2001: A Space Odyssey

1968 film by Stanley Kubrick the 1968 film the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)2001: A Space Odyssey (novel) other uses 2001: A Space Odyssey (disambiguation) A Space Odyssey other uses Space Odyssey (disambiguation) July 2024 December 2024 2001: A Space Odyssey 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968).png A movie poster: at the top, "An epic drama of adventure and exploration" in black block letters against a white background; below, a painted image of a space station suspended in space, with the Earth in the background; at the bottom, a black band, over which the title "2001: a space odyssey" appears in yellow block letters. Theatrical release poster by Robert McCall Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke Keir Dullea Gary Lockwood Geoffrey Unsworth Ray Lovejoy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer2001: A Space Odyssey https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/23399 AFI Catalog of Feature Films 14 March 2025 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer yes 1968 4 2 Uptown Theater Coate Michael The Original Reserved-Seat Roadshow Engagements Of "2001: A Space Odyssey" https://www.in70mm.com/presents/1959_super_panavision/1968_2OO1/engagements/2001/engagements/index.htm in70mm.com 12 July 2023 23 July 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230723191025/https://www.in70mm.com/presents/1959_super_panavision/1968_2OO1/engagements/2001/engagements/index.htm live 1968 04 03 United States 1968 5 1 United Kingdom 139 minuteshttps://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/14/arts/home-video-new-cassettes-from-kubrick-to-saint-exupery-162687.html Home video; New cassettes: From Kubrick to Saint-Exupery The New York Times Janet Maslin 14 April 1985 30 July 2023 15 July 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230715001645/https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/14/arts/home-video-new-cassettes-from-kubrick-to-saint-exupery-162687.html live United Kingdom United States English $10.5 million $148.5 million 2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke. Its plot was inspired by several short stories optioned from Clarke, primarily "The Sentinel" (1951) and "Encounter in the Dawn" (1953).Benson Michael Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the making of a masterpiece 2018 Simon & Schuster 978-1-5011-6393-7 First Simon & Schuster hardcover New York 53 The film stars Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain. The film follows a four-million-year alien-directed transformation from Hominids to modern humans that culminates in a voyage by astronauts, scientists, and a sentient supercomputer (HAL 9000) to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith that accelerates human evolution to the next level. The film is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of spaceflight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous themes. Kubrick avoided conventional cinematic and narrative techniques; dialogue is used sparingly, and long sequences are accompanied only by music. Shunning the convention that major film productions should feature original music, 2001: A Space Odyssey takes numerous works of classical music for its soundtrack, including pieces by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian, and György Ligeti. 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered at Uptown Theater on 2 April 1968 before being released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on 3 April 1968 in the United States and 1 May 1968 in the United Kingdom. Polarising critics after its release, 2001: A Space Odyssey has since been subject to a variety of interpretations, ranging from the darkly apocalyptic to an optimistic reappraisal of the hopes of humanity. Critics noted its exploration of themes such as human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Kubrick the award for his direction of the visual effects, the only Academy Award the director would receive.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVEeu1eNx34 Stanley Kubrick Wins Special Effects: 1969 Oscars YouTube 7 November 2012 12 March 2024 12 March 2024 https://web.archive.org/web/20240312120909/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVEeu1eNx34 live The film is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1991, it was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2022, 2001: A Space Odyssey placed in the top ten of Sight & Sounds decennial critics' poll, and topped their directors' poll. A sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, was released in 1984 without Kubrick's involvement. 3 Plot In a prehistoric veld, a tribe of hominins is driven away from a water hole by a rival tribe, and the next day finds an alien monolith. The tribe learns how to use the bones of dead animals as weapons and, after a successful first hunt, uses them to drive away the rival tribe. Millions of years later, Dr Heywood Floyd, Chairman of the United States National Council of Astronautics, travels to Clavius Base, an American lunar outpost. During a stopover at Space Station Five, he meets Russian scientists who are concerned that Clavius seems to be unresponsive. He refuses to discuss rumours of an epidemic at the base. At Clavius, Floyd addresses a meeting of personnel, stressing the need for secrecy regarding their newest discovery; the rumoured epidemic is in fact a cover story. His mission is to investigate a recently found artefact, a monolith buried four million years earlier near the lunar crater Tycho. As Floyd and others examine and photograph the object, it emits a high-powered radio signal. Eighteen months later, the American spacecraft Discovery One is bound for Jupiter, with mission pilots and scientists Dr Dave Bowman and Dr Frank Poole on board, along with three other scientists in suspended animation. Most of Discoverys operations are controlled by HAL, a HAL 9000 computer with a human-like personality. When HAL reports the imminent failure of an antenna control device, Bowman retrieves it in an extravehicular activity (EVA) pod, but finds nothing wrong. HAL suggests reinstalling the device and letting it fail so the problem can be verified. Mission Control advises the astronauts that results from their twin 9000 computer indicate that HAL has made an error, but HAL blames it on human error. Concerned about HAL's behaviour, Bowman and Poole enter an EVA pod so they can talk in private without HAL overhearing. They agree to disconnect HAL if he is proven wrong. HAL follows their conversation by lip reading. While Poole is floating away from his pod to replace the antenna unit, HAL takes control of the pod and attacks him, sending Poole tumbling away from the ship with a severed air line. Bowman takes another pod to rescue Poole. While he is outside, HAL turns off the life support functions of the crewmen in suspended animation, killing them. When Bowman returns to the ship with Poole's body, HAL refuses to let him back in, stating that their plan to deactivate him jeopardises the mission. Bowman releases Poole's body and opens the ship's emergency airlock with his remote manipulators. Lacking a helmet for his spacesuit, he positions his pod carefully so that when he jettisons the pod's door, he is propelled by the escaping air across the vacuum into Discoverys airlock. He enters HAL's processor core and begins disconnecting HAL's memory, ignoring HAL's pleas to stop. When he is finished, a prerecorded video by Heywood Floyd plays, revealing that the mission's actual objective is to investigate the radio signal sent from the monolith to Jupiter. At Jupiter, Bowman finds a third, much larger monolith orbiting the planet. He leaves Discovery in an EVA pod to investigate. He is pulled into a vortex of coloured light and observes bizarre astronomical phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual colours as he passes by. Finally, he finds himself in a large rococoBenson Michael Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the making of a masterpiece Simon & Schuster 2018 978-1-5011-6393-7 1st hardback New York, NY 216 English When he drafted his rococo Louis XIV room, however, [Art director Anthony Masters] did retain an important element from Armstrong Cork['s commissioned design for the room in which Bowman is kept]: the glowing, indirect floor lighting. bedroom where he sees, then becomes, older versions of himself: first standing in the bedroom, middle-aged and still in his spacesuit, then dressed in leisure attire and eating dinner, and finally as an old man lying in bed. A monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it, he is transformed into a foetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light, which then floats in space above the Earth. Cast Keir Dullea as Dr David Bowman Gary Lockwood as Dr Frank Poole William Sylvester as Dr Heywood Floyd Daniel Richter as Moonwatcher, the chief man-ape Leonard Rossiter as Dr Andrei Smyslov Margaret Tyzack as Elena Robert Beatty as Dr Ralph Halvorsen Sean Sullivan as Dr Roy Michaelshttp://www.underview.com/asocast.html#Sean The Underview on 2001: A Space Odyssey – Cast and Crew 30 September 2013 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20161108072130/http://www.underview.com/asocast.html#Sean 8 November 2016 Douglas Rain as the voice of HAL 9000 Frank Miller as mission controller Edwina Carroll as lunar shuttle stewardess Penny Brahms as stewardess Heather Downham as stewardess Ed Bishop (credited as Edward Bishop) as Aries 1B lunar shuttle captain Alan Gifford as Poole's father Ann Gillis as Poole's mother Maggie d'Abo as stewardess (Space Station 5 elevator) (uncredited)http://www.2001italia.it/2013/06/two-days-turned-into-four-weeks.html "Two days turned into four weeks": an interview with Maggie D'Abo, hostess in '2001' 2001italia.it 16 July 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20190824194539/http://www.2001italia.it/2013/06/two-days-turned-into-four-weeks.html 24 August 2019 live Chela Matthison as Mrs Turner, Space Station 5 reception (uncredited)https://projects.thestar.com/2001-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick/ 2001: A Space Odyssey – 50 facts for 50 years thestar.com 19 February 2021 2 June 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210602213516/https://projects.thestar.com/2001-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick/ live Vivian Kubrick as Floyd's daughter, "Squirt" (uncredited)Mondello, Bob https://www.npr.org/2018/04/04/599579246/what-made-2001-a-space-odyssey-such-an-influential-film What Made '2001, A Space Odyssey' Such An Influential Film NPR 4 April 2018 7 July 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20190830002321/https://www.npr.org/2018/04/04/599579246/what-made-2001-a-space-odyssey-such-an-influential-film 30 August 2019 live Kenneth Kendall as BBC announcer (uncredited)Higham, Nick https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-20726319/broadcaster-kenneth-kendall-88-dies Broadcaster Kenneth Kendall, 88, dies BBC 14 December 2012 13 July 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20190413153146/https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-20726319/broadcaster-kenneth-kendall-88-dies 13 April 2019 live Production Development After completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), director Stanley Kubrick told a publicist from Columbia Pictures that his next project would be about extraterrestrial life,Agel 1970 11https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/11/12/how-about-a-little-game Stanley Kubrick: The Master Jeremy Bernstein The New Yorker 4 November 1966 www.newyorker.com 8 November 2023 6 January 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210106230532/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/11/12/how-about-a-little-game live and resolved to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie".Clarke 1972 17 How Kubrick became interested in creating a science fiction film is far from clear.Baxter John John Baxter (author) 1997 Stanley Kubrick: A Biography 200 New York Basic Books 0-7867-0485-3 https://archive.org/details/stanleykubrickbi00baxt Biographer John Baxter notes possible inspirations in the late 1950s, including British productions featuring dramas on satellites and aliens modifying early humans, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)'s big budget CinemaScope production Forbidden Planet, and the slick widescreen cinematography and set design of Japanese kaiju (monster film) productions (such as Ishirō Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya's Godzilla films and Koji Shima's Warning from Space). Kubrick obtained financing and distribution from the American studio MGM with the selling point that the film could be marketed in the ultra-widescreen Cinerama format, which MGM had recently used on How the West Was Won.Chapman Cull 2013 97McAleer 2013 140 It would be filmed and edited almost entirely in southern England, where Kubrick lived, using the facilities of MGM-British Studios and Shepperton Studios. MGM had subcontracted the production of the film to Kubrick's production company to qualify for the Eady Levy, a UK tax on box-office receipts used at the time to fund the production of films in Britain.Chapman Cull 2013 98 In a draft version of a contract with Kubrick's production company in May 1965, MGM suggested Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and David Lean as possible replacements for Kubrick if he was unavailable.https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/2001-a-space-odyssey-secrets-in-the-stanley-kubrick-archive The Weirdest, Most Wonderful 2001: A Space Odyssey Secrets in the Stanley Kubrick Archive Bruce Handy 14 February 2018 Vanity Fair 25 February 2024 20 March 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123620/https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/2001-a-space-odyssey-secrets-in-the-stanley-kubrick-archive live Pre-production Kubrick's decision to avoid the fanciful portrayals of space found in standard popular science fiction films of the time led him to seek more realistic and accurate depictions of space travel. Illustrators such as Chesley Bonestell, Roy Carnon, and Richard McKenna were hired to produce concept drawings, sketches, and paintings of the space technology seen in the film.http://scienceandfilm.org/articles/2656/graphic-films-and-the-inception-of-2001-a-space-odyssey Sloan Science & Film scienceandfilm.org 10 September 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20160921180606/http://scienceandfilm.org/articles/2656/graphic-films-and-the-inception-of-2001-a-space-odyssey 21 September 2016 livehttp://www.2001italia.it/2013/10/the-art-of-roy-carnon.html The Art of Roy Carnon www.2001italia.it 10 September 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20160920155423/http://www.2001italia.it/2013/10/the-art-of-roy-carnon.html 20 September 2016 live Two educational films, the National Film Board of Canada's 1960 animated short documentary Universe and the 1964 New York World's Fair film To the Moon and Beyond, were major influences. According to biographer Vincent LoBrutto, Universe was a visual inspiration to Kubrick. The 29-minute film, which had also proved popular at NASA for its realistic portrayal of outer space, met "the standard of dynamic visionary realism that he was looking for". Wally Gentleman, one of the special-effects artists on Universe, worked briefly on 2001. Kubrick also asked Universe co-director Colin Low about animation camerawork, with Low recommending British mathematician Brian Salt, with whom Low and Roman Kroitor had previously worked on the 1957 still-animation documentary City of Gold.Graham Gerald G. Canadian film technology, 1896–1986 1989 University of Delaware Press Newark 0-87413-347-5 114 https://books.google.com/books?id=lKKoJqjVn6QC&q=%22Brian%20Salt%22%20math&pg=PA114 17 August 2016 14 November 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20201114041129/https://books.google.com/books?id=lKKoJqjVn6QC&pg=PA114&q=%22Brian+Salt%22+math liveEvans Gary In the national interest: a chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989 1991 University of Toronto Press Toronto 0-8020-6833-2 75 Repr. https://archive.org/details/innationalintere0000evan registration In the National Interest City of Gold. 16 August 2016 Universes narrator, actor Douglas Rain, was cast as the voice of HAL.https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/colin-low-a-gentleman-genius-of-documentary-cinema/article29193112/ Colin Low: A gentleman genius of documentary cinema Lacey Liam 11 March 2016 The Globe and Mail 15 March 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20160317005445/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/colin-low-a-gentleman-genius-of-documentary-cinema/article29193112/ 17 March 2016 live For the role of Heywood Floyd, MGM suggested casting a well-known actor such as Henry Fonda or George C. Scott.https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/behind-the-scenes-of-2001-a-space-odyssey-50-years-later Behind the Scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Strangest Blockbuster in Hollywood History 14 February 2018 Vanity Fair 8 June 2023 24 March 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230324212444/https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/behind-the-scenes-of-2001-a-space-odyssey-50-years-later live After pre-production had begun, Kubrick saw To the Moon and Beyond, a film shown in the Transportation and Travel building at the 1964 World's Fair. It was filmed in Cinerama 360 and shown in the "Moon Dome". Kubrick hired the company that produced it, Graphic Films Corporation—which had been making films for NASA, the US Air Force, and various aerospace clients—as a design consultant. Graphic Films' Con Pederson, Lester Novros, and background artist Douglas Trumbull airmailed research-based concept sketches and notes covering the mechanics and physics of space travel, and created storyboards for the space flight sequences in 2001. Trumbull became a special effects supervisor on 2001. Writing 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)#Differences from the film2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)#Differences from the film Differences between the film and the novel thumb|Arthur C. Clarke in 1965, photographed in the Discovery pod bay Searching for a collaborator in the science fiction community for the writing of the script, Kubrick was advised by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staff member Roger Caras, to talk to writer Arthur C. Clarke, who lived in Ceylon. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick allowed Caras to cable the film proposal to Clarke. Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with [that] enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?"LoBrutto 1998 257McAleer 1992 176 Meeting for the first time at Trader Vic's in New York on 22 April 1964, the two began discussing the project that would take up the next four years of their lives.Clarke 1972 29 Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001.Arthur Clarke's 2001 Diary http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0073.html visual-memory 2 July 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20150510060924/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0073.html 10 May 2015 live Kubrick told Clarke he wanted to make a film about "Man's relationship to the universe",Clarke 1972 13 and was, in Clarke's words, "determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe ... even, if appropriate, terror". Kubrick was initially interested in adapting Clarke's novel Childhood's End, but the film rights had already been optioned by director Abraham Polonsky. Instead, Clarke offered Kubrick six of his short stories, and by May 1964, Kubrick had chosen "The Sentinel" as the source material for the film. In search of more material to expand the film's plot, the two spent the rest of 1964 reading books on science and anthropology, screening science fiction films, and brainstorming ideas.Clarke 1972 32–35 They created the plot for 2001 by integrating several different short story plots written by Clarke, along with new plot segments requested by Kubrick for the film development, and then combined them all into a single script for 2001.Agel 1970 61Benson Michael Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece 2018 Simon and Schuster 978-1-5011-6395-1 https://books.google.com/books?id=7BkyDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT255 Michael Benson (filmmaker) https://web.archive.org/web/20180831174955/https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7BkyDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT255 31 August 2018 live Clarke said that his 1953 story "Encounter in the Dawn" inspired the film's "Dawn of Man" sequence.Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke Clarke Arthur C. Macmillan 2001 978-0-312-87821-4 460 https://archive.org/details/collectedstories00clar/page/460 Kubrick and Clarke privately referred to the project as How the Solar System Was Won, a reference to how it was a follow-on to MGM's Cinerama epic How the West Was Won. On 23 February 1965, Kubrick issued a press release announcing the title as Journey Beyond The Stars.Hughes 2000 135 Other titles considered included Universe, Tunnel to the Stars, and Planetfall. Expressing his high expectations for the thematic importance which he associated with the film, in April 1965, eleven months after they began working on the project, Kubrick selected 2001: A Space Odyssey; Clarke said the title was "entirely" Kubrick's idea.Clarke 1972 32 Intending to set the film apart from the "monsters-and-sex" type of science-fiction films of the time, Kubrick used Homers The Odyssey as both a model of literary merit and a source of inspiration for the title. Kubrick said, "It occurred to us that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation."Agel 1970 25 right 25em How much would we appreciate La Gioconda today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: "This lady is smiling slightly because she has rotten teeth"—or "because she's hiding a secret from her lover"? It would shut off the viewer's appreciation and shackle him to a reality other than his own. I don't want that to happen to 2001. —Stanley Kubrick, Playboy, 1968Agel 1970 328–329 Originally, Kubrick and Clarke had planned to develop a 2001 novel first, free of the constraints of film, and then write the screenplay. They planned the writing credits to be "Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick" to reflect their preeminence in their respective fields.Agel 1970 24–25 In practice, the screenplay developed in parallel with the novel, with only some elements being common to both. In a 1970 interview, Kubrick said: There are a number of differences between the book and the movie. The novel, for example, attempts to explain things much more explicitly than the film does, which is inevitable in a verbal medium. The novel came about after we did a 130-page prose treatment of the film at the very outset.... Arthur took all the existing material, plus an impression of some of the rushes, and wrote the novel. As a result, there's a difference between the novel and the film ... I think that the divergences between the two works are interesting. In the end, Clarke and Kubrick wrote parts of the novel and screenplay simultaneously, with the film version being released before the book version was published. Clarke opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and Star Gate in the novel; Kubrick made the film more cryptic by minimising dialogue and explanation.http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/Q12.html What did Kubrick have to say about what 2001 "means"? Krusch.com 22 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100927064037/http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/Q12.html 27 September 2010 live Kubrick said the film is "basically a visual, nonverbal experience" that "hits the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does, or painting".Gelmis 1970 302 The screenplay credits were shared whereas the 2001 novel, released shortly after the film, was attributed to Clarke alone. Clarke wrote later that "the nearest approximation to the complicated truth" is that the screenplay should be credited to "Kubrick and Clarke" and the novel to "Clarke and Kubrick".Clarke 1972 31–38 Early reports about tensions involved in the writing of the film script appeared to reach a point where Kubrick was allegedly so dissatisfied with the collaboration that he approached other writers who could replace Clarke, including Michael Moorcock and J. G. Ballard; however, they felt it would be disloyal to accept Kubrick's offer.https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/close-tears-he-left-intermission-how-stanley-kubrick-upset-arthur-c-clarke 'Close to tears, he left at the intermission': how Stanley Kubrick upset Arthur C Clarke www.newstatesman.com 8 January 2017 7 February 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180207122341/https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/close-tears-he-left-intermission-how-stanley-kubrick-upset-arthur-c-clarke 7 February 2018 live In Michael Benson's 2018 book Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, the actual relationship between Clarke and Kubrick was more complex, involving an extended interaction of Kubrick's multiple requests for Clarke to write new plot lines for various segments of the film, which Clarke was expected to withhold from publication until after the release of the film while receiving advances on his salary from Kubrick during film production. Clarke agreed to this, though apparently he did make several requests for Kubrick to allow him to develop his new plot lines into separate publishable stories while film production continued, which Kubrick consistently denied based on Clarke's contractual obligation to withhold publication until release of the film. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his 1973 book The Cosmic Connection that Clarke and Kubrick had asked him how to best depict extraterrestrial intelligence. While acknowledging Kubrick's desire to use actors to portray humanoid aliens for convenience's sake, Sagan argued that alien life forms were unlikely to bear any resemblance to terrestrial life, and that to do so would introduce "at least an element of falseness" to the film. Sagan proposed that the film should simply suggest extraterrestrial superintelligence, rather than depict it. He attended the premiere and was "pleased to see that I had been of some help".Carl Sagan's cosmic connection: an extraterrestrial perspective 2nd Carl Sagan Cambridge University Press 2000 0-521-78303-8 183 27 January 2012 https://books.google.com/books?id=lL57o9YB0mAC 25 https://web.archive.org/web/20190330140644/https://books.google.com/books?id=lL57o9YB0mAC 30 March 2019 live Sagan had met with Clarke and Kubrick only once, in 1964; and Kubrick subsequently directed several attempts to portray credible aliens, only to abandon the idea near the end of post-production. Benson asserts it is unlikely that Sagan's advice had any direct influence. Kubrick hinted at the nature of the mysterious unseen alien race in 2001 by suggesting that given millions of years of evolution, they progressed from biological beings to "immortal machine entities" and then into "beings of pure energy and spirit" with "limitless capabilities and ungraspable intelligence".Stanley Kubrick: Playboy Interview Playboy September 1968 http://www.archiviokubrick.it/english/words/interviews/index.html 7 July 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180715101917/http://www.archiviokubrick.it/english/words/interviews/index.html 15 July 2018 live In a 1980 interview (not released during Kubrick's lifetime), Kubrick explains one of the film's closing scenes, where Bowman is depicted in old age after his journey through the Star Gate: The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by godlike entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time.... [W]hen they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made some kind of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest. The script went through many stages. In early 1965, when backing was secured for the film, Clarke and Kubrick still had no firm idea of what would happen to Bowman after the Star Gate sequence. Initially all of Discoverys astronauts were to survive the journey; by 3 October, Clarke and Kubrick had decided to make Bowman the sole survivor and have him regress to infancy. By 17 October, Kubrick had come up with what Clarke called a "wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease". HAL 9000 was originally named Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom and had a feminine voice and persona. Early drafts included a prologue containing interviews with scientists about extraterrestrial life,Agel 1970 48. voice-over narration (a feature in all of Kubrick's previous films),Jason Sperb's study of Kubrick The Kubrick Facade analyses Kubrick's use of narration in detail. John Baxter's biography of Kubrick also describes how he frequently favoured voice-over narration. Only three of Kubrick's 13 films lack narration: Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut.Barham J. M. Terror Tracks: Music and Sound in Horror Cinema 2009 Equinox Press London, U.K. http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1956/ 978-1-84553-202-4 137–170 http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1956/ Incorporating Monsters: Music as Context, Character and Construction in Kubrick's The Shining 20 July 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20170804133256/http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1956/ 4 August 2017 live a stronger emphasis on the prevailing Cold War balance of terror, and a different and more explicitly explained breakdown for HAL.http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0075.html The Kubrick Site: Fred Ordway on '2001' Visual-memory.co.uk 22 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20120623062250/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0075.html 23 June 2012 live Other changes include a different monolith for the "Dawn of Man" sequence, discarded when early prototypes reflected light poorly; the use of Saturn as the final destination of the Discovery mission rather than Jupiter, discarded when the special effects team could not develop a convincing rendition of Saturn's rings; and the finale of the Star Child exploding nuclear weapons carried by Earth-orbiting satellites,2001: A Space Odyssey Clarke Arthur 1968 New American Library UK 0-453-00269-2 which Kubrick discarded for its similarity to his previous film, Dr. Strangelove. The finale and many of the other discarded screenplay ideas survived in Clarke's novel. Kubrick made further changes to make the film more nonverbal, to communicate on a visual and visceral level rather than through conventional narrative. By the time shooting began, Kubrick had removed much of the dialogue and narration.Walker 1971 251 Long periods without dialogue permeate the film: the film has no dialogue for roughly the first and last twenty minutes,Ebert Roger https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/2001-a-space-odyssey-1968 2001: A Space Odyssey Movie Review 12 April 1968 10 June 2019 Roger Ebert RogerEbert.com https://web.archive.org/web/20190404232622/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/2001-a-space-odyssey-1968 4 April 2019 live as well as for the 10 minutes from Floyd's Moonbus landing near the monolith until Poole watches a BBC newscast on Discovery. What dialogue remains is notable for its banality (making the computer HAL seem to have more emotion than the humans) when juxtaposed with the epic space scenes. Vincent LoBrutto wrote that Clarke's novel has its own "strong narrative structure" and precision, while the narrative of the film remains symbolic, in accord with Kubrick's final intentions.LoBrutto 1998 310 Filming Principal photography began on 29 December 1965, in Stage H at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England. The studio was chosen because it could house the 60 × 120 × 60 ft on pit for the Tycho crater excavation scene, the first to be shot. In January 1966, the production moved to the smaller MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, where the live-action and special-effects filming was done, starting with the scenes involving Floyd on the Orion spaceplane;Geduld 1973 24 , reproduced in Castle 2005 and Schwam 2010 22. it was described as a "huge throbbing nerve center ... with much the same frenetic atmosphere as a Cape Kennedy blockhouse during the final stages of Countdown."Lightman Herb A. June 1968 Filming 2001: A Space Odyssey American Cinematographer Excerpted in Castle 2005. The only scene not filmed in a studio—and the last live-action scene shot for the film—was the skull-smashing sequence, in which Moonwatcher (Daniel Richter) wields his newfound bone "weapon-tool" against a pile of nearby animal bones. A small elevated platform was built in a field near the studio so that the camera could shoot upward with the sky as background, avoiding cars and trucks passing by in the distance.Clarke 1972 51 The Dawn of Man sequence that opens the film was shot at Borehamwood with John Alcott as cinematographer after Geoffrey Unsworth left to work on other projects.http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/497964/ Alcott, John (1931–1986) Cinematographer BFI Screenonline 5 February 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20181213131432/http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/497964/ 13 December 2018 live The still photographs used as backgrounds for the Dawn of Man sequence were taken at the Spitzkoppe mountains in what was then South West Africa.https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/2001-a-space-odyssey-what-it-means-and-how-it-was-made "2001: A Space Odyssey": What It Means, and How It Was Made Dan Chiasson The New Yorker 16 April 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20221026101637/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/2001-a-space-odyssey-what-it-means-and-how-it-was-made 26 October 2022 livehttps://www.movie-locations.com/movies/0/2001-A-Space-Odyssey.php "2001: A Space Odyssey": Locations Movie-Locations.com 25 July 2023 25 July 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230725134407/https://www.movie-locations.com/movies/0/2001-A-Space-Odyssey.php live Filming of actors was completed in September 1967,Richter 2002 135 and from June 1966 until March 1968, Kubrick spent most of his time working on the 205 special-effects shots in the film.Gelmis 1970 308 He ordered the special-effects technicians to use the painstaking process of creating all visual effects seen in the film "in camera", avoiding degraded picture quality from the use of blue screen and travelling matte techniques. Although this technique, known as "held takes", resulted in a much better image, it meant exposed film would be stored for long periods of time between shots, sometimes as long as a year.Schwam 2010 156 In March 1968, Kubrick finished the "pre-premiere" editing of the film, making his final cuts just days before the film's general release in April 1968. The film was announced in 1965 as a "Cinerama"Krämer 2010 32–33 film and was photographed in Super Panavision 70 (which uses a 65 mm negative combined with spherical lenses to create an aspect ratio of 2.20:1). It would eventually be released in a "roadshow" 70 mm version and a later general release 35 mm version.Krämer 2010 92Chapman Cull 2013 97 footnote 18 Colour processing and 35 mm release prints were done using Technicolor's dye transfer process. The 70 mm prints were made by MGM Laboratories, Inc. on Metrocolor. The production was $4.5 million over the initial $6 million budget and 16 months behind schedule.Geduld 1973 27 , reproduced in: Schwam 2010 26. For the opening sequence involving tribes of apes, professional mime Richter played the lead ape and choreographed the movements of the other man-apes, who were mostly portrayed by his mime troupe.Richter 2002 133–35 Kubrick and Clarke consulted IBM on plans for HAL, though plans to use the company's logo never materialised. Post-production For cuts made after the film premiered, see §Theatrical run below. The film was edited before it was publicly screened, cutting out, among other things, a painting class on the lunar base that included Kubrick's daughters, additional scenes of life on the base, and Floyd buying a bush baby for his daughter from a department store via videophone.http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/brown3.html 2001's Pre- and Post-Premiere Edits by Thomas E Brown 27 January 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20110926210804/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/brown3.html 26 September 2011 live A ten-minute black-and-white opening sequence featuring interviews with scientists, including Freeman Dyson discussing off-Earth life,Freeman Dyson Freeman Dyson Disturbing the Universe https://archive.org/details/disturbinguniver00dyso registration 1979 189–191 0-330-26324-2 was removed after an early screening for MGM executives.The text survives in Agel 1970 27. Music 2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack)2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack) 2001: A Space Odyssey (score)2001: A Space Odyssey (score) In the early stages of production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily nonverbal experienceCastle 2005 July 2020 that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during scenes with dialogue. The film is notable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Most feature films, then and now, are typically accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written specially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production, Kubrick commissioned a score for 2001 from Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also had worked on Dr. Strangelove.Time Warp CD Booklet Telarc Release# CD-80106https://www.vox.com/2018/4/26/17283314/2001-a-space-odyssey-music-stanley-kubrick-50th-anniversary The music of 2001: A Space Odyssey is justifiably famous. The studio hated it. Emily St James 26 April 2018 Vox 16 May 2023 16 May 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230516193534/https://www.vox.com/2018/4/26/17283314/2001-a-space-odyssey-music-stanley-kubrick-50th-anniversary live During post-production, Kubrick chose to abandon North's music in favour of the classical pieces which he had earlier chosen to guide North's score. North did not know that his score had been abandoned in favour of the temporary music pieces until he saw the film at its premiere.LoBrutto 1998 308 Design and special effects Technologies in 2001: A Space OdysseyTechnologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey Costumes and set design Kubrick involved himself in every aspect of production, even choosing the fabric for his actors' costumes,Bizony 2001 159 and selecting notable pieces of contemporary furniture for use in the film. When Floyd exits the Space Station5 elevator, he is greeted by an attendant seated behind a slightly modified George Nelson Action Office desk from Herman Miller's 1964 "Action Office" series.Examples of the Action Office desk and "Propst Perch" chair appearing in the film can be seen in Pina 2002 66–71. First introduced in 1968, the Action Office-stcubicle" would eventually occupy 70 per cent of office space by the mid-2000s.https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-moral-life-of-cubicles David Franz 19 Winter 2008 132–139 https://web.archive.org/web/20110223192348/http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-moral-life-of-cubicles dead The Moral Life of Cubicles 23 February 2011 The New AtlantisCubicles had earlier appeared in Jacques Tati's Playtime in 1967. Danish designer Arne Jacobsen designed the cutlery used by the Discovery astronauts in the film.https://io9.gizmodo.com/2001-a-flatware-odyssey-344966 2001: A Flatware Odyssey 15 January 2008 io9 25 February 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20190526215806/https://io9.gizmodo.com/2001-a-flatware-odyssey-344966 26 May 2019 livehttp://www.free-press-release.com/news/200802/1204149687.html 2001: A Space Odyssey – Modern Chairs & Products by Arne Jacobsen Bows at Gibraltar Furniture Bradley Friedman 27 February 2008 Free-Press-Release.com 25 February 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110425230507/http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200802/1204149687.html 25 April 2011 livehttp://www.designophy.com/newslog/article.php?UIN=1000000522 2001: A Space Odyssey-Products by Arne Jacobsen 4 October 2007 Designosophy 25 February 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110501035106/http://www.designophy.com/newslog/article.php?UIN=1000000522 1 May 2011 live Other examples of modern furniture in the film are the bright red Djinn chairs seen prominently throughout the space stationPublic Eye; 30 Years After '2001': A Furniture Odyssey Phil Patton https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/19/garden/public-eye-30-years-after-2001-a-furniture-odyssey.html The New York Times 19 February 1998 26 February 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110430011440/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/19/garden/public-eye-30-years-after-2001-a-furniture-odyssey.html 30 April 2011 liveFiell 2005 un-numbered and Eero Saarinen's 1956 pedestal tables. Olivier Mourgue, designer of the Djinn chair, has used the connection to 2001 in his advertising; a frame from the film's space station sequence and three production stills appear on the homepage of Mourgue's website.http://www.oliviermourgue.com/ Olivier Mourgue, Designer: (born 1939 in Paris, France) Olivier Mourgue 25 February 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110513021105/http://www.oliviermourgue.com/ 13 May 2011 live Shortly before Kubrick's death, film critic Alexander Walker informed Kubrick of Mourgue's use of the film, joking to him "You're keeping the price up."Schwam 2010 305ff Commenting on their use in the film, Walker writes: Everyone recalls one early sequence in the film, the space hotel, primarily because the custom-made Olivier Mourgue furnishings, those foam-filled sofas, undulant and serpentine, are covered in scarlet fabric and are the first stabs of colour one sees. They resemble Rorschach "blots" against the pristine purity of the rest of the lobby.Walker 1971 224 Detailed instructions in relatively small print for various technological devices appear at several points in the film, the most visible of which are the lengthy instructions for the zero-gravity toilet on the Aries Moon shuttle. Similar detailed instructions for replacing the explosive bolts also appear on the hatches of the EVA pods, most visibly in close-up just before Bowman's pod leaves the ship to rescue Poole.Between the two lines large red letters reading at top "CAUTION" and at bottom "EXPLOSIVE BOLTS" are smaller black lines reading "MAINTENANCE AND REPLACEMENT INSTRUCTIONS" followed by even smaller lines of four instructions beginning "(1) SELF TEST EXPLOSIVE BOLTS PER INST 14 PARA 3 SEC 5D AFTER EACH EVA", et cetera. The instructions are generally legible on Blu-ray editions but not DVD editions of the film.Agel 1970 321–324 The film features an extensive use of Eurostile Bold Extended, Futura and other sans serif typefaces as design elements of the 2001 world.http://typesetinthefuture.com/2001-a-space-odyssey/ 2001: A Space Odyssey: Typeset in the Future Dave Addey 11 February 2014 23 February 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20140222012112/http://typesetinthefuture.com/2001-a-space-odyssey/ 22 February 2014 live Computer displays show high-resolution fonts, colour, and graphics that were far in advance of what most computers were capable of in the 1960s, when the film was made. Design of the monolith Kubrick was personally involved in the design of the monolith and its form for the film. The first design for the monolith was a transparent tetrahedron. This design was taken directly from the short story "The Sentinel", one of the stories that inspired the first segment of the film.Kolker 2006 82https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/07/unseen-images-2011-space-odyssey-making Weird, Unseen Images from the Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey Vanity Fair 9 July 2014 21 August 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20170706230658/http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/07/unseen-images-2011-space-odyssey-making 6 July 2017 live A London firm was approached by Kubrick to provide a 12 ft on transparent plexiglas pyramid, but due to construction constraints they recommended a flat slab shape. Kubrick approved, but was disappointed with the glassy appearance of the transparent prop on set. Art director Anthony Masters suggested making the monolith's surface matte black. Models thumb|Modern replica of the Discovery One spaceship model To heighten the reality of the film, intricate models of the various spacecraft and locations were built. Their sizes ranged from about two-foot-long models of satellites and the Aries translunar shuttle up to the 55 ft on-long model of the Discovery One spacecraft. "In-camera" techniques were again used as much as possible to combine models and background shots together to prevent degradation of the image through duplication.Trumbull Douglas Creating Special Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey http://cinetropolis.net/vintage-article-by-douglas-trumbull-on-creating-special-effects-for-2001-a-space-odyssey/ American Cinematographer 49 6 412–413, 420–422, 416–419, 441–447, 451–454, 459–461 June 1968 Cinetropolis 7 June 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20160613162305/http://cinetropolis.net/vintage-article-by-douglas-trumbull-on-creating-special-effects-for-2001-a-space-odyssey/ 13 June 2016 liveSchwam 2010 151ff In shots where there was no perspective change, still shots of the models were photographed and positive paper prints were made. The image of the model was cut out of the photographic print and mounted on glass and filmed on an animation stand. The undeveloped film was re-wound to film the star background with the silhouette of the model photograph acting as a matte to block out where the spaceship image was. Shots where the spacecraft had parts in motion or the perspective changed were shot by directly filming the model. For most shots the model was stationary and camera was driven along a track on a special mount, the motor of which was mechanically linked to the camera motor—making it possible to repeat camera moves and match speeds exactly. Elements of the scene were recorded on the same piece of film in separate passes to combine the lit model, stars, planets, or other spacecraft in the same shot. In moving shots of the long Discovery One spacecraft, in order to keep the entire model in focus (and preserve its sense of scale), the camera's aperture was stopped down for maximum depth-of-field, and each frame was exposed for several seconds.Bizony 2001 112–113 Many matting techniques were tried to block out the stars behind the models, with film makers sometimes resorting to hand-tracing frame by frame around the image of the spacecraft (rotoscoping) to create the matte.Bizony 2001 113–117 Some shots required exposing the film again to record previously filmed live-action shots of the people appearing in the windows of the spacecraft or structures. This was achieved by projecting the window action onto the models in a separate camera pass or, when two-dimensional photographs were used, projecting from the backside through a hole cut in the photograph. All of the shots required multiple takes so that some film could be developed and printed to check exposure, density, alignment of elements, and to supply footage used for other photographic effects, such as for matting. Rotating sets thumb|right|The "centrifuge" set used for filming scenes depicting interior of the spaceship Discovery For spacecraft interior shots, ostensibly containing a giant centrifuge that produces artificial gravity, Kubrick had a 30 ST on rotating "ferris wheel" built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering Group at a cost of $750,000 (US 750000 1968 -5 eq $US). The set was 38 ft in diameter and 10 ft wide.George D. DeMet http://www.palantir.net/2001/meanings/dfx.html The Special Effects of '2001: A Space Odyssey' https://web.archive.org/web/20080509060702/http://www.palantir.net/2001/meanings/dfx.html 9 May 2008 DFX July 1999 Various scenes in the Discovery centrifuge were shot by securing set pieces within the wheel, then rotating it while the actor walked or ran in sync with its motion, keeping him at the bottom of the wheel as it turned. The camera could be fixed to the inside of the rotating wheel to show the actor walking completely "around" the set, or mounted in such a way that the wheel rotated independently of the stationary camera, as in the jogging scene where the camera appears to alternately precede and follow the running actor.Bizony 2001 138–144 The shots where the actors appear on opposite sides of the wheel required one of the actors to be strapped securely into place at the "top" of the wheel as it moved to allow the other actor to walk to the "bottom" of the wheel to join him. The most notable case is when Bowman enters the centrifuge from the central hub on a ladder and joins Poole, who is eating on the other side of the centrifuge. This required Gary Lockwood to be strapped into a seat while Keir Dullea walked toward him from the opposite side of the wheel as it turned with him. Another rotating set appeared in an earlier sequence on board the Aries trans-lunar shuttle. A stewardess is shown preparing in-flight meals, then carrying them into a circular walkway. Attached to the set as it rotates 180 degrees, the camera's point of view remains constant, and she appears to walk up the "side" of the circular walkway, and steps, now in an "upside-down" orientation, into a connecting hallway.Bizony 2001 144. Zero-gravity effects thumb|Zero-gravity effect The realistic-looking effects of the astronauts floating weightless in space and inside the spacecraft were accomplished by suspending the actors from wires attached to the top of the set and placing the camera beneath them. The actors' bodies blocked the camera's view of the wires and appeared to float. For the shot of Poole floating into the pod's arms during Bowman's recovery of him, a stuntman on a wire portrayed the movements of an unconscious man and was shot in slow motion to enhance the illusion of drifting through space.Agel 1970 129–135 The scene showing Bowman entering the emergency airlock from the EVA pod was done similarly: an off-camera stagehand, standing on a platform, held the wire suspending Dullea above the camera positioned at the bottom of the vertically oriented airlock. At the proper moment, the stage-hand first loosened his grip on the wire, causing Dullea to fall toward the camera, then, while holding the wire firmly, jumped off the platform, causing Dullea to ascend back toward the hatch.Jan Harlan, Stanley Kubrick October 2007 2001:A Space Odyssey DVD Warner Bros. The methods used were alleged to have placed stuntman Bill Weston's life in danger. Weston recalled that he filmed one sequence without air-holes in his suit, risking asphyxiation. "Even when the tank was feeding air into the suit, there was no place for the carbon dioxide Weston exhaled to go. So it simply built up inside, incrementally causing a heightened heart rate, rapid breathing, fatigue, clumsiness, and eventually, unconsciousness."https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/05/stanley-kubrick-risked-stuntman-life-making-2001-a-space-oydssey Alberge Dalya The Guardian 5 April 2018 Stanley Kubrick 'risked stuntman's life' making 2001: A Space Odyssey 23 August 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20181021155514/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/05/stanley-kubrick-risked-stuntman-life-making-2001-a-space-oydssey 21 October 2018 live Weston said Kubrick was warned "we've got to get him back" but reportedly replied, "Damn it, we just started. Leave him up there! Leave him up there!"Kaplan Ilana https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/stanley-kubrick-2001-space-odyssey-stuntman-risk-life-filming-a8290286.html The Independent Stanley Kubrick 'risked stuntman's life' filming 2001: A Space Odyssey 5 April 2018 23 August 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180424093514/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/stanley-kubrick-2001-space-odyssey-stuntman-risk-life-filming-a8290286.html 24 April 2018 live When Weston lost consciousness, filming ceased, and he was brought down. "They brought the tower in, and I went looking for Stanley... I was going to shove MGM right up his... And the thing is, Stanley had left the studio and sent Victor [Lyndon, the associate producer] to talk to me." Weston claimed Kubrick fled the studio for "two or three days. ... I know he didn't come in the next day, and I'm sure it wasn't the day after. Because I was going to do him."https://www.space.com/40173-space-odyssey-michael-benson-excerpt.html Benson Michael space.com 3 April 2018 Dangling on a Wire: A Tale from the Making of '2001: A Space Odyssey' 23 August 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180928124017/https://www.space.com/40173-space-odyssey-michael-benson-excerpt.html 28 September 2018 live "Star Gate" sequence none 2001 space travel.ogv Special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey The face of David Bowman with lights reflected in the visor of his helmet During the "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" sequence, Bowman takes a trip through the "Star Gate" that involves the innovative use of slit-scan photography to create the visual effects. The coloured lights in the Star Gate sequence were accomplished by slit-scan photography of thousands of high-contrast images on film, including Op art paintings, architectural drawings, Moiré patterns, printed circuits, and electron-microscope photographs of molecular and crystal structures. Kubrick was in part inspired to make the scene by seeing abstract effects in experimental films, such as the 1963 short film Sublimated Birth, whose creators would later work on the Star Gate sequence.Odino Simone 2021-10-11 Stanley Kubrick's "Manhattan Project": How Two Experimental Filmmakers Contributed to 2001: A Space Odyssey https://filmmakermagazine.com/112357-stanley-kubrick-2001-space-odyssey-fredric-martin-john-jack-malick/ live https://web.archive.org/web/20250327205048/https://filmmakermagazine.com/112357-stanley-kubrick-2001-space-odyssey-fredric-martin-john-jack-malick/ 2025-03-27 2025-08-27 Filmmaker Magazine Known to staff as "Manhattan Project", the shots of various nebula-like phenomena, including the expanding star field, were coloured paints and chemicals swirling in a pool-like device known as a cloud tank, shot in slow motion in a dark room.Agel 1970 143–146 The live-action landscape shots were filmed in the Hebridean islands, the mountains of northern Scotland, and Monument Valley. The colouring and negative-image effects were achieved with different colour filters in the process of making duplicate negatives in an optical printer.Agel 1970 150 Visual effects thumb|upright=1.1|A bone-club and orbiting satellite are juxtaposed in the film's famous match cut. Not one foot of this film was made with computer-generated special effects. Everything you see in this film or saw in this film was done physically or chemically, one way or the other. Keir Dullea (2014)TIFF Originals 2001: A Space Odyssey Q&A Keir Dullea & Gary Lockwood TIFF 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FANUlAbf0cc YouTube 12 November 2014 25 October 2020 7 November 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20201107121040/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FANUlAbf0cc live 2001 contains a famous example of a match cut, a type of cut in which two shots are matched by action or subject matter.http://www.allmovietalk.com/?page_id=91 The Film Buff's Dictionary All Movie Talk 28 July 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20140723172157/http://www.allmovietalk.com/?page_id=91 23 July 2014 liveRoberte Dariusz http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0108.html 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Critical Analysis of the Film Score The Kubrick Site: Slavoj Zizek on Eyes Wide Shut Visual-memory.co.uk 23 April 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180207205813/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0108.html 7 February 2018 liveMonaco 2001 183https://ew.com/books/2018/04/02/space-odyssey-book-excerpt/ Why '2001: A Space Odyssey' was a masterpiece so ahead of its time David Canfield 2 April 2018 EW.com 13 October 2024 24 December 2024 https://web.archive.org/web/20241224152225/https://ew.com/books/2018/04/02/space-odyssey-book-excerpt/ live After Moonwatcher uses a bone to kill another ape at the watering hole, he throws it triumphantly into the air; as the bone spins in the air, the film cuts to an orbiting satellite, marking the end of the prologue.Agel 1970 196 The match cut draws a connection between the two objects as exemplars of primitive and advanced tools respectively, and demonstrates humanity's technological progress since the time of early hominids.Duckworth A. R. 27 October 2008 Basic Film Techniques: Match-Cut http://ardfilmjournal.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/basic-film-techniques-match-cut/ The Journal of Film, Art and Aesthetics 2049-4254 28 July 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20110718085250/http://ardfilmjournal.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/basic-film-techniques-match-cut/ 18 July 2011 live 2001 pioneered the use of front projection with retroreflective matting. Kubrick used the technique to produce the backdrops in the Africa scenes and the scene when astronauts walk on the Moon.Bizony 2001 133http://www.thepropgallery.com/2001-a-space-odyssey-dawn-of-front-projection 2001: A Space Odyssey – The Dawn of Front Projection The Prop Gallery 4 November 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20180615063650/http://www.thepropgallery.com/2001-a-space-odyssey-dawn-of-front-projection 15 June 2018 live The technique consisted of a separate scenery projector set at a right angle to the camera and a half-silvered mirror placed at an angle in front that reflected the projected image forward in line with the camera lens onto a backdrop of retroreflective material. The reflective directional screen behind the actors could reflect light from the projected image 100 times more efficiently than the foreground subject did. The lighting of the foreground subject had to be balanced with the image from the screen, so that the part of the scenery image that fell on the foreground subject was too faint to show on the finished film. The exception was the eyes of the leopard in the "Dawn of Man" sequence, which glowed due to the projector illumination. Kubrick described this as "a happy accident".http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/2001a/page2.html Front Projection for '2001: A Space Odyssey' Herb A. Lightman American Cinematographer 20 September 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20130102040441/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/2001a/page2.html 2 January 2013 live Front projection had been used in smaller settings before 2001, mostly for still photography or television production, using small still images and projectors. The expansive backdrops for the African scenes required a screen 40 ft tall and 110 ft wide, far larger than had been used before. When the reflective material was applied to the backdrop in 100 ft on strips, variations at the seams of the strips led to visual artefacts; to solve this, the crew tore the material into smaller chunks and applied them in a random "camouflage" pattern on the backdrop. The existing projectors using 4 × 5 in cm on transparencies resulted in grainy images when projected that large, so the crew worked with MGM's special-effects supervisor Tom Howard to build a custom projector using 8 × 10 in cm on transparencies, which required the largest water-cooled arc lamp available. The technique was used widely in the film industry thereafter until it was replaced by blue/green screen systems in the 1990s. The film earned an Oscar for best special effects, but the award went solely to Kubrick, with Douglas Trumbull not receiving acknowledgement for his work. This led to threats of legal action and the two men did not speak for a decade.Douglas Trumbull obituary The Times en https://www.thetimes.com/article/douglas-trumbull-obituary-dnsc08lmr 17 March 2022 0140-0460 The voice of HAL In the scene when Bowman deactivates the computer, both the pitch and speed of HAL's voice were gradually dropped at different rates, using an Eltro information rate changer.Langford Simon Digital Audio Editing: Correcting and Enhancing Audio in Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Cubase, and Studio One https://books.google.com/books?id=9achAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA239 2013 CRC Press 978-1-134-11130-5 239Krapp Peter Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture https://books.google.com/books?id=w4k0WhZNNp4C&pg=PA65 2011 University of Minnesota Press 978-0-8166-7624-8 65 The final effect was created by passing the actor's voice through the Eltro twice.Vintage Technologies: The Eltro and the Voice of HAL. The Eltro Mark II "Information Rate Changer" Carlos Wendy http://www.wendycarlos.com/other/Eltro-1967/ Serendip LLC 2008 Soundtrack 2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack) The initial MGM soundtrack album release contained none of the material from the altered and uncredited rendition of Ligeti's Aventures used in the film, but used a different recording of Also sprach Zarathustra (performed by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm) from that heard in the film, and a longer excerpt of Lux Aeterna than in the film.1968: La révolution Kubrick Cinezik web site (French film magazine on music in film) http://www.cinezik.org/reperes/kubrick/kubrick06.php https://web.archive.org/web/20091023074216/http://www.cinezik.org/reperes/kubrick/kubrick06.php 23 October 2009 29 September 2019 live fr In 1996, Turner Entertainment/Rhino Records released a new soundtrack on CD that included the film's rendition of Aventures, the version of Zarathustra used in the film, and the shorter version of Lux Aeterna from the film. As additional "bonus tracks" at the end, the CD includes the versions of Zarathustra and Lux Aeterna on the old MGM soundtrack album, an unaltered performance of Aventures, and a nine-minute compilation of all of HAL's dialogue. Alex North's unused music was first released in Telarc's issue of the main theme on Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, a compilation album by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. All of the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by his friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and released on Varèse Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release and before North's death. Eventually, a mono mix-down of North's original recordings was released as a limited-edition CD by Intrada Records.George Burt The Art of Film Music https://books.google.com/books?id=4E9EdlJw_N8C&pg=PA126 1995 Northeastern University Press 978-1-55553-270-3 126 20 November 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20160128231433/https://books.google.com/books?id=4E9EdlJw_N8C&pg=PA126 28 January 2016 live Theatrical run and post-premiere cuts thumb|thumbtime=24|right|upright=1.6|Original trailer for 2001: A Space Odyssey The film was originally scheduled for a Christmas 1966 release, but was later delayed to early 1967, then later to October 1967.https://variety.com/2016/film/news/stanley-kubrick-birthday-2001-a-space-odyssey-1201822511/ Stanley Kubrick & '2001': Over Budget and Behind Schedule — but a Radical Classic Tim Gray 26 July 2016 8 November 2023 8 November 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20231108080754/https://variety.com/2016/film/news/stanley-kubrick-birthday-2001-a-space-odyssey-1201822511/ live The film's world premiere was on 2 April 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.,Space World 1988 Palmer Publications, Incorporated 19 https://books.google.com/books?id=fDgqAQAAIAAJ en 29 March 2023 6 April 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230406010857/https://books.google.com/books?id=fDgqAQAAIAAJ live with a 160-minute cut.23399 It opened the next day at the Loew's Capitol in New York and the following day at the Warner Hollywood Theatre in Los Angeles. The original version was also shown in Boston. Kubrick and editor Ray Lovejoy edited the film between 5 and 9 April 1968. Kubrick's rationale for trimming the film was to tighten the narrative. Reviews suggested the film suffered from its departure from traditional cinematic storytelling.https://variety.com/1968/film/reviews/2001-a-space-odyssey-1200421723/ Review: '2001: A Space Odyssey' Frederick Robert B. Variety 2 April 1968 22 March 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180512164000/http://variety.com/1968/film/reviews/2001-a-space-odyssey-1200421723/ 12 May 2018 live Kubrick said, "I didn't believe that the trims made a critical difference. ... The people who like it like it no matter what its length, and the same holds true for the people who hate it." The cut footage is reported as being 19Variety 16 May 2020 7 Kubrick Trims '2001' by 19 Mins., Adds Titles to Frame Sequences; Chi, Houston, Hub Reviews Goodhttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/07/unseen-images-2011-space-odyssey-making Weird, Unseen Images from the Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey Bruce Handy 9 July 2014 Vanity Fair 21 August 2019 6 July 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20170706230658/http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/07/unseen-images-2011-space-odyssey-making live or 17https://www.wired.com/2010/12/its-official-warner-bros-has-no-plans-for-deleted-2001-a-space-odyssey-vault-footage/ It's Official: Warner Bros. Has No Plans for Deleted 2001: A Space Odyssey Vault Footage 20 December 2010 Hugh Hart Wired 26 September 2022 21 December 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20161221070913/https://wired.com/2010/12/its-official-warner-bros-has-no-plans-for-deleted-2001-a-space-odyssey-vault-footage/ live minutes long. It includes scenes revealing details about life on Discovery: additional space walks, Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor, elements from the Poole murder sequence—including space-walk preparation and HAL turning off radio contact with Poole—and a close-up of Bowman picking up a slipper during his walk in the alien room. Jerome Agel describes the cut scenes as comprising "Dawn of Man, Orion, Poole exercising in the centrifuge, and Poole's pod exiting from Discovery." The new cut was approximately 139 minutes long. According to his brother-in-law, Jan Harlan, Kubrick was adamant that the trims were never to be seen and had the negatives, which he had kept in his garage, burned shortly before his death. This was confirmed by former Kubrick assistant Leon Vitali: "I'll tell you right now, okay, on Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, some little parts of 2001, we had thousands of cans of negative outtakes and print, which we had stored in an area at his house where we worked out of, which he personally supervised the loading of it to a truck and then I went down to a big industrial waste lot and burned it. That's what he wanted."https://www.dvdtalk.com/leonvitaliinterview.html Kubrick Questions Finally Answered – An in Depth Talk with Leon Vitali Dvdtalk.com 22 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100801042359/http://www.dvdtalk.com/leonvitaliinterview.html 1 August 2010 live However, in December 2010, Douglas Trumbull, the film's visual effects supervisor, announced that Warner Bros. had found 17 minutes of lost footage from the post-premiere cuts, "perfectly preserved", in a Kansas salt mine vault used by Warner Bros. for storage.http://www.slashfilm.com/warner-bros-responds-17-minutes-lost-2001-space-odyssey-footage#more-94389 Warner Bros. Responds: 17 Minutes of 'Lost' '2001: A Space Odyssey' Footage Found? Peter Sciretta slashfilm.com 20 December 2010 4 January 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110813021914/http://www.slashfilm.com/warner-bros-responds-17-minutes-lost-2001-space-odyssey-footage/#more-94389 13 August 2011 liveAgel 1970 170 No plans have been announced for the rediscovered footage.Sneider Jeff WB Uncovers Lost Footage From Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' 16 December 2010 https://www.thewrap.com/deal-central/column-post/wb-uncovers-lost-footage-kubricks-2001-space-odyssey-23309 20 December 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20110816200554/http://www.thewrap.com/deal-central/column-post/wb-uncovers-lost-footage-kubricks-2001-space-odyssey-23309 16 August 2011 live The revised version was ready for the expansion of the roadshow release to four other US cities (Chicago, Denver, Detroit and Houston), on 10 April 1968, and across the world in five cities the following day,http://www.underview.com/bhpalltrims.html#en05 A Taste of Blue Food in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey Thomas E. Brown Phil Vendy 2 March 2000 Underview.com 8 January 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110121005339/http://www.underview.com/bhpalltrims.html#en05 21 January 2011 dead where the shortened version was shown in 70mm format in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio and used a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack. By the end of May, the film had opened in 22 cities in the United States and Canada and in another 36 in June. The general release of the film in its 35 mm anamorphic format took place in autumn 1968 and used either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural one. The original 70 mm 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 mm production. The original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70 mm Cinerama with six-track sound played continually for more than a year in several venues, and for 103 weeks in Los Angeles.http://www.in70mm.com/news/2004/2001_in_70mm/index.htm 1968: A Roadshow Odyssey – The Original Reserved Seat Engagements Of '2001: A Space Odyssey' Michael Coate in70mm.com 9 January 2011 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20110430000932/http://www.in70mm.com/news/2004/2001_in_70mm/index.htm 30 April 2011 As was typical of many high-budget films of the era, it was released both in a "roadshow" 70 mm version and a later 35 mm general release version. The entrance music, intermission music (and intermission altogether), and exit music were cut from most prints of the latter version, although these have been restored to most DVD releases.http://www.avrev.com/blu-ray-movie-disc-reviews/sci-fi-fantasy/2001-a-space-odyssey.html 2001: A Space Odyssey (Blu-Ray review) Les Paul Robley 1 February 2008 Audio-Video Revolution 7 January 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110514152019/http://www.avrev.com/blu-ray-movie-disc-reviews/sci-fi-fantasy/2001-a-space-odyssey.html 14 May 2011 deadhttp://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=1126 2001: A Space Odyssey (Remastered) dvd.net.au 7 January 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110201132037/http://dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=1126 1 February 2011 live Reception and legacy Box office In its first nine weeks from 22 locations, it grossed $2 million—equivalent to $US 2 1962 2 million in US—in the United States and Canada.Daily Variety 7 June 1968 3 $2 Mil 'Odyssey' B.O. Gross To Date The film earned $8.5 million in theatrical gross rentals from roadshow engagements throughout 1968,Hall Sheldon Sheldon Hall (film historian) Introduction to 2001: A Space Odyssey 9 April 2011 In70mm.com http://www.in70mm.com/pictureville/2010/sheldon/index.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20110526092759/http://www.in70mm.com/pictureville/2010/sheldon/index.htm 26 May 2011Big Rental Films of 1968 Variety 8 January 1969 15 This figure refers to rental revenue accruing to distributors. contributing to North American rentals of $16.4 million and worldwide rentals of $21.9 million during its original release.Block Wilson 2010 434 The film's high costs, of approximately $10.5 million,2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — Financial Information https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/2001-A-Space-Odyssey#tab=summary The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC 2 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20221127095518/https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/2001-A-Space-Odyssey#tab=summary 27 November 2022 live meant that the initial returns from the 1968 release left it with an $800,000 loss; but the successful re-release in 1971 made it profitable.Block Wilson 2010 492–493Miller Frank Behind the Camera on 2001: A Space Odyssey tcm.com Turner Classic Movies http://www.tcm.turner.com/this-month/article/26711%7c0/Behind-the-Camera.html 24 December 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20160128231433/http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/26711%7c0/Behind-the-Camera.html 28 January 2016 liveKolker 2006 83 By June 1974, the film had rentals from the United States and Canada of $20.3 million (gross of $58 million) and international rentals of $7.5 million.Daily Variety 31 July 1974 Murphy A.D. 1 'Odyssey' Test Run Revival Here Turns into Surprise B.O. Smash The film had a reissue on a test basis on 24 July 1974 at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and grossed $53,000 in its first week, which led to an expanded reissue. Further re-releases followed, giving a cumulative gross of over $60 million in the United States and Canada.2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0062622/ Box Office Mojo. IMDbPro 24 March 2026 https://web.archive.org/web/20260324221143/https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0062622/ 24 March 2026 live Taking its re-releases into account, it is the highest-grossing film of 1968 in the United States and Canada.All Time Box Office: Domestic Grosses – Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm?adjust_yr=1 Box Office Mojo. IMDbPro 9 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20190901183428/https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm?adjust_yr=1 1 September 2019 live Worldwide, it has grossed $148.5 million across all releases,Robert Kolker put the cumulative global gross of the film at $138 million as of 2006,Kolker 2006 16 although it has had several limited releases since then. The combined takings of multiple reissues between 2010 and 2026 added a further $10.5 million to the gross. although some estimates place the gross higher, at over $190 million.Miller Frank 2001: A Space Odyssey – Articles tcm.com Turner Classic Movies http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/628/2001-A-Space-Odyssey/articles.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120212151721/http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/628/2001-A-Space-Odyssey/articles.html 12 February 2012 2 October 2019 live Critical response thumb|Seattle writer Walt Crowley drew this cartoon to illustrate his favorable review in the Seattle underground paper Helix, in which he accused mainstream critics of "approach[ing] Kandinsky with a Norman Rockwell mentality."Crowley Walt Walt Crowley "My Favorite Movie" https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Helix,_v.3,_no.10,_Jun._20,_1968_-_DPLA_-_f9ecebcefb9617a4b4bfe6acddc80869_(page_15).jpg 17 February 2024 Helix v.3, no. 10 20 June 1968 16 16 April 2024 https://web.archive.org/web/20240416210543/https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Helix,_v.3,_no.10,_Jun._20,_1968_-_DPLA_-_f9ecebcefb9617a4b4bfe6acddc80869_(page_15).jpg live 2001: A Space Odyssey polarised critical opinion, receiving both praise and derision, with many New York–based critics being especially harsh.Higgins Bill Hollywood Flashback: In 1968, '2001: A Space Odyssey' Confounded Critics https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-flashback-1968-2001-a-space-odyssey-confounded-critics-1109385 The Hollywood Reporter Eldridge Industries Los Angeles 7 May 2018 10 May 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180508112152/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-flashback-1968-2001-a-space-odyssey-confounded-critics-1109385 8 May 2018 live Some critics viewed the original 161-minute cut shown at premieres in Washington D.C., New York, and Los Angeles.Agel 1970 169 Keir Dullea says that during the New York premiere, 250 people walked out; in L.A., Rock Hudson not only left early but "was heard to mutter, 'What is this bullshit? "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"Ebert Roger https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-2001-a-space-odyssey-1968 2001: A Space Odyssey movie review 27 March 1997 14 January 2023 RogerEbert.com https://web.archive.org/web/20130409153337/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-2001-a-space-odyssey-1968 9 April 2013 live "But a few months into the release, they realised a lot of people were watching it while smoking funny cigarettes. Someone in San Francisco even ran right through the screen screaming: 'It's God!' So they came up with a new poster that said: '2001 – the ultimate trip!Hoad Phil How we made 2001: A Space Odyssey https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/12/how-we-made-2001-a-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick-hal The Guardian 12 March 2018 14 May 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180522144157/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/12/how-we-made-2001-a-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick-hal 22 May 2018 live In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor ... The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing."Gilliatt, Penelope (5 April 1968). "After Man", review of 2001 reprinted from The New Yorker in Agel 1970 209–213. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future ... it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film."Champlin, Charles (5 April 1968). Review of 2001 reprinted from Los Angeles Times in Agel 1970 213–215. Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth."Sweeney, Louise. Review of 2001 reprinted from The Christian Science Monitor in Agel 1970 227–231. Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D. W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man ... Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch."French, Philip. Review of 2001 reprinted from an unnamed publication in Agel 1970 237–239. The Boston Globe review called it "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere ... The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life."Adams, Marjorie. Review of 2001 reprinted from The Boston Globe in Agel 1970 240. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, saying the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale". He later put it on his Top 10 list for Sight & Sound.BFI | Sight & Sound | Top Ten Poll 2002 – How the directors and critics voted Ebert Roger http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/voter.php?forename=Roger&surname=Ebert https://web.archive.org/web/20090903062342/http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/voter.php?forename=Roger&surname=Ebert 3 September 2009 dead 27 July 2009 Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews in various issues in 1968, each slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review of 27 December 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."Unknown reviewer. Capsule review of 2001 reprinted from Time in Agel 1970 248. Others were unimpressed. Pauline Kael called it "a monumentally unimaginative movie",How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love 'Barry Lyndon' 11 January 1976 Hofsess John http://partners.nytimes.com/library/film/011176kubrick-lyndon.html 30 June 2013 The New York Times https://web.archive.org/web/20130127160904/http://partners.nytimes.com/library/film/011176kubrick-lyndon.html 27 January 2013 live and saw the film as a vehicle for Kubrick to do "every dumb thing he ever wanted to do".Kael Pauline https://books.google.com/books?id=tkShTL84MrcC The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael: A Library of America Special Publication 27 October 2011 Library of America 978-1-59853-171-8 228 24 July 2025 14 November 2025 https://web.archive.org/web/20250724091524/https://books.google.com/books?id=tkShTL84MrcC live Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic described it as "a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull".Stanley Kauffmann Lost in the Stars The New Republic 4 May 1968 https://newrepublic.com/article/132297/lost-stars https://web.archive.org/web/20050403160335/http://krusch.com/kubrick/Q16.html 3 April 2005 The Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky found the film to be an inadequate addition to the science fiction genre of filmmaking. Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring".Adler, Renata. Review of 2001 reprinted from The New York Times in Agel 1970 207–8. Varietys Robert B. Frederick ('Robe') believed it was a "[b]ig, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic ... A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark". Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life ... 2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points."Sarris, Andrew. Review of 2001 quoted from a WBAI radio broadcast in Agel 1970 242–3. (Sarris changed his opinion upon a second viewing, done under the influence of drugs, and declared, "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist."Hail the Conquering Hero http://www.filmcomment.com/article/hail-the-conquering-hero-andrew-sarris-profiled 1 May 2005 12 January 2007 FilmComment.com https://web.archive.org/web/20120623223203/http://www.filmcomment.com/article/hail-the-conquering-hero-andrew-sarris-profiled 23 June 2012 live) John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines ... and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans ... 2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story".Simon, John. Review of 2001 reprinted from The New Leader in Agel 1970 244. Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. deemed the film "morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long ... a film out of control".Joyce, Paul (director) Doran, Jamie (producer) Bizony, Piers (assoc. producer) 2001 2001: The Making of a Myth Television production Channel Four Television Corp. UK 15:56 ID In March 2001, a BBC review commented that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon release.https://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2000/09/18/2001_review.shtml BBC – Films – review – 2001: A Space Odyssey BBC 29 March 2001 22 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20111225002936/http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2000/09/18/2001_review.shtml 25 December 2011 live On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 91% based on 169 reviews, with an average rating of 9.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "One of the most influential of all sci-fi films – and one of the most controversial – Stanley Kubrick's 2001 is a delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity – and folly – of mankind."2001: A Space Odyssey 2 April 1968 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/2001_a_space_odyssey Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media 19 October 2026 7 August 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20200807100940/https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/2001_a_space_odyssey live Review aggregator Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, has assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100, based on 25 critics’ reviews.2001: A Space Odyssey Reviews https://www.metacritic.com/movie/2001-a-space-odyssey Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. 14 September 2021 7 August 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20200807100907/https://www.metacritic.com/movie/2001-a-space-odyssey live 2001 was the only science fiction film to make Sight & Sound 2012 list of the ten best films,Christie Ian Ian Christie (film scholar) et al. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time The 50 Greatest Films of All Time Sight & Sound British Film Institute September 2012 7 August 2017 2 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20170301135739/http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time 1 March 2017 dead and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of greatest science fiction films of all time.2001: A Space Odyssey Named the Greatest Sci-Fi Film of All Time By the Online Film Critics Society Online Film Critics Society 12 June 2002 http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/pages/pr/top100scifi 15 December 2006 https://web.archive.org/web/20061126071451/http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/pages/pr/top100scifi 26 November 2006 dead In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed it as the 19th best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.The 75 Best Edited Films Editors Guild Magazine May 2012 1 3 https://www.editorsguild.com/magazine.cfm?ArticleID=1102 20 April 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20160304232326/https://www.editorsguild.com/magazine.cfm?ArticleID=1102 4 March 2016 live Other lists that include the film are 50 Films to See Before You Die (6th), The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th century (11th), and Roger Ebert's Top Ten of 1968 (2nd). In 1995, the Vatican included it in a list of 45 important films, under the category of "Art".USCCB – (Film and Broadcasting) – Vatican Best Films List USCCB web site http://archive.usccb.org/movies/vaticanfilms.shtml 1 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20070418125227/http://www.usccb.org/movies/vaticanfilms.shtml 18 April 2007 live In 1998, Time Out conducted a reader's poll and 2001: A Space Odyssey was voted as ninth on the list of "greatest films of all time".AMC Filmsite.org http://www.filmsite.org/timeout2.html Top 100 Films (Readers) American Movie Classics Company 17 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20140718213202/http://www.filmsite.org/timeout2.html 18 July 2014 live Entertainment Weekly voted it no. 26 on their list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time http://www.filmsite.org/ew100.html Filmsite.org 19 January 2009 live https://web.archive.org/web/20140331185517/http://www.filmsite.org/ew100.html 31 March 2014 In 2017, Empire magazine's readers' poll ranked it 21st on its list of "The 100 Greatest Movies".https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/best-movies/ The 100 Greatest Movies 20 March 2018 6 July 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180706075658/https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/best-movies/ live In the Sight & Sound poll of 480 directors published in December 2022, 2001: A Space Odyssey was voted as the Greatest Film of All Time, ahead of Citizen Kane and The Godfather.https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/2001-a-space-odyssey-named-greatest-movie-of-all-time/ '2001: A Space Odyssey' named the greatest movie of all time by 480 filmmakers 2 December 2022 5 December 2022 5 December 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221205152806/https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/2001-a-space-odyssey-named-greatest-movie-of-all-time/ live Science fiction writers The film won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, as voted by science fiction fans and published science-fiction writers. Ray Bradbury acknowledged that "technically and photographically, it is probably the most stunning film ever put on the screen," but disliked the banality of the dialogue and complained that the audience does not care when Poole dies, saying, "the freezing touch of Antonioni, whose ghost haunts Kubrick, has turned everything here to ice." 29 June 2026 https://criterioncast.com/column/reflections/2001-a-space-odyssey-1968-ld-60 criterioncast.com Criterion Reflections – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – LD #60 Blakeslee, David 3 May 2016Brosnan John https://archive.org/details/futuretense00john Future tense : the cinema of science fiction 1978 St. Martin's Press Internet Archive 978-0-312-31488-0 New York 179 John Brosnan 12 January 2024 Internet Archive Both he and Lester del Rey disliked the film's feeling of sterility and blandness in the human encounters amidst the technological wonders, while both praised the pictorial element of the film. Reporting that "half the audience had left by intermission", del Rey described the film as dull, confusing, and boring ("the first of the New Wave-Thing movies, with the usual empty symbols"), predicting "[i]t will probably be a box-office disaster, too, and thus set major science-fiction movie making back another ten years".del Rey Lester July 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v26n06_1968-07#page/n193/mode/2up Galaxy Science Fiction 193–194 6 January 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20190330143620/https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v26n06_1968-07#page/n193/mode/2up 30 March 2019 live Samuel R. Delany was impressed by how the film undercuts the audience's normal sense of space and orientation in several ways. Like Bradbury, Delany noticed the banality of the dialogue (he stated that characters say nothing meaningful), but regarded this as a dramatic strength, a prelude to the rebirth at the conclusion of the film.Samuel R. Delany's and Lester del Rey's reviews both appear in the 1968 anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 2 edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss. Both are also printed on The Kubrick Site:Lester del Rey 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Review http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0045.html 1968 live https://web.archive.org/web/20110709013211/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0045.html 9 July 2011 5 March 2022Delany Samuel R. A Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0044.html 1968 live https://web.archive.org/web/20110819033153/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0044.html 19 August 2011 5 March 2022 Without analysing the film in detail, Isaac Asimov spoke well of it in his autobiography and other essays. James P. Hogan liked the film but complained that the ending did not make any sense to him, leading to a bet about whether he could write something better: "I stole Arthur's plot idea shamelessly and produced Inherit the Stars."http://io9.com/5586134/rip-hard-science-fiction-writer-james-p-hogan R.I.P. hard science fiction writer James P. Hogan Charlie Jane Anders io9 13 July 2010 17 June 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20140227040133/http://io9.com/5586134/rip-hard-science-fiction-writer-james-p-hogan 27 February 2014 live Awards and honours AwardCategoryNominee(s)Result Academy Awards Best Director Stanley Kubrick https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1969 The 41st Academy Awards 1969 14 April 1969 Academy Awards Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 30 July 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20260122154201/https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1969 22 January 2026 live Best Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke Best Art Direction Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer Best Special Visual Effects Stanley Kubrick British Academy Film Awards Best Film Stanley Kubrick http://www.bafta.org/print/awards/film/nominations/film-awards-nominations,183,BA.html?year=1968 28 March 1968 Film Nominations 1968 British Academy of Film and Television Arts https://web.archive.org/web/20131006010330/http://www.bafta.org/print/awards/film/nominations/film-awards-nominations,183,BA.html?year=1968 6 October 2013 dead 16 October 2012 Best Art Direction Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer Best Cinematography Geoffrey Unsworth Best Sound Track Winston Ryder United Nations Award Stanley Kubrick Cinema Writers Circle Best Foreign Film 2001: A Space Odyssey http://www.cinecec.com/cec.html Premios del CEC a la producción española de 1968 Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos es 29 January 2019 16 October 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20120425232140/http://www.cinecec.com/cec.html 25 April 2012 live David di Donatello Awards Best Foreign Film Stanley Kubrick http://film.iksv.org/en/the-38th-istanbul-film-festival-2019/2001-a-space-odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey madebycat.com İKSV en 7 April 2019 10 July 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20190710135056/http://film.iksv.org/en/the-38th-istanbul-film-festival-2019/2001-a-space-odyssey 10 July 2019 live Directors Guild of America Awards Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures Stanley Kubrick http://www.dga.org/Awards/History/1960s/1968.aspx Awards / History / 1968 – 21st Annual DGA Awards Directors Guild of America 2 February 1969 16 October 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20160128231433/http://www.dga.org/Awards/History/1960s/1968.aspx 28 January 2016 live Hugo Awards Best Dramatic Presentation Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1969-hugo-awards/ 1969 Hugo Awards World Science Fiction Society 28 August 1969 16 October 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20130703111100/http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1969-hugo-awards/ 3 July 2013 live Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards Best Film 2001: A Space Odyssey http://www.kcfcc.org/1960s.html Winners: 1960s Kansas City Film Critics Circle 18 December 1968 16 October 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20120503233832/http://www.kcfcc.org/1960s.html 3 May 2012 live Best Director Stanley Kubrick Laurel Awards Best Road Show 2001: A Space Odyssey Movie awards: the ultimate, unofficial guide to the Oscars, Golden Globes, critics, Guild & Indie honors O'Neil Thomas Perigee Book 2003 978-0-399-52922-1 306 National Board of Review Awards Top 10 Films 2001: A Space Odyssey 10th placehttp://www.nbrmp.org/awards/past.cfm?year=1968 Awards for 1968 10 January 1969 National Board of Review of Motion Pictures https://web.archive.org/web/20101125221611/http://nbrmp.org/awards/past.cfm?year=1968 25 November 2010 dead 16 October 2012 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards Best British Original Screenplay Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke WRITERS' GUILD AWARDS 1968 https://web.archive.org/web/20231021134212/https://writersguild.org.uk/writers-guild-awards-1968/ 21 October 2023 Writers' Guild of Great Britain. Retrieved 20 October 2023. In 1969, a United States Department of State committee chose 2001 as the American entry at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival.http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/archives/?year=1969 6th Moscow International Film Festival (1969) 20 December 2012 MIFF dead https://web.archive.org/web/20130116194825/http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/archives/?year=1969 16 January 2013 2001 is ranked 15th on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies list from 2007,AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies 10th Anniversary http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/100Movies.pdf afi.com American Film Institute 16 June 1998 9 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20130606072909/http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/100Movies.pdf 6 June 2013 live up from no. 22 on AFI's original list from 1998,AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/movies100.pdf afi.com American Film Institute 16 June 1998 9 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20190412113202/http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/movies100.pdf 12 April 2019 live and was also no. 40 on its 100 Years... 100 Thrills,AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Thrills http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/thrills100.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140328082214/http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/thrills100.pdf dead 28 March 2014 afi.com American Film Institute 16 June 1998 9 October 2019 was included on its 100 Years... 100 Quotes (no. 78 "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."),AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movie Quotes http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/quotes100.pdf afi.com American Film Institute 16 June 1998 9 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20110313150615/http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/quotes100.pdf 13 March 2011 live and HAL 9000 was selected as the 13th greatest villain on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list.AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Heroes & Villains http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/handv100.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140328082215/http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/handv100.pdf dead 28 March 2014 afi.com American Film Institute 16 June 1998 9 October 2019 The film was voted the 47th most inspiring film on the 100 Years... 100 Cheers list,AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Cheers http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/cheers100.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150421022651/http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/cheers100.pdf dead 21 April 2015 afi.com American Film Institute 16 June 1998 9 October 2019 and was the no.1 science fiction film on AFI's 10 Top 10.AFI's 10 Top 10: Top 10 Sci-Fi http://www.afi.com/10top10/category.aspx?cat=7 https://web.archive.org/web/20140328081240/http://www.afi.com/10top10/category.aspx?cat=7 dead 28 March 2014 afi.com American Film Institute 17 June 2008 9 October 2019 Interpretations Interpretations of 2001: A Space OdysseyInterpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analysed and interpreted by professional critics and theorists, amateur writers, and science fiction fans. In his monograph for BFI analysing the film, Peter Krämer summarised the diverse interpretations as ranging from those who saw it as darkly apocalyptic in tone to those who saw it as an optimistic reappraisal of the hopes of mankind and humanity.Krämer 2010 8 Questions about 2001 range from uncertainty about its implications for humanity's origins and destiny in the universeSee especially the essay "Auteur with a Capital A", by James Gilbert, anthologized in Kolker 2006. to interpreting elements of the film's more enigmatic scenes, such as the meaning of the monolith, or the fate of astronaut David Bowman. There are also simpler and more mundane questions about the plot, in particular the causes of HAL's breakdown (explained in earlier drafts but kept mysterious in the film).Schwam 2010 86Singer Matt The End of '2001: A Space Odyssey' Explained By Stanley Kubrick https://screencrush.com/2001-a-space-odyssey-ending-explained-by-stanley-kubrick/ ScreenCrush en 5 July 2018 27 September 2025 17 May 2025 https://web.archive.org/web/20250517213821/https://screencrush.com/2001-a-space-odyssey-ending-explained-by-stanley-kubrick/ live Slayton Nicholas In Lost Interview, Stanley Kubrick Explains The Ending of 2001: A Space odyssey https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/in-lost-interview-stanley-kubrick-explains-the-ending-of-2001-a-space-odyssey 5 July 2018 SyfyWire 7 July 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180706010257/http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/in-lost-interview-stanley-kubrick-explains-the-ending-of-2001-a-space-odyssey 6 July 2018 liveHandy Bruce Sometimes a Broken Glass Is Just a Broken Glass https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/opinion/2001-a-space-odyssey-broken-glass.html 5 April 2018 The New York Times 7 July 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180407140425/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/opinion/2001-a-space-odyssey-broken-glass.html 7 April 2018 live Audiences vs. critics A spectrum of diverse interpretative opinions would form after the film's release, appearing to divide theatre audiences from the opinions of critics. Krämer writes: "Many people sent letters to Kubrick to tell him about their responses to 2001, most of them regarding the film—in particular the ending—as an optimistic statement about humanity, which is seen to be born and reborn. The film's reviewers and academic critics, by contrast, have tended to understand the film as a pessimistic account of human nature and humanity's future. The most extreme of these interpretations state that the foetus floating above the Earth will destroy it."Krämer 2010 7 thumb|left|Closing scene of Dr. Strangelove and Kubrick's sardonic fulfilment of a nuclear nightmare Some of the critics' cataclysmic interpretations were informed by Kubrick's prior direction of the Cold War film Dr. Strangelove, immediately before 2001, which resulted in dark speculation about the 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 foetus) destroyed Earth, perhaps for the purpose of creating a new Heaven. This idea never occurred to me; it seems clear that he triggered the orbiting nuclear bombs harmlessly... ." In response to Jeremy Bernstein's dark interpretation of the film's ending, Kubrick said: "The book does not end with the destruction of the Earth." Regarding the film as a whole, Kubrick encouraged people to make their own interpretations and refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened". In a 1968 interview with Playboy, he said: You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point. In a subsequent discussion of the film with Joseph Gelmis, Kubrick said his main aim was to avoid "intellectual verbalization" and reach "the viewer's subconscious". He said he did not strive for ambiguity—it was simply an inevitable outcome of making the film nonverbal. Still, he acknowledged this ambiguity was an invaluable asset to the film. He was willing then to give a fairly straightforward explanation of the plot on what he called the "simplest level", but unwilling to discuss the film's metaphysical interpretation, which he felt should be left up to viewers.Gelmis 1970 293–294 left Meaning of the monolith thumb|right|Multiple interpretations of the meaning of the monolith have been examined in the critical reception of the film. For some readers, Clarke's more straightforward novel based on the script is key to interpreting the film. The novel explicitly identifies the monolith as a tool created by an alien race who have been through many stages of evolution, moving from organic form to biomechanical, and finally achieving a state of pure energy. These aliens travel the cosmos assisting lesser species to take evolutionary steps. Conversely, film critic Penelope Houston wrote in 1971 that because the novel differs in many key aspects from the film, it perhaps should not be regarded as the skeleton key to unlock it.Houston Penelope Skeleton Key to 2001 Sight and Sound International Film Quarterly 40 2 Spring 1971 London British Film Institute Carolyn Geduld writes that what "structurally unites all four episodes of the film" is the monolith, the film's largest and most unresolvable enigma.Geduld 1973 40 Vincent LoBrutto's biography of Kubrick says that for many, Clarke's novel supplements the understanding of the monolith which is more ambiguously depicted in the film.LoBrutto 1998 310, 606 Similarly, Geduld observes that "the monolith ... has a very simple explanation in Clarke's novel", though she later asserts that even the novel does not fully explain the ending. Bob McClay's Rolling Stone review describes a parallel between the monolith's first appearance in which tool usage is imparted to the apes (thus 'beginning' mankind) and the completion of "another evolution" in the fourth and final encounterSchwam 2010 165 with the monolith. In a similar vein, Tim Dirks ends his synopsis saying "[t]he cyclical evolution from ape to man to spaceman to angel-starchild-superman is complete."http://www.filmsite.org/twot.html 2001: A Space Odyssey Dirks Tim Filmsite.org 21 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20110303025113/http://www.filmsite.org/twot.html 3 March 2011 live Humanity's first and second encounters with the monolith have visual elements in common; both the apes, and later the astronauts, touch it gingerly with their hands, and both sequences conclude with near-identical images of the Sun appearing directly over it (the first with a crescent moon adjacent to it in the sky, the second with a near-identical crescent Earth in the same position), echoing the Sun–Earth–Moon alignment seen in the film's opening.http://www.filmsite.org/twot.html 2001: A Space Odyssey Dirks Tim Filmsite.org 21 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20110303025113/http://www.filmsite.org/twot.html 3 March 2011 live Dirks says that, in the ape encounter, "With the mysterious monolith in the foreground, the glowing Sun rises over the black slab, directly beneath the crescent of the Moon" and that on the Moon "Again, the glowing Sun, Moon and Earth have formed a conjunctive orbital configuration." The second encounter also suggests the triggering of the monolith's radio signal to Jupiter by the presence of humans, echoing the premise of Clarke's source story "The Sentinel".Schwam 2010 212–215 The monolith is the subject of the film's final line of dialogue (spoken at the end of the "Jupiter Mission" segment): "Its origin and purpose still a total mystery." Reviewers McClay and Roger Ebert wrote that the monolith is the main element of mystery in the film; Ebert described "the shock of the monolith's straight edges and square corners among the weathered rocks", and the apes warily circling it as prefiguring man reaching "for the stars". Patrick Webster suggests the final line relates to how the film should be approached as a whole: "The line appends not merely to the discovery of the monolith on the Moon, but to our understanding of the film in the light of the ultimate questions it raises about the mystery of the universe."Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from Lolita Through Eyes Wide Shut Webster Patrick 2010 McFarland 978-0-7864-5916-2 66 According to other scholars, "the monolith is a representation of the actual wideframe cinema screen, rotated 90 degrees ... a symbolic cinema screen".https://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%202.html Chapter 2. The Meaning Of The Monolith 2001: A Space Odyssey – in-depth analysis https://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20analysis%20new.html Rob Ager Rob Ager 2008 2015 2 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20170824061016/https://www.collativelearning.com/2001+chapter+2.html 24 August 2017 live "It is at once a screen and the opposite of a screen, since its black surface only absorbs, and sends nothing out. ... and leads us ... to project ourselves, our emotions."Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey https://books.google.com/books?id=9zn8DwAAQBAJ Chion Michel Michel Chion 2019 2001 Bloomsbury Publishing London 978-1-83871-665-3 116 2 January 2023 2 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230102073842/https://books.google.com/books?id=9zn8DwAAQBAJ live "A new heaven" thumb|left|upright=1.09|The Star Child looking upon the Earth Clarke indicated his preferred reading of the ending of 2001 as oriented toward the creation of "a new heaven" provided by the Star Child. His view was corroborated in a posthumously released interview with Kubrick. Kubrick says that Bowman is elevated to a higher level of being that represents the next stage of human evolution. The film also conveys what some viewers have described as a sense of the sublime and numinous. Ebert writes in his essay on 2001 in The Great Movies: North's [rejected] score, which is available on a recording, is a good job of film composition, but would have been wrong for 2001 because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action—to give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. It uplifts. It wants to be sublime; it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals. In a book on architecture, Gregory Caicco writes that Space Odyssey illustrates how the quest for space is motivated by two contradictory desires, a "desire for the sublime" characterised by a need to encounter something totally other than ourselves—"something numinous"—and the conflicting desire for a beauty that makes us feel no longer "lost in space", but at home.Architecture, ethics, and the personhood of place Caicco Gregory 2007 UPNE 978-1-58465-653-1 137 Similarly, an article in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, titled "Sense of Wonder", describes how 2001 creates a "numinous sense of wonder" by portraying a universe that inspires a sense of awe but that at the same time we feel we can understand.The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders, Volume 2 Westfahl Gary 2005 Greenwood Publishing Group 978-0-313-32952-4 707 Christopher Palmer wrote that "the sublime and the banal" coexist in the film, as it implies that to get into space, people had to suspend the "sense of wonder" that motivated them to explore it.Christopher Palmer Big Dumb Objects in Science Fiction: Sublimity, Banality, and Modernity Extrapolation Kent Spring 2006 47 1 103 10.3828/extr.2006.47.1.10 0014-5483 left HAL's breakdown Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey#HAL 9000 thumb|upright=0.45|One of HAL 9000's interfaces The reasons for HAL's malfunction and subsequent malignant behaviour have elicited much discussion. He has been compared to Frankenstein's monster. In Clarke's novel, HAL malfunctions because it has been ordered to lie to the crew of Discovery and withhold confidential information from them, namely the confidentially programmed mission priority over expendable human life, despite being constructed for "the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment". This would not be addressed on film until the 1984 follow-up, 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that HAL, as the supposedly perfect computer, is actually the most human of the characters. In an interview with Joseph Gelmis in 1969, Kubrick said that HAL "had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility".http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html An Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1969) Joseph Gelmis 31 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100419155630/http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html 19 April 2010 live "Star Child" symbolism Multiple allegorical interpretations of 2001 have been proposed. The symbolism of life and death can be seen through the final moments of the film, which are defined by the image of the "Star Child", an in utero foetus that draws on the work of Lennart Nilsson.Burfoot Annette The Fetal Voyager: Women in Modern Medical Visual Discourse Shteir, Ann Lightman, Bernard 2006 Figuring it out: science, gender, and visual culture UPNE 978-1-58465-603-6 339 The Star Child signifies a "great new beginning", and is depicted naked and ungirded but with its eyes wide open.Grant Barry Keith 2010 Shadows of Doubt: Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films Wayne State University Press 978-0-8143-3457-7 135 Leonard F. Wheat sees 2001 as a multi-layered allegory, commenting simultaneously on Nietzsche, Homer, and the relationship of man to machine.Wheat 2000 3 Rolling Stone reviewer Bob McClay sees the film as like a four-movement symphony, its story told with "deliberate realism".Schwam 2010 210–213 Military satellites Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey#Military nature of orbiting satellites Military nature of orbiting satellites Kubrick originally planned a voice-over to reveal that the satellites seen after the prologue are nuclear weapons,Walker 2000 181–182 and that the Star Child would detonate the weapons at the end of the filmWalker 2000 192 but felt this would create associations with Dr. Strangelove and decided not to make it obvious that they were "war machines". A few weeks before the film's release, the US and Soviet governments had agreed not to put any nuclear weapons into outer space. In a book he wrote with Kubrick's assistance, Alexander Walker states that Kubrick eventually decided that nuclear weapons had "no place at all in the film's thematic development", being an "orbiting red herring" that would "merely have raised irrelevant questions to suggest this as a reality of the twenty-first century". Kubrick scholar Michel Ciment, discussing Kubrick's attitude toward human aggression and instinct, observes: "The bone cast into the air by the ape (now become a man) is transformed at the other extreme of civilization, by one of those abrupt ellipses characteristic of the director, into a spacecraft on its way to the moon."Ciment 1999 128 In contrast to Ciment's reading of a cut to a serene "other extreme of civilization", science fiction novelist Robert Sawyer, in the Canadian documentary 2001 and Beyond, says he sees it as a cut from a bone to a nuclear weapons platform, explaining that "what we see is not how far we've leaped ahead, what we see is that today, '2001', and four million years ago on the African veld, it's exactly the same—the power of mankind is the power of its weapons. It's a continuation, not a discontinuity in that jump."Michael Lennick 7 January 2001 2001 and Beyond television Discovery Channel Canada Canada Influence 2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture 2001: A Space Odyssey is widely regarded as among the greatest and most influential films.Overbye Dennis Dennis Overbye '2001: A Space Odyssey' Is Still the 'Ultimate Trip' – The rerelease of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece encourages us to reflect again on where we're coming from and where we're going. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/science/2001-a-space-odyssey-kubrick.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180511122838/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/science/2001-a-space-odyssey-kubrick.html 10 May 2018 The New York Times 10 May 2018 11 May 2018 live It is considered one of the major artistic works of the 20th century, with many critics and filmmakers considering it Kubrick's masterpiece.Parrett Aaron March 2008 Review: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays by Robert Kolker https://www.jstor.org/stable/25475111 Science Fiction Studies SF-TH Inc. 35 1 116–120 10.1525/sfs.35.1.0116 25475111 12 May 2022 27 December 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221227181101/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25475111 live subscription 2 December 2022 2001: A Space Odyssey reviewed in 1968 https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/2001-space-odyssey-reviewed-1968 9 July 2026 BFI In the 1980s,https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/features/kubrick1987.htm Stanley Kubrick, at a Distance Rose Lloyd The Washington Post 28 June 1987 18 April 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20121104173552/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/features/kubrick1987.htm 4 November 2012 live critic David Denby compared Kubrick to the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, calling him "a force of supernatural intelligence, appearing at great intervals amid high-pitched shrieks, who gives the world a violent kick up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder".https://books.google.com/books?id=XBQi4cCEYNIC Duncan Paul 2003 Stanley Kubrick: Visual Poet 1928–1999 Taschen GmbH 978-3-8365-2775-0 10–11 18 April 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20160826091619/https://books.google.com/books?id=XBQi4cCEYNIC 26 August 2016 live By the start of the 21st century, 2001: A Space Odyssey had become recognised as among the best films ever made by such sources as the British Film Institute (BFI). The Village Voice ranked the film at number 11 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/take/one/full_list.php3?category=10 Take One: The First Annual Village Voice Film Critics' Poll 27 July 2006 1999 The Village Voice https://web.archive.org/web/20070826201343/http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/take/one/full_list.php3?category=10 26 August 2007 In January 2002, the film was included on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics.Carr Jay The A List: The National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films 2002 Da Capo Press 978-0-306-81096-1 81 https://archive.org/details/alistnationalsoc00jayc registration 27 July 2012100 Essential Films by The National Society of Film Critics https://www.filmsite.org/alist.html filmsite.org 18 July 2021 16 July 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210716022159/https://www.filmsite.org/alist.html live Sight & Sound magazine ranked the film twelfth in its greatest films of all-time list in 1982,Sight & Sound Greatest Films Poll 1982 https://www.listal.com/list/sight-sound-1982 listal.com 24 February 2021 3 June 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210603144147/https://www.listal.com/list/sight-sound-1982 live tenth in 1992 critics' poll of greatest films,Sight and Sound Poll 1992: Critics California Institute of Technology http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/sight/1992_1.html 29 May 2009 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20150618053015/http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/sight/1992_1.html 18 June 2015 sixth in the top ten films of all time in its 2002,Critics Top Ten Poll 2002 Sight & Sound British Film Institute http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/critics.html 10 May 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20020816030430/http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/critics.html 16 August 2002 dead 2012,https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b9450a5/sightandsoundpoll2012 Votes for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Sight & Sound British Film Institute 24 November 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20181201014125/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b9450a5/sightandsoundpoll2012 1 December 2018 dead and 2022 critics' polls editions;https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/cefccdb2-b558-5623-9c17-72b4be7bd4c1/2001-a-space-odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Sight & Sound British Film Institute 2 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20221201220301/https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/cefccdb2-b558-5623-9c17-72b4be7bd4c1/2001-a-space-odyssey 1 December 2022 live it also tied for second in the magazine's 2012, and was ranked first in the 2022 directors' poll. The film was voted no. 43 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008.Ambrose Heron http://www.filmdetail.com/2008/11/23/cahiers-du-cinemas-100-greatest-films/ Cahiers du cinéma's 100 Greatest Films 23 November 2008 18 July 2021 16 July 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180716224153/http://www.filmdetail.com/2008/11/23/cahiers-du-cinemas-100-greatest-films/ live In 2010, The Guardian named it "the best sci-fi and fantasy film of all time".2001: A Space Odessy: the best sci-fi and fantasy film of all time Catherine Shoard https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/space-odyssey-kubrick-science-fiction The Guardian 21 October 2010 18 July 2021 18 July 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210718162911/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/space-odyssey-kubrick-science-fiction live The film ranked 4th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.The 100 Greatest American Films https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150720-the-100-greatest-american-films bbc 20 July 2015 24 February 2021 14 January 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210114132906/https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150720-the-100-greatest-american-films live In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.https://www.loc.gov/film/registry_titles.php National Film Registry National Film Registry (National Film Preservation Board, Library of Congress) dead https://web.archive.org/web/20130328133050/http://www.loc.gov/film/registry_titles.php 28 March 2013 13 December 2011 In 2010, it was named the greatest film of all time by The Moving Arts Film Journal.The Moving Arts Film Journal | TMA's 100 Greatest Films of All Time | web site http://www.themovingarts.com/100-greatest-movies-of-all-time/ 3 February 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110106083521/http://www.themovingarts.com/100-greatest-movies-of-all-time/ 6 January 2011 usurped 13 November 2010 In 2026, Encyclopædia Britannica described 2001: A Space Odyssey as one of the most original works in cinema history, crediting its special effects and largely non-verbal storytelling with setting a benchmark for later science-fiction films.2026-06-29 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 film) Stanley Kubrick, Cast, Sci-Fi Classic, & Production Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/2001-A-Space-Odyssey-film-1968 2026-07-09 www.britannica.com en right 25em Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science-fiction movie and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned.... On a technical level, it [Star Wars] can be compared, but personally I think that 2001 is far superior. —George Lucas, 1977Scanlon Paul 'Star Wars' Success Surprised Even Its Creator https://www.newspapers.com/article/lexington-herald-leader-star-wars-succ/176627356/ Lexington Herald-Leader 28 August 1977 E1, E8 Newspapers.com 16 August 2025 14 July 2025 https://web.archive.org/web/20250816040737/https://www.newspapers.com/article/lexington-herald-leader-star-wars-succ/176627356/ live The influence of 2001 on subsequent filmmakers is considerable. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and others—including many special effects technicians—discuss the impact the film has had on them in a featurette titled Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001, included in the 2007 DVD release of the film. Spielberg calls it his film generation's "big bang", while Lucas says it was "hugely inspirational", calling Kubrick "the filmmaker's filmmaker". Director Martin Scorsese has listed it as one of his favourite films of all time.http://www.miramax.com/subscript/scorseses-favorite-films Scorsese's 12 favorite films Miramax.com 29 March 2013 9 October 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20131226091025/http://www.miramax.com/subscript/scorseses-favorite-films 26 December 2013 dead Sydney Pollack calls it "groundbreaking", and William Friedkin says 2001 is "the grandfather of all such films". At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott said he believed 2001 was the unbeatable film that in a sense killed the science fiction genre.Kazan Casey http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/ridley-scott-science-fiction-is-dead.html Ridley Scott: 'After 2001 – A Space Odyssey, Science Fiction is Dead' Dailygalaxy.com 10 July 2009 22 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20110321121445/http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/ridley-scott-science-fiction-is-dead.html 21 March 2011 dead Similarly, film critic Michel Ciment in his essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" wrote, "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete."William Johnson Focus on the Science Fiction Film https://archive.org/details/focusonsciencefi00john registration Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice-Hall 1972 Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick Michel Ciment 978-0-13-795179-6 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.George D. DeMet http://www.palantir.net/2001/meanings/essay09.html The 2001 Archive The Search for Meaning in 2001 22 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20110426050647/http://www.palantir.net/2001/meanings/essay09.html 26 April 2011 live Science magazine Discovers 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 ultimate alien artefact, the monolith, have all become enduring cultural icons in their own right."http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2009/04/02/this-day-in-science-fiction-history-2001-a-space-odyssey/ This Day in Science Fiction History – 2001: A Space Odyssey | Discover Magazine Blogs.discovermagazine.com 2 April 2009 22 August 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100328142257/http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2009/04/02/this-day-in-science-fiction-history-2001-a-space-odyssey/ 28 March 2010 live Trumbull said that when working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture he made a scene without dialogue because of "something I really learned with Kubrick and 2001: Stop talking for a while, and let it all flow".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHjLsvEOeS0 DOUGLAS TRUMBULL – Lighting the Enterprise – Star Trek 27 October 2016 YouTube Toronto International Film Festival 20 June 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20200130065111/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHjLsvEOeS0 30 January 2020 live Kubrick did not envision a sequel. Fearing the potential exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet), he ordered all sets, props, miniatures, production blueprints, and prints of unused scenes destroyed.The Making of "2010: The Year We Make Contact" YouTube 6 November 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHpCeBQ5Xug&t=189s 22 March 2024 22 March 2024 https://web.archive.org/web/20240322213834/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHpCeBQ5Xug&t=189s live Most of these materials were lost, with some exceptions: a 2001 spacesuit backpack appeared in the "Close Up" episode of the Gerry Anderson series UFO and one of HAL's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of Hal's Legacy, David G. Stork.Bizony 2001 1511984 2010: The Odyssey Continues DVD ZM Productions/MGM Mark Stetson (model shop supervisor) 31 August 2007 http://imdb.com/title/tt0235153/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070824064532/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235153/ 24 August 2007 deadhttp://www.starshipmodeler.com/2001/2001int.htm Starship Modeler: Modeling 2001 and 2010 Spacecraft Starship Modeler 26 September 2006 19 October 2005 https://web.archive.org/web/20060820130341/http://www.starshipmodeler.com/2001/2001int.htm 20 August 2006 liveBentley Chris The Complete Gerry Anderson: The Authorised Episode Guide 4th Reynolds and Hearn 2008 London 978-1-905287-74-1 In March 2015, a model of the Aries 1B Trans-Lunar Space Shuttle used in the film was sold at auction for $344,000 in the United States.https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-academy-space-odyssey-museum-20150329-story.html The $344,000 movie item: Academy buys ship from Kubrick's '2001' Los Angeles Times 29 March 2015 2 April 2024 Saba Hamedy 2 April 2024 https://web.archive.org/web/20240402161144/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-academy-space-odyssey-museum-20150329-story.html live In 2012, Lockheed engineer Adam Johnson, working with Frederick I. Ordway III, science adviser to Kubrick, wrote the book 2001: The Lost Science, which for the first time featured many of the blueprints of the spacecraft and film sets that previously had been thought destroyed. Clarke wrote three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). The only filmed sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, released in 1984, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel. Kubrick was not involved; it was directed as a spin-off by Peter Hyams in a more conventional style. The other two novels have not been adapted for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks in June 1999 expressed a passing interest in possible adaptations.http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808402810 3001: The Final Odyssey Yahoo! Movies November 2002 17 September 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20071013214251/http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808402810 13 October 2007 live Jack Kirby, who created the comic book adaptation of the original film, followed it up with his own ten issue sequel series starting in 1976. Lantz James Heath A Monolith in Comics: A Look at Jack Kirby's Adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey Back Issue! 89 47–51 TwoMorrows Publishing July 2016 Raleigh, North Carolina To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film's release, an exhibit called "The Barmecide Feast" opened on 8 April 2018, in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The exhibit features a fully realised, full-scale reflection of the rococo hotel room from the film's penultimate scene.https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/2001-space-odyssey-immersive-art-exhibit 2001: A Space Odyssey Immersive Art Exhibit 3 April 2018 aiandspace.si.edu 8 April 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180408083337/https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/2001-space-odyssey-immersive-art-exhibit 8 April 2018 livehttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/2001-a-space-odyssey-movie-50th-anniversary/ Smithsonian celebrates 50th anniversary of '2001: A Space Odyssey' CBS News 6 April 2018 8 April 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180406182627/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2001-a-space-odyssey-movie-50th-anniversary/ 6 April 2018 live Director Christopher Nolan presented a 70 mm print of 2001 for the film's 50th anniversary at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival on 12 May.Cannes Classics to celebrate the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/infos-communiques/communique/articles/cannes-classics-to-celebrate-the-50th-anniversary-of-2001-a-space-odyssey Festival de Cannes 28 March 2018 8 April 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180405153759/http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/infos-communiques/communique/articles/cannes-classics-to-celebrate-the-50th-anniversary-of-2001-a-space-odyssey 5 April 2018 live The new 70 mm print is a photochemical recreation made from the original camera negative, for the first time since the film's original theatrical run.https://deadline.com/2018/03/christopher-nolan-cannes-stanley-kubrick-space-odyssey-2001-1202354670/ Cannes: Christopher Nolan To Present 70 mm Print Of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' Andreas Wiseman Deadline Hollywood 28 March 2018 28 March 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180328172210/http://deadline.com/2018/03/christopher-nolan-cannes-stanley-kubrick-space-odyssey-2001-1202354670/ 28 March 2018 live Further, an exhibit entitled "Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey" presented at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York City opened in January 2020.Kenigsberg Ben The Making of '2001: A Space Odyssey' Was as Far Out as the Movie – A jumble of memorabilia, storyboards and props, an exhibit illustrates the whirl of influences behind Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking 1968 film. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/arts/design/kubrick-2001-museum-moving-image.html 23 January 2020 the New York Times 25 January 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20200124230345/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/arts/design/kubrick-2001-museum-moving-image.html 24 January 2020 live In July 2020, a silver space suit was sold at auction in Los Angeles for $370,000, exceeding its estimate of $200,000–300,000. Four layers of paint indicate it was used in multiple scenes, including the Clavius Moon base sequence. The helmet had been painted green at one stage, leading to a belief that it may have been worn during the scene where Bowman disconnects HAL 9000.Hollywood: Legends and Explorers, Lot 897 https://www.julienslive.com/m/lot-details/index/catalog/353/lot/141578 17 July 2020 Julien's Auctions 23 July 2020 13 July 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20200713005204/https://www.julienslive.com/m/lot-details/index/catalog/353/lot/141578 live Stanley Kubrick introduced Arthur C. Clarke to Joseph Campbell's 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces during the writing of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are allegorical archetypal patterns of the "hero's journey" in this film. Clarke called Campbell's book "very stimulating" in a diary entry.Rice Julian Kubrick's Story, Spielberg's Film: A.I. Artificial Intelligence The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2017 979-8-8818-1986-6 10.5040/9798881819866 1544973729 252 Home media The film has been released in numerous forms: In 1980, MGM/CBS Home Video released the film on VHS and Betamax.1980 MGM/CBS Home Video ad Billboard 22 November 1980 https://books.google.com/books?id=mCQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT58 20 April 2011 14 November 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20201114041155/https://books.google.com/books?id=mCQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT58 live In 1989, The Criterion Collection released a two-disc special LaserDisc edition with the transfer monitored by Kubrick himself.2001: A Space Odyssey Laserdisc The Criterion Collection/The Voyager Company B00417U8UU In 2008, Warner Home Video released the film on Blu-ray.Top 10 DVDs and CDs of 2007 https://www.soundandvision.com/content/top-10-dvds-and-cds-2007 Sound & Vision 1–4 Hachette Filipacchi Magazines 73 24 2008 31 January 2023 31 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230131233854/https://www.soundandvision.com/content/top-10-dvds-and-cds-2007 live In 2018, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment re-released it on Blu-ray and 4K HDR on Ultra HD Blu-ray, based on a 8K scan of the original camera negative and audio remixed and remastered in DTS-HD MA 5.1 along with the original 70mm 6-track theatrical audio.Archer John '2001: A Space Odyssey' 4K Blu-ray Review – A Monolithic Achievement 30 October 2018 Forbes.com https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/10/30/2001-a-space-odyssey-4k-blu-ray-review-a-monolithic-achievement/ 28 December 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20181115223750/https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/10/30/2001-a-space-odyssey-4k-blu-ray-review-a-monolithic-achievement/ 15 November 2018 live In 2026, it was announced that 2001: A Space Odyssey will be released by The Criterion Collection alongside Kubrick's entire filmography as part of a special 4K UHD Blu-Ray box set titled The Complete Kubrick. The set will feature new and archival supplements, and is due to be released in October 2026.The Complete Kubrick https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/9000-the-complete-kubrick 23 August 2026 The Criterion Collection en Re-releases The film was re-released in 1974, 1977, 1980, and 1993.Daily Variety 'Turtles' Fans Shell Out 23 March 1993 3 Klady Leonard In 2001, a restoration of the 70 mm version was screened at the Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival, and the production was also reissued to selected film houses in North America, Europe and Asia.https://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2001/10/47432 2001: A Re-Release Odyssey https://web.archive.org/web/20080501235218/http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2001/10/47432 1 May 2008 Wired Silverman Jasonhttps://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1258465.stm Press Reviews: 2001: A Space Odyssey https://web.archive.org/web/20141204195614/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1258465.stm 4 December 2014 BBC live 4 April 2001 For the film's 50th anniversary, Warner Bros. struck new 70 mm prints from printing elements made directly from the original film negative.Opaskar Peter 2001 in 70 mm: Pod bay doors look better than ever, still won't open – Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi opus looks better than it has in decades. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/2001-in-70mm-luxuriate-in-variously-evolved-humans-going-places-eating-things/ 21 July 2018 Ars Technica 21 July 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180721121446/https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/2001-in-70mm-luxuriate-in-variously-evolved-humans-going-places-eating-things/ 21 July 2018 live This was done under the supervision of film director Christopher Nolan, who has spoken of 2001s influence on his career. Following a showing at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival introduced by Nolan, the film had a limited worldwide release at select 70 mm-equipped theatres in the summer of 2018,Deb Sopan Christopher Nolan's Version of Vinyl: Unrestoring '2001' https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/movies/2001-a-space-odyssey-christopher-nolan-cannes.html 11 May 2018 The New York Times 12 May 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180511212551/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/movies/2001-a-space-odyssey-christopher-nolan-cannes.html 11 May 2018 livehttps://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-christopher-nolan-2001-20180503-story.html Christopher Nolan returns Kubrick sci-fi masterpiece '2001: A Space Odyssey' to its original glory Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times 11 May 2018 3 May 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180510210339/http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-christopher-nolan-2001-20180503-story.html 10 May 2018 live followed by a one-week run in North American IMAX theatres (including five locations equipped with 70 mm IMAX projectors).Experience Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' in IMAX for the First Time https://www.imax.com/News/2001-A-Space-Odyssey-in-IMAX IMAX 31 July 2018 5 September 2018 en https://web.archive.org/web/20180906215816/https://www.imax.com/News/2001-A-Space-Odyssey-in-IMAX 6 September 2018 live On 3 December 2018, an 8K Ultra-high definition television version of the film was reported to have been broadcast in selected cinemas and shopping-mall demonstration stations in Japan.Byford Sam 2001: A Space Odyssey's 8K TV broadcast doesn't quite go beyond the infinite https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/12/3/18123433/2001-a-space-odyssey-8k-tv-nhk-japan 3 December 2018 The Verge 3 December 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20190327183647/https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/12/3/18123433/2001-a-space-odyssey-8k-tv-nhk-japan 27 March 2019 live See also Film 1960s Science fiction List of artificial intelligence films List of cult films List of films considered the best List of films featuring eclipses List of films featuring extraterrestrials List of films featuring space stations List of incomplete or partially lost films Voyage to the End of the Universe Notes References Sources 2 Agel Jerome The Making of Kubrick's 2001 https://archive.org/details/makingofkubricks00agel registration New American Library 1970 New York 0-451-07139-5 Bizony Piers 2001 Filming the Future Sidgwick and Jackson 2001 London 1-85410-706-2 Castle Alison Alison Castle The Stanley Kubrick Archives http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/books/film/new/facts/00301.htm 5 February 2007 2005 Cologne Taschen 978-3-8228-2284-5 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20070707135608/http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/books/film/new/facts/00301.htm 7 July 2007 Block Alex Ben Wilson Lucy Autrey 2010 George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success HarperCollins 978-0-06-177889-6 https://archive.org/details/georgelucassbloc00alex 6 August 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20191218133047/https://archive.org/details/georgelucassbloc00alex 18 December 2019 live James Chapman Nicholas J. Cull Projecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction and Popular Cinema https://books.google.com/books?id=0jEIHfOErcsC&pg=PA97 5 February 2013 I.B. Tauris 978-1-78076-410-8 20 November 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20160128231433/https://books.google.com/books?id=0jEIHfOErcsC&pg=PA97 28 January 2016 live Ciment Michel Michel Ciment Kubrick Faber and Faber 1980 1999 New York 0-571-21108-9 Clarke Arthur C. Arthur C. Clarke The Lost Worlds of 2001 Sidgwick and Jackson 1972 London 0-283-97903-8 The Lost Worlds of 2001 Fiell Charlotte 1,000 Chairs (Taschen 25) Taschen 2005 978-3-8228-4103-7 Gelmis Joseph The Film Director As Superstar https://archive.org/details/filmdirectorassu0000gelm registration Doubleday & Company 1970 New York Geduld Carolyn 4. The Production: A Calendar Filmguide to 2001: A Space Odyssey https://archive.org/details/filmguideto2001s0000gedu registration 1973 Indiana University Press 978-0-253-39305-0 Hughes David The Complete Kubrick Virgin Publishing Ltd. 2000 London 0-7535-0452-9 Kolker Robert Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays Oxford University Press 2006 New York 0-19-517453-4 Krämer Peter 2010 2001: A Space Odyssey BFI Film Classics London British Film Institute LoBrutto Vincent Stanley Kubrick https://archive.org/details/stanleykubrickbi00lobr registration Faber and Faber London 1998 0-571-19393-5 McAleer Neil 1992 Arthur C. Clarke. The Authorized Biography Contemporary Books 0-8092-4324-5 https://books.google.com/books?id=LW5aAAAAMAAJ 14 January 2023 14 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230114042914/https://books.google.com/books?id=LW5aAAAAMAAJ live McAleer Neil 1 April 2013 Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary: A Biography RosettaBooks 978-0-9848118-0-9 https://books.google.com/books?id=pU8qAAAAQBAJ 9 July 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20200718004858/https://books.google.com/books?id=pU8qAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover 18 July 2020 live Monaco Paul 2001 The Sixties, 1960–69, History of American Cinema University of California Press London Pina Leslie A. Herman Miller Office Schiffer Publishing 2002 Pennsylvania, United States 978-0-7643-1650-0 Richter Daniel Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space Odyssey foreword by Arthur C. Clarke Carroll & Graf Publishers 2002 New York City 0-7867-1073-X https://archive.org/details/moonwatchersmemo00rich Schwam Stephanie Introduction by Jay Cocks The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey https://books.google.com/books?id=j_EmH_W4I7YC 2010 2000 Random House New York City 978-0-307-75760-9 21 September 2020 14 November 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20201114041216/https://books.google.com/books?id=j_EmH_W4I7YC live Walker Alexander Stanley Kubrick Directs Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1971 New York 0-393-32119-3 Walker Alexander Stanley Kubrick, director W. W. Norton and Company 2000 New York 0-393-32119-3 Note: This is a revised edition of Walker 1971. Wheat Leonard F. Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory Scarecrow Press 2000 Lanham, MD 0-8108-3796-X Further reading none Emme Eugene M. Eugene M. Emme Science Fiction and Space Futures: Past and Present AAS History Series 5 Univelt 1982 San Diego 0-87703-172-X none Frayling Christopher The 2001 File: Harry Lange and the Design of the Landmark Science Fiction Film 2015 Reel Art Press London 978-0-9572610-2-0 none Johnson Adam 2001 The Lost Science Apogee Prime 2012 Burlington Canada 978-1-926837-19-2 none Johnson Adam 2001 The Lost Science Volume 2 Apogee Prime 2016 Burlington Canada 978-1-926837-35-2 none Mathijs Ernest Mendik Xavier Ernest Mathijs Xavier Mendik 2001: A Space Odyssey 6 100 Cult Films 2011 Palgrave Macmillan London 978-1-84457-571-8 100 Cult FilmsJune 2023 InternetArchiveBot yes none Ordway Frederick I Godwin Robert Frederick I. Ordway III Robert Godwin 2001: The Heritage & Legacy of the Space Odyssey Apogee Prime 2014 Burlington Canada 978-1-926837-32-1 none Shuldiner Herbert https://books.google.com/books?id=mykDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA62 How They Filmed '2001: A Space Odyssey' Bonnier Corporation Popular Science June 1968 192 6 62–67 0161-7370 none Wigley Samuel https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/2001-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick-influences 50 years of 2001: A Space Odyssey – 5 films that influenced Kubrick's giant leap for sci-fi bfi.org.uk 28 March 2018 14 January 2021 External links 1 y 2001: A Space Odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey essay by James Verniere at National Film Registry 2001: A Space Odyssey essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 0826429777, pages 635–636 2001: A Space Odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey Script on dailyscripts.com 2001: A Space Odyssey Internet Resource Archive Kubrick 2001: The Space Odyssey Explained Roger Ebert's Essay on 2001 (https://web.archive.org/web/20130407094155/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19970327%2FREVIEWS08%2F401010362%2F1023 7 April 2013 ) The Alt.Movies.Kubrick FAQ many observations on the meaning of 2001 The Kubrick Site including many works on 2001 Awards for 2001: A Space Odyssey Category:1960s space adventure films Category:1968 American films Category:1968 British films Category:1968 English-language films Category:1968 films Category:1968 science fiction films Category:American epic films Category:American IMAX films Category:American science fiction adventure films Category:American space adventure films Category:Articles containing video clips Category:British epic films Category:British IMAX films Category:British science fiction adventure films Category:English-language science fiction films Category:Existentialist films Category:Films about artificial intelligence Category:Films about astronauts Category:Films about evolution Category:Films about suspended animation Category:Films about technological impact Category:Films adapted into comics Category:Films directed by Stanley Kubrick Category:Films produced by Stanley Kubrick Category:Films set in 1999 Category:Films set in 2001 Category:Films set in outer space Category:Films set in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa Category:Films set in prehistory Category:Films set in the future Category:Films set on spacecraft Category:Films set on the Moon Category:Films shot at MGM-British Studios Category:Films shot at Shepperton Studios Category:Films shot in Hertfordshire Category:Films shot in Spain Category:Films shot in Surrey Category:Films shot in the Outer Hebrides Category:Films shot in Utah Category:Films that won the Best Visual Effects Academy Award Category:Films with screenplays by Arthur C. Clarke Category:Films with screenplays by Stanley Kubrick Category:Hard science fiction films Category:Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation–winning works Category:Jupiter in film Category:Metaphysical fiction films Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films Category:Moon in film Category:Prehistoric people in popular culture Category:Saturn Award–winning films Category:Space Odyssey Category:United States National Film Registry films inducted in 1991