It’s not that Kubrick didn’t personally believe in these as elements within the movie, but that he wanted audiences to detect them there but not know what to make of them.įeeling bewildered is a big part of the experience of watching 2001. Kubrick didn’t want any of this in his film, especially not Clarke’s idea for voiceover narration.
#Hal 9000 sound movie#
His novel (Which he wrote during the film’s development it was intended to be released before the movie but ended up coming out afterward, giving the impression that it was a “novelization” not unlike the kind we now see accompanying every blockbuster… it certainly was not.) is heavy on explanations, so we find out exactly what happens to make Hal act out, who the aliens are and what they plan, what happens to Dave Bowman, and what the star child means. Science involves rigorous explanation with supporting details, and Clarke thought 2001 needed to lean on this. Clarke, one of the all-time great science fiction writers, was most interested in how science can help mankind reach toward utopia. Clarke developing the screenplay centered mainly on how much explanation should be given. His troubled collaboration with Arthur C. , I know he would have rejected any individual interpretation of this film.
Every other element within the movie is a diversion from that central theme.Īnd yet, because I know so much about Stanley Kubrick II) Watch Room 237. This is not a movie about space travel or artificial intelligence-it’s about evolution and the possible intervention of an alien or divine I) Or maybe they’re one and the same?) force in that process. That’s in keeping with my read of the film as the story of the of humanity, from its origins to its next step of the journey that we can no more comprehend than a two-dimensional character in an arcade game can understand three dimensions. The portions with the astronauts on the space mission doesn’t loom large in my memory. When I think of 2001, I think of the apes reacting to the monolith and then using bones as weapons, and I think of that bedroom at the end. The monolith returns as a plot device after Dave Bowman has dismantled Hal, and its existence motivates the remainder of the film. It is the centerpiece of the opening segments (“The Dawn of Man”) and the key point moving all the action leading up to the excavation site on the moon. The specter of the monolith hangs over the entire first 54 minutes of the film. It has the same tone and rhythm as the rest of the movie, and yet I never really feel like I’m watching the same film as I am in the first and third acts. Hal is the movie’s most memorable and sympathetic character, his storyline is suspenseful and exciting, and this section is literally the centerpiece of the movie and occupies the most screentime. But on viewing the movie for the first time in a decade or so for Load Bearing Beams, I found that my old hesitation about the Hal segments hadn’t gone away. To me, 2001 -one of my all-time favorite movies-is the story of the evolution of humans from primitive ape-adjacent creatures to their eventual next form symbolized by the star child at the conclusion of the film. But I’ve always been a bit puzzled as to how the story of Hal and the astronauts aboard the Discovery One fits into the larger picture of what the film is trying to say.
The portions of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey centered around the HAL-9000 computer and its interference in the titular odyssey are probably the most widely-celebrated parts of the film.
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