The ONLY true science fiction movie

Rating: 10/10 (17 June 2004)

2001 is most emphatically NOT for Star Wars fans. It's the antithesis of all the Hollywood nonsense that have turned people away from science fiction and convinced people that sci-fi is no different from fantasy or improbable action movies. 2001 is about REAL space travel. It's about what it would REALLY be like if we found out there was intelligent life off the earth. It's about what Artificial Intelligence might REALLY be like. The fact that the year 2001 has come and gone and the movie didn't happen is irrelevant; everything in the movie is still plausible, and we could have the world it portrays in another twenty or thirty years. Computers are becoming more sophisticated and intelligent, we have the VASIMR engine, which is remarkably similar to the Discovery's plasma drive in the movie, and the Bush space initiative will have a base on the moon which may well be similar to the movie's Clavius Base. So many of Arthur C. Clarke's visions of the future have come to pass, and many of 2001's speculations have been matched by reality. The fact that a movie made in 1968 can still look so authentic and believable is the true litmus test of a good science fiction movie. Unlike most sci-fi movies, 2001 shows space travel as it really is -- no streamlined space fighters banking and zooming as if in the atmosphere or making whooshing noises in the vacuum of space. Space is realistically silent, spaceships cruise on predetermined orbits with their engines dark and silent except when delta vee is required, the hardware was developed in consultation with the aerospace industry, computer experts, and industrial firms, and actual JPL engineers designed the amazing spaceship Discovery and other vehicles. The subject matter is approached with the serious, sober attitude that it deserves. I don't think I've ever seen another science fiction movie that treated space travel with such immediacy. The dangers faced by the crew of the Discovery are the things real astronauts will -- and do -- have to deal with. The nervous breakdown of the infamous HAL-9000 computer has become legendary, but it's not the kind of cheesy mad computer stuff you find in scores of 70s movies. HAL has a glitch, and like every desktop computer, the glitch gets progressively worse as it goes undiagnosed and the computer remains operational. You can also look at HAL psychologically; subconscious feelings of guilt produce hypochondria and paranoia. Is HAL a character or a computer with a corrupt program? These are questions we will inevitably have to face someday. When Dave Bowman disconnects HAL, is he diverting the ship's control from an unreliable system, or is he murdering a shipmate? The whole storyline is done the way events would probably unfold; no laser battles, no explosions, no buff hero with sleeves cut off marching through smoky corridors with a ludicrous laser pulse weapon -- just a space suited astronaut, realistically weightless, armed with a screwdriver. Nothing in the movie is over-the-top or beyond what could really happen. Sometimes it's easy to forget that you're watching a movie; it seems more like C-SPAN footage of a real space mission.
At the same time, though, it's so marvelously poetic and musically divine, no other sci-fi movie has ever conveyed so eloquently the wonder and beauty of space travel. The special effects still look utterly authentic today; when Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov saw the movie, he said, "Now I feel like I've been in space twice." Many people have been baffled by the ending, but I think most people appreciate the movie much more on subsequent viewings. I never had trouble "understanding" the movie, but that may be because I read the novel first. This movie is not about munching popcorn and wheedling away two hours; it's about serious contemplation of our future, about space travel, about the immensity of space and time, and about the possibilities that lie out there. It's more about real life than the world of movies -- which I guess is why we fans of the movie get so defensive when non fans attack it. It's the Citizen Kane of science fiction; the definitive thoughtful examination of its subject matter.