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2001: A Space Odyssey Reaction! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-09-01 15:34:12
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Back from break! Thank you truly for all the support when I was away.

Files

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Full Reaction You can either stream the Full reaction below using the embedded video player, otherwise you can click the 'Download' button which will take you directly to Google Drive, enabling you to save the video to your computer instead. You must provide your own footage to watch alongside the full reactions.

Comments

Joe Crammond

welcome back, hope you enjoyed your break, super excited for upcoming reactions, especially doctor who and hopefully wednesday season 2

Anthony Peterson

Great to have you back! I just started watching Wednesday season 1, I'll have to go back and catch your reactions. Also excited for you to see classic Who through to the end

Geordie Joe

Welcome back Jess. I hope you had a nice time on your break. This is another great Stanley Kubrick movie. It made me wonder if you've seen one of his best movies The Shining or not. I'm guessing that you probably have but if not, then I know what my next movie suggestion is going to be.

Elisia

Welcome back! I hope your break was exactly what you needed, and you got to take full advantage of it! We’ve all missed you, and are glad you are back!

Lucas

Back with my favourite film of all time :D Hope you had a great break, excited to get back into things with your reactions

Josef Schiltz

Hello Jess! Hope that you had a really good break. What a nice surprise on a rainy Suffolk afternoon.

Josef Schiltz

Unfortunately, although an MP4, read this upon downloading the edited version. "Missing CODEC. This item was encoded in a format that's not supported."

Ian Smith

The world seems divided on whether this is the greatest science fiction film ever made, or the most boring. I'm in the former camp, but I can see the naysayers point - despite my appreciation, it's a film I tend not to look at too often; as it's quite demanding to watch,and often very bleak - but,my God,it's stunningly made.

Lucas

You definitely understood the film with the thingies (monoliths) being the progress of human evolution, not everyone seems to manage to catch it at first. Totally agree about a lot of shots looking like paintings too, but an even more beautiful looking film by Kubrick for me is Barry Lyndon which is full of shots that just look exactly like some artwork from the period it's set in so I'd give that one a big recommendation if you've not seen it before.

Thomas Corp

Welcome back, Jess. Hell of a thing to have this be the final thing to film before a break. Then again, my last real trip anywhere, I rewatched Blade Runner 2049 hours before hitting the road. On the back of my blu-ray copy of this is the quote from Roger Ebert that succinctly sums the film up, as Roger often did, the quote being, “2001 is not concerned with thrilling us, but inspiring us with awe.” Risking crucifixion by saying that this is not in my top five Kubrick pictures. Nor, for that matter, is it in my top five of 1968, though it is in my top ten of the year, and to be fair, the year is crowded. As mentioned last month, the quote from Spielberg about how Kubrick films tend to grow on you. Spielberg himself cites The Shining as an example of how he was not overly fond of it initially, and it has hence become one of his favorite pictures. I, myself, list this film as the chief example. In my experience, I’ve had an instant love for each Kubrick film, except for this one. I struggled when I first saw it about sixteen years ago now. This one took a few years for it to grow on me. And I hear you on the foreknowledge helping given the bad burnout you were going through at the time you filmed this. You and I roughly match as to what we knew going into this one. Figured this film would trigger the claustrophobia a mite. Laughed how you called the one scene with that. You speak well of one of its most enduring legacies is the visuals. Six decades hence and the visuals still pack the punch; one can only imagine how audiences back then reacted. Beauty and haunting nature is a fair description. The influence had on George Lucas for Star Wars is apparent. So, I see the copy you have doesn’t have the word “overture” at the first bit. My blu-ray copy doesn’t have that either, so not to worry. It’s also missing the word “entr’acte” following the intermission, even though the word “intermission” is featured. Which is odd. Your reaction to those parts of the film gave me good Motionless Picture flashbacks, and I got a good laugh. Always a pleasure to see a fellow film viewer rocking out to Also Sprach Zarathustra, which, yes, is fairly well associated with this film, to the point that most know the homages are connected to this film, even if they haven’t seen the film itself. It is likewise lovely to see you dance to the Blue Danube, which that should make an interesting age test of do people associate the piece with 2001 or Squid Game. I still maintain that the Shostakovich waltz would have been a more appropriate selection for Squid Game, but they probably thought it too overt a Kubrickian reference. Good point on the nightmare, copyright-wise if this was a youtube upload. Lot of shouting in the first part of the film. It’s sort of like congress, like you said. The opening dawn of man sequence does put you off at first, yes. Gets parodied a lot, for instance, Barbie had the pitch perfect homage, which immediately told me that I would love that film. If 2001 does not hold the record for longest period of time into a film before even one word of dialogue is spoken, it is in the running for that, yes. Watching it again last week, yeah, it does strike you how it takes its time before the plot kicks off in earnest. Love your observation on the zero-gravity toilet, and how it would be something if you really had to go. Leading you to say it’s a mess, making me chime in with, “...Literally.” moments before you said that which was great.

Thomas Corp

Bringing us to the other enduring legacy: HAL9000, my favorite character of the film. I know, big shock and horror that my favorite is the villain. Damn good villain. Gene Siskel listed HAL as perhaps his favorite film villain; I think he said it was between HAL and Mr. Potter. It seemed likely you’d know at least something about HAL. Most everyone anymore goes into this with some measure of knowledge that HAL is Bad News Bears as you put it. I would imagine that even if one goes into this not knowing about HAL, shows like Black Mirror would result in people being on guard with HAL more than viewers way back when. Terrific how there is the ambiguity of when HAL’s villainous nature started, and of course, many viewers ponder if HAL grew beyond his programing, if he gained sentience and a soul. Which: Those are two different questions. One is practical and the other, well, that’s the real existential crux. Love the comments you made about the voice work of Douglas Rain as our dear HAL. Adored the reaction to the lip-reading scene. HAL’s scene with cutting the life support is terrifying. Not one fuck. Is given. By HAL. You are correct on that one, Jess. Funny thing about the iconic line that HAL has is that my mom’s more familiar with it due to my quoting it a fair amount more than being familiar with it from the film itself. Your ultimate reaction to said line was the best part of the reaction, or, at least, my favorite part of the reaction. Kubrick shows his skill for black comedy as I loved HAL’s lines getting the laughs from you. Great how you talked about how HAL should not fight back against Dave too much, and just accept what was to happen to him. How you tried to impart to HAL that he need not be afraid of his impending death since, as has been said, “It’s just a moment. We’re here. Then we’re not here. We’re somewhere else... maybe. And it’s as natural as breathing. Why should we be scared?” Though HAL dies afraid, reiterating the message where he talks about being manufactured in Urbana, a line that got big cheers from students of U of I, as the stories from the seventies that I’ve heard have told me. The Daisy scene is quite legendary. Then there’s the rather infamous ending where we go to plaid. I assure you that lots of people ignored your advice to refrain from hard drugs when watching that last bit. You say, “I got no notion as to what I’m watching.” which you add that you surmise is the point, that is something of a shared experience with most everyone on the first viewing, and probably several viewings hence. Your surmise is simpatico with most everyone’s consensus view of it initially. That Dave is transported off somewhere and essentially experiences time all at once. How that happens and to what purposes, that is the 64,000-dollar question that the film provides no answer. Only concrete thing gathered is that it ties to the monolith. Er, the thingy, as you called it, which, knowing Kubrick’s sense of humor, I think he’d have gotten an appreciative chuckle at that. I can’t speak to the Lynchian of it all, Twin Peaks-wise, though what you describe is very believable. The ending is heavily homaged. Two of the film’s cinematic, children, I guess is the word to use, being Contact and Interstellar, which you’ve already reacted to. I got strong vibes of this in the 73 Yards episode of Doctor Who. I don’t blame you in the slightest for being flabbergasted, gobsmacked by the ending. Curious to hear that you knew the image of the space baby. All in all, a great reaction, Jess. You spoke of potentially cinephiles possibly coming for you at spots. The concern had crossed my mind, more so given how you speak of the sort of response you can get in comments when people seem to want reactors to understand everything right away. That is impossible with this film. I knew that this would be a film that could have gone either way for you. Say you ended up being on the more negative side, I wouldn’t have held it against you. Setting aside how my doing that would be hypocritical, this is arguably a beauty for this film how it just sits with you, making you go back to it, and again, as Spielberg says how Kubrick films grow on you. So, again, hell of a film to see before break. Hopefully you got in some lighter viewing over your break. In any event, a great first reaction back, Jess, thank you.

Ryan

Wonderful to see you again, and I hope the time off was everything you needed. Personally, I spent that time in a descent into madness over a seemingly innocent and wholesome old-timey kids' movie called Skippy. If anyone's seen it, and I hope you haven't, you probably have a good idea why. I was a bit apprehensive seeing this movie on the list, because if there was ever a film specifically designed to wreck any attempt to do an interesting reaction video, it's this one, and I've seen several very fun and engaging reactors be defeated by it. But you very much made it a good time. A big part of that is because (and I'm very surprised this doesn't come up more often when discussing this film) what you're seeing isn't a complete product. Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke designed it as a movie and novel that would be perfectly complimentary to each other, Clarke laying out the logistics in prose so Kubrick could focus purely on the visuals and the required effects. I didn't know this when I picked up the book in high school before seeing the film, but it certainly added a lot to when I did see it, and now that you've got one down I highly recommend you finish the package. Another unavoidable part of watching this movie is that, just like The Godfather, there have been so many homages and parodies of its entire length that it's easy to just slip into a non-stop "So that's where that's from." And I make no promises for refraining from those. So we start out with present day Congress as you put it, though I'd say everyone masturbating after Orson Welles tries to make it sound serious and important is even closer. And Kubrick already starts on providing images just as indelible as Slim Pickens on the bomb, with the birth of homo sapiens through better means of killing each other. Thanks, monolith. Now they're all free to evolve to creating the first marriage, followed soon after by the first homosexual marriage, plus the birth of art, and the inevitable afterbirth, the critic. At least until they're all wiped out by the hot dog finger people. And concluded with the greatest match cut ever as a bone turns into a spaceship, humanity evolving to its highest form but still having that primitive violence with them. This is the director who ended his last movie by blowing up the whole world, after all. And then it's time to break out the William Sylvester Trivial Pursuit, because William Sylvester's here as Dr. Heywood Floyd, who's really come up in the world after the mess he made of the Gorgo situation. This section is where you have to really remind yourself of the time when this was made, the Apollo project just starting to recover from the disastrous first attempt and even 8's circling of the moon still a few months away. So what might seem unbearably slow to us is to let audiences of the time have their minds blown by the effects of floating pens and turning upside-down in a hamster wheel. The convenient thing is it gives you plenty of time to voice your ideas of what's going on, plus appreciate the effects, and I'm here for all of it. You also have to dig the toilet instructions; Ron Howard says in the Apollo 13 commentary that he made sure to include a scene showing how that works in space because it's the one question that astronauts ALWAYS get, and I'm sure it was very much on the mind of the public at the time. And now to the big thing everyone remembers the movie for, HAL-9000 (and if you were wondering, Clarke maintained to the grave that it wasn't intentional the name is one letter down from IBM, despite them having their own product placement). At least 80% of his effectiveness is the marvelous voice work from Douglas Rain, and it wasn't surprising to hear that you'd probably be very unsettled by that velvet monotone even if you didn't know where this is going. We also finally meet Keir Dullea Gone Tomorrow as the closest thing to a main character, who it's not exactly surprising didn't go on to a bigger career after how this role mostly just asks him to respond stoically to everything, but he still becomes pretty engaging despite it, and is still alive and working, turning up in the most unexpected places like that Halo show. And he's got Gary Mitchell backing him up, which should be fine unless some explosion gives him god powers...oh crap. This whole section is the most "mainstream" the movie gets, and the slow pace adds quite a bit to the steadily building tension. From what I understand, the trope of an AI going rogue was already a very popular sci-fi idea, but few made it as disturbing as this from all sides, both the humans realizing how screwed they are and HAL remaining totally inscrutable even as he begs for his life. We start with the tonal whiplash of Gary flying through space in a panic after how sedate everything else has been (that'll teach you to get Kirk's middle initial wrong), and even never actually meeting them, the idea that the three other crew members went into stasis with no idea they'd never come out is really haunting, and on first viewing I nearly had to shut it off as their precious bodily fluids are slowly drained away. But Dave manages to come out on top, and the next time we see HAL he's blathering on about cloning a new leader from the old one's nose. Or running Chell through a bunch of portal tests, your choice. Well, that was fun, but now on to the most confusing part of all, which cinephiles have been struggling to comprehend for decades. It's something about human evolution, and how the next step after it helped us come up with weapons might be back to a simpler form (thankfully done much better than Paris and Janeway becoming lizards), and even the book isn't much help. But at least it all looks really neat, and the film does have a sequel, 2010, that spells some things out, which is naturally pretty controversial but I think it's pretty good and would make for a fine reaction itself (it's also the true source of the line "My god, it's full of stars" in case you were wondering where that was). This is another of those movies I respect more than really like, and having seen it you probably understand it's not exactly something you casually throw on. But I'm very glad it exists, and provided so much inspiration to other artists. And I just hope there isn't too much tonal whiplash going into next month's movie, but don't worry, the fall will probably kill you.

Andrew Vignaux

"Open the pod bay doors please, HAL", Dave Bowman, "2001: A Space Odyssey" Thanks for your reaction. This is an important movie. And it is important to lots of important movie makers. Tom Hanks, has famously said he has seen it over 120 times - and qualifies it by stating exactly how many time he has seen it projected in a theater. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going.", HAL, "2001: A Space Odyssey" I have seen it about 16 times - 3 projected. I first saw the film when my Dad took me to see it when I was eight or ten or something - it was either that or going to a football game. I don't know how much of the film I understood - but I recall feeling very upset when HAL was shutdown. I think telling people what one thinks the meaning of this movie - will influence what *they* think of the movie. So I won't do that. I'll just list some trivial thoughts that occurred to me while watching it with you. The film wasn't nominated for "Best Picture" although it did win "Best Special Visual Effects". BTW: The original "Planet of the Apes" won a special award for makeup achievement for their ape makeup - of course we had ape makeup in this one too - 1968 was an important year for ape makeup in SF. The special visual effects were groundbreaking. Douglas Trumbull was special effects supervisor on the film. And he later worked with John Dykstra and Dykstra went on to do "Star Wars" and he worked with ... This film is influential in pop culture - from references in Pixar films like "Wall-E" to "The Simpsons" - if you hear the "Thus Spake Zarathustra" music, there's probably a 2001 reference visible on the screen. A space pod like the one that Dave and Frank used to fly around Discovery, is seen in a junkyard in "Star Wars - Episode 1" if you look really hard. BTW: the overture at the beginning (and after the intermission - you're meant to eat a snack during the intermission) was not unknown for movies in this period - "Lawrence of Arabia" and "My Fair Lady" spring to mind, although the latter being originally a musical had an overture for the theater production anyway. And how about that film cut from the bone flying in the air - to the craft in orbiting the Earth! And then playing the "The Blue Danube" waltz against the orbiting craft as the Pan Am spacecraft comes into dock at the space station is wonderful. However the film didn't predict that Pan Am would fold in 1991. Personal "The Blue Danube" anecdote: I was on an overnight long-haul flight years ago and the music they were playing through the earphones on one of the plane's audio channels during takeoff was "The Blue Danube" - I was swept away by recalling this movie while we accelerated into the sky. "Here you are, sir.", Aries-1B Stewardess, "2001: A Space Odyssey" We certainly waited a while for the first line of the movie. And we had to wait almost an hour for HAL to appear too. The film makes you wait! I always recognise two of the actors playing the Russian scientists that Floyd meets on the space station. Leonard Rossiter plays the scientist who asks about the situation at Clavius. Leonard is best known to me for his lead role in a British TV comedy series "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin". Margaret Tyzack plays Elena, Floyd's friend. She is best known to me for her role in the famous BBC "I, Claudius" TV series. She was also in "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles". I don't know if I recognize anyone else in the film. The Zero Gravity toilet instructions are fun! The song "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)" that HAL knows (knew) was the first song sung by computer generated speech in 1961 - and this film references that. "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.", HAL, "2001: A Space Odyssey" I have now seen this film around 17 times - still a bit less than Tom Hanks.

Hemdian

First, if you have an Apple device with Siri, try asking it to "Open the pod bay doors." Try asking a few times. Second, you might like to check out the sequel "2010". It's a more conventional film, but it does give one interpretation of what "2001" was about.

James Fish

Great to have you back Jess & I hope you had a well earned rest. Definitely going to have to invest in the DVD so I can watch along to this! I have an Incredibly strange memory attached to this. I recall waking up many years ago from having the most surreal dream and thinking WTF did I just dream about, whereby the end part of this film had played out exactly as can be seen. While I don't as such recall having seen it prior to having that dream, I guess I must have done & it might have been my brains attempt to make sense of it! Absolutely love this film even though I struggle to get my head around the exact meaning of it! I often listen to the full version of the Blue Danube to de-stress. The sequel is pretty good too. So far it's the only one of three sequels Arthur C Clarke wrote in this series, the others being 2061 and 3001.

Josef Schiltz

Jess. Really look into checking out the sequel 2010. It's brilliant.