Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Watch Along (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-31 17:30:01
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

I am still processing this film. I watched it late last night and now Im in this deep philosophical trance. hahah. Please excuse my rambling outro but that is what is to be expected after such a thought provoking film. I can't wait to hear all your interpretations of this film as I am still fresh with one watch to have as much insight as all of you!

That all being said. Of course this is on the AFI list (#15). The technological aspects of filming this, the concept, the philosophical depth and how this would have made an impact in society in 1968. I could see people loving and hating it because they didn't "get it". But, that's what great filmmakers do. They leave a lasting impression on you for the rest of your life.

Leave everything down below. I want fun facts, facts, your thoughts and all of what you know about this film!

xx

ames

Files

2001: A Space Odyssey Watch Along

Comments

pickupthepieces

OMG, racing home. Will HAL aka IBM win this time. 😁

Toc

First! I have had the worst morning, this is exactly what I need. The soothing sounds of Strauss, the visuals of Kubrick, and the commentary of Ames!! :D See you on the other side! Literally! Let's go on a space odyssey!

RFK Fan

Your a child of the CGI generation Ames.. Can you imagine seeing this in the theatre in 1968? I remember my Dad taking us to see it during a re-release in the mid-70's and WALKING OUT. It's a masterpiece no question and still poses many theoretical questions to us even today. What is the monolith? When you talk about groundbreaking films this has to be at the top. The special effects were the catalyst to John Dykstra and ILM for Star Wars just a few years later. It's a movie lovers movie but not one I would bring a date to....

AJ

Thanks for another great week of content. I have anxiety for you trying to turn the two lists of nominations into polls. Have a nice weekend.

Jeffrey Schmidbauer

The monolith is the key. It was created by an intelligent life "off the Earth" to guide and aid mankind in his evolution as a species. Each encounter with the monolith advances man's intelligence famously depicted with that cut edit from a bone thrown into the air to a "bone-shaped" spacecraft flying through space. In the third segment, "Beyond Jupiter and the Infinite", Astronaut Dave Bowman slides into a time portal or wormhole to another part of the galaxy and lands on the alien planet that supplied the monolith. There Bowman is nurtured and cared for by the aliens who are never seen. Time passes at an incredible rate while Bowman lives there as if in a cage in a zoo. He eventually dies but is reborn and evolved into a new advanced life form and is returned to Earth by the aliens. The movie ends with the question, "What will happen next?" Anyway, that's my interpretation of the movie.

Jeffrey Schmidbauer

Trivia tidbits about 2001: A Space Odyssey: 1. No dialogue is spoken in the first 20 or so minutes of the movie. 2. "Squirt", the young girl on the telephone is actually director Stanley Kubrick's daughter. She will make small cameo appearances in most of his succeeding movies. (Blink and you'll miss her!) 3. HAL is rumored to be a playful acronym for IBM. (H-I, A-B, L-M) 4. The movie is based on Arthur C. Clarke's, "The Sentinel". He also co-wrote the script with Kubrick. 5. The breath sounds you hear while the astronauts are in their spacesuits are actually from Stanley Kubrick breathing into a mike during post-production. 6. Gary Lockwood who played Frank Poole in 2001, previously starred in another Sci-Fi program: Star Trek, (the original series). He was in the second pilot episode: "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

Jeffrey Schmidbauer

FYI, you're probably wondering why there was three minutes of black with sound effects at the beginning of the movie. Back in the 60s, people would smoke in the lobby and get their treats waiting for the movie to start. Once they heard the sound effects or theme music, the patrons were given time to find their seat before the movie began.

Toc

Hey Ames!!!!! Listen, I know this movie can be homework, or it can be heaven, depending on the time or place, or frame of mind, But that was fantastic! Girl, you got it 100%! You got it more than lots do on their first watch! Right to the very ending, "he's the next step in intelligence", etc etc. To answer your question: Planet Of The Apes and 2001 opened THE SAME DAY in 1968! They had different premieres, but they opened in theatres the same day. I always joke "Planet Of THe Apes" is actually a sequel to 2001! The monolith gives the Earth back to the apes. 😁 You were totally on the money about the ship looking phallic, and about noticing faces on the helmets or on the spaceships. The humans are the machines, and the machines are the humans! HAL is the most human character! Ok, I promised myself I wouldn't write too much. (PS: I even got a mention! For the record, yeah, this is THE psychedelic movie of all time, I can attest to that. And if you ever get a chance to see it in 70mm, on a big screen, you know what to do! Just get a designated driver! 🤣 (just kidding!) THANK YOU, AMES! And congratulations!

Jeffrey Schmidbauer

The rotating space station creates artificial gravity by using centrifugal force.

Toc

And yeah, the monolith: is it God? Is it alien intelligence? I think you were right on the money about the monolith studying him ( a human zoo is sometimes what it's referred to). I totally agree about seeing organs and blood and human stuff in the abstract "stargate" sequence, I always thought that, so cool you pointed that out!

Paddy Thompson

This was sooo much fun! Ames you hit the nail on the head with this one. well done! This is history right here! It's because of this film that we have the works of Spielberg, Lucas, Nolan, Villeneuve.... okay I'm full on geeking out right now! I'll just come out and say it: Who needs drugs when you've got Stanley Kubrick films am I right??!!! 🤣🤣🤣

Chill

I am three minutes in and already I will never see the shot of the sun cresting over the Earth the same way again 🤣

Paddy Thompson

So for me it’s a film about the next step in evolution, and the human race essentially being Guinea pigs for a higher intelligence, and HAL being the pitfalls of humanity’s attempt a creating higher intelligence.

Justtired

I first watched this film when I was 10 (which was too young to appreciate it) and then later we broke it down in film school. While I respect it a great deal and love Kubrick, it’s never been a favorite for me. It’s one of those AFI 100 films I look at with a shoulder shrug. However, watching it with you was quite fun. You bring something different to your reactions I can’t quite explain. As always, I look forward to the next one.

Andrew Roach

A small tidbit, you mentioned how they could pour actual liquid into a cup on the moon bus ride. Unlike in space where it is zero g, there is gravity on the moon, it is far less than on earth but the moon still does have gravity so liquids would still pour into a cup, albeit slowly. As someone else touched on, unlike normal sci fi movies where in space there is gravity thanks to "artificial gravity" this movie was scientifically accurate in portraying gravity in space using spinning and centrifugal force. Now I am no expect but in my laymen understanding imagine a cylinder, a pop can perhaps, in space. Spin it lengthwise, if you were small and in that can you be pressed against the spinning interior wall... hence artificial gravity. In the movie they actually built huge sets that were circular and actually spun around, in essence a hamster wheel. The highlight shot was when Poole was jogging and "boxing," that whole corridor was spinning keeping him on the bottom the whole time. The concept of grip boots is probably nonsense, I mean if you were truly in zero g it would be so effortless to move by floating and propelling yourself with your hands but even as advanced as this movie was that is not practical to portray the actors floating around. Heck, even today with digitally removing wires whenever I see zero g floating my mind always imagines those wires. A great, great, great movie, than not enough people react to and I am not sure why, called Gravity was the first movie I watched that so flawlessly imitated zero g I never questioned it wasn't real.

JM63

As others have mentioned, the spinning of the space station and spacecraft is the only realistic method of simulating Earth’s gravity in space. (Think about riding a playground merry-go-round and how you can feel your body being flung outward from the center -- same principle, bigger scale.) This film made a huge impression on me when I saw it in my early twenties. I couldn’t imagine that you could make a movie like this, let alone such an engrossing one. Now, with a little more background, I see how it embodies the past and future of filmmaking. Much of it plays like a silent film, with both dead silence and only backing score. But we also get amazing soundscapes -- the eerie chanting, the breathing, the steady rumbling during the journey. The bright explosions of color bring to mind the classic Technicolor era. And the amazing set-pieces like the lunar landing foreshadow the future (the space station hangar shot in particular is straight out of Star Wars). (SPOILERS BELOW)

Shawn Goforth

Getting here a day late, I can see there is no need for me to write 2,001 words, so I'll just share that my draw to this has always been the pacing. I think I remain patient, because I imagine what it may have been like experiencing this over a year prior to the moon landing. The world was preparing to discover what else might be out there, and this film gave us the sense of what that journey might feel like. The docking sequence and time spent observing the crew and their work is never rushed, probably because we were experiencing all of that for the first time. We had SF films before, but this one took itself seriously, almost like a fictional documentary. The movie spends more time showing us what space travel might be like, without telling us. I also appreciate that we never see the aliens. It works better having them off-screen, leaving the monoliths, opening the star gate, and just observing the human behavior. Did the humans discover them independently, or were they being led in that direction the entire time? The open ending is appropriate to highlight the existence of so many unknowns.

Jeffrey Schmidbauer

FYI, Stanley Kubrick's only Oscar win was for Best Special Effects for this movie even though Douglas Trumbull did all the "heavy lifting".

AJ

A few days late so don't know how many will see this, but here goes. Nothing but love to everyone who is passionate about this film. I respectfully present a different opinion. I've tried with this film before and tried again this weekend. Some Kubrick is like Picasso or Basquiat - abstract but just enough structure to be beautiful, passionate, heartbreaking, insightful. 2001 is a Jackson Pollock. Some see a masterpiece and find all types of meaning. I just see lines thrown on a canvas. Feels like I'm at the DMV for 2.5 hours and when I finally get to the counter the computer breaks and then the person in line behind me tries to tell me how the DMV had this plan for me all along and tomorrow I'll be reborn to get to do it all over again. Isn't that a profound allegory for the human experience? Maybe...maybe he's too focused on the effects. He's way over budget and way over schedule. He's an egomaniac that's too close to edit objectively and is editing right up to the release. He's too invested in the effects and cuts story. He won't cut effects and ends up with 30-45 minutes too much film. He ends up with no story. The effects will always degrade over time. The story is what endures. But it's Kubrick so he defied convention and narrative and it's brilliant that you no longer need the 3 act drama. You can look to the book and interviews and create meaning that could/should have been created by the film itself, but wasn't. But it's Kubrick so it must have been intentional genious. What do i know. I'm just an accountant who prefers stories with heart in them. If you love this film please keep loving it. I'm sure that I love stories you don't and that's ALL GOOD. Ames you're better for having watched but it's OK to go WTF was that and be disappointed. Selina clearly felt that way. 😉

Catchermag

I’m late to this comment section too. Kubrick directed 13 films. 7 of them are eminently re-watchable for me (Shining, Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange, The Killing, Full Metal Jacket, Spartacus, Paths of Glory), 4 that I don’t care if I ever see again, 1 I’ve never seen. And then this one, which I’ve seen a couple times over the years. It FEELS like it SHOULD go into the re-watchable category just because of its prestigious reputation, yet I just can’t bring myself to waste over 2 hours of my life on it anymore. Life’s too short. If I met Kubrick at a viewing of 2001 I’d say “Hey! Great job mate! Wow! What a great obelisk, right?”………and then I’d go home and watch Clockwork Orange again, with an ironic glass of milk. If I were ever asked to watch 2001 again I’d have to use the eyeball bracing mechanisms from Clockwork Orange to not fall asleep. Side note, similarly to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon synching up with The Wizard of Oz……..the final 20 minutes of 2001 synch up PERFECTLY with Pink Floyd’s Echoes (off the album Meddle). I’m a massive Floyd fan, so it’s really the only reason for me to watch this movie again. But only the final 20 minutes. Life is too short 🙄

AstralCars

2001: A Space Odyssey is pretty much my favorite movie of all time (which puts me on the same wavelength as Tom Hanks who also routinely cites it as his favorite movie!). I remember first watching 2001 as a teenager on a crappy VHS and like most people I was thinking “Why is this movie so slow? Why is this movie so weird?” but by the time the end credits came up, I knew I had seen one of the greatest films ever made. Watching it as a teenager, this movie profoundly changed the way I watched movies going forward. I learned that it’s good for movies to be weird, strange, and ambitious. I get frustrated by moviegoers who dismiss ambitious movies as “too weird” without making any effort in trying to figure out what the filmmakers’ intention were for the “weirdness.” 2001 is really the movie most responsible for me opening myself up to more arthouse movies. To me, 2001 is the most powerful movie ever made about the mysteriousness of the universe. I recently read a nonfiction book called In My Time Of Dying by Sebastian Junger which is about Junger, who is a really famous reporter, having a near-death experience from an aneurysm. While he was dying, he had a vision of being drawn toward a black hole that was on the ground and his dead father floating above him comforting him as he was losing blood. Junger, who is an avowed atheist, tries in his book to explain his near-death experience with science and explores the possibility of a post-death reality existing on a quantum level, and there’s a really great line in the book that says that basically human beings understand reality like a dog understands a television screen. We as human beings don’t have the capacity to understand how this universe operates. The genius of 2001 is that it never explains who or what this higher intelligence is or why they’re doing what they’re doing because that would be dumbing them down to something humans would be able to understand. In reality, a higher intelligence like this would probably be operating on a level that we couldn’t even begin to comprehend. That, as an idea, is just so powerful to me. And to all the naysayers, I completely understand where you’re coming from. All I can say is that as movie fans, I think you at least owe it to yourself to watch 2001 in a movie theatre with the best sound if you ever get the opportunity. It is a profoundly different experience than watching it at home. As an auditory and visual cinematic experience that is more than 50 years old, 2001 is still operating on a level that ranks with modern day filmmakers like Spielberg, Nolan and Villenueve!

Jeffrey Schmidbauer

It was Keir Dullea's birthday a few days ago. Happy 88th! Now he can really play the scene of the old man lying in bed without any makeup.

Hold Down A

I will get back to you all ASAP! I love reading your comments!

Jeffrey Schmidbauer

2001 was the first Kubrick movie I ever saw. I was only about 8 years old at the time and watched it at an outdoor movie theater with the family. My brother loved Sci-Fi and he was the main reason we went to see it. My first impression was, "Apes?" "I thought this was a space movie!" But, since I was a captive audience, I stuck it out and my mind was blown after that dramatic cut edit from bone to spacecraft. Hearing the music I loved so well (my Dad played classical music around the house including Strauss waltzes) and seeing the visuals left an indelible impression upon me. At the end of the movie, I asked myself, "What just happened?" One of the exquisite aspects of 2001 is its mystery. Not every movie needs to have all its loose ends resolved into a nice and neat little bow.

Michael T

Ames, you mentioned liking this movie (2001) and liking Barry Lyndon, but not Full Metal Jacket. That's understandable, because I think Kubrick reached his peak with 2001, then gradually declined. Some of his later movies are very good, but certainly not at this extremely high level. However, some of Kubrick's earlier work is amazing, especially Dr. Strangelove and also The Killing. If you haven't seen either of those yet, I would highly recommend them.

James Rogers

Wish I'd been a member when this one dropped. Was about 11 when it came out. Still don't know why my family went to see this in the theater but I'm so glad they did. For me it is a transcendental experience. I don't think its his best film but I do think its his finest work of art.

Ken Schneyer

Many, many people were confused by this film when it first came out. There is a (somewhat more) concrete interpretation available, which can be found in the novel Clarke wrote along with the screenplay, and which becomes even clearer in the sequel film (also novel) "2010". Postcard version: think of the monoliths as tools, each tool with a different function; think of the film as a four-million-year experiment by those who use those tools. One of the inevitable frustrations of people seeing earlier films which heavily influenced later films that they have already seen is the reversal of causation. You anticipated HAL's actions by virtue of later films you've seen with "Bad A.I.s"; you intuited that you were seeing a wormhole because you've seen wormholes in other films; you thought of the Death Star because, well, you've already seen it. But all of those films *got* those concepts from this film; it was a revolution. (Star Trek TOS already existed when this film was made, but it was operating on an entirely different narrative structure.) The moon landing was a year after this film came out. Imagine how it felt to see this. When people speak of watching this film while high, they're talking about the last half hour. There is a book called "The Making of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey" which talks about the filmmaking techniques. My favorite aspect is the two revolving sets (the one with the flight attendant and the one with the jogging).

Richard Higgs

Any chance you will watch 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) to see the rest of the story? Just in case famous actors intrigue you, it stars Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren and John Lithgow.

Brian

Loved loved loved your nonstop ‘wtf’ reaction to the ending, Mrs. A. We’ve all been having that exact reaction to this ending for 50+ years now. In my opinion, this is the single most important & influential film in the history of films. I view the art of movies in a pre-2001 A Space Odyssey era… and a post-2001 A Space Odyssey era. It single handedly changed the game for the art form. Every modern director of note. From Spielberg. To Francis Ford. To George Lucas. To De Palma. To James Cameron. They ALL single handedly point to 2001 as the ‘holy shit!!! You can do THAT in a movie???” Moment in their formative years. I’d argue that’s it’s the single most inspiring movie ever made, as far as feeding the imagination of generations to come! And, as Kubrick’s finest film, in a career of fine films, it’s still inspiring generations of artists & storytellers. I never tire of watching this one. ❤️❤️❤️