Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey machines". Kubrick was also confronted with the fact that, during the production of the film, the US and USSR had agreed not to put any nuclear weapons into outer space by signing the Outer Space Treaty. Alexander Walker in a book he wrote with Kubrick's assistance and authorisation, states that Kubrick eventually decided that as nuclear weapons the bombs had "no place at all in the film's thematic development", now being an "orbiting red herring" which would "merely have raised irrelevant questions to suggest this as a reality of the twenty-first century". In the Canadian TV documentary "2001 and Beyond",
2001: A Space Odyssey (film) Times" wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring." "Variety"'s 'Robe' believed the film was a "[b]ig, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic ... 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