Conference bookie::movies

    FWIW, Star Wars came out the summer of 1977.  As for the ending, as a
    kid I read the book if only to understand what the ending "meant."  If
    I recall correctly, the ending basically had to do with the main
    character evolving rapidly into the embryo of a superior life form.
    The big rectangle structures represented an advanced form of
    intelligence whose purpose it was to help man to evolve.  So, the
    ending is like the beginning.  As man came from ape, this new life form
    came from man.
    
    This is not terribly dissimilar to the concept behind "Childhood's End"
    from the same author.  Again, the focus is on a "higher" intelligence
    whose purpose it is to help man to evolve into the higher life form
    that man was meant to be.
    
    How's that for a from-the-hip summary?
    
    Steve

  More on the ending. Seems we should be using spoiler warnings

SPOILER



  As .-1 points out, the book explains what's going on at the end in great
detail. I don't believe that it was suppose to be abstract at all but the movie
certainly came out that way. I'll recap the story and try to fill in what the
movie left out. 

  Basically the rectangles (monoliths) were devices planted by a very advanced
society somewhere off in space. What happened was that they visited Earth
several million years ago and placed one monolith on Earth to examine the
primates and determined that they would advance into an intelligent form. 

  They then went to the moon and buried another one as a signaling device to
tell them when humans had evolved to the level of intelligence capable of space
travel. Then they left, and waited for the signal. That all happened in the
"monkey" time frame. 

  Now flash to the year 199?. People finally evolved, went to the moon, started
digging, and found the monolith that had been buried millions of years before.
When they uncovered it, the sun hit it and it sent a signal to Jupiter (Saturn
in the book, but Jupiter in the movie). Remember the scene where they were
walking out of the pit trying to cover their ears through the helmets?

  Now flash ahead to 2001. Two astronauts named Dave and Frank and three
scientists in deep freeze were headed toward Jupiter in the ... what was the
name of the ship? I forget ... anyway, they were headed toward Jupiter under
the control of a computer named the HAL-9000. Originally they were just suppose
to explore Jupiter but HAL had been told that the mission plan had changed and
that their real purpose was to examine why the signal had been sent to Jupiter
from the monolith on the moon. The humans were not told for security reasons. 

  That was the reason why HAL flipped out, he was torn between what he saw as
the purpose of the mission (the monolith) and what the astronauts felt was the
purpose of the mission (exploration). When he felt that they were getting in
the way of exploring the monolith he went psycho and started killing everyone. 

  Well they fought, HAL killed Frank and the 3 scientists in deep freeze, and
Dave unplugged HAL ("Day-Zee Day-Zee Give me your ..."). Then Dave saw the
monolith and went off to explore and see what it was. 

  What it was, was a transportation device that would transport who ever got
close to it many light years away to where the aliens lived. When Dave looked
in he said something like "My God, it's full of Stars" and woosh, off he went
across the cosmos. That was the scene of stars rushing past. 

  The home land of the aliens was not a planet, but a star. I believe we saw
the star after seeing the planets rush past. The aliens build a room on the
star because they realized Dave could not survive on the star's surface. 

  In the room, we saw Dave evolve into a higher life form then we saw him get
sent back to earth as an embryo. 

  Originally they wanted to end with Dave destroying all the nuclear bombs that
were orbiting the planet, but they decided to drop that scene because it would
look too much like "Doctor Strangelove (sp?)" which had just come out so the
embryo shot was the last scene of the movie. 

  To find out what happens next, see 2010. 

  George

    RE: .2
    
    George,
    
    A masterly summary.
    
    I am particulary fond of one of Clarke's forewords, where he says
    (paraphrased): "This is one attempt to describe such a situation.  The
    truth, as always, will be far stranger."
    
    I saw the movie after reading the book, and felt that I understood what
    was going on in a technical sense, but given that science fiction
    always describes alien situations with a frame of reference that us
    lowly humans of Earth can understand, I believe that we could never
    "understand" others out there.
    
    cheers
    
    ..klaas.. 

    I tend to believe that a work of art should stand on its own, and for
    that reason I have generally had a problem with the idea that you
    should need to turn to the book in order to understand the ending of
    the movie.  Then again, I have been known to read a Shakespeare play
    and the associated footnotes before seeing it in production so that I
    can understand it better, but the difference as I view it is that it is
    not Shakespeare's fault that he wrote in the language of his own time.

    Anyway, that being said, I still love 2001. 

    -- Mike

    >Last night I watched 2001 on TV.  I had previously started to watch
    >this fim 3 or 4 times in the past - but with little action for the
    >first 5 minutes,I had always turned off or to another channel.
    
    I had the good fortune to see this in the initial release in Cinerama. 
    If you had been there, you probably would not have walked out.  The
    effects were marvelously believable, and still very good today, even
    though we have become jaded by "Star Trek" and it's sequels and
    imitators.
    

    Just saw 2010 on tv last night and thought that as a movie on its own
    it was pretty good as a sequel well they could ov done slightly better
    the ideas were there , but the storie was trying to scream out .
    
    
    
    spoiler :
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    It would of been nice to understand what the hell the russians were
    talking about through out the film , they left it in there own language
    which was a bit anoying.  However this also made it a more realistic
    film instead of a pale attempt at english with a russian twang.
    
    
    out of 10 :-
    
    
                STORY - 7
                SOUND - 8
                  F/X - 9
                MUSIC - 9
              EDITING - 7  * due to it being on tv , for the adverts .
                 CAST - 9
    
    
            OVERALL RATING - 8.5  VERY ENJOYABLE ..
    
         ED -209..............
    

    I agree that it was a good film in it's own right. what it lost was the
    sense of total mystery that 2001 had, the sense that whatever the alien
    intelligence was it was way-way-way beyond our comprehension.
    
    

    
    
    A.C.Clarke also wrote 2061:Oddessy Three a few years back, where
    Heywood Floyd is like 103 years old or something.  Interesting but not
    memorable.
    
    (Hey, I'm not kidding)
    
    

    
    I prefer to think of it more as Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space
    Odyssey" than Arthur C. Clarke's.  Compare the themes and style with
    Kubrick's films and Clarke's rather mundane sequel (and literal
    novelization).
    
    The latest issue of the British film magazine "Sight and Sound" has 
    an interesting re-appraisal of the film given the passage of some 25 years.
    
    - Dave

    
    What's the actual length of 2001? It'll be on the French-German Arte
    channel 1st thing next year and I saw that it's only 2.5 hours or so 
    - I thought it was much longer than that, and I'm wondering if we're 
    going to get a condensed version.
    
    Thanks,
    
    -maarten.
    

    2.5 hours sounds about right. Only 29 minutes of dialog, though.

    
    .11 - thank you! And what did you say the first 
          three letters of your name were? ;-)
    
    -maarten.
    

According to the Internet Movie Database, there are two cuts; the
"premiere cut" is 156 minutes, and the "final cut" is 139 minutes.
(Or, if you prefer, 4064 meters in the 35MM German version...)