the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later used it in the screenplay and novel.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
Many non-English language versions of the film do not use the song "Daisy". In the French soundtrack, HAL sings the French folk song "Au clair de la lune" while being disconnected. In the German version, HAL sings the children's song "Hänschen klein" ("Little Johnny"), and in the Italian version HAL sings "Giro giro tondo" (Ring a Ring o' Roses).


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
A recording of British light music composer Sidney Torch's "Off Beat Moods Part 1" was chosen by Kubrick as the theme for the fictitious BBC news programme "The World Tonight" seen aboard the Discovery.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
On June 25, 2010, a version of the film specially remastered by Warner Bros, without the music soundtrack, opened the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Royal Society at Southbank Centre in cooperation with the British Film Institute. The score was played live by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Choir. This has become a recurring event at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall, with repeat performances in 2011 and on October 2, 2016. These later two performances were played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and sung by the Philharmonia Choir, the latter as part of a more general programme of similar events entitled "Film Scores Live."


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
On June 14, 2013, a repeat presentation of the film accompanied by live orchestra and choir was performed at Symphony Hall in Birmingham, again accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Wallfisch together with the choir Ex Cathedra.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Background
A presentation of the film accompanied by live orchestra and choir premiered in the United States on August 18, 2015, at The Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California, accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Brad Lubman together with the choir Los Angeles Master Chorale.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
2001 is particularly remembered for the use of the opening theme from the Richard Strauss tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (Usually translated as "Thus Spake Zarathustra" or "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" where the soundtrack album gives the former, the movie's credits give the latter). The theme is used both at the start and at the conclusion of the film. Also memorable in the film is its use of parts of Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube), during the extended space-station docking. (Composers Richard and Johann Strauss are not related)


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
In addition to the majestic yet fairly traditional compositions by the two Strausses and Aram Khachaturian, Kubrick used four highly modernistic compositions by György Ligeti which employ micropolyphony, the use of sustained dissonant chords that shift slowly over time.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
This technique was pioneered in Atmosphères, the only Ligeti piece heard in its entirety in the film. Ligeti admired Kubrick's film, but in addition to being irritated by Kubrick's failure to obtain permission directly from him, he was offended that his music was used in a film soundtrack shared by composers Johann and Richard Strauss.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
The Richard and Johann Strauss pieces and György Ligeti's Requiem (the Kyrie section) act as recurring motifs in the film's storyline. Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra is first heard in the opening title which juxtaposes the Sun, Earth, and Moon. It is subsequently heard when an ape first learns to use a tool, and when Bowman is transformed into the Star-Child at the end of the film. Zarathustra thus acts as a bookend for the beginning and end of the film, and as a motif signifying evolutionary transformations, first from ape to man, then from man to Star-Child.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
This piece was originally inspired by the philosopher Nietzsche's book of the same name which alludes briefly to the relationship of ape to man and man to Superman. The Blue Danube appears in two intricate and extended space travel sequences as well as the closing credits. The first of these is the particularly famous sequence of the PanAm space plane docking at Space Station V. Ligeti's Requiem is heard three times, all of them during appearances of the monolith. The first is its encounter with apes just before the Zarathustra-accompanied ape discovery of the tool.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
The second is the monolith's discovery on the Moon, and the third is Bowman's approach to it around Jupiter just before he enters the Star Gate. This last sequence with the Requiem has much more movement in it than the first two, and it transitions directly into the music from Ligeti's Atmosphères which is heard when Bowman actually enters the Star Gate. No music is heard during the monolith's much briefer final appearance in Dave Bowman's celestial bedroom which immediately precedes the Zarathustra-accompanied transformation of Bowman into the Star-Child.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
A shorter excerpt from Atmosphères is heard during the pre-credits prelude and film intermission, which are not in all copies of the film. "Gayaneh's Adagio" from Aram Khatchaturian's Gayane ballet is heard during the sections that introduce Bowman and Poole aboard the Discovery conveying a somewhat lonely and mournful quality. Other music used is Ligeti's Lux Aeterna and an electronically altered form of his Aventures, the last of which was also used without Ligeti's permission and is not listed in the film's credits.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Music
Since the film, Also sprach Zarathustra has been used in many other contexts. It was used by the BBC and by CTV in Canada as the introductory theme music for their television coverage of the Apollo space missions, as well as stage entrance music for multiple acts including Elvis Presley later in his career (1971-1977). Jazz and rock variants of the theme have also been composed, the most well known being the 1972 arrangement by Eumir Deodato (itself used in the 1979 film Being There). Both Zarathustra and The Blue Danube have been used in numerous parodies of both the film itself and science fiction/space travel stories in general. HAL's "Daisy Bell" also has been frequently used in the comedy industry to denote both humans and machines in an advanced stage of madness.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Album release
The initial MGM soundtrack album release contained none of the material from the altered and uncredited rendition of "Aventures", used a different recording of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" than that heard in the film, and a longer excerpt of "Lux Aeterna" than that in the film. The soundtrack was a commercial success, reaching the 24th spot at the Billboard 200, and receiving a RIAA certification of Gold for an excess of 500,000 copies.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Album release
In 1996, Turner Entertainment/Rhino Records released a new soundtrack on CD which included the material from "Aventures" and restored the version of "Zarathustra" used in the film, and used the shorter version of "Lux Aeterna" from the film. As additional "bonus tracks" at the end, this CD includes the versions of "Zarathustra" and "Lux Aeterna" on the old MGM soundtrack, an unaltered performance of "Aventures", and a nine-minute compilation of all of Hal's dialogue from the film.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Album release
Citing John Culshaw's autobiography Putting the Record Straight, the Internet Movie Database explains


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Album release
The end music credits do not list a conductor and orchestra for "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Stanley Kubrick wanted the Herbert von Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic version on English Decca for the film's soundtrack, but Decca executives did not want their recording "cheapened" by association with the movie, and so gave permission on the condition that the conductor and orchestra were not named. After the movie's successful release, Decca tried to rectify its blunder by re-releasing the recording with an "As Heard in 2001" flag printed on the album cover. John Culshaw recounts the incident in "Putting the Record Straight" (1981)... In the meantime, MGM released the "official soundtrack" L.P. with Karl Böhm's Berlin Philharmonic "Also Sprach Zarathustra" discreetly substituting for von Karajan's version.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Unused score
In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, during post-production, Kubrick chose to abandon North's music in favor of the now-familiar classical music pieces he had earlier chosen as "guide pieces" for the soundtrack. North did not know of the abandonment of the score until he saw the film's premiere screening.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Unused score
In March 1966, MGM became concerned about 2001's progress and Kubrick put together a show reel of footage to the ad hoc 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.


2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack), Unused score
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.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture
In popular culture, Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey has had a significant impact in such diverse cultural forms and media as film, literature, music and technology.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on film
The influence of 2001 on subsequent filmmakers is considerable. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and others, including many special effects technicians, discuss the impact the film has had on them in a featurette titled Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001, included in the 2007 DVD release of the film. Spielberg calls it his film generation's "big bang", while Lucas says it was "hugely inspirational", labeling Kubrick as "the filmmaker's filmmaker". Sydney Pollack refers to it as "groundbreaking", and William Friedkin states 2001 is "the grandfather of all such films".


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on film
George Lucas provided a high appraisal of Kubrick's direction of the film stating: "Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned. On a technical level, it can be compared, but personally I think that '2001' is far superior."


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on film
At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott stated he believed 2001 was the unbeatable film that in a sense killed the science fiction genre. Similarly, film critic Michel Ciment in his essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" stated, "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete." However, others credit 2001 with opening up a market for films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner and Contact; proving that big-budget "serious" science-fiction films can be commercially successful, and establishing the "sci-fi blockbuster" as a Hollywood staple. Science magazine Discover's blogger Stephen Cass, discussing the considerable impact of the film on subsequent science-fiction, writes that "the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000, and the ultimate alien artifact, the Monolith, have all become enduring cultural icons in their own right."


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on film
Visual references to 2001 (including to HAL 9000), are present in both the original Star Wars film and the concluding episode, The Rise of Skywalker. The depiction of hyperspace in the original film was specifically influenced by the psychedelic visual in 2001.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on media
One commentator has suggested that the image of the Star Child and Earth has contributed to the rise of the "whole Earth" icon as a symbol of the unity of humanity. Writing in The Asia Pacific Journal Robert Jacobs traces the history of this icon from early cartoons and drawings of Earth to photographs of Earth from early space missions, to its historic appearance on the cover of The Whole Earth Catalog. Noting that images of the entire planet recur several times in A Space Odyssey, Jacobs writes:


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on media
The most dramatic use of the icon was in the film's conclusion. In this scene ... Bowman is reborn as the Star Child ... depicted as a fetus floating in space in an amniotic sac. The Star Child turns to consider the Whole Earth floating in front of it, both glowing a bright blue-white. The two appear as newborn versions of Man and Earth, face-to-face, ready to be born into a future of unthinkable possibilities.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on technology
In August 2011, in response to Apple Inc.'s patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung, the latter argued that Apple's iPad was effectively modeled on the visual tablets that appear aboard spaceship Discovery in the Space Odyssey film, which constitute prior art.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on technology
"Siri", Apple's natural language voice control system for the iPhone 4S, features a reference to the film: it responds "I'm sorry I can't do that" when asked to "open the pod bay doors". When asked repeatedly, it may say, "Without your space helmet, you're going to find this rather... breathtaking.".


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on technology
The iPhone 6 version also included some references to HAL: initially, when the user said it was "good", it sometimes repeated what HAL says to the BBC interviewer about himself, then, when the user asked her to search information about HAL, it said that "We all know what happened to HAL..." or, later, that "at least, he was good at singing".


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Influence on technology
Inspired by Clarke's visual tablet device, in 1994 a European Commission-funded R&D project code named "NewsPAD" developed and pilot tested a portable 'multimedia viewer' aiming for the realisation of an electronic multimedia 'newspaper' pointing the way to a future fully interactive and highly personalised information source. Involved partners were Acorn RISC Technologies UK, Archimedes GR, Carat FR, Ediciones Primera Plana ES, Institut Català de Tecnologia ES, and TechMAPP UK.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Sequels
Kubrick did not envision a sequel to 2001. Fearing the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet), he ordered all sets, props, miniatures, production blueprints, and prints of unused scenes destroyed. Most of these materials were lost, with some exceptions: a 2001 spacesuit backpack appeared in the "Close Up" episode of the Gerry Anderson series UFO, and one of HAL's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of Hal's Legacy, David G. Stork. In 2012 Lockheed engineer Adam Johnson, working with Frederick I. Ordway III, science adviser to Kubrick, wrote the book 2001: The Lost Science, which for the first time featured many of the blueprints of the spacecraft and film sets that previously had been thought destroyed.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Sequels
Clarke wrote three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). The only filmed sequel, 2010, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel and was released in 1984. Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which was directed by Peter Hyams in a more conventional style with more dialogue. Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel, and had a brief cameo appearance in the film. As Kubrick had ordered all models and blueprints from 2001 destroyed, Hyams was forced to recreate these models from scratch for 2010. Hyams also claimed that he would not have made the film had he not received both Kubrick's and Clarke's blessings:


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Sequels
I had a long conversation with Stanley and told him what was going on. If it met with his approval, I would do the film; and if it didn't, I wouldn't. I certainly would not have thought of doing the film if I had not gotten the blessing of Kubrick. He's one of my idols; simply one of the greatest talents that's ever walked the Earth. He more or less said, "Sure. Go do it. I don't care." And another time he said, "Don't be afraid. Just go do your own movie."


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Sequels
The other two novels have not been adapted for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks has expressed interest in possible adaptations.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Sequels
In 2012, two screenplay adaptations of both 2061 and 3001 were posted on the 2001:Exhibit website, in the hopes of generating interest in both MGM and Warner Bros. to adapt the last two novels into films.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Comics adaptations
René Bratonne made a French newspaper comic adaptation of this film, assisted by Pierre Leguen, Claude Pascal and his son, who worked under the pseudonym Jack de Brown.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Comics adaptations
Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published a comic adaptation of the film written and drawn by Jack Kirby, and a 10-issue monthly series expanding on the ideas of the film and novel, also created by Kirby.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Parodies and homages
2001 has been the frequent subject of both parody and homage, sometimes extensively and other times briefly, employing both its distinctive music and iconic imagery.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Parodies and homages, 50th anniversary celebration
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the film's release, an exhibit called “The Barmecide Feast” opened on April 8, 2018 in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The exhibit features a fully realized, full-scale reflection of the iconic, neo-classical hotel room from the penultimate scene in the film.


2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture, Parodies and homages, Utah monolith
In 2020, a metallic pillar of unknown origin was discovered in Utah. It has been compared to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.


2001: A Space Road Odyssey
2001: A Space Road Odyssey is a 2001 Canadian television series that aired on Space channel. It documented a three-month journey across Canada in search for the paranormal. It was hosted by videographer Natasha Eloi and voiceover personality Steve Anthony.


2001: A Space Road Odyssey
This article about a television show originating in Canada is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .


2001: A Space Road Odyssey
This article related to a reality television program is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .


2001: A Space Travesty
2001: A Space Travesty is a 2000 sci-fi comedy film directed by Allan A. Goldstein and starring Leslie Nielsen, Ophélie Winter, Peter Egan, and Ezio Greggio. The film has a few sequences parodying elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but is not focused on parodying that film alone. Filming took place in Los Angeles, California.


2001: A Space Travesty, Plot
Marshal Richard "Dick" Dix, a special detective, saves a fast food chain restaurant from a terrorist hostage situation, much to the displeasure of the police chief. He drives away and back to the police station, where he meets his boss, who is with a police worker, Cassandra Menage. She retells her experience of the cloning of the President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, who remains unnamed throughout the film.


2001: A Space Travesty, Plot
Dix is sent to the cloning facility, a Moon base called Vegan. He causes a mayhem on the way there, reaches Vegan and is met by Lt. Bradford Shitzu at the security check. On the way to meet the main suspect in the cloning, Dr. Griffin Pratt, Dix experiences strange happenings throughout the colony involving certain Aliens who live there.


2001: A Space Travesty, Plot
During a very strange incident involving an Alien about to explode, Dix meets Capt. Valentino DiPasquale, with whom he will share his quarters. Dix and Shitzu get to Dr. Pratt's quarters, and talk to him. Shitzu leaves, and Pratt takes Dix on a tour of his cloning facility. While on the tour, he meets Dr. Uschi Künstler, with whom he takes the elevator to meet Ms. Menage. Dr. Künstler deserts the two, and they make their way to a party where the suspects may be.


2001: A Space Travesty, Plot
Pratt and Menage have dinner, while Dix has a bizarre escapade with Pratt's toupe. He leaves the party and goes to his quarters with Valentino. There he shows him his huge array of disguises. Dix gets a phone call from Ms. Menage that they are about to raid Pratt's quarters. Dix destroys his Vegan model and spreads paint all over the place. Then he stumbles on the radio, and it starts playing the cancan very loudly.


2001: A Space Travesty, Plot
Pratt comes back to his room, only to discover that Dix escaped. He goes to his apartment and threatens him. Dix tells Menage, and soon enough, Menage gets abducted by Pratt's goons. Pratt pretends to help Dix find the President and rescue Ms. Menage, but Pratt's goons trap them. Ms. Menage uses her martial arts skills, and the President, Dix, and Menage escape back to Earth. The President they rescued is then replaced with the president in the White House, and suddenly Dix finds out that he put the clone in the White House.