Lord Foul wrote:I find it interesting you think a story constitutes a main character wanting something or some obstacle being there. The story goes across from the dawn of mankind to the first human who breaches the point of space which signifies a technological checkpoint for the aliens who've been guiding them from the beginning. The plot's there, goes from beginning to end; that's the point; not some character wanting something but an odyssey of discovery.
Ah . . . I haven't had this much fun in this forum since Wall-e.
Seriously, this is turning into a good discussion. I'm glad to see some passion about a movie that left me cold. I honestly do want to know what others love about it, and not simply to trash it.
Yes, I think a
story is human drama. That means people wanting something, and the conflict involved in the difficulty of achieving that something. If something is important enough to make a movie about, then it should
at least be important enough for characters in that movie to
care about it. Why am I watching something that the characters themselves don't even seem engaged in? The problem here is that the audience cares more about anything in this movie than the characters do themselves. That's why it's not a story--it's a
concept. A music video. The friggin' computer is more of a character than the humans. Wayfriend seems to think that a monolith is more of a character than the humans. Sorry--nice try. But that's like saying the flaming eye of Sauron was a good character. If inanimate objects are more of a character than your characters, then it's a big clue that this is not a
story.
With that said, I have to admit that this movie attempted some admirable things. It tried to have some "deep" ideas. I glossed over it in my last post, but the issue of artificial intelligence and the debate over their status as sentient beings is a fascinating issue. But I think Asimov and Star Trek (Next Generation) did it much better than 2001. Data was a
character. HAL was closer to a (lame) monster.
As for the idea that aliens are driving our evolution . . . it's just lazy. And it
diminishes the very thing that is (or should be) truly amazing about this movie: our odyssey of discovery. This alien cop-out idea ignores the fact that animals
naturally compete for mates and resources. They don't need "miraculous" intervention from aliens to know you can use a bone to knock someone over the head. This kind of science fiction is so stupid, it's like saying that you need a God to explain lightning; it's science fiction that is no better than superstition. It's a bit
ad hoc and overly complicated to assume that humans needed aliens to push them into a direction that they naturally achieved themselves. That's an inexcusable diminishment of the power and wonder of natural selection and evolution. Science fiction shouldn't dumb down reality. It shouldn't make something wonderful seem ad hoc. Instead, it should bring out the real, true wonder of our scientific discoveries, instead of crapping all over them just to make it "dramatic" (. . . but then failing as a drama).
A bit more interesting--and connected to the AI theme later on--would have been to suppose that aliens taught humans how to
talk, not how to bash each other over the head. Consciousness.
Intelligence. That would have been a tad more plausible, since humans are the only intelligent species on earth. And then it would have played right into the theme of mankind creating intelligence with AI, replicating and mirroring this earlier act. That would have still dumbed-down the concept of evolution, but at least it would have been more consistent.
Lord Foul wrote:
What makes you think it was even trying to be a drama, or that constitutes it being good or not if it is/isn't? The characters have no need to be developed; it's extraneous and outside the point of the film.
Well, if it's not a drama, what is it? A fictional documentary?
I'm reminded of Adaptation (by my favorite screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman). The main character wants to write a story where none of the characters find resolution, or have big dreams, or do anything significant . . . because, he proposed, life is sometimes like that, rather than (in his opinion) how it is portrayed in "dramas." So he goes to a screen-writing convention, and the speaker tells him:
Robert McKee: Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it.
Lord Foul wrote:
Figure out what the film is trying to do before you criticize it.
And yes, it is just a film. Kubrick wasn't trying to write a treatise on philosophy or science; he collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke, not Carl Sagan. Though, to the film's credit, it's very realistic as far as outer space goes (especially compared to stuff preceding it).
Actually, he did consult Carl Sagan. And Sagan is the one who convinced him not to use anthropomorphic aliens . . . which is why he went with the black monoliths. So this "fantastic" symbol of alien intelligence was just a cop-out because they couldn't realistically depict aliens.
Anyway, I will criticize this film on whatever grounds I want. You keep attacking me, while all I'm doing is attacking this movie. Please stop.
The filmmakers themselves wanted people to find their own meaning in this film, and I did. I called "bullshit" on it.
Jeff wrote:
Obviously, you simply lack fine aesthetic sensibilities, sensitivity to zeitgeist, and are mired in a morass of Platonic Ideals. The soundtrack alone stands as a sonic, post-modern "David," an aural eminence from which to survey the desolate plains in which all earlier compositions are rooted. The plaintive wail of "Puberty Loooove...puberty looo-uh-uhve" is a bleak, yet seductive Ante (and Anti)-Freudian lament, both shackling and liberating the libido, enforcing yet transcending the metaphysical and metabolic strictures of desire.
The penetration of the meat-bodied master of disguise into the vegetative weltenschahung...
Ok..I'll stop.
Don't stop! That was great!
