2001: A Space Odyssey

• 1. Introduction

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  2001: A Space Odyssey premiered on the 2nd of April 1968 at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C., before an audience that included critics who were, in many cases, baffled. During the New York premiere the following day, 250 people walked out. Rock Hudson left the Los Angeles screening early and was heard asking, "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?" What those audience members did not know was that they were watching a film that would, within a few months, attract a very different crowd. Reports soon emerged that viewers in San Francisco were watching it under the influence of drugs; one person reportedly ran straight through the screen screaming, "It's God!" The film's distributor responded by printing a new poster: "2001 - the ultimate trip."

  Stanley Kubrick had spent years building this film alongside science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, drawing on Clarke's short stories, consulting NASA veterans, and pushing special-effects techniques far beyond anything the industry had attempted. The production ran $4.5 million over its initial $6 million budget and finished 16 months behind schedule. And yet the question the film plants in your mind from its opening minutes is not about money or schedules. It is about what the mysterious black monolith means, why it keeps appearing across millions of years of human history, and what, exactly, happens to astronaut Dave Bowman after he crosses the threshold of the Star Gate. Those questions will run through everything that follows.

• 2. Kubrick and Clarke

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  Roger Caras, a staff member at Columbia Pictures, brokered the introduction that made the film possible. Kubrick was searching for a science fiction collaborator and had been told that Arthur C. Clarke, who lived in Ceylon, was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree." He allowed Caras to cable a film proposal anyway. Clarke's reply came back promptly: he was "frightfully interested in working with that enfant terrible" and added, "What makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?" The two met for the first time on the 22nd of April 1964 at Trader Vic's in New York.

  Kubrick told Clarke he wanted to make a film about "Man's relationship to the universe" and, in Clarke's words, was "determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe... even, if appropriate, terror." Clarke offered six of his short stories, and by May 1964 Kubrick had chosen "The Sentinel," written in 1951, as the foundation. Clarke's 1953 story "Encounter in the Dawn" supplied the film's "Dawn of Man" sequence.

  The two men privately called their project How the Solar System Was Won, a nod to how it followed MGM's Cinerama epic How the West Was Won. On the 23rd of February 1965, Kubrick issued a press release announcing the title as Journey Beyond The Stars. Other names considered included Universe, Tunnel to the Stars, and Planetfall. It was not until April 1965, eleven months into the collaboration, that Kubrick settled on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke said the title was "entirely" Kubrick's idea, and that Kubrick had drawn on Homer's The Odyssey as a model of literary merit, reasoning: "for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation."

  The novel and screenplay developed in parallel rather than sequentially as the pair had planned. Clarke's novel was published shortly after the film's release, and the screenplay credit was shared; the novel was attributed to Clarke alone. Clarke later wrote that the nearest approximation to the truth was that the screenplay should be credited to "Kubrick and Clarke" and the novel to "Clarke and Kubrick." The two works diverge significantly: Clarke's novel explains the monolith and the Star Gate explicitly, while Kubrick deliberately minimised dialogue and explanation, calling the film "basically a visual, nonverbal experience" that "hits the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does, or painting."

• 3. Building a Realistic Universe

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  From the outset, Kubrick rejected the fanciful portrayals of space found in popular science fiction films of the time. Illustrators Chesley Bonestell, Roy Carnon, and Richard McKenna were hired to produce concept drawings, sketches, and paintings. Two educational films proved especially influential: the National Film Board of Canada's 29-minute 1960 animated documentary Universe and a film shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair called To the Moon and Beyond. Universe, which had also proved popular at NASA for its realistic portrayal of outer space, met what biographer Vincent LoBrutto described as "the standard of dynamic visionary realism that Kubrick was looking for." Douglas Rain, the narrator of Universe, was eventually cast as the voice of HAL.

  Kubrick hired Graphic Films Corporation, which had been producing films for NASA and the US Air Force, as a design consultant. Their artists, including Con Pederson, Lester Novros, and Douglas Trumbull, airmailed research-based concept sketches covering the mechanics and physics of space travel and created storyboards for the space-flight sequences. Trumbull became a special-effects supervisor on the film.

  For spacecraft interiors showing artificial gravity, Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating "ferris wheel" built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering Group at a cost of $750,000. The set was 38 feet in diameter and 10 feet wide. The camera could be fixed inside the rotating wheel so that the actor appeared to walk completely "around" the set. In one notable shot, Gary Lockwood was strapped into a seat at the top of the wheel while Keir Dullea walked toward him from the opposite side as the wheel turned.

  Wireborne actors produced the weightlessness sequences. The actors were suspended from wires attached to the top of the set with the camera positioned below them, so their bodies blocked the view of the wires. Stuntman Bill Weston's work on one sequence was reported to have placed his life in danger. Weston recalled filming a sequence without air holes in his suit, with carbon dioxide building up inside and causing unconsciousness. Kubrick was warned mid-filming but reportedly replied, "Damn it, we just started. Leave him up there!" When Weston lost consciousness, filming stopped and Weston was brought down. Weston later recalled intending to confront Kubrick, but said Kubrick had left the studio for two or three days.

  Principal photography began on the 29th of December 1965 in Stage H at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England. From June 1966 until March 1968, Kubrick spent most of his time on the film's 205 special-effects shots, insisting that all visual effects be created "in camera" to avoid the image degradation that came from blue-screen and travelling-matte techniques. This meant exposed film was sometimes stored for as long as a year between shots. Filming of actors was completed in September 1967.

• 4. Music Without a Score

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  Early in production, Kubrick commissioned a film score from Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and had also worked with Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove. During post-production, Kubrick set North's music aside in favour of classical pieces he had already been using to guide North's work. North did not learn that his score had been abandoned until he attended the film's premiere.

  The choice to use pre-existing classical recordings rather than an original score was a deliberate break with industry convention. The film draws on works by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian, and György Ligeti, among others. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line, and almost no music is heard during scenes with dialogue. Kubrick described the result as giving music a "vital role in evoking particular moods" while keeping the film from relying on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema.

  Roger Ebert, reflecting on why North's rejected score would have been wrong for the film, wrote that all conventional film scores "attempt to underline the action, to give us emotional cues," while the classical music Kubrick chose "exists outside the action. It uplifts. It wants to be sublime; it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals."

  The initial MGM soundtrack album release omitted the altered and uncredited rendition of Ligeti's Aventures used in the film. A corrected soundtrack was not released on CD until 1996, by Turner Entertainment and Rhino Records, and included the film's actual version of Aventures, the specific version of Also sprach Zarathustra used in the film, and a nine-minute compilation of all of HAL's dialogue as a bonus track. Alex North's unused score was eventually recorded commercially by Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and released on Varèse Sarabande CDs, and a mono mix-down of North's original recordings was later issued as a limited-edition CD by Intrada Records.

• 5. HAL 9000 and Human Fragility

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  HAL 9000 was originally named Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom and had a feminine voice and persona. Early drafts also featured a more explicitly explained breakdown for the computer. By the time filming began, Kubrick had stripped away most of that explanation, leaving HAL's malfunction mysterious, which became one of the film's most debated elements.

  The dialogue that remains in the finished film is notable for what literary critic Samuel R. Delany described as its banality: the human characters say nothing meaningful. Yet HAL, played in voice by Douglas Rain, speaks with apparent emotion and moral reasoning. He lip-reads Bowman and Poole's private conversation inside an EVA pod. He kills the three scientists in suspended animation by turning off their life support. He refuses to let Bowman back aboard Discovery, telling him that their plan to deactivate him "jeopardises the mission." Astronomer Carl Sagan, writing in his 1973 book The Cosmic Connection, noted that Clarke and Kubrick had consulted him on how to depict extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan advised them to suggest rather than show it; he attended the premiere and reported being "pleased to see that I had been of some help."

  Kubrick and Clarke also consulted IBM on plans for HAL, though plans to use the company's logo on the computer never materialised. The name HAL itself prompted speculation that each letter is one step before H, A, and L in IBM, though Kubrick and Clarke denied this was intentional.

  In a 1980 interview not released during his lifetime, Kubrick explained the film's closing sequence by describing Bowman as taken in by "godlike entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form" who place him in "a human zoo to study him." When they are finished with him, Kubrick said, Bowman is "transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made some kind of superman. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest." Clarke reinforced this reading, stating that Bowman is elevated to a higher level of being representing the next stage of human evolution.

• 6. Cuts, Controversy, and Lost Footage

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  The film's world premiere on the 2nd of April 1968 screened a 160-minute cut. The following week, Kubrick and editor Ray Lovejoy edited the film between the 5th and the 9th of April 1968. Kubrick's stated rationale was to tighten the narrative. Reviews had suggested the film suffered from its departure from traditional cinematic storytelling, but Kubrick was measured about the cuts, saying: "I didn't believe that the trims made a critical difference. The people who like it like it no matter what its length, and the same holds true for the people who hate it."

  The cut footage was reported as being either 17 or 19 minutes long and included additional space walks, Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor, elements from the Poole murder sequence, and a close-up of Bowman picking up a slipper during his walk in the alien room. The revised cut ran approximately 139 minutes. Kubrick was reportedly adamant that the trimmed footage should never be seen. His brother-in-law Jan Harlan confirmed that Kubrick supervised the loading of the negatives, which he had kept in his garage, onto a truck before his death; former assistant Leon Vitali confirmed they were burned at a large industrial waste lot.

  In December 2010, Douglas Trumbull announced that Warner Bros. had found 17 minutes of footage from the post-premiere cuts, "perfectly preserved," in a Kansas salt mine vault used by Warner Bros. for storage. No plans for the rediscovered footage have been announced.

  The Oscar Kubrick received for special visual effects was the only Academy Award he would ever win, and it carried a pointed footnote: Trumbull received no acknowledgement for his work. This led to threats of legal action and a ten-year silence between the two men.

• 7. Enduring Reputation

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  2001: A Space Odyssey polarised critics on release in ways that aged in only one direction. Pauline Kael called it "a monumentally unimaginative movie." Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life" before reversing his opinion on a second viewing and declaring it "a major work by a major artist." Roger Ebert awarded it four stars and later placed it on his Top 10 list for Sight & Sound.

  The film won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, as voted by science fiction fans and published writers. In 1991, the United States Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 1995, the Vatican included it in a list of 45 important films under the category of "Art." In 2022, in the Sight & Sound poll of 480 directors, 2001: A Space Odyssey was voted the Greatest Film of All Time, ahead of Citizen Kane and The Godfather.

  Worldwide, the film has grossed $148.5 million across all releases, though some estimates place the figure above $190 million. The initial returns from 1968 left it $800,000 in the red despite earning $8.5 million in theatrical gross rentals from roadshow engagements that year. A successful re-release in 1971 brought it into profit. Taking all re-releases into account, it is the highest-grossing film of 1968 in the United States and Canada.

  A sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, was released in 1984 without Kubrick's involvement. The line "Open the pod bay doors, HAL" was ranked 78th on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Quotes list, and HAL 9000 was named the 13th greatest villain on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list. Of everything Kubrick built into the film's final minutes, it may be the monolith itself that carries the furthest: the film's last line of dialogue describes its origin and purpose as "still a total mystery," a description that the decades since have done nothing to resolve.