A True Epic!!!

Rating: Null/10 (13 February 2002)

2001:a space odyssey is without a doubt one of the greatest epics of all time.It is probably my second favorite film of all-time next to "Jaws".This isn't your everyday film.It may be one of the most unique films ever.What Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark were able to do with this story is truly mind-boggling.It's different things to different people which is part of what makes it so amazing.It makes people think.I think that's the way Kubrick wanted it.He loved to make people have to think about stuff.It starts with one of films greatest openings.It's our so-called ancestors,the apes.They stumble upon this great,big monolith of extra-terrestrial knowledge.After coming in contact with it,the apes evolve into a intellegent speices.They learn to kill for food,and each other.The score to this film is absolutely astonishing.Whenever I think of something gigantic or amazing I think of this score at the beginning.Anyway,after millions of years of evolving,the apes finally become the human race.They can build big,giant machines to help them rule and explore the universe.But what they don't know is that they are not the most intellegent life in space.Machines must do everything for them.They aren't even potty-trained in space.They are just children who don't understand it as much as they think they do.So the monolith tries to make them more itellegent.But they do not understand this because they are too dumb. And they become so dumb over the years after having so much promise that even their own machines become smarter then them.Especially HAL,a super-computer and the brain of the Discovery.He obviously has a intelligence far greater then humans.And so,he thinks their should be no humans.He starts off by killing all the crew aboard the Discovery shuttle(who need machines to put them asleep in order for them to travel without going crazy.)So,it is not HAL who is the crazy one here,but the humans who underestimate HAL's intellegence.But HAL dosen't kill astronauts Frank Poole and David Bowman.This was his mistake.HAL learns of their plan to disconnect him and acts on it as soon as he gets the chance by killing Poole.Then he tries to kill Bowman,but he sneaks into the ship.He then disconnects HAL after a long battle of apologies and regrets by the original IBM himself.Bowman tries to rescue his comrad Poole,but it is too late for him.Then,as if the super-natural beings feel pity for Bowman,a gigantic,rainbow-colored wormhole or teleport takes Bowman's pod on the ultimate trip.After a series of swirling,colorful spirals and shapes inside the portal,Bowman finds himself in a hotel room.He wonders where in the world he is,or even if he is in a world at all.He stumbles around with a look of wonder on his face.He then sees an old man eating dinner.The man is old and withering away slowly.He drops a glass of wine,shattering it.The glass is shattered,but the liquid is still their,which hints what Kubrick may have meant for this:that the human body may change,but the soul inside will always remain the same,just like the old man.Then Bowman finds himself in a bed,old and withering away,slowly.He is the old man.Then he sees the gigantic monolith at the end of his bed as if signaling the end of his evolutionary cycle.He reaches out as if he thinks it will save him.But it is too late for Bowman,and he ends up at the start of his next so-called life,as a human embryo heading towards his new destination and new life.Kubrick was right,we are just children in space and in life.