2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke. Its plot was inspired by several short stories optioned from Clarke, primarily "The Sentinel" (1951) and "Encounter in the Dawn" (1953). The film stars Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain, and follows a voyage by astronauts, scientists, and the sentient supercomputer HAL 9000 to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith.
The film is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of spaceflight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous themes. Kubrick avoided conventional cinematic and narrative techniques; dialogue is used sparingly, and long sequences are accompanied only by music. Shunning the convention that major film productions should feature original music, 2001: A Space Odyssey takes numerous works of classical music for its soundtrack, including pieces by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian, and György Ligeti.
2001: A Space Odyssey premiered at Uptown Theater on 2 April 1968 before being released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on 3 April 1968 in the United States and 1 May 1968 in the United Kingdom. Polarising critics after its release, 2001: A Space Odyssey has since been subject to a variety of interpretations, ranging from the darkly apocalyptic to an optimistic reappraisal of the hopes of humanity. Critics noted its exploration of themes such as human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Kubrick the award for his direction of the visual effects, the only Academy Award the director would receive.
The film is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1991, it was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2022, 2001: A Space Odyssey placed in the top ten of Sight & Sounds decennial critics' poll, and topped their directors' poll. A sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, was released in 1984 without Kubrick's involvement.
Plot
In a prehistoric veld, a tribe of hominins is driven away from a water hole by a rival tribe, and the next day finds an alien monolith. The tribe learns how to use the bones of dead animals as weapons and, after a successful first hunt, uses them to drive away the rival tribe.
Millions of years later, Dr Heywood Floyd, Chairman of the United States National Council of Astronautics, travels to Clavius Base, an American lunar outpost. During a stopover at Space Station Five, he meets Russian scientists who are concerned that Clavius seems to be unresponsive. He refuses to discuss rumours of an epidemic at the base. At Clavius, Floyd addresses a meeting of personnel, stressing the need for secrecy regarding their newest discovery. His mission is to investigate a recently found artefact, a monolith buried four million years earlier near the lunar crater Tycho. As Floyd and others examine and photograph the object, it emits a high-powered radio signal.
Eighteen months later, the American spacecraft Discovery One is bound for Jupiter, with mission pilots and scientists Dr Dave Bowman and Dr Frank Poole on board, along with three other scientists in suspended animation. Most of Discoverys operations are controlled by HAL, a HAL 9000 computer with a human-like personality. When HAL reports the imminent failure of an antenna control device, Bowman retrieves it in an extravehicular activity (EVA) pod, but finds nothing wrong. HAL suggests reinstalling the device and letting it fail so the problem can be verified.
Mission Control advises the astronauts that results from their twin 9000 computer indicate that HAL has made an error, but HAL blames it on human error. Concerned about HAL's behaviour, Bowman and Poole enter an EVA pod so they can talk in private without HAL overhearing. They agree to disconnect HAL if he is proven wrong. HAL follows their conversation by lip reading.
While Poole is floating away from his pod to replace the antenna unit, HAL takes control of the pod and attacks him, sending Poole tumbling away from the ship with a severed air line. Bowman takes another pod to rescue Poole. While he is outside, HAL turns off the life support functions of the crewmen in suspended animation, killing them.
When Bowman returns to the ship with Poole's body, HAL refuses to let him back in, stating that their plan to deactivate him jeopardises the mission. Bowman releases Poole's body and opens the ship's emergency airlock with his remote manipulators. Lacking a helmet for his spacesuit, he positions his pod carefully so that when he jettisons the pod's door, he is propelled by the escaping air across the vacuum into Discoverys airlock. He enters HAL's processor core and begins disconnecting HAL's memory, ignoring HAL's pleas to stop. When he is finished, a prerecorded video by Heywood Floyd plays, revealing that the mission's actual objective is to investigate the radio signal sent from the monolith to Jupiter.
At Jupiter, Bowman finds a third, much larger monolith orbiting the planet. He leaves Discovery in an EVA pod to investigate. He is pulled into a vortex of coloured light and observes bizarre astronomical phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual colours as he passes by. Finally, he finds himself in a large rococo bedroom where he sees, then becomes, older versions of himself: first standing in the bedroom, middle-aged and still in his spacesuit, then dressed in leisure attire and eating dinner, and finally as an old man lying in bed. A monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it, he is transformed into a foetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light, which then floats in space above the Earth.
Cast
Production
Development After completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), director Stanley Kubrick told a publicist from Columbia Pictures that his next project would be about extraterrestrial life, and resolved to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie". How Kubrick became interested in creating a science fiction film is far from clear. Biographer John Baxter notes possible inspirations in the late 1950s, including British productions featuring dramas on satellites and aliens modifying early humans, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)'s big budget CinemaScope production Forbidden Planet, and the slick widescreen cinematography and set design of Japanese kaiju (monster film) productions (such as Ishirō Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya's Godzilla films and Koji Shima's Warning from Space).
Kubrick obtained financing and distribution from the American studio MGM with the selling point that the film could be marketed in the ultra-widescreen Cinerama format, which MGM had recently used on How the West Was Won. It would be filmed and edited almost entirely in southern England, where Kubrick lived, using the facilities of MGM-British Studios and Shepperton Studios. MGM had subcontracted the production of the film to Kubrick's production company to qualify for the Eady Levy, a UK tax on box-office receipts used at the time to fund the production of films in Britain. In a draft version of a contract with Kubrick's production company in May 1965, MGM suggested Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and David Lean as possible replacements for Kubrick if he was unavailable.
Pre-production Kubrick's decision to avoid the fanciful portrayals of space found in standard popular science fiction films of the time led him to seek more realistic and accurate depictions of space travel. Illustrators such as Chesley Bonestell, Roy Carnon, and Richard McKenna were hired to produce concept drawings, sketches, and paintings of the space technology seen in the film. Two educational films, the National Film Board of Canada's 1960 animated short documentary Universe and the 1964 New York World's Fair film To the Moon and Beyond, were major influences.
According to biographer Vincent LoBrutto, Universe was a visual inspiration to Kubrick. The 29-minute film, which had also proved popular at NASA for its realistic portrayal of outer space, met "the standard of dynamic visionary realism that he was looking for". Wally Gentleman, one of the special-effects artists on Universe, worked briefly on 2001. Kubrick also asked Universe co-director Colin Low about animation camerawork, with Low recommending British mathematician Brian Salt, with whom Low and Roman Kroitor had previously worked on the 1957 still-animation documentary City of Gold. Universes narrator, actor Douglas Rain, was cast as the voice of HAL. For the role of Heywood Floyd, MGM suggested casting a well-known actor such as Henry Fonda or George C. Scott.
After pre-production had begun, Kubrick saw To the Moon and Beyond, a film shown in the Transportation and Travel building at the 1964 World's Fair. It was filmed in Cinerama 360 and shown in the "Moon Dome". Kubrick hired the company that produced it, Graphic Films Corporation—which had been making films for NASA, the US Air Force, and various aerospace clients—as a design consultant. Graphic Films' Con Pederson, Lester Novros, and background artist Douglas Trumbull airmailed research-based concept sketches and notes covering the mechanics and physics of space travel, and created storyboards for the space flight sequences in 2001. Trumbull became a special effects supervisor on 2001.
Writing
Searching for a collaborator in the science fiction community for the writing of the script, Kubrick was advised by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staff member Roger Caras, to talk to writer Arthur C. Clarke, who lived in Ceylon. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick allowed Caras to cable the film proposal to Clarke. Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with [that] enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?" Meeting for the first time at Trader Vic's in New York on 22 April 1964, the two began discussing the project that would take up the next four years of their lives. Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001.
Kubrick told Clarke he wanted to make a film about "Man's relationship to the universe", and was, in Clarke's words, "determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe ... even, if appropriate, terror". Kubrick was initially interested in adapting Clarke's novel Childhood's End, but the film rights had already been optioned by director Abraham Polonsky. Instead, Clarke offered Kubrick six of his short stories, and by May 1964, Kubrick had chosen "The Sentinel" as the source material for the film. In search of more material to expand the film's plot, the two spent the rest of 1964 reading books on science and anthropology, screening science fiction films, and brainstorming ideas. They created the plot for 2001 by integrating several different short story plots written by Clarke, along with new plot segments requested by Kubrick for the film development, and then combined them all into a single script for 2001. Clarke said that his 1953 story "Encounter in the Dawn" inspired the film's "Dawn of Man" sequence.