2001 in 2007

Rating: 9/10 (6 February 2007)

Back when I first saw 2001 on the big screen  more years ago than I'd care to think -- I thought it was the greatest movie ever made. It had it all, mystical theme, dazzling (for its day) special effects, cool technology, and Kubrick's trademark meticulous direction. I've probably seen it more times than any other film, and I usually managed to suck back a few tokes in time for the stargate sequence at the end. I've seen the sequel 2010, read Clarke's novel (and all of his sequels) as well as other books and essays that attempted to explain and/or expand on the movie's rather abstruse plot. But, it has been several years since I last saw it, so when I saw the re-release DVD on sale I picked it up and re-watched it again for the first time since the actual year 2001.
Although after my numerous viewings the film couldn't contain any surprises it was still cool to watch it with fresh eyes. A few things struck me. For starters, I think the film has aged rather well. The special effects, stunning in their day, are rather commonplace now, but that's largely due to the influence of 2001 itself. Still, with one or two exceptions, they're still as good as many of the computer-generated effects of today, and in some cases, better.
Second, I noticed for the first time that, perhaps because of the front-projection backdrops and rather stagy lighting in the "dawn of man" chapter, it had an eerie, almost CGI-like ambiance. It was almost as if the whole sequence was computer-generated, à la Final Fantasy. Interesting. And still, after all these years, the ape makeup is still pretty incredible, way better than Planet of the Apes, which snagged the Oscar for best makeup that year (some folks say it's because the Academy didn't realize the apes in 2001 were actually actors).
Third, horribly stilted dialog. I'm surprised I never really noticed this before, but then, I probably wasn't watching it for the character development (see the toke comment above). Seen with 2007 eyes, the dialog had a distinctly "60's" feel to it, rather like the 50's dialog that was so well recreated in Good Night and Good Luck. People just talked differently then, although it's a difficult distinction to quantify. Still, given the fact that there's hardly any of it (the first actual words come some 20 minutes in), this didn't really detract from my enjoyment per se.
Fourth, a few anachronisms. For example, Pan Am no longer exists; therefore the shuttle looks rather dated. Also, I'm willing to bet that, should Kubrick still be alive and working on 2001 today, he would likely be a lot more creative in depicting zero-gee. 2001 was the first sci-fi film to actually address the fact of weightlessness in space rather than simply ignoring it, but by the same token Kubrick in many scenes took the easy way out (vis, the "grip shoes" worn by the shuttle flight attendant), which, seen through 2007 eyes, looks a little cheesy. For example, why bother to climb or descend a ladder in zero-gee, when a little hop will get you there with a fraction of the effort? It was pretty obvious in some scenes (on the bridge and the pod deck, both of which were supposedly weightless areas of the ship) that Bowman and Poole were actually carrying weight. I also noticed, in most cases for the first time, many of the "goofs" listed here on IMDb. Perhaps with an additional 30 years of movie appreciation behind me, I am a little more observant.
The stargate sequence: still not bad, although it probably could be dashed off today in a few hours using CGI, instead of the months it took Doug Trumbull to do it at the time using slit scan. I still really like the "Jupiter space" sequences. It has a wonderfully remote, alien vibe to it, especially the shots of this teeny-tiny spacecraft hovering in a void, dwarfed by the moons of Jupiter looming over it.
And as for the ending, well, what can I say? Cool, but still completely incomprehensible (despite having read the book). All in all, although I would no longer call it my favorite film (I don't think I have a favorite any more, really) it still ranks up there with some of the greats, and it deserves a place in the IMDb top 250 if for no other reason than that it set the bar for all of the space movies that followed it, the Star Wars franchise, Close Encounters, the Alien trilogy, Star Trek, etc. etc. etc. It still, even after all these years, has one of the most "technically accurate" depictions of space travel of any of them. ...And it's kind of sad that even today, 6 years after the year 2001, we still don't really have bases on the moon, commercial space stations in orbit, or artificial intelligence.