2001: A Space Odyssey (film) as a pessimistic account of human nature and humanity's future. The most extreme of these interpretations state that the fetus floating above the Earth will destroy it." Many of the cataclysmic interpretations of the film appeared inspired by Kubrick's direction of the Cold War film "Dr. Strangelove" just before "2001", which resulted in dark speculation about the use of 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 fetus) destroyed Earth, perhaps for the purpose of creating a new
Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey as "orbiting satellites carrying nuclear weapons" Actor Gary Lockwood (astronaut Frank Poole) in the audio DVD commentary says the first satellite is an armed weapon, making the famous match-cut from bone to satellite a "weapon-to-weapon cut". Several recent reviews of the film mostly of the DVD release refer to armed satellites, possibly influenced by Gary Lockwood's audio commentary. A few published works by scientists on the subject of space exploration or space weapons tangentially discuss "2001: A Space Odyssey" and assume at least some of the orbiting satellites are space weapons. Indeed, details worked out with input from space industry