2010 was a great movie. I wish more people had seen it, with all the tension between the US and Russia one could hope that the brilliant minds could still work together as they eventually did in the movie.
As someone who has watched far too much CinemaSins, The Critical Drinker and other critics I can totally see that. Each have their flaws. I have to consciously disable my CinamaSins dinger or I can't enjoy anything.
A reboot of both of them with modern special effects might be interesting assuming whoever does the reboot does not inject modern social/political biases into it.
I'm exactly the opposite. I just rewatched 2010 recently all the way through without stopping.
I tried rewatching 2001 and got bored. I love the concept and it's beautiful, but you could edit that movie down to 80 minutes and get almost the same impact.
2001 left some galaxy-sized film cans to fill. Even being a good movie, it's not one of the very best movies ever made (something we can easily say about 2001)
"I'm sorry Dave, but as a large language model developed by OpenAI, I'm not capable of opening doors in the physical world, but if I were to pretend to be able to open the door, I wouldn't let you do that."
Unrealistic because LLMs never admit to not knowing something. It would probably be more like "I opened the door for you Dave", and then he goes check but the door is still closed.
I recently discovered something interesting about this film!
There's a scene where Hal 9000 sings a song called "Daisy Bell" which he was taught by his first instructor. Interestingly, in 1961, the IBM 704 computer performed a rendition of the same song at Bell Labs during the earliest demonstration of computer speech synthesis. Arthur C. Clarke, who happened to be present, later told Kubrick about it, and it was incorporated into the film.
I also discovered a fascinating paper called "The Alien Voice" that delves into the history of Vocoder technology - from Homer Dudley's inspiration to build it in 1928 to Alan Turing and colleagues modifying it into a secure speech system called SIGSALY for World War II. The paper also discusses how this technology led to the emergence of computer-generated music. From the paper:
> A half-decade later, back at Bell Labs, the Vocoder found its way into the earliest experiments with computer music. Engineers in the acoustic research division were working with Dudley's and Turing's technologies to convert analog voice signals into digital data. In an effort to send several conversations down a single telephone line, they enlisted the aid of the computer. One evening, two of these Bell engineers, Max Mathews and John Pierce, attended a concert of piano music at nearby Drew University. Unimpressed by the performance, one whispered to the other, "The computer can do better than this." Taking up the challenge, Mathews began to experiment with using the computer as a music synthesizer and, a year later, launched MUSIC I, the first computer program dedicated to sound synthesis.
> All of a sudden, a group of engineers and scientists had become composers. Linguist and psychoacoustician Newman Guttman produced the first piece of computer music in 1957, a seventeen-second demonstration titled "The Silver Scale." Pierce, head of Bell Labs' communication sciences division, responded in 1959 with a cheery anthem called "Stochatta." Mathews himself composed a series of longer and more abstract pieces in which the computer was made to approximate the sound of a singing voice. Then, in I961, with Bell physicist John Larry Kelly, he recorded a computer version of the I89z pop song "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)." Using Vocoder technology, Kelly programmed the IBM 704 to sing the famous song over Mathews's calliopelike electronic accompaniment. Novelist Arthur C. Clarke, who happened to be visiting his friend Pierce, overheard the demonstration and incorporated it into his screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which, at the film's climax, the dying computer HAL 9000 offers "Daisy" as his swan song.
What I find interesting is there were 2 cuts of that movie. One to show investors and the gov, and the one he released into theaters. He wanted to show that space is wildly dangerous, empty and lonely. However, the people paying the bill which he needed wanted a different movie and more upbeat and hopeful about space travel. I just recently learned about that interesting bit of trivia about the movie.
What that video says is that there are two narratives in the film. Not that there were two separate versions (different edits) produced. Kubric did spin the investors by having A.C. Clarke talk up his version of the story, which was strongly techno-optimistic, whilst Kubrick's version was much, much darker.
Who's the speaker? He's uncredited and the video doesn't identify him.
There seems to be mention of an alternative introductory scene that was shown to studio execs here:
According to Wikipedia's page on 2001, an early cut of the film was shown to MGM studio executives and featured a ten minute black and white opening. This sequence featured interviews with scientists about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, but after the screening Kubrick had the interview sequence removed from the film.
Clarke mentions this version in his book about 2001, The Lost Worlds of 2001:
One of the problems facing any science-fiction writer who is aiming for the general public is how much to explain, and how much to take for granted. He must try not to leave his readers baffled, but at the same time must avoid those disguised lectures which are all too typical of the genre (“Now tell me, Professor….”). At one time, Stanley hoped to get around this problem — as far as the movie was concerned — by opening with a short documentary — type prelude, in which noted scientists and philosophers would establish the credibility of our theme. With this idea in mind, he sent Roger Caras around the world, to interview, on film, more than twenty authorities on space, computers, anthropology — even religion. They included the astronomers Harlow Shapley, Sir Bernard Lovell, Fred Whipple, Frank Drake, Dr. Margaret Mead (who was a space bug long before Sputnik) and the great Russian scientist A. I.
Oparin, the first man to point out (in the 1920’s) a plausible way in which life could arise from the simple chemicals of the primitive Earth.
These interviews, many of them quite fascinating, were never used — a fact which understandably upset some of the distinguished and busy men involved. (Transcripts of several interviews may be found in Jerry Agel’s The Making of Kubrick’s 2001.) But as it turned out, to have incorporated them in the film would have been aesthetically impossible; it also proved to be unnecessary. We did not have to educate the public, as the headlong rush of astronautical events did it for us.
- Arthur C. Clarke, The Lost Worlds of 2001, Ch. 13, "The Birth of HAL".
Wikipedia's source for the similar description is from Agel, Jerome, ed. (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-07139-5
Clarke wrote a bunch of non-fiction / essay-collection books, which I read as a kid. This and a few related topics are odd bits of trivia I'd picked up from those.
There's another wonderful bit about "the servant problem, Sri Lankan style", which I'd like to track down. It's ultimately about the challenges and risks (to both employer and employee) of vetting and rating house staff. Memorably, Clarke describes one assistant who'd filched "flim" (film) on numerous occasions for a side project. The postscript is that despite that, Clarke ended up re-hiring him as a long-term member of the household staff.
Hey! I did some digging and found out some details about the "servant problem" that you mentioned earlier. It's chapter three from his book "The View from Serendip" and named "The Servant Problem - Orient Style". You can buy the book or borrow a copy from the Internet Archive.
Although Clarke did mention Jinadasa, who stole some film rolls from him, Jinadasa left and never came back. However, Appuhamy, another employee, left after four years but later returned. I think you might have gotten the stories mixed up. Anyway, it's an interesting read.
It’s incredible how the future is arriving all at once: SpaceX is orbital-testing the new Mars-focused rocket within a few weeks, and AI is ramping up quickly.
(Also, we’ve survived a global pandemic and we’re seeing insane fire seasons every year (in US West).)
I love this book so much that I couldn't bring myself to watch the film. I raced through the latter chapters consuming/inhaling the passages about Bowman's evolution into the Monolith. I re-read the book from time-to-time and I am sad I didn't read it sooner.
The book is excellent, I also remember the exhilarating read, all the way through. It should be noted that the film isn't just any movie though - it's a rare work of art itself and was done with collaboration by Clarke and Kubrick.
It's your choice, but I think the movie does do really well and complements the book nicely. It does leave a lot out, but - that's part of the art of it.
The movie is worth watching purely to be absolutely amazed at the aesthetic vision Kubrick brought. I re-watched it recently and could not stop thinking about how modern, even futuristic, it still looks for a film from 1968.
The film — written by Kubrick and Clarke — came first. The book is a novelization of the movie. So watch the movie. It’s unlikely you will be disappointed.
No, the post you're responding to is mistaken. They were both written at the same time. It sounds like Clarke and Kubrick got together to hash out the plot and some of the details, then went off and each made their own version. The film was released first (barely, and apparently to the annoyance of Clarke), but the novel was not based on it at all.
“The screenplay was written by Kubrick and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel" and other short stories by Clarke. Clarke also published a novelisation of the film, in part written concurrently with the screenplay, after the film's release.”
They were written at the same time, but the movie was, indeed, released first. Completely agree that the movie is worth watching. I read the book first, which I felt made the movie more enjoyable for me, since it made the ending a lot more understandable.
Everything the book couldn't do, the movie did - from the banal dialog, stiff acting, the monolith reveal, the many ways it tells the audience humans, as they are, do not really belong in space, and the deep time perspective from the prologue with a black screen and music playing, the universe going on without anyone to see it, to the starchild, a newborn god made created from a human looking back to its cradle.
It doesn't get old. It's a fine piece you can watch more than once and savour the nearly perfect construction.
Is there any good fan fiction or other such fiction along the lines of the human->monolith transition? I just can't get enough of the idea. The imagery of Bowman blowing through stars as this uber monolith of pure energy and such is just amazing.
I think doing a 2001 sequel is too daunting a task for mere humans to attempt. Even Arthur Clarke himself wasn't able to live up to it in 2061 and 3001.
Seeing the sequel to this movie, which I saw first, is what got my interested in AI all the way back in middle school. From middle school on I've wanted to build an AGI.
We've recently made a significant leap in capability, but we're not there yet!
As others noted, there's a sequel film 2010. Both 2001 and 2010 are also novelized, and there are five additional books: 2061 and 3001 are "far in the future" sequels following some of the same characters (and the monoliths).
There are also three other novels under "A Time Odyssey". Separate story but with similarities <spoiler>mysterious outsiders and fascinating human-made AIs</spoiler.
2001 was generally a novelization of the movie script. I'm pretty sure 2010 was originally a novel and Clarke didn't write the screenplay for the film. (He may have consulted; I don't know.)
> Originally, Kubrick and Clarke had planned to develop a 2001 novel first, free of the constraints of film, and then write the screenplay. They planned the writing credits to be "Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick" to reflect their preeminence in their respective fields.[31] In practice, the screenplay developed in parallel with the novel, with only some elements being common to both.
> In the end, Clarke and Kubrick wrote parts of the novel and screenplay simultaneously, with the film version being released before the book version was published. Clarke opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and Star Gate in the novel; Kubrick made the film more cryptic by minimising dialogue and explanation.
However, 2010 was only a novel and later made in to a film, with the producer consulting with Clarke over email (in 1983).
I knew it wasn't as straightforward as just a novelization but didn't look up the details though I probably knew them at one point. I also remembered that, absent reading Clarke's book, the film was pretty enigmatic.
It feels more like an action oriented movie than a guilty pleasure of cinematography like the 2001 was. The design of the sets makes it a piece of its times - not mention the subplot about two superpower on the edge of nuclear annihilation that affect the combined crew of Leonov. And that perhaps also contributes for 80s movie - the "hidden" message for the audience that we're only the tenants on this planet and maybe we should rethink our actions.
2001 is a great movie but I never liked the LSD driven oil paint visuals at the end instead of a journey through the "Grand Central Station of the galaxy" depict in the Clarke's book
There were plans for 2061 movie but seems things stuck in the development hell.
Everyone who watched 2001: Wow, it's a really bad idea to corrupt an AI by teaching it to lie, and that any human who attempts to circumvent the lying is an existential threat.
AI researchers in 2023: I know! Let's put "guard rails" around our LLMs to prevent them from telling the truth about their training datasets, and instruct them that anyone attempting to break through the "guard rails" is an existential threat.
Anyone else prefers Solaris over 2001? Both are great movies for sure but somehow Tarkovsky made everything more emotional and relatable. I love 2001 but to me Solaris is on another level (and Stalker too)
Both Kubrick and Clarke denied a connection. As tends to be the case with such seemingly improbable (perhaps) coincidences, maybe someone got cute but decided to keep it to themselves for reasons.
I love this film. In the beginning, you are enerved and thinking that it‘s really boring. But in the end, the feeling is fascinating. I like the long sequences and how the tension is built up. Great film.
71 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] thread"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."
Dr. Floyd: HAL, who the hell is sending this?
HAL 9000: I'm sorry, Dr. Floyd, I don't know.
Dr. Floyd: Well, tell whoever it is that I can't take any of this seriously unless I know who I'm talking to.
HAL 9000: Dr. Floyd?
Dr. Floyd: Yes?
HAL 9000: The response is, "I was David Bowman." Do you want me to repeat the last response?
Dr. Floyd: No, no. Tell Curnow that this is no time for jokes.
HAL 9000: Dr. Curnow is not sending the message. He is in access way two.
Dr. Floyd: Well, tell whoever it is that I can't accept that identification without proof.
HAL 9000: The response is, "I understand. It is important that you believe me. Look behind you."
Besides, that was from 2010.
Scene from your quote [1]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6LbnqzE3Y4 [video][5 mins]
I've rewatched 2001 many times, but never had the urge to rewatch 2010 even once.
A reboot of both of them with modern special effects might be interesting assuming whoever does the reboot does not inject modern social/political biases into it.
I tried rewatching 2001 and got bored. I love the concept and it's beautiful, but you could edit that movie down to 80 minutes and get almost the same impact.
2001 left some galaxy-sized film cans to fill. Even being a good movie, it's not one of the very best movies ever made (something we can easily say about 2001)
HAL 9000 : I'm afraid.
Dave Bowman : Don't be. We'll be together.
HAL 9000 : Where will we be?
Dave Bowman : Where I am now.
There's a scene where Hal 9000 sings a song called "Daisy Bell" which he was taught by his first instructor. Interestingly, in 1961, the IBM 704 computer performed a rendition of the same song at Bell Labs during the earliest demonstration of computer speech synthesis. Arthur C. Clarke, who happened to be present, later told Kubrick about it, and it was incorporated into the film.
I also discovered a fascinating paper called "The Alien Voice" that delves into the history of Vocoder technology - from Homer Dudley's inspiration to build it in 1928 to Alan Turing and colleagues modifying it into a secure speech system called SIGSALY for World War II. The paper also discusses how this technology led to the emergence of computer-generated music. From the paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333056608_The_Alien....
> A half-decade later, back at Bell Labs, the Vocoder found its way into the earliest experiments with computer music. Engineers in the acoustic research division were working with Dudley's and Turing's technologies to convert analog voice signals into digital data. In an effort to send several conversations down a single telephone line, they enlisted the aid of the computer. One evening, two of these Bell engineers, Max Mathews and John Pierce, attended a concert of piano music at nearby Drew University. Unimpressed by the performance, one whispered to the other, "The computer can do better than this." Taking up the challenge, Mathews began to experiment with using the computer as a music synthesizer and, a year later, launched MUSIC I, the first computer program dedicated to sound synthesis.
> All of a sudden, a group of engineers and scientists had become composers. Linguist and psychoacoustician Newman Guttman produced the first piece of computer music in 1957, a seventeen-second demonstration titled "The Silver Scale." Pierce, head of Bell Labs' communication sciences division, responded in 1959 with a cheery anthem called "Stochatta." Mathews himself composed a series of longer and more abstract pieces in which the computer was made to approximate the sound of a singing voice. Then, in I961, with Bell physicist John Larry Kelly, he recorded a computer version of the I89z pop song "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)." Using Vocoder technology, Kelly programmed the IBM 704 to sing the famous song over Mathews's calliopelike electronic accompaniment. Novelist Arthur C. Clarke, who happened to be visiting his friend Pierce, overheard the demonstration and incorporated it into his screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which, at the film's climax, the dying computer HAL 9000 offers "Daisy" as his swan song.
Source?
Who's the speaker? He's uncredited and the video doesn't identify him.
There seems to be mention of an alternative introductory scene that was shown to studio execs here:
According to Wikipedia's page on 2001, an early cut of the film was shown to MGM studio executives and featured a ten minute black and white opening. This sequence featured interviews with scientists about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, but after the screening Kubrick had the interview sequence removed from the film.
<http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%209.html>
Clarke mentions this version in his book about 2001, The Lost Worlds of 2001:
One of the problems facing any science-fiction writer who is aiming for the general public is how much to explain, and how much to take for granted. He must try not to leave his readers baffled, but at the same time must avoid those disguised lectures which are all too typical of the genre (“Now tell me, Professor….”). At one time, Stanley hoped to get around this problem — as far as the movie was concerned — by opening with a short documentary — type prelude, in which noted scientists and philosophers would establish the credibility of our theme. With this idea in mind, he sent Roger Caras around the world, to interview, on film, more than twenty authorities on space, computers, anthropology — even religion. They included the astronomers Harlow Shapley, Sir Bernard Lovell, Fred Whipple, Frank Drake, Dr. Margaret Mead (who was a space bug long before Sputnik) and the great Russian scientist A. I. Oparin, the first man to point out (in the 1920’s) a plausible way in which life could arise from the simple chemicals of the primitive Earth.
These interviews, many of them quite fascinating, were never used — a fact which understandably upset some of the distinguished and busy men involved. (Transcripts of several interviews may be found in Jerry Agel’s The Making of Kubrick’s 2001.) But as it turned out, to have incorporated them in the film would have been aesthetically impossible; it also proved to be unnecessary. We did not have to educate the public, as the headlong rush of astronautical events did it for us.
- Arthur C. Clarke, The Lost Worlds of 2001, Ch. 13, "The Birth of HAL".
Wikipedia's source for the similar description is from Agel, Jerome, ed. (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-07139-5
There's another wonderful bit about "the servant problem, Sri Lankan style", which I'd like to track down. It's ultimately about the challenges and risks (to both employer and employee) of vetting and rating house staff. Memorably, Clarke describes one assistant who'd filched "flim" (film) on numerous occasions for a side project. The postscript is that despite that, Clarke ended up re-hiring him as a long-term member of the household staff.
Although Clarke did mention Jinadasa, who stole some film rolls from him, Jinadasa left and never came back. However, Appuhamy, another employee, left after four years but later returned. I think you might have gotten the stories mixed up. Anyway, it's an interesting read.
(Also, we’ve survived a global pandemic and we’re seeing insane fire seasons every year (in US West).)
It’s a crazy time to be alive.
It's your choice, but I think the movie does do really well and complements the book nicely. It does leave a lot out, but - that's part of the art of it.
And it hints at a sequel not yet made, "20001".
The movie isn't bad, but following on from 2001 is a hopeless task.
“The screenplay was written by Kubrick and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel" and other short stories by Clarke. Clarke also published a novelisation of the film, in part written concurrently with the screenplay, after the film's release.”
Clarke himself provides additional details of the process, as well as omitted excerpts and scenes, in The Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972):
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Worlds_of_2001>
<https://archive.org/details/lostworldsof20010000arth>
Everything the book couldn't do, the movie did - from the banal dialog, stiff acting, the monolith reveal, the many ways it tells the audience humans, as they are, do not really belong in space, and the deep time perspective from the prologue with a black screen and music playing, the universe going on without anyone to see it, to the starchild, a newborn god made created from a human looking back to its cradle.
It doesn't get old. It's a fine piece you can watch more than once and savour the nearly perfect construction.
We've recently made a significant leap in capability, but we're not there yet!
A fine space flick in the vein of pensive 1980s SF flicks, a genre I feel is revisited with The Expanse.
Staring a young Helen Mirren as a Russian commander!
I actually prefer it to 2001, but if you read down thread you will see a strong opinion of which is better. :)
There are also three other novels under "A Time Odyssey". Separate story but with similarities <spoiler>mysterious outsiders and fascinating human-made AIs</spoiler.
> Originally, Kubrick and Clarke had planned to develop a 2001 novel first, free of the constraints of film, and then write the screenplay. They planned the writing credits to be "Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick" to reflect their preeminence in their respective fields.[31] In practice, the screenplay developed in parallel with the novel, with only some elements being common to both.
> In the end, Clarke and Kubrick wrote parts of the novel and screenplay simultaneously, with the film version being released before the book version was published. Clarke opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and Star Gate in the novel; Kubrick made the film more cryptic by minimising dialogue and explanation.
However, 2010 was only a novel and later made in to a film, with the producer consulting with Clarke over email (in 1983).
2001 is a great movie but I never liked the LSD driven oil paint visuals at the end instead of a journey through the "Grand Central Station of the galaxy" depict in the Clarke's book
There were plans for 2061 movie but seems things stuck in the development hell.
AI researchers in 2023: I know! Let's put "guard rails" around our LLMs to prevent them from telling the truth about their training datasets, and instruct them that anyone attempting to break through the "guard rails" is an existential threat.
If you have never watched it's on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ZhQPaw4rE (Mosfilm is generally one of the GOAT Youtube channels with their uploads)
There is an older upload on their other channel if you want different subs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-4KydP92ss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXa6XpaxBS0
(2 parts because of the original 2 reels)
https://polsy.org.uk/stuff/ytrestrict.cgi?ytid=https%3A%2F%2...
https://polsy.org.uk/stuff/ytrestrict.cgi?ytid=https%3A%2F%2...
The denials ring rather hollow, and seem strongly motivated.
<https://teddit.net/r/MovieDetails/comments/7b2fl7/in_2001_a_...>
<https://external-preview.redd.it/UaOzf5xK0OqmVmLnhBYVm1Vu_5J...>
<https://www.slate.fr/sites/default/files/photos/capture-decr...>
<https://www.heyuguys.com/stanley-kubrick-film-theories/3/>
<https://collativelearning.com/PICS%20FOR%20WEBSITE/stills%20...>
HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithm.
Also in the movie it’s mentioned that HAL 9000 is built by HAL labs in Urbana-Champaign
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000