We drown in our own pretention

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2002)

Kubrick seems to have wanted to make this film a long homage to Frederick Nietzche. The "Dawn of Man" sequence, Dave's release of Frank's corpse and Dave's final transformation into a child are all direct references to that philosopher's Thus Spake Zarathustra, and subtler, more interpretive references abound, including use of a Strauss piece with the same name as that book as the movie's "theme music."
People do not understand the intellectual content of this film, and I therefore fell very safe in saying that it must've failed to reach its own brainy aims. All ideas about it "meaning" have been pure conjecture, and vague conjecture at that. Add to that a complete lack of drama, and you have one amazingly bad film