One thing that annoys me about 2001 is the elitist way in which those who do like it often assume that those of us who don't just don't understand it, or are in some way simple or defective. They are the true sci-fi fans, because, well, they are capable of appreciating 2001.

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You're just defective.

A 20 minute repair at the manufacturer should clear that issue right up!

Ditto.

I actually do understand 2001. I get the whole "monolith triggers the whole evolution of intelligence in primates that then go into space after a nice transition from a bone thrown in the air to a space station (Do you get it? Do you get the bone space station transition? Isn't it the BEST transition EVER?) from which people go to the moon where a newly discovered monolith sends a loud and annoying signal to Jupiter (or Saturn, or wherever) where they find another monolith and a computer goes insane and HEY! DIDJA NOTICE THAT THERE'S NO SOUND IN THE SPACE SCENES! NO SOUND IN SPACE! THAT'S WHY 2001 IS THE BEST SCIFI MOVIE EVER!" thing. Really. I do understand it.

Nevermind that the cell phone conversation of a 16 year old sitting next to me on a train is more interesting than the twenty minutes of "dialog" stretched out over two hours in the film. Nevermind that "Yes, it's a spaceship! Wow, what a great effect, let's keep it on screen for twenty minutes! Ooooh look! Another space ship! Let's keep it on screen for twenty minutes! DID YOU NOTICE THERE'S NO SOUND IN THE SPACE SCENES! NO SOUND IN SPACE! THAT'S WHY 2001 IS THE BEST SCIFI MOVIE EVER!!!!" bit. And nevermind the twenty minute psychedelic ending.

Nope. I guess I don't like the film because I just don't understand it.

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I don't feel you are any worse of a person because you don't like 2001. To be blunt, I don't really care if you or anyone else likes it or not.

I wonder if the age of the person is a factor. As Vonstadt said, I was 10 when I first saw it (in fact, it was an early birthday present to go see it). And even though I didn't understand all of it at the time, it absolutely blew me away. It was by far the most amazing, realistic space science fiction I had ever seen. And though I knew it was fiction, I also thought that this might be what the future would be like.

Remember, this was 1968... we were still a year away from landing on the moon. It seemed possible that 33 years in the future (which, to a 10 year old is a LONG time), that we would have space stations and Pan Am shuttles and a base on the moon.

This was also 10 years before Star Wars and Close Encounters and modern CGI.

So, the film made a huge permanent impression on a space-happy 10 year old. For that alone, it will always have a place in my heart.

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Back to the original post...

I think it would be unfair to say that the article "dissed" 2001. I think it would be infinatly more likly that it was a joke. When the author set out to make his "Least Historical" movie list, he wondered "Y'know, what happend to the flying car we were promised 50 years ago" and she/he though it would be fun to include a movie set in their future / our past that showed what people used to think the future would looks like.

Just give it a chuckle and move on.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

I'm glad you mentoned the OP. I went back and reread the list. It includes Apocalypto, the Mel Gibson flick about the Mayas. That movie has bad history and bad science, which somehow never made this forum.

The hero is spared from sacrifice by a solar eclipse. That night, his wife is shown gazing at the full moon.

Oh. Spoiler alert.

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Curse you! Now I won't bother seeing it . . . oh, wait.

On topic: Yeah, I read the list, too. The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha, Braveheart, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and The Patriot were honest-to-Gods bad-to-horrible history. (Though, again, even some of those were hardly the worst history ever shown on screen. I could start listing, if people liked!) Gladiator and 300 were historical fantasization, and perhaps Apocalypto as well, though I suspect not.* Maybe 10,000 BC is intended to be; with stuff that far back in history, it's hard to tell. Sometimes, it's that the filmmakers really do think that, oh, the Pyramids are that old. And, of course, if we're going on about "Where's our flying cars?" there are better movies to use as examples. However, 2001 is pretty specific about when it happened, which a lot of sci-fi isn't.

Further . . . the list seems to be "the most historically inaccurate movies that I expect people to have heard of, mostly from the last 10 years."

Off topic: I saw 2001 for the first time about a year or so ago. I was quite impressed by it and wished I'd seen it on The Big Screen^TM instead of just my TV. However, I do not think it's the best movie I've ever seen. Or in the top 10. Or the best Stanley Kubrick movie I've seen.

*The difference between history and historical fantasization, to me at least, is one of intent. 300 chose to give us a stylized, imaginary Sparta. Braveheart was trying to teach us history. Gladiator was creating a "maybe it happened this way." Memoirs of a Geisha, while fictional, was creating a this is how it was for this one woman." And while I haven't actually seen Memoirs, I am morally certain that there are worse examples of the genre.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Actually you may have missed a point or two. The dialogue is supposed to be banal. The human characters are supposed to be less likeable, and somehow less human than HAL is. The Discovery is supposed to be colorless, sterile, and impersonal (read as boring by some viewers).

Part of the central permise (and it's clearer in the book than it is in the movie) is that the apes in the opening scene were dying out. They had gone as far as they could with what evolution had given them, and had to be kick-started by the monolith before they could make the jump to actual tool-use and further evolution. They were starving to death among all the pigs they could eat because they couldn't grasp the idea of eating them and how to go about it. If the monolith hadn't shown up the apes would have all died out rather than evolved into humans.

By 2001 the human race is again as far as they can go on their own. The banality of Floyd, Poole, and Bowman's relationships and their colorless world are illustrations of this. The drive of earlier ages has been lost for a sort of placid mediocrity. The human race is on the verge of destroying itself with its tools, and is unable to make the jump to the next stage by itself. Humanity has to have another kick-start in order to survive, and the monolith again supplies this.
Dave Bowman at the end of the movie successfully moves to the next stage, and in a way that must be largely incomprehensible to us, because if it weren't then we could do it without the assistance of the people of the monolith. The star child is as much a mystery to us as the tool-using ape is to his opponents at the water hole.

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Memoirs of a Geisha, while fictional, was creating a this is how it was for this one woman." And while I haven't actually scene Memoirs, I am morally certain that there are worse examples of the genre.

One of the knocks against Memoirs - and it sorta fits the "bad history" thing - is that they chose a Chinese actress to portray a Japanese Geisha. That's like having Samuel L. Jackson play Braveheart or Jackie Chan star in Gladiator.

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Oh, I so want to see that movie.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

Probably a bit more like having having Hugh Laurie star as Braveheart... Or, having Mel Gibson (an Irish American) playing a scottsman....

"Scene Memoirs" What have you done with the real Gillian?

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I always considered 300 to be a movie told from Greek myth not from Greek history. Complaining about 300 is like complaining about Paul Bunyan and his blue ox.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I must admit that there are very few films that get me close to what happened. Or what may happen.

I took 300 for what it was and its (the situation) been something I have been aware of for a while, the battle of Thermopylae.

Gladiator I also take as it comes. Good film and not worrying over historical accuracy.

A few mentions are missing but that is the way of films. Troy maybe but that is from a tale. King Arthur, Holy Grail.... so many wrongs there.

Same here, but don't be surprised that, if somebody says they don't like it, I'll point out that I do, and often will mention some of the reasons why.

That's undoubtedly one of the common factors. Like you, I first saw it when quite young, and I saw it on a big screen. It wasn't IMAX, but it was close. I was extremely impressed with it, and it was great thinking that this, or something close to it, might be real in my future. I'm sad some of that didn't work out, though I'm glad they were wrong on other things (for instance, a continued cold war).

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Let's be frank, the point of these lists (just like the Razzies) is publicity for the writers, not the transfer of knowledge to the readers.

Eh, actually, having read 2063 and 3001, that ain't the case.

Bowman was absorbed to help the monolith overcome a logical impasse it was having over whether to ignite Jupiter to give the Europans a chance in the Sun, or to leave the Europans to die in ice in favor of preserving the very primitive life in Jupiter's atmosphere that would never have an opportunity to achieve tool using sentience because of the nature of its environment.

The monolith, for all its complexity, was just a big stinking computer, it couldn't make the subjective judgement call to pick one form of life over another, because it was originally designed to see all life as worthwhile. Bowman gave it the impetus needed to decide that the limitations of jovian lifeforms in existance were worth sacrificing to give Europan life a better shot at achieving tool using sentience in a terrestrial environment.

Afterall, why would the monolith go through all that trouble to uplift a single human multimillion miles from home, and then not do anything else on Earth, but nine years later detonate a gas giant knowing it only had about a thousand years to get the Europans up and running before the report the Tycho monolith (yup, kids, that big signal it launched in 1999 wasn't for big papa in orbit around Jupiter, it was calling home to big boss, subject to all the limitations of sub-speed of light signaling) sent to an overseer monolith 450 light years away condemned humans as unsalvagably barbaric and warranting termination (the order which was received sometime around 3005 or so).

Humans were a write off, Europa was the last chance the monoliths gave the Solar System, and that was a failure because of damage to the monolith there received in 2063.

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Clarke himself said that the print sequels to 2001 each take place in alternate parallel universes. Therefore in each of the sequels the powers and motives behind what the monliths do can be completely different - each is effectively a re-imagining of the basic premise. Changes between universes include how Floyd, who had also been "uploaded" in 2063 is absent from 3001, and how the epilogue of 2010 is set in 20,001, with monoliths present on Europa, when by the end 3001 monliths have left the solar system, and how 3001 acknowledges that the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, despite it's important roles in 2001 and 2010, and pushed back the chronology of the first two novels to 2030 and 2040, respectively (Yes, in the 3001 timeline the Discovery mission doesn't actually take place in 2001.).

The original conception of 2001 both film and novel is as I outlined. Bowman was not merely being "uploaded" into a computer in that film.

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2001, Dr. Who, etc. Can we at least agree British made science fiction is rather boring.


"Don't let the facts get in the way of the truth"

Randell Wallace (The guy that wrote, "Braveheart" screenplay)


Since three out of ten of those flicks, were Mel Gibson movies, it really sounds like the author has it in for Mel Gibson.

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2001 wasn't British-made; Kubrick was born in Manhattan and the film was produced by MGM.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

If by "understand" you mean "finding something worthy" in the film, something that pleases you and stimulates you, something where you find a meaning, then that's exactly what I feel: that those who take pleasure on egging supposedly "elitist" films like 2001 failed to understand them. Their loss.

We most certainly cannot.

I don't think there can be any question about it. It can only be attributed to human error.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

By "understand" I mean, well, "understand". By "appreciate" I mean "finding something worthy". It's possible to do the former without the latter. Films aren't elitist, just some of their fans. I have a problem with the "you don't like what I like, so you can't be as smart as me" attitude, you see.

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

That distinction, valid in many cases, is blurred by stories like 2001. According to its writers, the film intentionally gives the viewers some leeway to interpret the story in their own way. It's not just a question of figuring out what you're supposed to "understand", but also of imagining it for yourself.

Well, I have a problem with the "you don't like what I like, so you must be an elitist" attitude.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

But that's not a definition of "understand" at all! Further, it's not "those who take pleasure in egging" the movie who get picked on, or not just them. It's anyone who didn't like it. Most of the people who've stated that they don't like it have stated just that. They didn't like it. Few of them implied that people who do are elitist. What has been stated is that people who claim that anyone who dislikes the film simply doesn't understand it are elitist.

I believe that what Lianachan is saying is that quite a lot of people who don't like the film do understand it. In my experience, this is true. It is also my experience that most people who do like the film don't say that those who don't like it don't understand it. However, there is a certain class of people who treat the film like an icon. Like dogma. Either you like it or you are wrong, and possibly too stupid to get why it isn't brilliant. I'm not saying that's your attitude. In fact, I'm at this point refusing to say who's saying it, because that isn't the point. I'm saying it's an attitude that has come across from some people.

I am in the middle, myself. I understood the film just fine. I can see the superior artistry with which it was created. I just didn't think it was the greatest film, or the greatest sci-fi film, ever made. Now, I do think we can all agree that I know a thing or two about film. I hope we can also agree that I'm no dummy. Ergo, I think it's safe to say that it's a reasonable assumption that I understood the film. However, there are some people who would assume that I don't, because I don't like it as much as they do.

What the filmmakers intended is often irrelevant to what people bring to the film. Kubrick and Clarke may have intended you to have great spiritual revelations from the movie. However, it is possible to fail to have great spiritual revelations and still understand what's going on and the intention behind it.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I like British Sci Fi (doctor who, at least)...

Mel Gibson just makes entertaining historical fiction.


They're fiction, no matter if they're regarded as anything else. Check into any of them. That said, they're entertaining.

It sure seems that the 2001 writeup touched a lot of nerves.
It's one of those movies that you either love or hate - like most Kubrick films BTW.
Personally, the movie is in my top ten of all time.

One thing that bothers me in historically inaccurate films is that the movie is often less interesting than what really happened. But I guess Hollywood needs to throw in ingredients to feed the masses.

What made me laugh in Gladiator was when Marcus Aurelius offers Maximus the throne (?). Although this indeed could legally be done, I think.

Braveheart has so many inaccuracies that they could fill a book.

I noticed that Yahoo didn't mention any old movies. There are many from the fifties when sandal epics were the rage that are much more inaccurate historically. Think of anything Charlton Heston was in, or Tony Curtis (The Vikings, Houdini, Taras Bulba, The Boston Strangler). At least today the soundtrack is usually much better.

Well, that's not something that annoys you about 2001, that's something that annoys you about those people. Gotta place the blame where it belongs.

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"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

A fact which I attribute a smart old man extending middle digit skyward to potential continuity flaw chasers.

To heck with geosynchronous orbits, the man predicted BAUT posters! (I'd say he predicted the Internet, but then Algore would get all uppity...)

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

My only problem with the actual film itself is that it's as boring as hell, for me. The elitism is indeed rooted in individuals, and not in the film. I know that. In my original quote, I thought it was clear that I was referring to the film and it's associated culture, etc, but maybe not.

It looks like Gillianren knows what I'm getting at. But then, since I don't like 2001 I'm clearly some sort of gibbering imbecile and allowances should be made.

If you think that's what I was saying then you have entirely failed to grasp what I'm talking about, because that is far, far, from the point I was making. In fact, I agree 1,000% with your statement there, because my point is that all you can tell about somebody from what they think of a film is, well, what they think of the film. It has no bearing on anything else about them, whatsoever.

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.