A mockery of the notion to cherish humanity, and an encouragement to the human altruism to embrace the end of an era and welcome the new intelligence.

Rating: 8/10 (21 February 2015)

2001: A Space Odyssey is a neocreationist scientific fictional movie from 1968. I have recently watched this movie again after last time when I was perhaps five. Overall, I give the movie eight out of ten as of the standard in 2015. So let's jump into the details.
First, I like to talk about the cons of the movie. The movie features no Asian or Black actors or actresses. It may be appropriate and convincing in 1968, but certainly not today in 2015. Due to the lack of diversity, the setup of the movie seems more like a funny space sitcom rather than a futuristic exploration. Perhaps due to propaganda purpose, the US and English language are featured dominantly throughout the movie. Examples include the boarding check features a list of languages with English on top, but excluding some of the most populated languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. The lack of diversity in the space and the ideology of the predominant role of the US in the space exploration era shows arrogance and ignorance of the filmmakers, therefore discredited the believability of the realism in the movie. The slow pace and the long pauses in the movie certainly do not seem poetic in 2015, but rather seem idiotic and pretentious. This is why the movie lost two points.
Now, let's talk about pros. The movie is very realistic. It carefully portrayed the behaviors of apes and the lifestyle in space, although from time to time, there were amusing mistakes, such as the space pilot took over the plate by holding the bottom with one hand and to prevent it from dropping while using another hand to pull it over in zero gravity. The movie is actually profound, while it does try too hard and became pretentious. It depicts the beginning and the end of the humanity, and points out what made humanity rise, and why humanity is no longer fitting for a space era. A type of black monolith is prominently featured as an indication of higher intelligence's influence in humanity's evolution – presumably throughout the history, but the movie only showed or mentioned it appeared on earth (likely Africa based on the landscape), moon, a moon surrounding Jupiter, and a symbolic world. This black monolith is a physical symbol that indicates a significant step in the evolution process of intelligence from solar system. The beginning of the movie shows apes' discovery of using bones as weapons following the sudden existence of the black monolith from of the void. Later the black monolith was discovered on moon indicating humanity's ability in space travel. The black monolith on the moon surrounding Jupiter indicates humanity's ability in creating superior life form, the computers. And then the movie uses most of its time to explain why computers are a superior life form and why humanity is no longer fitting for the space era. For example, it uses slow pace to show how difficult it is for human to operate in the space, and how inefficient the way human works. The doctor who was visiting the moon from Jupiter exploration must verify his identity before boarding, and then he must play the role of father to video chat with his daughter, and reminding her daughter to tell his wife that he called. These two actions indicate that human needs constant verifications in order to maintain trusty relationships. Later the doctor meets his fellows and discusses his journey, while he refused to reveal any information. This indicates most of the time human communications are merely waste of time. Then due to the fear of social impact, the doctor reveals that the discovery of monolith must remain a secret. This indicates the fragile of human social structure. Such list can go on and on, and as a result, an artificial intelligent (named Hal) on the exploring ship to Jupiter decided to murder all on board members. This can be seen as a significant evolution step for intelligence in solar system. The AI revealed its despise to humanity when it commented that all mistakes were a result of human errors while inserting such comment in a mellow conversation, which shows its greater ability in giving overtone in the sentences, an indication of AI's higher creativity. The AI gave the final punch to indicate that human cannot even survive in the space without a space helmet.
Of course the movie shows how the astronaut fights his way back to control room and removed chips of the on-board computer and eliminated the threat post by the AI. And then the astronaut had strange visions showing electronic art and then seeing himself getting older and finally on his dead bed, he saw the black monolith once again, and he became an infant flowing in the space overseeing the earth. All of the above scenes since the astronaut fights his way back into the spaceship should be understood as the visual presentation of the denial thinking that humanity will last, and is the terminal species in evolution. The implication here is that, the astronaut died in the space, and a new child of intelligence is born, that the AI has reached a new step in the process of evolution, overseeing the dead bed of humanity, the earth.
The movie overall shows the ideology of neocreationism, that the creator of humanity may or may not be the creator of the universe. It could merely be a mysterious being. More importantly, humanity isn't a very special creation of such being. It can be, for instance in this movie, a biological bootloader of software based intelligence, a superior and more space fitting life form. The movie is a mockery of the notion to cherish humanity, and an encouragement to the human altruism to embrace the end of an era and welcome the new intelligence.