A Study of Intellectual Evolution

Rating: Null/10 (30 July 1998)

2001 is probably the most technically perfect film ever made. It is a study in the intellectual evolution of mankind. The premise is that an outside entity is enabling our journey through the use of the monolith. The monolith gives the apes the ability to reason. Not insignificantly, Moonwatchers first thought is the use of a weapon (the bone). This changes everything. This new species is able to conquer its rivals, changing itself from hunted to hunter, allowing the species to flourish. Moonwatcher throws the bone in the sky and it morphs into a nuclear space station. Eons have gone by in an instant but man has not changed at all. The rest of the movie deals with the next step in man's intellectual evolution beginning with the discovery of the monolith on the moon. This can be seen symbolically in the ships that are used, signifying man's "re-birth". The space station is an unfertilized egg and Floyd's shuttle is the sperm. Conception occurs at docking. The probe to the moon is the fertilized zygote implanting itself in the womb (the moon). And of course, Discovery is the soon to be born child, the monolith by Jupiter the birth canal. New man no longer needs a body and is pure energy.