Without its historical context, 2001 is nothing special

Rating: 5/10 (13 April 2006)

As an influence on cinema and as a film made in the sixties, 2001: A Space Odyssey is indeed great. But evaluated simply as a movie, with no consideration given to its historical context, it is nothing special, and is in fact quite mediocre. Here are three reasons why:
(1) The characters are underdeveloped. This happened somewhere in the transition from novel to screenplay; the actors do passably well with the material they're given. Consider the opening scene: a bunch of people in ape suits develop the use of tools. We don't know, while watching the movie, that one of the apes, Moon-Watcher, is already more evolved than the others and is influenced most by the black monolithinstead, we see a group of apes, and a random one picks up a bone and smashes stuff with it. There's no clarity in the development here, and the story is left unfinished when Kubrick cuts thousands of years into the future. The characters here, though more distinguishable, are no more complete: the most developed is HAL 9000, and he's a machine. But even his motives are unclear... that may add to the mystery and suspense, but it's only by reading the novel that we learn he begins malfunctioning as a result of guilt. That's an interesting thematic element that's not explored in the film adaptation.
(2) The visual effects are unspectacular. When watching this film, the visual element is only interesting if we constantly remind ourselves that this film was made almost forty years ago; without that knowledge, it seems cheap and amateur. There is one scene in particular where about five minutes are spent showing lights flashing past one of the characters; I almost got up and left to find a book to read until it ended. The technology is outdated, and with it the special effects of this filmif 2001 were made today, nobody would be impressed with these effects. We shouldn't have to consider the era in which it was made to respect a film.
(3) There is no coherent story. This is another thing lost between novel and screenplay. The film tells two (or three, depending on how you count them) loosely related stories that center around a black monument that is never explained. The novel, by contrast, describes the course of human evolution, and how that black monument shaped it. The final scene of the movie leaves many viewers perplexedafter soaring through light for seeming ages and winding up in a quaint suite, Dave returns to earth as a fetus in a bubble. In the novel, he finds a giant monolith similar to the ones on earth and the moon and is evolved so much as to no longer require a body. In his new immortal, immaterial state, he returns to earth and detonates a nuclear bomb that had been fired before it can land, saving humanity. The novel is a story. The film is a mess.