What it is, and what it isn't

Rating: 10/10 (9 January 2001)

To anyone who actually hasn't seen this yet... The best preparation is knowing what 2001 is NOT. I'd actually go so far as to say it's not a movie. It is a presentation of REALITY in humanity's immediate future, and an open ended question about humanity's distant future. Don't expect furure reality to be profoundly different from what it is now. Reality can be exciting, hopeful, profound, beautiful, terrifying and mind numbingly boring. Don't expect humankind to have all the answers. We can achieve a stunningly beautiful ballet of percision as a space shuttle docks into a space station, but the humans inside are still squirming through politics. We can make discoveries beyond earth with immense implications, and we'll still goof around and pose for a candid photo. We can create a computer more "human" than we are, which also proves to be capable of a very real psychotic episode. We can travel to Jupiter, which we eventually will, and the reality is that it will be a mind numbingly boring journey. Anyone who has driven across the plains of the American Midwest knows the boredom. No turns in the road. No change of scenery. Long before the end you're thinking about the girl you liked in 2nd grade because there's simply nothing left to think about. Space travel will be MUCH worse. This film does not hesitate to show you all of that.
2001 doesn't spare you from anything for "artistic license". It's a movie that is a slave to who we are. Brutal, political, percise, pioneers, victims of our creations, with sparks of immense profound potential. This doesn't tell a simple story so much as it highlights portions of humanity, adds an object with no meaning other than what the viewer interjects into it, and leaves you with questions about humanity. Not answers. The point of this film is not what it does on screen, but in your own mind. Don't watch it if you don't feel like thinking. If you don't think, there is nothing here to see.
Finally, don't get TOO caught up in the specific year of 2001, even though the film has evolved to an interesting window on our past expectations. Yes, it is quite interesting what was correctly portrayed and what wasn't.
Do yourself a favor and only think about that after your 2nd viewing. You'll end up not paying attention to the best parts of the movie.
Ok, so PanAm ended up bankrupt before 2001. That isn't the point, it's a real, everyday airline. So the Bell system was broken up, it's a real, everyday communications carrier. I would say the ONLY way that this movie has been diminished by time is that the general public can now easily grasp the concept of massive computing power in a small box. In 1968 they couldn't. I don't believe they didn't predict microcomputers, I think HAL's computational power wouldn't be propperly perceived by the 1968 public if he wasn't massive. Really, would HAL have been HAL if he was a laptop on a wireless network??? In 1968 that shape instantly registered "Etch-A-Sketch", not Notebook Computer. So I say thank, or blame, HAL's size on the 1968 general public and not necessarily the creators.
Besides, imagine how many 1.5Ghz Pentium III's we can fit in HAL's central processing chamber... Now THAT is processing power worthy of HAL!