Hello lovely people, thank you so much for watching this recap! As it's not my usual wheelhouse I expect fewer regular visitors here, but I had the most fun making this and put in a butt-load of work, so if you enjoyed it I would be so grateful for your comments and shares! I'm not suddenly changing all my content or stopping talking about religion, reacting to fundamentalism etc. but I am a person and I don't want to do the same thing every day forever so it's really fun to mix it up! Unfortunately that doesn't go down super well on RUclips, so your support here is so appreciated 🦆💗
You did good. I've never seen this movie, but now I'm curious. Kubrick did some pretty great things for film. This was definitely different than the other stuff you do, but that's ok. Light-hearted Emma is good too 😄 Can't wait to see more back and forth with the crazy old pastor guy and the christian female coalition against gays, or whoever those ladies are 😆 I love your takes on all their bs. Anyway, stay classy Emma, and keep up the good work.
Is Cinema not a religion? Have I been worshipping mistakenly at Temples of The Silver Screen? What is life without movies? Where will I receive moral guidance? How will I learn about the world without film? Help. It’s so dark in the world so suddenly. I need the Light of The Great Projector to show me the way.
I've seen 2 or 3 of your vids. I'm by far not a regular. Maybe stepping out of your wheelhouse has the upside of attracting new/new-ish viewers? I watched the first half of the vid before work, and specifically went into my watch history to find this vid and watch the rest, because it's genuinely compelling and fun. I won't complain if more like this shows up in my recommendation feed :)
I'm going to watch 2001 again, thanks to your review, now I'll be able to make sense of it. I would like to suggest that you review "Once Upon A Time in the West" starring Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson. It flopped when it first came out because Henry Fonda was cast as the bad guy but now is considered one of the best films of all time.
Emma's an adult? My God, the girl is only 12 years old. I know because I'm 73 and she looks like child!! LOL!! Also, I do NOT want things completely explained. For example, one of my favorite Disney films is Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent is delightful. She is so evil and mysterious. The live action Maleficent trying to explain Her human b!ckground takes away some of the mystery, making her just another miserable average human. How dreary! Sometimes leaving it mysterious is better!!
According to Isaac Asimov, first time he saw this movie, when the intermission started he turned to his friend with him in the theatre and said “They’re going to violate the First Law!” And his friend said “Well, why don’t you strike them dead, Isaac.”
From Isaac Asimov's essay _View from Amalthea_ ( included in the _The Solar System and Back_ ): In "2001," the most dramatic episodes involve an intelligent computer (equivalent to one of my robots) who deliberately brings about the death of several human beings. That this was going to happen was made abundantly clear to the audience just before the midpoint intermission, and at intermission I went seething up the aisle toward a friend of mine I noticed in the audience. In tones of deep shock, I said to him, "They're breaking First Law! They're breaking First Law!" And my friend answered, calmly, "So why don't you strike them with lightning, Isaac!"
Close: Acording to the original unabridged version of "The Hugo Winners Volume 1" his friend said "why don't you strike them down with lightning, Isaac." Pretty close, and essentially the same, but one of my favorite quotes from that book I read in the 70s as a teenager or I wouldn't even mention it.
Emma is so adorable, its fun to watch her enthusiastically expound basically anything, but i do also dig her film expertise. I hope she does more of these
"Eat dicks HAL! Dave is unstoppable!" is now my new favourite thing ever. I almost suffocated from laughing so hard. Just as a side note: It is my belief that the Monolith is made from chocolate so dark that light cannot escape it surface.
I, a 50 something, am unreasonably happy every time I learn that someone understands and likes this movie/book. All the more so that it's someone so young. Great video!
I'm also in my 50s now. I tried watching this film 8 times before I finally read the book when I was 15 and kept going WTF each time. After I read the book, things changed, and it's been one of my all-time favorite films ever since!
My mother, who was a big science fiction fan, books and films, took me to see 2001 in the cinema on it's release; I was 10 and didn't really understand it of course, but it made me a lifelong scien ce fiction fan and lead me to a degree of astro-physics. Still my favourite film, along with Local Hero. In the book TMA-2 is on Saturn's moon Iapetus but when doing the effects for an approach and orbit of Saturn,Kubrick thought that it looked too artificial and so moved TMA-2 to orbit around Jupiter. The footage of the Saturn approach was used in the film Silent Running.
Oh Local Hero is so good too. I didn't get to see 2001 in the theater because I was just a few years too young when it was released. But I still saw several times from the 1970's onward. It seemed like a very iconic movie then, everyone knew it and had seen it. Anyway, congrats on your degree in astro-physics, that's quite an accomplishment.
My grandfather was an Isaac Asimov fan, and he took my mother to a screening of 2001 at a fair in upstate New York when it just came out. She was utterly confused, but stunned by the visuals and music, and was obsessed with film ever since.
Nobody does a better film/book review than Emma. The way she physically throws herself into her narrative is sometimes thrilling and mostly hilarious 🙂
I'm an old guy born in 1962. In high school I was lucky enough to have a sci fi geek of an English teacher who talked the school into offering a science fiction literature and film class. Being a sci-fi fan I signed up. One of the first films that we saw was 2001 and it was epic. We each individually had to right a review of the film. I remember getting an A+ for a grade but the paper is lost to time as it was over 40 years ago. It would be interesting to see how awful that my writing was in 1978 though.
"I'm an old guy born in 1962" as opposed to a young guy born in 1962? cuz i gotta admit that would be a lot more interesting. "but the paper is lost to time" maybe the young guy has it. " It would be interesting to see how awful that my writing was in 1978 though." i have samples of things i wrote when i was in high school or younger. interesting is not the word i'd use. i'd use the word 'self-flagellating.' you were in the 70s. do you have pics of the outfits you wore? imagine that times 100.
My English teacher in 10th grade was irrationally anti science fiction. He insisted Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy didn't count as literature simply because it is speculative fiction.
@@bjbear5202 " didn't count as literature" there are ppl who want narrow definitions of things and ppl who want broad definitions. there are some ppl who think 'literature' is a special genre of writing and should be distinguished between other types. just as there are ppl who think 'rap is not music', 'comics are not literature', and 'song lyrics are not poetry.' it's all basically a semantics argument, they have set their definitions of things to be exclusionary.
Had a 12th grade teacher that actually asked me to come up with a syllabus for a possible sci-fi course the next year. Of course, I never saw what would come of my work, if anything.
Huge fan of Arthur C Clarke here, Please do the rest of the 2001 series, I want to see you talk about the velociraptor with a day job ;-) Also, if you haven't, PLEASE read the Rendezvous with Rama series by Clarke; you'll love it, Emma!
The sequels to the first book in the Rama series were written mainly by Gentry Lee with Clarke providing the outline for them, if I remember right. I found Garden of Rama to be the most depressing of the sequels. It was Rendevous With Rama that really got me into reading SF in about 1992, particularly hard SF, and Clarke has been a favourite SF author of mine since then.
@kingspeget RE: ". . . the velociraptor with a day job" I have read everything written by Arthur C Clarke and I don't remember him ever writing about a velociraptor.
@@spaceman081447It was a small scene in 3001, where it's mentioned that a lot of the menial labor jobs are done by replicas of dinosaurs or something.
@@kyzer422 You're absolutely right. I remember now. The velociraptor had been designed to work as a gardener. One of the characters said that they had tried bioengineered primates (chimps and gorillas I think) but they got bored too easily.
I just gotta say, I’ve only ever watched the movie at home until last year when a local independent theater got their hands on one of the newer 70mm prints and it was such an amazing experience to see it so large, loud, and up close. If you get a chance to see it on a big screen, take it.
Try being an Empath, ALL dreams feel real. God is a Fifth Dimentional, or Higher Being, so that Time and Knowledge are ALL accessible to HIM. No, I'm not a Lunatic, Just Another Fu*king Observer (JAFO).
@@Rob2000 I think there are other films without dialog in the first 25 minutes, though. It's been a long time since I watched Wall-E, but I don't think there's any dialog in the first half of the film.
There are not just the four 2001 novels, there's also the short story 'The Sentinel' which first introduces the monolith. It's the last story in Clarke's collection 'Of Time And Stars', which I was fortunate enough to be bought for my eighth birthday in 1972 (and which I still have on my bookshelf; it's an excellent introduction to the breadth of sci-fi).
@@aldebaran4154 It’s been included in multiple collections of Carke’s work. It’s probably his most reprinted story. I never really “got” 2001 until I read “The Sentinel” (I was 12 when it came out.)
@@donsample1002 Yeah, I think there's at least five of Clarke's short story collections I have it in. I just wanted to mention the original one. I know parts of Transit of Earth was also used. I saw 2001 for the first time in the early 1980s when I was a teenager so I was at a better age to grasp its impact. The one thing I've always not understood is why so many viewers didn't understand why HAL did what he did when it's right in the movie. :) Edit: Oops, not Transit of Earth but Encounter n the Dawn. I always confuse those two titles!
My parents took me to see this in the theater when I was three years old, and while I have no memory of it, they told me that I stood on the theater seat and just stared at the screen for the entire duration of the movie. Also, I'd love to see you do this for 2010, a very underrated movie in my opinion. :)
OMG! My parents also took me to see it when I was 3 (1973)! I actually remember the monkey men and Frank Poole's EVA from that experience and nothing else!
Douglas Trumbull couldn't figure out how to deliver a convincing Saturn on the schedule that Kubrick needed it for, so the script was rewritten to shorten Discovery-1's final destination to Jupiter instead. Trumbull never stopped thinking about the problem even after the film wrapped, and then a few years later made the film Silent Running when he'd finally cracked it. I'm also convinced that since Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is a bit of a love letter to 2001, this is why the wormhole in that film was placed near Saturn.
And supposedly the rings of Saturn were formed right around 3 or 4 million years ago. Perhaps a backup plan in case the lunar monolith did not survive. Hey, look at me.
@@radwolf76 Fun fact (that you may already be aware of): during that BBC-12 interview, the announcer says "mission to Jupiter", but if you look closely, his lips are voicing "Saturn". They overdubbed the original film recording once this change was made.
Another book to add to your collection is "The Lost Worlds of 2001" by Clarke. It chronicles the writing of the novel( At one point,HAL was called Athena) and includes other alternative openings and endings. As a huge 2001 fan myself, I once replaced many of the Windows audio files with HAL's voice on a computer I used to have with stuff like, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" and "We have problem". When I shut the computer down, it was HAL singing "Daisy". An interesting fact about the soundtrack: The original plan was to use a score written for it. There were some delays and setbacks with the composer they chose, and when the studio started hounding Kubrick to show them something, he used a the classical pieces as placeholders for the screening. It worked so well, that they stuck with it. One thing I really liked in the novel is how Moonwatcher's thoughts at the end of the first section are mirrored by the starchild at the end of the book.
This was the first film I ever rented on VHS back in the early eighties when you couldn’t watch nearly anything you wanted whenever you like. I knew almost nothing about the film, only that it was classic science fiction… I think a good sized chunk of the back of my skull is still flying further out into space, my mind having been that completely blown. I was born in ‘69 and have been a space nerd all my life. Yes please do the sequels! Then do RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA! Or INTERSTELLAR, yes, also good. Great video!
2010 recap, yes please. The little girl in the vid-phone call was Stanley Kubricks daughter, he basically made a home movie with her and stuck it in the film. Also the sandwiches eaten in the "moon buggy" have no crust, which I always thought was weird. ☺️
It has probably been about 30 years since I watched the movie and read the books. My dad recommended them to me, which was kind of surprising because he never liked sci-fi. But apparently he did like the movie, and read the books along with me. I enjoyed this video, at least in part, because you're as enthusiastic about it as I remember being when I first saw and read it. One thing I remember from the book was that when Dave was in the white hotel room at the end, he noticed that the newspapers and cereal boxes and such were blurry and unreadable. As though made with photographs taken from a really long distance. That bit really hit me, that "they" have been watching for a long time, and still were watching.
Yes this is what I need today lmao I rewatched this movie a few years ago while writing a piece on the history of the relationship between psychedelics and sci fi. And while this wasn't a story inspired directly by drug use, it's no coincidence that upon rerelease the film came with a new tagline, "The Ultimate Trip"
Do you have ant thoughts about the film They Live in reference to the sunglasses being a metaphor for LSD? I've yet to find anyone who will entertain this assertion.
This was fantastic. I would love to see a similar synopsis for both 2010 and 2061. (3001 was just plain silly and such a bad way to wrap up such an epic. No need to remind us of that mistake.) I'd also love to see you do this for a few select entries from Asimov's robot short stories, followed by his detective stories with Elijah Bailey, R. Daneel, R. Giskard, and the gang, running through the development of Hari Seldon's psychohistory, and through the entirety of the Foundation series.
I was at university when this came out and saw it with friends. I remember many conversations afterwards discussing what it was all about, but mostly whether the spacy trippy sequence was good movie making or poor special effects. One thing that it did was popularise Also Spake Zarathustra and we all became fans of Richard Strauss.
Decided to stop halfway through and actually watch the movie for the first time. I'll finish your video afterwards. Thanks for getting me engaged enough that I decided I needed to see the crazy parts for myself. Synopses really have become the most effective form of recommendation for me. 💜💜💜
My favourite experience of watching 2001 was at a 24 hour SF film festival. It was set to play really late so by the time you got to the the trippy psychedelic bit you had been awake for at least 20 hours, were super tired and staying awake mostly due to giant doses of caffeine. It was one of the most magnificent moments I have had in a theatre
My first time viewing the 2001 movie was as a 9yr old child at a double feature with 2010. I was captivated by the imagery and it spurred a life long love of NASA. Having read the books later, I gained a newfound love of the material. Thanks to your video, I'm reminded that another rewatch is in order. I would love a recap of 2010 as well, if you find the time and are so inclined.
I think it's Dave who does the first EVA, because he's wearing the red suit. Then it's Frank's turn for the second EVA. Also, I remember both the book and the movie's title cards as saying that the Dawn of Man is 3 million years ago. Also, also, I think the force-field around the monolith is from the short story "The Sentinel", which _2001_ is based on. As I remember, in the novel _2001,_ TMA sends its signal when it's exposed to the Sun for the first time in millions of years, and I think that's implicit in the movie, as it's illuminated by floodlights when Floyd gets to the site, and the Sun rises while they're taking the photos.
@@vforwombat9915 Me too! We cannot subvert the Coffee! Export/Import to the Enquiring Minds among us on this Rock. Happy Coffee County Month, by the way. ☕💙
Your enthusiasm is super infectious and actually makes me quite emotional 😂 Love a genuine nerd ❤ (Also ~ "Good job" to the monkeys! Those berries can be a little unstable. Not the best of foundations to build a diet on)
I attempted to watch the movie a few years back but fell asleep during the monkey men scenes at the start, and no one has been able to convince me to try watching it again until I watched your video today!! Now that I know what I missed, I will go back and pay full attention 😁 You're so passionate about it I loved watching your video and would love a video about the book sequels!!
Wow. This was a flashback. I'm an old timer. When I was a young man, I lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. I couldn't afford cable TV, the Internet wasn't a thing, and I made minimum wage hauling furniture around, so I had no money. My main means of entertainment was a local used book store, where I could purchase used sci-fi paperbacks for 30 cents. I bought and read every bit of Asimov that they had. When I ran out, the old lady running the place recommended Arthur C. Clark. I bought well-used copies of the Space Odyssey series, and spent my nights and weekends in my tiny bedroom reading them. I spent hours reading, rereading and analyzing them. I'd sit in the delivery truck between customers thinking about the meaning of these books. They really opened up my imagination, and brought me a lot of joy. I really enjoyed Emma's recap and analysis, and I would love to see more of this kind of content. Thanks, Emma!
Great review! I thought the moon monolith was programmed to send its signal when unearthed, or un-mooned, and the sun hits it for the first time in 4 million years, wonder where I got that from? Maybe that's from some deleted scene someone mentioned, or from the sequel, it's been so long since I read it. (I read the book first in the early 60's, then saw the film in the late 60's, and read the first sequel in the 80's.) btw the name HAL comes from the 3 letters after I, B and M.
Yup in the film the burst from the monolith happens when the sunlight strikes it over the pit walls surrounding it. It's coincidental that Floyd et al happen to be there.
Emma's enthusiasm is just awesome. I remember watching another video about the story, using both the book and film to more clearly describe the plot, and there are some details that Emma includes that I do not recall being included in the other video that adds to the story. Thank you for doing this and being such a joy to watch and listen to.
I'll always remember the chills of seeing that monolith and prehistoric humans using tools for the first time with such violence against the other tribe. Fantastic film, fantastic recap, thanks Emma!
I love your passion for my all time favourite film I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.{HAL)
It's such a beautiful film. You've made me feel like I have missed out by not having read the book(s). Your enthusiasm for the film is refreshing and charming.
My mum took me to see this a looooong time ago when I was quite young and I recall enjoying the film until the last 20 minutes or so and losing all idea of just what the heck was happening. Many years later (10 or 20?) I read the book and realised what it had all been about!
I was born in 1963, and grew up with this movie. I watched it countless times in my life, and never really got the ending. It was still so interesting to watch, though. Then about 10 years ago, I came across the book in a used bookstore and picked it up. FINALLY I understood the end of the story. I don't know why Kubrick left it so enigmatic and puzzling. I mean, even the book is somewhat enigmatic, it's not an easy ending either. But it sits more comfortably in my brain now. You did a good job in the video! Even though I know the story, you made it really entertaining and fun. I wonder how many times in my life I've said "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
I love your passion for this movie Emma! I've always loved it as well and keep finding new things to enjoy every time I watch it again. I would love to read your essay on the film, I don't think a video about it would be at all boring.
Loved this! More film analysis please! I'd enjoy some of your film studies observations too, it can add extra appreciation of why a film really grabs you (or doesn't). Don't worry about it being dry, your personality and enthusiasm would liven it up :) A bit of triv about HAL singing Daisy Daisy as 'he' regresses - ''The song is said to have been inspired by Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, one of the many mistresses of King Edward VII. It is the earliest song sung using computer speech synthesis by the IBM 704 in 1961, a feat that was referenced in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).''
The color-coded spacesuits are a great idea. I am honestly surprised it never caught on, as you can immediately identify a person even if there is a radio failure.
At last a review of a decent film without the usual idiots. Luckily I re-watched this film and 2010 recently. I must reread 3001, but am currently rereading Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Are you planning to recap "2010: the year we make contact" also?
My favorite part from 3001 is when Frank has some sexy times with a lady but then she gets freaked out because he's circumcised. Seems ritualistic genital mutilation will no longer be in vogue.
I love the story of how Kubrick wanted Arthur Clarke (one of my very favorite sci-fi authors and a veritable Nostradamus of science) to help him make the proverbial 'Good Science Fiction Movie'. And he did!
I saw 2001 when I was a kid, when it first came out, in the original Panavision. I was 11 and it blew my little mind. I'm so glad young people like you adore this movie as much as I do. I've seen it many times, read all the books a number of times. You mention that the first time Frank goes out to get the AE-35 unit and HAL moves the pod to focus the lights on Frank's work. Foreshadowing! Dave, in his panic to get Frank's body, makes a huge error and forgets his helmet, which means he has to blow himself into he airlock.
So amazing to see that people from a younger generation are still appreciating that master piece. There are only two kind of people those who love that movie and those who think it's a bor. I am a huge fan even when I saw it on VHS back in the 80s as a 13 year's old it was way over my head but it made a huge impression. I read the book visited the exhibition you name it. And back in the days I had my default windows error Message "sorry Dave I can't do that"...
Other tech companies used 2001 to prove the pre-existance of the form of those devices. This was to disprove Apple's claim of having an original design and, therefore, exclusive rights to manufacture tablets.
I literally just watched this movie last night, what a nice coincidence this just got recommended to me. After watching it, I thought the movie was silly, especially the start, interesting with the middle part, and fun again at the end with the stream of incomprehensible insanity happening to Dave. I wish the movie gave the book's reason for HAL's actions, rather than him just being an evil robot. The idea of him going mental from the conflicting goals of helping his crewmates and keeping important secrets from them is super interesting. Another thing that was cool from the book is the sense of loss both when discovering the monolith, and Dave's experiences zipping through abandoned alien car parks further confirming we missed our shot to meet the extraterrestrials. Finally, the monoliths being alien breadcrumbs requiring a moon landing, nukes, frequency scanners, and long range space travel to follow (very cool, the monoliths being how-advanced-is-your-civilization tests) leading the advanced sapient creatures they created through space to the third monolith which further transforms the creatures into transcendent beings beyond matter itself makes the ending less insane and far more understandable. It also makes the alien's actions understandable, they want to give the gifts they eventually discovered to their creations. So much of the movie fits into the book, it almost seems made to be watched by people who have read the book, to gain all this contextualization.
No, the movie is its own thing and the book's interpretation should not be read onto the movie. The movie has a mystery to it that makes it better, which is why it regularly makes the lists of the greatest films of all time. The book certainly does not make the lists of the greatest books of all time.
This was one of the best rambling high-energy recaps I've ever heard. I feel much happier than I did 50 mins ago, and I'm that much closer to the weekend. Thank you!
The main problem I have with the film is largely the same problem I have with most of Kubrick's work: it's way too invested in the concept of "being a Great Film (TM)" that it looses sight of being a good film in the process. On a technical level it's a masterpiece, and if you do your homework and have a film or media degree then you can easily squint at it hard enough to get a lot from the film. And that's fine, but 2001 receives an amount of leeway from being "the first" in many aspects, while simultaneously being quite facile it its execution of those things. It's a landmark film, certainly. And there are so many wonderful moments if you take them out of the wider film. But ultimately for me the film has always been a bunch of really pretty, interesting scenes and concepts put together in a way that removes the magic from the whole affair.
I think 2001 is a great film, but it is not a good movie, for the reasons you suggested. Kubrick did love to flaunt his auteur abilities regardless of whether it helped or hindered the storytelling. I know I'll likely get heat for this, but for this reason, I've found the Interstellar did what 2001 could not, and that's being able to bring in a human element that was missing from Kubrick.
I was lucky enough to see a presentation of this film at university of Kentucky with the UK Philharmonic playing the score live throughout the film. It was quite breathtaking.
Love that this 55+ year-old movie is your favorite, Emma, and that it's still impacting younger audiences. It's tied with another Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove, as my favorite. You capture the imagery, edits, dialogue, and scenes that make this movie so great.
Barbie pink space stewardess cosplay? Humming Thus Spake Zarathustra? Yeah don't worry about it. You'll fit right in the movie theaters right now. No problem.
This was super fun and enjoyable. I think the best part was your presentation very enthusiastic and animated. Honestly I enjoyed listening to your voice. Thanks
2010 yes yes yes please! Your recap absolutely brought me back to the late nineties, when I made the effort to both read all the books, and watch all the films. The world building by Clarke (and of course Kubrick) made a lasting impression on me and your recap of both the book and the film was thoroughly entertaining. Your style and wit are great. Thank you!
Seen 2001 several times, but never read the book. What little dialogue and story there is, it's so spread out among all the silence and awe-inspiring scenery that it's really hard to follow. Your recap was adorable and the movie makes a LOT more sense now than it did without context. Thanks!
Yes, do more, please. You're absolutely lovely and seeing your passion about a favourite of mine was so fun! BTW, Tycho is the crater near the south of the moon's face with the star-like flares of dust radiating from it i don't think it's the largest, though.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" was a strange movie. I watched it a long time ago and it left me with that "what the freak .." kind of impression. This was really fun, recaps of the others would be great.
Keir Dullea really enjoyed working with Kubrick. And the sets were absolutely amazing.❤ The retroreflector screens in first scenes. Including a coaxial beam splitter camera and projector which hid shadows by geometry. The giant rotating drum for space station artificial gravity. To the use of peanut butter to keep the food stuck to the trays when things went upside down. Individual rotascreen masks for stars. Actually the ape suits and actors were absolutely cutting edge and amazing and super challenging to wear due to heat. And Ligeti’s scores are superb.❤❤❤❤🎉🎉 The only reason the ape suits didn’t win awards were…the judges thought they were actually real. The little girl who want the bushbaby is: Kubrick’s daughter Vivian Kubrick. Originally the space portal was supposed to be at Saturn, and ended up being Jupiter. The scenes with space walks were filmed from below the actors who were suspended from wires hidden by perspective. Original score was supposed to be synthesizer music, but Kubrick decided on discussion with staff to use Strauss and Ligeti. And BTW we are decades away from a HAL, who is way beyond the current popularized “AI”. We have multi agent (deep, sparce forest, etc. neural networks) great for modeling hidden processes and complex systems, but they are purpose driven. Things are moving forward (I worked in AI for protein folding) in true artificial intelligence but HAL is way beyond what the general public thinks of and the media AI. This is still in my top 5 favorite films. The young girls of Rochefort is another….❤
I saw this film at the beginning of 1969 four months shy of my 12th birthday. I was fortunate to see it in one of the old massive, huge screen theatres which still existed in the 1960s. When I saw it there were very few people in the cinema. I chose a seat which was dead centre in the stalls about four rows back from the front because that was where the limit of my peripheral vision was perfectly aligned with the width of the screen. This film completely blew me away. Bear in mind that I was only 11 years old and this was at the time that the Apollo Space Program was receiving its maximum media and public interest. Apollo 8 had circled the Moon at Christmas with the famous reading from Genesis. Apollo 9 and 10 were still in the immediate future and, of course, Apollo 11 was still about 6 months in the future as well. Heady times. I don't think that I have ever fully recovered from that first viewing and 2001 remains as my favourite film of all time. The combination of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke is one of the ultimate dream tickets for producing a significant cinematic experience. Considering that they were both very strong personalities and were still able to compromise is amazing. Fantastic film. Many times imitated. Never equaled. Of course my opinion is highly prejudiced. Sorry. Can't help it and why the f should I?
Something Amazing which appears to have gone unnoticed is the way Enma cut out the Moon and Jupiter so perfectly, i doubt Kubrick had that attention to detail 😊
An idea that crossed my mind when I watched the movie the second time: when the monolith on the moon gives off its piercing signal into space, Dr Floyd and his colleagues do something irrational, but something that any of us would do: they try to cover their ears with their hands. They can't, of course: they're wearing space helmets. Perhaps I'm reading something into it that isn't there, but perhaps this is meant to suggest that, compared to the entities that made the monolith, we humans are still well and truly apes. The action is a concession to animal instinct, but comes from the most advanced scientific minds in the world.
Great video! I still remember my parents taking us to see this film as a double feature with Silent Running at the drive in about 1972. My dad the huge scifi fan, my mum, not so much. While my younger siblings sawed logs in the folded down back of our station wagon, 10 year old me watched both films right through. I didn't understand 2001, but the music and images stuck with me. Became a big Kubrick fan. I have not had the opportunity to see it again like you suggest on the big screen, but watch it regularly on DVD. The community in live in has a (tiny) connection to the film. In our town hospital died Douglas Rain aged 90, in 2018. He was living in nearby Stratford, Ontario. Unfortunately, we have no grave to visit, as his ashes were kept by the family.
HAL being able to identify a drawing of a human face is pretty astonishing because that's a human instinct that has evolved over millions of years. Our brains are hardwired to see faces, and we see them everywhere, we even see the markings on the moon as a human face.
Thank you! My dad took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey 50 years ago when I was 11. I didn’t understand it and always thought I didn’t like it. You have helped me understand and appreciate the movie.
Your enthusiasm and love for this story are so clear and so lovely to see. Really enjoyed the rundown with book insights that I'd never have known otherwise. While I like your usual content as well, I for one would love to see more videos like this on stories (film or book) that you love or were impactful. Cheers!
I don't know how true this is, but one of my composition teachers told us about meeting Ligeti. When asked how to pronounce his last name, he said, "Ligeti, like hot diggity".
I've enjoyed your content sir some time. This is now one of my favorites. I'm an old guy who absolutely loves 2001. I've been disappointed that too many people to whom I've introduced it find it too slow and abstract. It warms my heart to see such a smart young person as yourself so excited about this movie!
Thoroughly loved this. Please do more like it. One of the small tidbits of this movie/book I like is HAL is a simple alphabet shift of IBM, a huge name at the time in computers.
It's been decades since I read/watched these, and I feel the need to read them again. A friend told me about watching the film at the drive-in, and how he had to go back the next night to watch it again without the drug trip.
Thanks for this: I’m an older chap and saw this film during the initial run. It did a number on my 11-year old brain. I’ve seen it many times since and read the book as well: Your summary is both spot-on and great fun. I would add that this film set the standard for “hard” Sci-Fi. Much less silly and more realistic than other films of the time. As you say: The space travel shots hold up remarkably well. And? Oh-my-goodness-yes please give us more.
Hey Emma! This is the only movie in my 50 years of life that I seen for the first time twice. First time when I was 14 in the summer of 1987. My cousin and I watched it and it went right over our heads. Eleven years later, I had just graduated from college and it was the 30th Anniversary of the release of 2001. They were showing it at a local theater that showed a lot of classic movies and my girlfriend at the time wanted to see it. I reluctantly went. Two and a half hours later I said to myself, "That might be the best movie I have ever seen." Why the change? I UNDERSTOOD IT! Which leads to the question. Where the heck were you in 1987 to explain it to me? Ha ha ha! Great job kid!
Hello lovely people, thank you so much for watching this recap! As it's not my usual wheelhouse I expect fewer regular visitors here, but I had the most fun making this and put in a butt-load of work, so if you enjoyed it I would be so grateful for your comments and shares!
I'm not suddenly changing all my content or stopping talking about religion, reacting to fundamentalism etc. but I am a person and I don't want to do the same thing every day forever so it's really fun to mix it up! Unfortunately that doesn't go down super well on RUclips, so your support here is so appreciated 🦆💗
You did good. I've never seen this movie, but now I'm curious. Kubrick did some pretty great things for film. This was definitely different than the other stuff you do, but that's ok. Light-hearted Emma is good too 😄 Can't wait to see more back and forth with the crazy old pastor guy and the christian female coalition against gays, or whoever those ladies are 😆 I love your takes on all their bs. Anyway, stay classy Emma, and keep up the good work.
Is Cinema not a religion? Have I been worshipping mistakenly at Temples of The Silver Screen? What is life without movies? Where will I receive moral guidance? How will I learn about the world without film? Help. It’s so dark in the world so suddenly. I need the Light of The Great Projector to show me the way.
I've seen 2 or 3 of your vids. I'm by far not a regular. Maybe stepping out of your wheelhouse has the upside of attracting new/new-ish viewers? I watched the first half of the vid before work, and specifically went into my watch history to find this vid and watch the rest, because it's genuinely compelling and fun.
I won't complain if more like this shows up in my recommendation feed :)
I'm going to watch 2001 again, thanks to your review, now I'll be able to make sense of it. I would like to suggest that you review "Once Upon A Time in the West" starring Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson. It flopped when it first came out because Henry Fonda was cast as the bad guy but now is considered one of the best films of all time.
Do 2010 The Year We Make Contact next!!!
That was quite possibly the cutest description of a film that an adult has ever given.
I must agree, I felt this also. Heart, skill and playful presentation - completely and uniquely Emma. Oh; passion too, especially when it counts most!
@braindrew....nock it off lil bro, she's already spoken for...
Agreed, her youthful description reminds me of child talking about a Disney cartoon.
Emma's an adult? My God, the girl is only 12 years old. I know because I'm 73 and she looks like child!! LOL!! Also, I do NOT want things completely explained. For example, one of my favorite Disney films is Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent is delightful. She is so evil and mysterious. The live action Maleficent trying to explain
Her human b!ckground takes away some of the mystery, making her just another miserable average human. How dreary! Sometimes leaving it mysterious is better!!
@@phillipstephens4522 ....you must be highly upset about the malfaction character explanation of her dreary human b!ckground?
According to Isaac Asimov, first time he saw this movie, when the intermission started he turned to his friend with him in the theatre and said “They’re going to violate the First Law!” And his friend said “Well, why don’t you strike them dead, Isaac.”
Fucking-A.
From Isaac Asimov's essay _View from Amalthea_ ( included in the _The Solar System and Back_ ):
In "2001," the most dramatic episodes involve an intelligent computer (equivalent to one of my robots) who deliberately brings about the death of several human beings. That this was going to happen was made abundantly clear to the audience just before the midpoint intermission, and at intermission I went seething up the aisle toward a friend of mine I noticed in the audience.
In tones of deep shock, I said to him, "They're breaking First Law! They're breaking First Law!"
And my friend answered, calmly, "So why don't you strike them with lightning, Isaac!"
@@wizardsuth Thank you for finding the reference. I was going from memory of having read that 4 or 5 decades ago.
Close: Acording to the original unabridged version of "The Hugo Winners Volume 1" his friend said "why don't you strike them down with lightning, Isaac." Pretty close, and essentially the same, but one of my favorite quotes from that book I read in the 70s as a teenager or I wouldn't even mention it.
@@wizardsuthIt's such an adorable nerd rage moment, and such a civilized yet agreeing answer.
Emma is so adorable, its fun to watch her enthusiastically expound basically anything, but i do also dig her film expertise. I hope she does more of these
Enthusiastic Yes to " . . . more of these."
"Eat dicks HAL! Dave is unstoppable!" is now my new favourite thing ever. I almost suffocated from laughing so hard. Just as a side note: It is my belief that the Monolith is made from chocolate so dark that light cannot escape it surface.
I would buy this t-shirt.
I would buy this chocolate.
@@Anson_AKBmmm chocolate
@@Villani_AV Mmm, chocolate, on my t-shirt.
"BEHOLD, YE GODS! 101% DARK CHOCOLATE! THEY TOLD ME IT COULDN'T BE DONE! MY CONFECTIONERY SHALL GRATIFY ALL PLACES FOR ALL TIME!"
I, a 50 something, am unreasonably happy every time I learn that someone understands and likes this movie/book. All the more so that it's someone so young. Great video!
I'm also in my 50s now. I tried watching this film 8 times before I finally read the book when I was 15 and kept going WTF each time. After I read the book, things changed, and it's been one of my all-time favorite films ever since!
My mother, who was a big science fiction fan, books and films, took me to see 2001 in the cinema on it's release; I was 10 and didn't really understand it of course, but it made me a lifelong scien ce fiction fan and lead me to a degree of astro-physics. Still my favourite film, along with Local Hero.
In the book TMA-2 is on Saturn's moon Iapetus but when doing the effects for an approach and orbit of Saturn,Kubrick thought that it looked too artificial and so moved TMA-2 to orbit around Jupiter.
The footage of the Saturn approach was used in the film Silent Running.
Oh Local Hero is so good too. I didn't get to see 2001 in the theater because I was just a few years too young when it was released. But I still saw several times from the 1970's onward. It seemed like a very iconic movie then, everyone knew it and had seen it. Anyway, congrats on your degree in astro-physics, that's quite an accomplishment.
My grandfather was an Isaac Asimov fan, and he took my mother to a screening of 2001 at a fair in upstate New York when it just came out.
She was utterly confused, but stunned by the visuals and music, and was obsessed with film ever since.
@@CodeNameX001 It is certainly a film that makes an impression, even if somebody is too young to understand it.
@@sharimeline3077 Thank you; was done as an Open University course simply to see if I could,.
Me too, when it was rereleased in the UK, in preference to going to see _The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes_ ŵ my sister. Mind. Blown. 🐜
Nobody does a better film/book review than Emma.
The way she physically throws herself into her narrative is sometimes thrilling and mostly hilarious 🙂
Yes, a connection from the heart in universal recognition. We see one another and embrace all. 🤗
@@libradragon Deep down inside, we're all monkey men.
I'm an old guy born in 1962. In high school I was lucky enough to have a sci fi geek of an English teacher who talked the school into offering a science fiction literature and film class. Being a sci-fi fan I signed up. One of the first films that we saw was 2001 and it was epic. We each individually had to right a review of the film. I remember getting an A+ for a grade but the paper is lost to time as it was over 40 years ago. It would be interesting to see how awful that my writing was in 1978 though.
"I'm an old guy born in 1962"
as opposed to a young guy born in 1962?
cuz i gotta admit that would be a lot more interesting.
"but the paper is lost to time"
maybe the young guy has it.
" It would be interesting to see how awful that my writing was in 1978 though."
i have samples of things i wrote when i was in high school or younger.
interesting is not the word i'd use.
i'd use the word 'self-flagellating.'
you were in the 70s.
do you have pics of the outfits you wore?
imagine that times 100.
My English teacher in 10th grade was irrationally anti science fiction. He insisted Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy didn't count as literature simply because it is speculative fiction.
@@bjbear5202 " didn't count as literature"
there are ppl who want narrow definitions of things and ppl who want broad definitions.
there are some ppl who think 'literature' is a special genre of writing and should be distinguished between other types.
just as there are ppl who think 'rap is not music', 'comics are not literature', and 'song lyrics are not poetry.'
it's all basically a semantics argument, they have set their definitions of things to be exclusionary.
1962?
Youngun😂
Very cool! You got lucky and got a great teacher! Too cool!!! Teachers are rare and a gift.
Had a 12th grade teacher that actually asked me to come up with a syllabus for a possible sci-fi course the next year.
Of course, I never saw what would come of my work, if anything.
Huge fan of Arthur C Clarke here, Please do the rest of the 2001 series, I want to see you talk about the velociraptor with a day job ;-)
Also, if you haven't, PLEASE read the Rendezvous with Rama series by Clarke; you'll love it, Emma!
Agreed, Rama's depiction of alien life is also fantastic (and fantastically depressing :) )
The sequels to the first book in the Rama series were written mainly by Gentry Lee with Clarke providing the outline for them, if I remember right. I found Garden of Rama to be the most depressing of the sequels.
It was Rendevous With Rama that really got me into reading SF in about 1992, particularly hard SF, and Clarke has been a favourite SF author of mine since then.
@kingspeget
RE: ". . . the velociraptor with a day job"
I have read everything written by Arthur C Clarke and I don't remember him ever writing about a velociraptor.
@@spaceman081447It was a small scene in 3001, where it's mentioned that a lot of the menial labor jobs are done by replicas of dinosaurs or something.
@@kyzer422
You're absolutely right. I remember now. The velociraptor had been designed to work as a gardener. One of the characters said that they had tried bioengineered primates (chimps and gorillas I think) but they got bored too easily.
I just gotta say, I’ve only ever watched the movie at home until last year when a local independent theater got their hands on one of the newer 70mm prints and it was such an amazing experience to see it so large, loud, and up close.
If you get a chance to see it on a big screen, take it.
Yeah, it's amazing on 70mm. You can even see all the national insignia on the space weapons after the bone weapon is thrown into the air.
Definitely. It's a different experience.
How do you carry a movie screen? 🤔😉
Even with just the recap, it never stops feeling like a fever dream
Try being an Empath, ALL dreams feel real. God is a Fifth Dimentional, or Higher Being, so that Time and Knowledge are ALL accessible to HIM. No, I'm not a Lunatic, Just Another Fu*king Observer (JAFO).
The only film without any dialog for the first 25 minutes.
It starts slow with Strauss and end with an epic LSD trip with Ligeti.
So it's book-ended.
Yup.
Well, there are films without any dialog at all, such as Koyaanisqatsi.
@@electronics-girl true, they are great films (the whole trilogy), but more art projects, not a feature film.
@@Rob2000 I think there are other films without dialog in the first 25 minutes, though. It's been a long time since I watched Wall-E, but I don't think there's any dialog in the first half of the film.
Being a huge Space Odyssey fan, you just multiplied my admiration for you by factor 2001.
There are not just the four 2001 novels, there's also the short story 'The Sentinel' which first introduces the monolith. It's the last story in Clarke's collection 'Of Time And Stars', which I was fortunate enough to be bought for my eighth birthday in 1972 (and which I still have on my bookshelf; it's an excellent introduction to the breadth of sci-fi).
In the US it was originally in the Expedition to Earth short story collection
@@aldebaran4154 It’s been included in multiple collections of Carke’s work. It’s probably his most reprinted story.
I never really “got” 2001 until I read “The Sentinel” (I was 12 when it came out.)
@@donsample1002 Yeah, I think there's at least five of Clarke's short story collections I have it in. I just wanted to mention the original one. I know parts of Transit of Earth was also used. I saw 2001 for the first time in the early 1980s when I was a teenager so I was at a better age to grasp its impact. The one thing I've always not understood is why so many viewers didn't understand why HAL did what he did when it's right in the movie. :) Edit: Oops, not Transit of Earth but Encounter n the Dawn. I always confuse those two titles!
There’s also “Encounter at Dawn,” which i think fed into the Dawn sequence.
The Sentinel is what they based the premise of the series on, when Kubrick reached out to Clark about making 2001 together :)
My parents took me to see this in the theater when I was three years old, and while I have no memory of it, they told me that I stood on the theater seat and just stared at the screen for the entire duration of the movie.
Also, I'd love to see you do this for 2010, a very underrated movie in my opinion. :)
OMG! My parents also took me to see it when I was 3 (1973)! I actually remember the monkey men and Frank Poole's EVA from that experience and nothing else!
In the book the Discovery mission is to Saturn, not Jupiter. The monolith that Bowman finds is on the satellite Iapetus.
Oh, that explains it... I was wondering how something could be "on" Jupiter. ^^
Douglas Trumbull couldn't figure out how to deliver a convincing Saturn on the schedule that Kubrick needed it for, so the script was rewritten to shorten Discovery-1's final destination to Jupiter instead. Trumbull never stopped thinking about the problem even after the film wrapped, and then a few years later made the film Silent Running when he'd finally cracked it.
I'm also convinced that since Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is a bit of a love letter to 2001, this is why the wormhole in that film was placed near Saturn.
And supposedly the rings of Saturn were formed right around 3 or 4 million years ago. Perhaps a backup plan in case the lunar monolith did not survive. Hey, look at me.
@@radwolf76 Fun fact (that you may already be aware of): during that BBC-12 interview, the announcer says "mission to Jupiter", but if you look closely, his lips are voicing "Saturn". They overdubbed the original film recording once this change was made.
Then the book 2010 retconned it to Jupiter!
Another book to add to your collection is "The Lost Worlds of 2001" by Clarke. It chronicles the writing of the novel( At one point,HAL was called Athena) and includes other alternative openings and endings.
As a huge 2001 fan myself, I once replaced many of the Windows audio files with HAL's voice on a computer I used to have with stuff like, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" and "We have problem". When I shut the computer down, it was HAL singing "Daisy".
An interesting fact about the soundtrack: The original plan was to use a score written for it. There were some delays and setbacks with the composer they chose, and when the studio started hounding Kubrick to show them something, he used a the classical pieces as placeholders for the screening. It worked so well, that they stuck with it.
One thing I really liked in the novel is how Moonwatcher's thoughts at the end of the first section are mirrored by the starchild at the end of the book.
This was the first film I ever rented on VHS back in the early eighties when you couldn’t watch nearly anything you wanted whenever you like. I knew almost nothing about the film, only that it was classic science fiction… I think a good sized chunk of the back of my skull is still flying further out into space, my mind having been that completely blown.
I was born in ‘69 and have been a space nerd all my life. Yes please do the sequels! Then do RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA! Or INTERSTELLAR, yes, also good.
Great video!
2010 recap, yes please. The little girl in the vid-phone call was Stanley Kubricks daughter, he basically made a home movie with her and stuck it in the film. Also the sandwiches eaten in the "moon buggy" have no crust, which I always thought was weird. ☺️
It has probably been about 30 years since I watched the movie and read the books. My dad recommended them to me, which was kind of surprising because he never liked sci-fi. But apparently he did like the movie, and read the books along with me. I enjoyed this video, at least in part, because you're as enthusiastic about it as I remember being when I first saw and read it.
One thing I remember from the book was that when Dave was in the white hotel room at the end, he noticed that the newspapers and cereal boxes and such were blurry and unreadable. As though made with photographs taken from a really long distance. That bit really hit me, that "they" have been watching for a long time, and still were watching.
Yes this is what I need today lmao
I rewatched this movie a few years ago while writing a piece on the history of the relationship between psychedelics and sci fi. And while this wasn't a story inspired directly by drug use, it's no coincidence that upon rerelease the film came with a new tagline, "The Ultimate Trip"
Do you have ant thoughts about the film They Live in reference to the sunglasses being a metaphor for LSD?
I've yet to find anyone who will entertain this assertion.
This is one of my favourite videos easily, your passion is so infectious and pleasure to watch.
This was fantastic. I would love to see a similar synopsis for both 2010 and 2061. (3001 was just plain silly and such a bad way to wrap up such an epic. No need to remind us of that mistake.)
I'd also love to see you do this for a few select entries from Asimov's robot short stories, followed by his detective stories with Elijah Bailey, R. Daneel, R. Giskard, and the gang, running through the development of Hari Seldon's psychohistory, and through the entirety of the Foundation series.
Nothing is more appropriate than a Hello Kitty chop stick. (INMHO)
I'm so strongly inclined to agree, I actually feel compelled to reply saying so 😂
@@musicalexistence1me three!
Dammit, stop stealing my thoughts!!!!
Where is that tinfoil? I need a hat.
I was at university when this came out and saw it with friends. I remember many conversations afterwards discussing what it was all about, but mostly whether the spacy trippy sequence was good movie making or poor special effects. One thing that it did was popularise Also Spake Zarathustra and we all became fans of Richard Strauss.
Decided to stop halfway through and actually watch the movie for the first time. I'll finish your video afterwards. Thanks for getting me engaged enough that I decided I needed to see the crazy parts for myself. Synopses really have become the most effective form of recommendation for me. 💜💜💜
Loved this video. I think a recap of 2010 would be a good follow up. My favorite part of the 2nd film is Hal being redeemed.
My favourite experience of watching 2001 was at a 24 hour SF film festival. It was set to play really late so by the time you got to the the trippy psychedelic bit you had been awake for at least 20 hours, were super tired and staying awake mostly due to giant doses of caffeine. It was one of the most magnificent moments I have had in a theatre
My first time viewing the 2001 movie was as a 9yr old child at a double feature with 2010. I was captivated by the imagery and it spurred a life long love of NASA. Having read the books later, I gained a newfound love of the material. Thanks to your video, I'm reminded that another rewatch is in order. I would love a recap of 2010 as well, if you find the time and are so inclined.
Brilliant, Emma! Please do more.
Emma Thorne and 2001:A Space Odyssey. Is this what heaven feels like?
I think it's Dave who does the first EVA, because he's wearing the red suit. Then it's Frank's turn for the second EVA.
Also, I remember both the book and the movie's title cards as saying that the Dawn of Man is 3 million years ago.
Also, also, I think the force-field around the monolith is from the short story "The Sentinel", which _2001_ is based on. As I remember, in the novel _2001,_ TMA sends its signal when it's exposed to the Sun for the first time in millions of years, and I think that's implicit in the movie, as it's illuminated by floodlights when Floyd gets to the site, and the Sun rises while they're taking the photos.
Yes to all!
" as saying that the Dawn of Man is 3 million years ago."'
i wonder when the First Cup of Coffee of Man was?
@@vforwombat9915 Just to take this too seriously, sometime after South America was colonised, so ~15,000 years ago? Long time to wait for coffee.
@@akizeta well, to be fair, they didn't have Folger's back then.
@@vforwombat9915 Me too! We cannot subvert the Coffee! Export/Import to the Enquiring Minds among us on this Rock. Happy Coffee County Month, by the way. ☕💙
Your enthusiasm is super infectious and actually makes me quite emotional 😂
Love a genuine nerd ❤
(Also ~ "Good job" to the monkeys! Those berries can be a little unstable. Not the best of foundations to build a diet on)
I attempted to watch the movie a few years back but fell asleep during the monkey men scenes at the start, and no one has been able to convince me to try watching it again until I watched your video today!! Now that I know what I missed, I will go back and pay full attention 😁 You're so passionate about it I loved watching your video and would love a video about the book sequels!!
Wow. This was a flashback.
I'm an old timer. When I was a young man, I lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. I couldn't afford cable TV, the Internet wasn't a thing, and I made minimum wage hauling furniture around, so I had no money.
My main means of entertainment was a local used book store, where I could purchase used sci-fi paperbacks for 30 cents. I bought and read every bit of Asimov that they had. When I ran out, the old lady running the place recommended Arthur C. Clark.
I bought well-used copies of the Space Odyssey series, and spent my nights and weekends in my tiny bedroom reading them.
I spent hours reading, rereading and analyzing them. I'd sit in the delivery truck between customers thinking about the meaning of these books. They really opened up my imagination, and brought me a lot of joy.
I really enjoyed Emma's recap and analysis, and I would love to see more of this kind of content.
Thanks, Emma!
Great review!
I thought the moon monolith was programmed to send its signal when unearthed, or un-mooned, and the sun hits it for the first time in 4 million years, wonder where I got that from? Maybe that's from some deleted scene someone mentioned, or from the sequel, it's been so long since I read it. (I read the book first in the early 60's, then saw the film in the late 60's, and read the first sequel in the 80's.)
btw the name HAL comes from the 3 letters after I, B and M.
Yup in the film the burst from the monolith happens when the sunlight strikes it over the pit walls surrounding it. It's coincidental that Floyd et al happen to be there.
Clarke insisted to his dying day that the HAL-IBM thing was just a coincidence.
This is the first time I’ve ever understood this movie. Thank you
Emma's enthusiasm is just awesome. I remember watching another video about the story, using both the book and film to more clearly describe the plot, and there are some details that Emma includes that I do not recall being included in the other video that adds to the story. Thank you for doing this and being such a joy to watch and listen to.
I'll always remember the chills of seeing that monolith and prehistoric humans using tools for the first time with such violence against the other tribe. Fantastic film, fantastic recap, thanks Emma!
I love your passion for my all time favourite film
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.{HAL)
It's such a beautiful film. You've made me feel like I have missed out by not having read the book(s). Your enthusiasm for the film is refreshing and charming.
This was an amazing recap, please do more! The sequels would be great.
"I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."
One of my favorite movie lines ever!
My mum took me to see this a looooong time ago when I was quite young and I recall enjoying the film until the last 20 minutes or so and losing all idea of just what the heck was happening. Many years later (10 or 20?) I read the book and realised what it had all been about!
I was born in 1963, and grew up with this movie. I watched it countless times in my life, and never really got the ending. It was still so interesting to watch, though. Then about 10 years ago, I came across the book in a used bookstore and picked it up. FINALLY I understood the end of the story. I don't know why Kubrick left it so enigmatic and puzzling. I mean, even the book is somewhat enigmatic, it's not an easy ending either. But it sits more comfortably in my brain now. You did a good job in the video! Even though I know the story, you made it really entertaining and fun. I wonder how many times in my life I've said "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
I love your passion for this movie Emma! I've always loved it as well and keep finding new things to enjoy every time I watch it again. I would love to read your essay on the film, I don't think a video about it would be at all boring.
Thanks Emma that was a blast! Yeah it was one those films that reinvented soundscapes for big screen films, a complete epic!
Loved this! More film analysis please! I'd enjoy some of your film studies observations too, it can add extra appreciation of why a film really grabs you (or doesn't). Don't worry about it being dry, your personality and enthusiasm would liven it up :)
A bit of triv about HAL singing Daisy Daisy as 'he' regresses - ''The song is said to have been inspired by Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, one of the many mistresses of King Edward VII. It is the earliest song sung using computer speech synthesis by the IBM 704 in 1961, a feat that was referenced in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).''
And IBM is what you get when you move each letter higher up in the alphabet from HAL
I love how passionate Emma is about this movie
I love 2001 and its LSD-free counterpart, Interstellar. 😅
Hey, wasn't Yuri Gagarin the first man in orbit? *Googles furiously
Spacewalk
I'm sure she meant lunar orbit.
Apollo 8 was the first manned Apollo mission, is what Emma meant.
@@akizeta Then why She mentioned Alexei Leonov?
@@neil2796 that makes sense, my bad 😅
The color-coded spacesuits are a great idea. I am honestly surprised it never caught on, as you can immediately identify a person even if there is a radio failure.
At last a review of a decent film without the usual idiots. Luckily I re-watched this film and 2010 recently. I must reread 3001, but am currently rereading Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Are you planning to recap "2010: the year we make contact" also?
Thanks for this ! I think you gave me the courage to see it fully or the first time, because I never pass the first 20min of nearly nothing happening
This used to be my favorite movie, but then Hot Fuzz happened.
My favorite part from 3001 is when Frank has some sexy times with a lady but then she gets freaked out because he's circumcised. Seems ritualistic genital mutilation will no longer be in vogue.
Some people have naturally short foreskins it would be a shame for others to make assumptions!@@pseudotasuki
@@pseudotasuki It's only really in vogue in the Middle East and the US.
I love the story of how Kubrick wanted Arthur Clarke (one of my very favorite sci-fi authors and a veritable Nostradamus of science) to help him make the proverbial 'Good Science Fiction Movie'. And he did!
I also like the story that Kubrick was constantly lying to Clarke about the script.
Please do 2010! I really loved this video.
I saw 2001 when I was a kid, when it first came out, in the original Panavision. I was 11 and it blew my little mind. I'm so glad young people like you adore this movie as much as I do. I've seen it many times, read all the books a number of times. You mention that the first time Frank goes out to get the AE-35 unit and HAL moves the pod to focus the lights on Frank's work. Foreshadowing! Dave, in his panic to get Frank's body, makes a huge error and forgets his helmet, which means he has to blow himself into he airlock.
So amazing to see that people from a younger generation are still appreciating that master piece. There are only two kind of people those who love that movie and those who think it's a bor. I am a huge fan even when I saw it on VHS back in the 80s as a 13 year's old it was way over my head but it made a huge impression. I read the book visited the exhibition you name it. And back in the days I had my default windows error Message "sorry Dave I can't do that"...
Other tech companies used 2001 to prove the pre-existance of the form of those devices.
This was to disprove Apple's claim of having an original design and, therefore, exclusive rights to manufacture tablets.
I literally just watched this movie last night, what a nice coincidence this just got recommended to me. After watching it, I thought the movie was silly, especially the start, interesting with the middle part, and fun again at the end with the stream of incomprehensible insanity happening to Dave.
I wish the movie gave the book's reason for HAL's actions, rather than him just being an evil robot. The idea of him going mental from the conflicting goals of helping his crewmates and keeping important secrets from them is super interesting.
Another thing that was cool from the book is the sense of loss both when discovering the monolith, and Dave's experiences zipping through abandoned alien car parks further confirming we missed our shot to meet the extraterrestrials.
Finally, the monoliths being alien breadcrumbs requiring a moon landing, nukes, frequency scanners, and long range space travel to follow (very cool, the monoliths being how-advanced-is-your-civilization tests) leading the advanced sapient creatures they created through space to the third monolith which further transforms the creatures into transcendent beings beyond matter itself makes the ending less insane and far more understandable. It also makes the alien's actions understandable, they want to give the gifts they eventually discovered to their creations.
So much of the movie fits into the book, it almost seems made to be watched by people who have read the book, to gain all this contextualization.
No, the movie is its own thing and the book's interpretation should not be read onto the movie. The movie has a mystery to it that makes it better, which is why it regularly makes the lists of the greatest films of all time. The book certainly does not make the lists of the greatest books of all time.
This was one of the best rambling high-energy recaps I've ever heard. I feel much happier than I did 50 mins ago, and I'm that much closer to the weekend. Thank you!
The main problem I have with the film is largely the same problem I have with most of Kubrick's work: it's way too invested in the concept of "being a Great Film (TM)" that it looses sight of being a good film in the process. On a technical level it's a masterpiece, and if you do your homework and have a film or media degree then you can easily squint at it hard enough to get a lot from the film. And that's fine, but 2001 receives an amount of leeway from being "the first" in many aspects, while simultaneously being quite facile it its execution of those things. It's a landmark film, certainly. And there are so many wonderful moments if you take them out of the wider film. But ultimately for me the film has always been a bunch of really pretty, interesting scenes and concepts put together in a way that removes the magic from the whole affair.
I think 2001 is a great film, but it is not a good movie, for the reasons you suggested. Kubrick did love to flaunt his auteur abilities regardless of whether it helped or hindered the storytelling. I know I'll likely get heat for this, but for this reason, I've found the Interstellar did what 2001 could not, and that's being able to bring in a human element that was missing from Kubrick.
Thank you for covering one of my favorite hard(ish) sci-fi stories ever
I was lucky enough to see a presentation of this film at university of Kentucky with the UK Philharmonic playing the score live throughout the film. It was quite breathtaking.
This film is obviously epic. You do a fantastic job reviewing the film and the book in a really simple way. Love it.
Love that this 55+ year-old movie is your favorite, Emma, and that it's still impacting younger audiences. It's tied with another Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove, as my favorite. You capture the imagery, edits, dialogue, and scenes that make this movie so great.
Barbie pink space stewardess cosplay? Humming Thus Spake Zarathustra? Yeah don't worry about it. You'll fit right in the movie theaters right now. No problem.
You did a fabulous job and I loved your enthusiasm in covering something you really like
This was super fun and enjoyable. I think the best part was your presentation very enthusiastic and animated. Honestly I enjoyed listening to your voice. Thanks
2010 yes yes yes please! Your recap absolutely brought me back to the late nineties, when I made the effort to both read all the books, and watch all the films. The world building by Clarke (and of course Kubrick) made a lasting impression on me and your recap of both the book and the film was thoroughly entertaining. Your style and wit are great. Thank you!
Seen 2001 several times, but never read the book. What little dialogue and story there is, it's so spread out among all the silence and awe-inspiring scenery that it's really hard to follow. Your recap was adorable and the movie makes a LOT more sense now than it did without context. Thanks!
Funny. Great. Takes the edge off of such an intimidating piece of film history without minimizing it. Just wonderful.
This is fantastic. More, please and thanks, Ms. Thorne. I can hardly wait for the next!
I just love the personality and enthusiasm you bring to your presentations ... you go girl !!
Yes, do more, please. You're absolutely lovely and seeing your passion about a favourite of mine was so fun! BTW, Tycho is the crater near the south of the moon's face with the star-like flares of dust radiating from it i don't think it's the largest, though.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" was a strange movie. I watched it a long time ago and it left me with that "what the freak .." kind of impression.
This was really fun, recaps of the others would be great.
Keir Dullea really enjoyed working with Kubrick. And the sets were absolutely amazing.❤ The retroreflector screens in first scenes. Including a coaxial beam splitter camera and projector which hid shadows by geometry. The giant rotating drum for space station artificial gravity. To the use of peanut butter to keep the food stuck to the trays when things went upside down. Individual rotascreen masks for stars. Actually the ape suits and actors were absolutely cutting edge and amazing and super challenging to wear due to heat. And Ligeti’s scores are superb.❤❤❤❤🎉🎉 The only reason the ape suits didn’t win awards were…the judges thought they were actually real. The little girl who want the bushbaby is: Kubrick’s daughter Vivian Kubrick. Originally the space portal was supposed to be at Saturn, and ended up being Jupiter. The scenes with space walks were filmed from below the actors who were suspended from wires hidden by perspective. Original score was supposed to be synthesizer music, but Kubrick decided on discussion with staff to use Strauss and Ligeti. And BTW we are decades away from a HAL, who is way beyond the current popularized “AI”. We have multi agent (deep, sparce forest, etc. neural networks) great for modeling hidden processes and complex systems, but they are purpose driven. Things are moving forward (I worked in AI for protein folding) in true artificial intelligence but HAL is way beyond what the general public thinks of and the media AI. This is still in my top 5 favorite films. The young girls of Rochefort is another….❤
This was awesome! I really enjoyed how you layered the sequence of events in the book alongside the film. Thank you.
I saw this film at the beginning of 1969 four months shy of my 12th birthday. I was fortunate to see it in one of the old massive, huge screen theatres which still existed in the 1960s. When I saw it there were very few people in the cinema. I chose a seat which was dead centre in the stalls about four rows back from the front because that was where the limit of my peripheral vision was perfectly aligned with the width of the screen.
This film completely blew me away.
Bear in mind that I was only 11 years old and this was at the time that the Apollo Space Program was receiving its maximum media and public interest. Apollo 8 had circled the Moon at Christmas with the famous reading from Genesis. Apollo 9 and 10 were still in the immediate future and, of course, Apollo 11 was still about 6 months in the future as well. Heady times.
I don't think that I have ever fully recovered from that first viewing and 2001 remains as my favourite film of all time.
The combination of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke is one of the ultimate dream tickets for producing a significant cinematic experience. Considering that they were both very strong personalities and were still able to compromise is amazing.
Fantastic film. Many times imitated. Never equaled. Of course my opinion is highly prejudiced. Sorry. Can't help it and why the f should I?
Great job Emma. Loved seeing you doing this in such a fun way. Yes please do another one on 2010. Very underrated film.
I never realized how beautiful this movie was until this recap. I tried reading the book but just couldn't see it through. thank you so much
Something Amazing which appears to have gone unnoticed is the way Enma cut out the Moon and Jupiter so perfectly, i doubt Kubrick had that attention to detail 😊
An idea that crossed my mind when I watched the movie the second time: when the monolith on the moon gives off its piercing signal into space, Dr Floyd and his colleagues do something irrational, but something that any of us would do: they try to cover their ears with their hands. They can't, of course: they're wearing space helmets.
Perhaps I'm reading something into it that isn't there, but perhaps this is meant to suggest that, compared to the entities that made the monolith, we humans are still well and truly apes. The action is a concession to animal instinct, but comes from the most advanced scientific minds in the world.
Great video!
I still remember my parents taking us to see this film as a double feature with Silent Running at the drive in about 1972. My dad the huge scifi fan, my mum, not so much.
While my younger siblings sawed logs in the folded down back of our station wagon, 10 year old me watched both films right through. I didn't understand 2001, but the music and images stuck with me.
Became a big Kubrick fan. I have not had the opportunity to see it again like you suggest on the big screen, but watch it regularly on DVD.
The community in live in has a (tiny) connection to the film. In our town hospital died Douglas Rain aged 90, in 2018. He was living in nearby Stratford, Ontario.
Unfortunately, we have no grave to visit, as his ashes were kept by the family.
HAL being able to identify a drawing of a human face is pretty astonishing because that's a human instinct that has evolved over millions of years. Our brains are hardwired to see faces, and we see them everywhere, we even see the markings on the moon as a human face.
Thank you! My dad took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey 50 years ago when I was 11. I didn’t understand it and always thought I didn’t like it. You have helped me understand and appreciate the movie.
Your enthusiasm and love for this story are so clear and so lovely to see. Really enjoyed the rundown with book insights that I'd never have known otherwise. While I like your usual content as well, I for one would love to see more videos like this on stories (film or book) that you love or were impactful.
Cheers!
The painfully few young people of Emma’s ilk are the ones who are keeping my slim hope for the future of humanity alive.
I don't know how true this is, but one of my composition teachers told us about meeting Ligeti. When asked how to pronounce his last name, he said, "Ligeti, like hot diggity".
I've never read the book, so I loved hearing the book perspective! I haven't watched this movie in forever, and now I kinda want to again.
I've enjoyed your content sir some time. This is now one of my favorites. I'm an old guy who absolutely loves 2001. I've been disappointed that too many people to whom I've introduced it find it too slow and abstract. It warms my heart to see such a smart young person as yourself so excited about this movie!
Thoroughly loved this. Please do more like it.
One of the small tidbits of this movie/book I like is HAL is a simple alphabet shift of IBM, a huge name at the time in computers.
Just watched this again! Love your energy and reviews! Please, more movie reviews! More movie reviews on the regular!
It's been decades since I read/watched these, and I feel the need to read them again.
A friend told me about watching the film at the drive-in, and how he had to go back the next night to watch it again without the drug trip.
Thanks for this: I’m an older chap and saw this film during the initial run. It did a number on my 11-year old brain.
I’ve seen it many times since and read the book as well: Your summary is both spot-on and great fun.
I would add that this film set the standard for “hard” Sci-Fi. Much less silly and more realistic than other films of the time. As you say: The space travel shots hold up remarkably well.
And? Oh-my-goodness-yes please give us more.
Hey Emma!
This is the only movie in my 50 years of life that I seen for the first time twice.
First time when I was 14 in the summer of 1987. My cousin and I watched it and it went right over our heads.
Eleven years later, I had just graduated from college and it was the 30th Anniversary of the release of 2001.
They were showing it at a local theater that showed a lot of classic movies and my girlfriend at the time wanted to see it.
I reluctantly went. Two and a half hours later I said to myself, "That might be the best movie I have ever seen."
Why the change?
I UNDERSTOOD IT!
Which leads to the question. Where the heck were you in 1987 to explain it to me?
Ha ha ha! Great job kid!
Yes yes yes! I'd love to see all of the books done, I love your recap style and these books are so deserving of it
I enjoyed your review of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The energy of your presentation is infectious. I'm going to watch the movie again tonight. :)
This was tremendous!! Beautiful work, Emma. More of this, classic sci-fi, especially 😊