2001: A Space Odyssey

Behind the Scenes

Cast and Crew Members

Cast

Keir Dullea

William Sylvester

Douglas Rain

Daniel Richter

Leonard Rossiter

Margaret Tyzack

Robert Beatty

Sean Sullivan

Frank W. Miller

Crew Members

Arthur C. Clarke Screenplay

Arthur C. Clarke Screenplay

Stanley Kubrick Screenplay

Stanley Kubrick Screenplay

Awards and Nominations

Audience Reviews

Read authentic reviews from real viewers about this movie.

• izgzhen

  Rating: 8/10

  "I believe that we should call it a modernism show, albeit exhibited in the form of a movie. While it might feel "boring", it forces you to rethink what philosophical level that a two-hour film can achieve. The focus on questions about life, intelligence, and time, is worth more attention than the sci-fi part (though the special effect of this movie is already way ahead of its time)."

• Per Gunnar Jonsson

  Rating: 6/10

  "I got this movie recently when it came out on Ultra HD Blu-ray simply because it was missing in my collection and, being a Sci-Fi fan, missing 2001 in my collection simply would not do. It is a movie that was made to rely almost entirely on the visuals. It could be said that it is a visual symphony if that makes sense. Thus it was filmed on 70 mm film and in 6 channel stereo which, at the time was a huge thing. Thanks to this it actually made some sense to transfer this movie to Ultra HD Blu-ray since the originals were really good enough even though the movie was made in 1968. I remember watching this movie as a kid and was profoundly disappointed. I thought come on, where’s the adventure, not to mention any form of action? Today I can more appreciate it for what it is. A visually stunning movie. I also can more appreciate the fact that the movie is trying to be scientifically accurate instead of going all out on the fiction part. The parts where gravity, or rather the lack thereof, was portrayed, that was really high tech movie making at the time. I also noticed now, when re-watching it, that all the screens are actually flat which also was really far in the future at the time. Actually it was still pretty much in the future back in 2001. However, even today, I have to say that I find the movie excruciatingly boring. It is two and a half hour long and it moves very, very slowly. It takes 50 minutes of movie time before we actually get to the main part of the movie and get onto the Discovery for instance. No matter how great the visuals are, there’s only so much boredom I can stand before it starts to get to me. In the last 30 minutes or so the movie starts to become very psychedelic. The part where Bowman is pulled into the vortex, the stargate, is going on forever and in the end it just becomes a blur of headache inducing color effects. The final parts of the movie with the three Bowmans of different ages is just weird. So,as this is a non-professional and personal take on the movie I cannot really motivate more than 3 out of 5 stars. I hadn’t actually planned to review this movie. Everything has really already been said about it but I could not refrain after having read this crap at Rotten Tomatoes: Critics Consensus: 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. It’s pretty well known that Rotten Tomatoes is the absolutely worst movie rating site around and the so called “critics” are useless culture elite morons with an over-inflated opinion about themselves at best and politically motivated SJW asswipes at worst but still. What the hell is controversial about it? Reality check, there’s really nothing controversial about it at all. It is just a fictional story in the future. Then we have that crap “the folly”. What bloody folly? If anything the movie shows a much better future than what we got. A future where the politicians apparently promoted advancement of science and space exploration which is the direct opposite to the money and oxygen wasters we have today. Sure, if you indulge too much in smoking funny mushrooms or are politically motivated you can probably “interpret” the hell out of any movie and “find” whatever message you want but it is still bullshit. Well, that was my (controversial?) take on 2001."

• Filipe Manuel Neto

  Rating: 2/10

  "**A magnificent film, with beautiful music and great visuals... but smug, empty and unforgivably overrated.** Stanley Kubrick is, for me, one of those directors who so quickly impresses us with a great film, as it makes us doubt his competence with an absolutely pathetic trash. I know that the director's fans are going to crucify me, but that's how I think, and I even say more: with each Kubrick film I see, I am more convinced that an aura of unjustified “cult” genius has been created around him. I loved some of his movies like “Spartacus”, “Dr. Strangelove”, “Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut”, but thinking about them and trying to compare them with “Clockwork Orange” and “Full Metal Jacket” is strange. They don't look like the work of the same director. Released in the 1960s, at a time when the space race was at its height and when the future of Humanity seemed, more and more, to be outside our planet, the film addresses the question of the evolution of the human species in a “sui generis” way: it starts with monkeys and goes to the first contacts with extraterrestrial beings. The film was considered one of the defining milestones of sci-fi as a cinematographic genre, and I believe that this is indisputable. It's also one of the rare sci-fi movies that seems concerned with being scientifically credible, yet not without flaws that a good scientist will spot (and we might not). Set in a hypothetical future, the film shows what space explorations and life in colonies made in space and on the Moon would be like. However, it is still ironic that, after the 60s and 70s, space exploration has been so secondary that many questions, even today, whether we really should spend industrial amounts of money and resources on it. The future that Kubrick imagined in 2001 seems, in 2022, even more imaginative and far from happening than when the film was released. However, some things really did happen and are, today, normal: this is the case of video calls and the extraordinary advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. Among the various merits of this film, we have to highlight the extraordinary visual beauty, the way the director worked with the visual and special effects and the excellent camera work. At a time when CGI was a mirage far from a filmmaker's mind, this film gives us images and visuals that look like they were made this year. The film simply hasn't aged a single day: we have clear images, magnificently crafted light and details, excellent sound effects, a cinematography that makes envy to many 21st century films and, also important, a magnificent soundtrack where “Blue Danube” and “Also Sprach Zarathustra” stand out, helping to popularize these melodies. Despite these indisputable merits, I think this film deserves to be on the list of the most overrated films I've ever seen. And this is due, in good part, to everything else that I didn't say, and which is essential in a good film. Let's start with the absence of a script and horrible pace: for almost three hours, the film drags on unbearably in scenes of great beauty, but with nothing to say. It's truly exasperating. The only moments where the film really gains interest are when the ship's supercomputer turns against the astronauts, and even that segment feels loose, as if the script were a patchwork quilt. The allusions to aliens didn't fascinate me either, it's a regular cliché when making a movie set in space. One point that also didn't help is the lack of good actors, or any decent work for them to do, and the fact that Kubrick shows us life on the space stations as if it were a stay in a luxury hotel. And what about the extraordinary sense of arrogant conceit that the film conveys? We are the ones who have to recognize if the film is good, it can't be the film telling us that every minute!"

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