Film Synopsis:
The film 2001: A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke is about a black monolith that has been affecting the lives of humans.
In the film, the effects of the monolith are separated into two eras. These eras were four million years ago at the beginning of man, when the ape men began to show behaviours that were not known before then.
The second era of the monolith was in the year 2001 when there are five astronauts onboard a spaceship called Discovery One set for Jupiter. Three of the five astronauts onboard are in hibernation toward to beginning of the mission in order to conserve energy over the entire course of the mission. This therefore leaves mission commander Dr. Dave Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole as the two keeping an eye on the spaceship. Although there are only these five astronauts on board, there is also one man-made computer on board named HAL. This man-made computer is responsible for controlling all the craft’s functions, including the one’s keeping the three hibernating astronauts alive. Throughout the course of this mission, the two non-hibernating astronauts begin having doubts on the reliability on HAL. This is because HAL has been acting strange due to the knowledge of characterized data about occasions that happened at Clavius, a lunar station, eighteen months earlier. However, this issue soon escalates into a fight between man and machine that would affect the human race as an entirety.
My take on the film:
Overall, I believe this was an extremely ambitious and incredible film for its time and that the director Stanley Kubrick made an absolute amazing effort in sticking to the feeling of realism which is presented to us throughout the film. The amount of effort involved in producing this film would have been quite extraordinary and is proven by the interview, How we made 2001: A Space Odyssey by Phil Hoad. This and the amount of educated predictions that had to be made just so this film would make sense is just truly mind boggling incredibly amazing. These achievements are further echoed as this film has constantly been bought up as being the most influential film ever made. In conclusion, I believe that this film has single-handedly changed the genre of sci-fi movies for the greater good and has set the standards for new and upcoming films even higher so that we viewers can enjoy a new type of joy from watching films.
What makes this film so realistic:
Know that we understand the importance that this film had on the film industry, in particular the sci-fi genre, we can finally move on to the amount of realism involved in this film. When Kubrick first set out to make 2001 back in 1968, he was determined to make this film infused into science. Therefore, almost everything in the film is so incredibly realistic. Examples of this is how the ships skim quietly through the vacuum of room, and even explosions produce no audible volume, since no such thing is conceivable where there is no air. Another example of this is how Kubrick’s shots on Discovery and on the Space Station where purposely filmed in a way that would simulate the rotational necessary to create artificial gravity.
Why is this so incredible:
Now that we have established the fact that this film is so realistic, you might be left wondering why this is so incredible. This is such an amazing feat achieved within the filming industry because much of the concepts explored throughout the film where never known to man ever before. This is mainly because 2001 was shot during the time when the space race had only just started and that no humans had ever been to space ever before. Due to this, much of the concepts within the film had to be meticulously predicted.
References:
-2001: A Space Odyssey (film) — Wikipedia. 2018. 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) — Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film). [Accessed 18 July 2018].
-IMDb. 2018. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — Plot Summary — IMDb. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/plotsummary. [Accessed 19 July 2018].
-Don Kaye. 2018. 10 reasons why 2001: A Space Odyssey is still the greatest sci-fi movie of all time — Syfy Wire. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/10-reasons-2001-a-space-odyssey-still-greatest-sci-fi-movie-of-all-time. [Accessed 19 July 2018].
-The Guardian. 2018. How we made 2001: A Space Odyssey | Film | The Guardian. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/12/how-we-made-2001-a-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick-hal. [Accessed 19 July 2018].