2001: A Space Odyssey (film) essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" wrote, "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete." 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
2001: A Space Odyssey (film) in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio. The general release of the film in its 35mm anamorphic format took place in autumn 1968 and used either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural soundtrack. 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