h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't believe that at any point I implied that the Andromeda Strain WAS a Kubrick film.I merely used it as an example of what I considered a good intellegent SF film.It didn't go over anyone's head and miss the point like 2001.2010 was a better film but it wasn't a Kubrick film either but it was made so as to explain the first film.

Incog.

I wouldn't say that 2010 was the better film - it was definitely more 'viewer friendly' and a lot of Kubrick fans hate it. I'm a huge Kubrick fan, and I kinda liked it

Since when is reaching the moon a 'stage of evolution'? And how is the advancement of reaching Jupiter after reaching the moon anywhere near the scale of the jump between the first two? And what were the monoliths actually supposed to be? I only knew what they were called because I saw them in something else (SimEarth the game). The implication was that, through some mystical power, this lump of rectangular volcanic rock _caused_ the human discovery of tools. By the way, tools of that order are currently used by a number of different species, including apes, otters and a type of eagle. No such implication was made about the other two.
I am willing to learn what the film was actually about, but it does seem to have failed if it it requires all this information from elsewhere simply to understand the plot.
By the way, the docking of the shuttle was nothing like ballet. If it were more than just an object moving in a straight line, I might feel differently, but it was far too simple and slow (!) to hold any of the beauty or entertainment of dance.
I did notice that the film got some things bery right about the future, both for the year 2001 and for the more abstract eventual future, and some things wrong. For this, I am willing to credit the value of the film as a historical document on perceptions of the future.

The monoliths were markers put there by an unknown alien race and sent radio signals back to them once Man had come to a pivotal moment in its evolution. The 'jump' between the apeman throwing the bone in the air and then cutting to the shuttle was symbolic of Man discovering his first tool, and then to another important tool - spacecraft. The third stage of evolution did not happen until Bowman entered the Stargate.

The film only concentrated on Man for what I thought would be obvious reasons

So were the momoliths supposed to have _caused_ the changes, or just reported them?
My point was that the discovery of tools is not such a great, defining difference, because there are many who have discovered them and are still most definitely behind us in intelligence and 'progress'. By the way, please don't get onto the debate about what 'progress' means. If you really want to discuss it, set up another thread for it.

so right. how is a casual viewer sposed ot know what the monolith is? or what happens at the end? clearly the narrative is shoddy.

and just cos kubrik made up the techniques and was borrowed doesnt make him actually any good. influence does not equate to quality.

And, for that matter, was it Kubrick who developed the techniques, or a SFX specialist?

As the film progresses, when the scientists are on the moon and the marker emits the radio signal it makes them start to understand what the monoliths are.

Kubrick and a team of many FX experts, among them Wally Veevers worked on the effects, although Kubrick took all the credit and got the Oscar for Best Special Effects - boo!

2001 is rubiish. QED.

How come I always seem to disagree about stuff with you?

Uncle Heavy is wrong QED

clearly because you are the antiUH

i dunno

MuauahahaHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Regarding 2010:

It's years since I first saw it (as part of Channel 4's "Movie Nightmares" season back in 1993 - 2001 was the first film in the series and it was the first time I saw that too! ). I remember that it had very pretty special effects and some good scenes (the bit where the astronaut (played, I think, by John Lithgow) steps out to do the spacewalk and freaks when he looks at space beneath him being one) but it tried too hard to be viewer-friendly whilst "matching" the spirtual weirdness of the original film. And they shouldn't have explained about HAL.

The USA-USSR standoff sub-plot dates the whole thing badly as well.

And the whole two suns thing? I don't think so!

Yeah, the two suns thing sounds a bit dodgy (I'd forgotten about that)

Wouldn't two suns really screw up Earth's ecology?

Hmm, Jupiter turns into a second sun, right? But a much smaller one... so I don't think it should be much of a problem...

(never seen the film, but I have read... 3010, is it? The last one...)

The "reaching the moon = stage of evolution" thingy is more about the state of mankinds evolution to have designed the tools to have taken him to the moon.

It is in this respect a very idealist film, it is strecthing a point more than a little to confuse technological advancement with actual evolution but still. Also consider the time that the book and film were made/written respectively, the idea of reaching the moon had special significance (that thing in the sky that you see almost everynight, weather permitting - someone STOOD on it once - amazing!)

The structure of the film however is the biggest giveaway - it's set in essentialy four parts. Consider this:

Part one, the apes are destined to starve and die of thrist unless they can gain control of the waterhole. The monolith 'encourages' them to develop the most basic skills with tools (hit it, hit it!) and thus they vanguish not only the threat from the other tribe but solve the problem of the food shortage by butchering the pigs. After this point nothing significant in the entirety of human history happens whastover so we cut straight to 2001. Boom.

Part two: Heywood travels to the moon to deal with the politcal fallout from the discovery at Tycho crater. Yeah the monolith was left behind to be discovered by the ape's it had nurtured before and when they reach a state of technical advancement such that they can walk on an airless space satalight, and discover it buried benetah the moons surface - due to the magnetic distortions as I recall. The sun rises and the light triggers an ear-splitting emission from the monolight - a signal directed at Jupiter (Saturn in book 1, the books follow the film in the subsequent novels thereafter and make it Jupiter.) So yet again man is called to take another voyage further from home than they've ever dared to go.

*eat mushrooms*

Part 3. Man is alone in space journeying toward an unknown destiny with his technology, the pinicle of which is in the ships central computer the so-called sixth crew member such is the advanced deree of it's specification.... Who unfortunately get's the zx spectrum equivilant of cabin fever and goes off at the deep end. Man represented by Bowman, is alone and is forced to abadon his tools, his technology, represented by HAL and take the next 'evolutionary' step. In fact it is only when Hal dies and Bowman is finally alone that the true reason for the mission is revealed and he goes of in search of the final monolith.

Que whizzy colourful woooo. (*the 'shrooms ought to be kickin' in right about now. ) and we arrive at

Part 4. Bowman (vis Mankind) is now sacrficed to the race of the monoliths who take him through his life then standing over his death bed like fate itself counting off the seconds they release mankind it's final evolutionary burden - his body.
Thus we see the eyes of the 'star-child' or whatever you wanna call it gazing down upon the earth with something like benevolance.

It's all about Mankind & Technology. Just like I said.



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fords_prefect:

"2001 is meant to be about evolution; based on the Sentinel by Arthur C Clarke. Kubrick and Clarke first wrote 2001 in novel form; making it easier to adapt to screen (Clarke took credit for the book, Kubrick for the screenplay). Now, the film shows the 3 stages of Man, symbolised by, funnily enough, the monolith markers. The actors, I would like to stress, are deliberately 'wooden' as they are only furniture to the plot, HAL included. These monoliths were put in the spots they were as markers by an intelligent species (unknown, hence the mission to Jupiter) - the first one when the apemen figured out tools, the second when Man reached the moon and the third..well you get the picture!"

If that is what 2001 is really supposed to be about then it is less interesting and intelligent than I had previously thought. What an arbitrary and meaningless division into three stages of man (except for the first, which is significant).

Sci-fi (and it probably applies to fantasy too), at its best (IMO), doesn't define man by his technological advancement but uses technological advancement as a tool to free itself from the limitations that reality put on storytelling. Asimov does this well, as does Frank Herbert in the earlier books in the Dune series. (Asimov and Herbert are my favourite SF authors.) I haven't read that much Clarke, but I've always thought he was more interested in the machines than the people.

I've only read one Clarke book (Imperial Earth). His science is very good, but his characters are two-dimensional and his grip of politics and social realism is pretty laughable.