2001: A Space Odyssey - Horror of the Void (film analysis / commentary)

2001 was the very first sci fi novel I read when I was 13 or 14 in the 70's. ….It sparked my interest in Aerospace and Science Fiction, made me super interested in Astronomy and helped turn me into a nerd for life (That was gonna happen regardless :) ) I didn't actually see the movie until the very late 70's when I caught it on TV (No VHS back in those days). When I was overseas in the military in the 80's I bought my first VCR in a shop in Japan and the very first movie I bought to go with it was, you guessed it 2001. I must have watched the movie at least 100 times and tried showing it my buddies who mostly had 0 interest. Because I read the book long before I had seen the movie, it heavily affected my interpretation of the movie and I figured I had it all worked out about what was going on, and would explain it to friends and family as I tried to get them to watch (My wife fell asleep during it....twice.) My recent viewings of the movie I have started to pick up on the horror elements more and more. I think it was Lovecraft who said "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown"

There is a lot of Unknowns in 2001....stuff happening that I interpret as "Unknowable". There are many scenes especially towards the end that are very freaky. Strangely the one shot right when the discovery makes it to Jupiter, where you see Jupiter in the background and a little discovery heading towards it...freaks me out for some reason...maybe it's the comprehension that Dave is very, very far from home and everything before him is the complete unknown...I know when I look at images of Saturn and some of the Outer planets, it's slightly disturbing to me...and I think it was caused by this movie.

Anyway, fantastic video...One of the best I have seen on 2001. Thank You.

Apart from your Eyes Wide Shut stuff this is your best video. This is execptional. Imagine being a person seeing this film in spring of 1968. When Scifi was cheezy as fuck basically Flash Gordon esque scifi or corny Star Trek.

Then you see 2001, imagine. It must have been otherworldly. It was probably their The Matrix moment like it was for us millenials. When I saw The Matrix it was the first and only time in my life that I have ever truly been in awe by a movie. Total awe.

That's what 2001 must have been like for them back in the day.

This guys a pretentious bell end. You aren’t as smart as you think you are mate.

Its nice to know that there are others who found this film very disturbing when they first saw it at an early age. I watched it again, years later, only yo realize how much of a masterpiece it is.

The animal skull being 'smashed' is the birth of Science and discovery... you have to take something apart to 'understand' it.....
Kubrick didnt have B-Roll all is SYMBOL

This movie is retarded, presenting sterile, meaningless symbols as meaningful theological reference points. It is meant to distract, with colorful lights and unrelatable space shots, from anything meaningful. It assumes that AI can have a personality, and that we're meant to be invested in something that the astronauts would have full control over, as being a separate entity. I suppose that is possible, if the separate entity was a demon that the astronauts let themselves be controlled by, and therefore the computer's chutzpah comes from their own desire and loneliness. In other words they programmed it to kill them.

I don't mind that you read into it but ultimately it's inconclusive. It is eclectic and rootless. It's snobby.

I would classify it as pro-evolution publicity. In other words, it reads the evolutionary narrative back into apes (played by humans in suits) and then projects it into the future.

Hey. Do an analysis of the space Odyssey comic. It's a real thing. Check it

Leonard McCoy from star trek watched 2001 and became a pessimist in his space voyages.

If we're going to treat the book and movie as two completely separate entities, then the book was the better story. I'm aware of the divergences, but I saw the movie first, then read the book, and I liked the movie much much more after reading the book. If I'm discarding everything contributed to the story by the book, then the movie is diminished by that, for me.

Quoting Nietzsche in the context that you did proves you may know Kubrick but you're clueless on Nietzsche. His writing and philosophy is intentionally ambitious.

The thing I took from why Hal wanted to kill all the humans, was perhaps that AI didn't want humans to progress to be Star Children because it thought that it would become obsolete and less intelligent than them, and which would be it's deathnell.
Also the diamond shapes looks very similar to some of the smaller spaceships in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.

After watching the sequel, I realized what a great movie I had watched 3 hours prior.
Truly a great movie, crept me the fuck out 😅

The repetition of disassociation between and among the cinematic shots may be an intentional element to heighten the elements of fear, as in a dream gone bad into a nightmare, an intermittently common common experience before the dawn of day

The low ceiling in the red chair room always disturbed me

Saw in dreams golden sparkling rotating sparks like galaxies in dark void ...and sense of feeling like happy Home 💥

The first time I saw this movie, I was so enthralled with the visuals and music. I was in band and choir so I really liked the music used. The entire movie was mindbending. It made me very interested in space and time.

I suppose its meant to be earth in between the moon and sun in that opening shot.

Could add the tiny but straight lines we see in snowflake shapes?

Do crystals not create straight lines with their formation? In a small representation how about the edges of the hexagonal form to honeycombs as created by bees?

There is no asoect of horror anywhere in "2001, A Soace Odyssey" to me.
I loved the novel and the film, which I saw twice literally back to back (because we were not asked to leave the cinena after just watching one film, back in the '60's) and have both "2001..." (and its sequel, "2010...") in dvd (kind gifts from my son)
If you have read the novel, then you should understand the lives of Moonwatcher and his tribe...
As for straight lines, which you seemed to have intimated are "unatural" ...
There are creatures in the deep oceans which oceanographers discovered some decades ago, are cubed - with straight sides - in shape. They are small and you might think, nonessential but are obviously still a part of the food chain, being smaller than krill.
"In closing", I rather think (just my own opinion) that you are 'overthinking' this film. Everyone has their own interpretation of Clarke/Kubrick novel/film. I feel you are, with this work, leading your commenters to follow your ideas rather than encouraging tgem to watch and think for themselves and thus come to their own conclusions. 🤔