2001 A Space Odyssey

Matthew Deinlein
Theresa Evans
English 103
December 3, 2009


Imagination Captured
A film evaluation of 2001 A Space Odyssey

Anyone who does not like 2001 A Space Odyssey does not have a firm grasp on his or her imagination. This 1968 film is a very modern look at the future from a 60’s perspective. It incorporates ideas such as artificial intelligence, extra-terrestrial life, and other future ideas and technologies.
This movie was like hugging a relative that you rarely see. It starts off interestingly with excitement, anxiety, and prefigures. This anticipation gradually becomes awkward until it resolves into the relaxation of the release representing a downward motion from the climax. Its concept of the discovery of tools was very feasible and was presented in a realistic manner. Our genetically close relatives coming upon an animal’s skeleton and curiously playing with the bones. They discover through this playful curiosity that these bones are not limited to recreational use and can be used as tools, or later, as weapons.
This movie introduces the idea of technological dominance translating to dominance over the individual. We see this in the first scene when the Ape like creature uses the bone, the pinnacle of technology at that time period, as a weapon. This technology is creating dominance over the rest of the species and thus creating an atmosphere where they are able to protect what they need and more. Technological dominance is also expressed later in this film when HAL 9000 eliminates four out of the five crewmembers.
Technology has always been the focal point that measures the success of our species. In this 1968 film, they masterfully depict predicted outcomes to our dependence on technology. Inevitably if we program computers to “learn” and have pseudo emotions, we are more susceptible to being influenced by them. We are inevitably unintelligent as a community and incapable of maintaining our own leadership among all nations.
Extraterrestrial life has been on the forefront of human thought since the dawn of man. The unavoidable, and inescapable question that many humans have tried to answer scientifically. This life is represented in a perfect rectangular prism that is black. Interestingly they chose the color black, a color that absorbs all other light and emits none itself. A series of colored rectangular prisms controlled by outside sources that were intelligent beings.
The only thing that this movie can offer us is perspective. In the culture of the late 60’s they produce this movie that depicts their perception of the future, intelligent life, future technologies, places of work, and planets that have been visited. The technologies in this movie are 40 years or more ahead of their proper time in our existence as humans. Some of these technologies we today take for granted but in the era of this production, they were only dreams on a storyboard. Such dreams as video messaging, flights into outer space by average citizens, and artificial intelligence are presented for the very first time.
This movie pushed the envelope of musical perfection, unique filming techniques, and was the founder of many of today’s science fiction techniques. This movie sparked imagination, inspired creative inquiry into unanswered questions of human existence and provided us with a glimpse of the future and what is to be expected in the future of the year 2001. It was one of the first movies to use weightlessness in space and other unique accuracies of space. This movie is definable as an artistic marvel then and now, and is still pushing the envelope of imagination creativity and the minds boundary of it’s own perspective. It reaches out beyond our own personal perspective to give this timeless classic.

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