Very good

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2004)

Some people might say that that movie sucked, or it was stupid and had no meaning whatsoever. I know, those people might like action which has hardly any theme at all so you don't have to think, and I agree that there are indeed movies that seem to be deep but are just stupid, or at least to me, but I disagree very much that 2001: A space odyssey is one of those movies, because it does have a meaning, and it is clearly shown at the end.
Space Odyssey portrays what makes us human and the fact that we are not perfect. When the man and the ship are taken to "the infinite and beyond" that isn't what happens in reality in the movie, instead it shows the man in a room, looking at his future self, eating, who then looks at his future self in a bed, dying, and finally becomes an embryo that he was decades ago before being born. This is to show how insignificant life is and that it literally has no meaning except for the people living it which don't even know why they're living it, except for that huge slab of rock. Nobody knows what it is, it's just there, and it just makes everybody wonder and they are curious, because the object is very mysterious and there isn't really any solid explanation as to what it is or what it does save for that it was made some million years ago, and deliberately buried on the Moon.
The questions are, why is it there?, what does it do?, what is it for?, who made it? where are they now? was it deliberately put there? Or was it just a fluke?
All these questions make the viewer as well as the characters wonder, just like the apes in the beginning. They were apes, uncivilized, brutal (who beat each other up) apes, yet when they saw that stone they marveled.
If you also happen to remember, the man eating dropped the glass on the floor which shattered. Did the man want it to fall and break? He liked the drink from his expression when he took a sip, so he would have rather it not fall, but yet it did. This shows the man isn't perfect. Had it been Hal, the glass surely wouldn't have fallen, because he is perfect. What happened to Hal? He got shut down. Do you remember the way Hal was begging for his life? What life, he is a machine, you say, but even if he were human, would Hal really have anything to live for? What for, he already knows everything, what does he need to live for? He doesn't, so why did he beg for his life like that, when he knew that it was coming to an end?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you think that this movie was about aliens, then you shouldn't be reading this, because this movie was about why we are human and what makes us human. The fact that we marvel, and don't know everything. The fact that we have something to live for, because we don't know what's going to happen the next day. Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? The guy is stuck in the same day every day, after day after, day. At first he likes it, he's excited, but in the end he tries to kill himself so many times, and is nearing insanity. Human nature asks question, and we are curious, and final we have the ability to make mistakes. We aren't Hal, ladies and gentlemen, we aren't supercomputers from the 9000's series, we are HUMAN.