The Bone, Hal, and The Monster From Frankenstein as Multiple Allusions

Rating: 10/10 (29 August 2011)

The beginning of the movie starts out as a brief history of man, beginning with total chaos and charting mankind's evolution from apes. As the ape evolves, he invents a weapon out of bone to kill his prey, and the movie suddenly makes perfect sense: man as creator.
The weapon's first use is food, but soon becomes a way to wage war against the opposing tribe of apes. With the weapon, the ape kills the leader of the opposing tribe, creating the multiple allusion to the invention as killer: the monster in Frankenstein or Hal9000 later in the movie. To rejoice in the kill, he tosses the weapon into the air, and the cut jumps directly into the future: the world of 2001 in outer space.
Amidst the vastness, we quickly learn the future world. There are harmless creations, like video conferencing, where a man communicates with his family back home. Then we have a computer that talks called Hal9000. Going off the theme of man as creator, we can assume that in the world of 2001 that invention is the future.
Mankind as creator makes Hal9000, a super computer with the ability to read lips. To make the invention more personable, we call the supercomputer Hal for short. He even has a personality. He is our friend that we can talk to.
I can just imagine the thrill one would get viewing this on its release date in theaters. Kubrick creates the world, throws (literally) us into the future, surrounds us with technology we can marvel at. We delight in the fresh aesthetics, and soon grow comfortable with them. We are encapsulated in the world created by the film, and therefore give it our absolute trust. In return, we receive comfort and can take a deep breath.
When the Frankenstein-like twist is fully realized paranoia sets in-as if Kubrick knew that his entire audience in the 60s would be high on drugs. He starts at our most animal being, shapes the world, makes us comfortable, and in enters the invention (the bone, the monster, or Hal) to wreak havoc. Hal is not our friend. He betrays us, and it is normal to feel anger, even hate, towards Hal.
As the credits roll, I think of the genius of Kubrick, to know exactly what the audience wants, even if they do not know what they want themselves, where he can take them on the trip they have been unconsciously craving. Imagining back again, I envision the smokers in the audience leaving the theater with paranoid thinking, questioning technology, while the heavier street drug users would be getting excited over scenes that make them geek out. It does not take a hippie to know that trips are not always daisies. Only Kubrick can create such an engrossing direction for this masterpiece, in such a way that the themes in the world of 2001 are universal: invention is the future (or shapes the future), and from the start of the movie, we know that mankind is continually evolving. The multiple allusion of the bone weapon, the monster from Frankenstein, and Hal, teaches a valuable lesson in that one must be careful that what one creates will not destroy.