Kevin's Watch

Just seen this for the first time in my adult life and frankly am still pretty bemused by the whole thing. What exactly was going on here? What was the mission of the Jupiter probe actually meant to be? Why did HAL think it appropriate to kill all of the humans on board in order to safeguard the missions purpose [surely the human presence was integral to that purpose if the intention had been for establishment of contact with the creators of the black monolith. The monoliths seem to have been tied up with human development in some way [re the initial 'ape-man' movement] but at the end what was going on; was the 'star-child' some yet further stage in human evolution that the 'alien' contact had mediated. Was the rococo furnished suite of rooms an hallucinatory experience designed for Daves protection while metamorphosis into the star-child was taking place? Does it really all mean anything or was Kubric just playing with a general theme that has no internal coherence while simultaneously showing what could be done with the sfx of the day. Beats me.

The book does a much better job at explaining than the film, although that still leaves a few questions.

Kubrick 2001: the space odyssey explained

Your taking the fun out of it, tho.

The film's sequel 2010 does what it can to try and answer many of the questions raised by the first film. Although I liked 2010 its straightforward SCI-FI adventure with political overtones is quite different in tone.

Since I didn't read 2010 I don't know exactly how much the film differs from the book.

michaelm wrote:The book does a much better job at explaining than the film, although that still leaves a few questions.

Ohgoshyes. The film's a beautiful mess.

aTOMiC wrote:The film's sequel 2010 does what it can to try and answer many of the questions raised by the first film. Although I liked 2010 its straightforward SCI-FI adventure with political overtones is quite different in tone.

Since I didn't read 2010 I don't know exactly how much the film differs from the book.

The book is spectacular. I really love the film, though I'd love it more if it included the Tsien subplot.

They need to make films of 2061 and 3001.

Yes - the film had a sort of slow unfolding beauty to it and the vision of the director/set builders in the 'space craft' interiors is almost uncanny [I saw the i-pad/Samsung tablet {sort-of} precursors that featured in the recent court battle between the two electronics giants].

I'm not going to read the explanation link above ........ yet! I'll mull on it for a while first .