A state of mind

Rating: Null/10 (14 June 2002)

One thing you must realize when you discuss "2001 - A space odyssey" is that this movie isn't really "a stereotypical Hollywood movie". If you compare this movie to any other movie (almost any other) then you'll notice a significant difference in story development. You may even want to call "2001" a slow movie. For instance take "Lost in space", "Red planet", heck - even "Star Wars" - then will you notice that these movies really are action/(fantasy)/science-fiction, while "2001" is a pure science-fiction movie. These action movies always develop more rapid or to be more precise, these movies have a shorter and more concentrated story.
Stanley had a kind of `trademark', which was that his movies often (or rather always) provoked the human mind. We who have seen `A Clockwork Orange' will know what I'm trying to say. `2001 - A space odyssey' is a provoking movie in the sense that it suggest that we (humans) really aren't that special. We humans have always thought ourselves as special, for a time not so long ago we thought that Earth was the centrum of the universe and just up to recently we thought that our Solar system was the only system with planets. Nowadays we know better, but still this `humanism' exists, even though we know that we probably are just one of hundreds (thousands, millions) other civilizations. Heck - just go outside any night and watch the universe and try to think that we are a product of the universe and there is no real meaning of life, it just is - then you'll realize that we are in fact nothing special.
A final remark, I read somewhere on this page that someone didn't understand why HAL 9000 went postal and that he actually committed an error in doing so, but if you watch `2010' (or even better, read the book since that movie wasn't really any good).
By the way, read the books (`2001', `2010', `2061', `3001' and `rendezvous with Rama' - all by Arthur C. Clarke, they are amongst the best books I ever read.)
From Sweden / Marcus Larsson