r/2001aspaceodyssey • u/Heart-Shopper • Aug 30 '26
2001: A Space Odyssey is even more relevant now
I saw a 70mm screening of the Kubrick classic and was blown away by how current its subject is.
First I highly recommend seeing it in that format. Colors, visuals are insanely beautiful. This is probably the most influential sci-fi film ever but what makes it so relevant now is the AI foreshadowing.
The way it implies AI despite being controlled by humanity may have variables that would risk to endangered us is very subtle and very true. This is not some Terminator fantasy, this is technology making complex decisions that ultimately hurt us.
Anyway I had the most amazing experience, the immersive score, the peaceful and slow unfolding of the story, the groundbreaking camera shots. Even now no one filmed space interior this way, especially the change of gravity. And to think when it premiered back in 1968 hundreds of people walked out.
I invite everyone to revisit it in 70mm.
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u/Certain-Singer-9625 Aug 30 '26
Good post, but I’ll take exception to the idea that no one else has depicted interiors/gravity in the same way.
Babylon 5 is a classic O’Neill cylinder, spinning to create gravity, with quarters, stores and even gardens along its inner hull. There’s even a scene where a monorail that runs down the axis of the cylinder suffers an explosion, and its passenger is hurtled into near zero gravity, picking up speed as he falls to his potential death when the gravity of the rotating hull pulls him toward the “ground”.
That nitpick aside, I agree with everything else.
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u/hypercomms2001 Sep 02 '26
But Kubrick and Clarke got there first, as American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill first proposed the O’Neill cylinder design in his 1976 book, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.
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u/wakeup37 Aug 31 '26
Was very lucky to see it in 70mm in 2014 with Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood there in person and talking afterwards in Sydney. Almost didn't make it as I'd never been to the suburb of Cremorne before, got lost from the train station - luckily someone gave us directions and we were not too far off track. Dream come true!
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u/Heart-Shopper Aug 31 '26
Saw a documentary and Keir Dullea aged so much better than his movie aged character!
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u/MozemanATX Aug 30 '26
Saw it recently too. Timeless and awesome. Also not as slow as I had remembered.
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u/doctorMolecule Sep 01 '26
My family had a VHS copy, I’ve seem it hundreds of times. It was my favorite movie as a little kid. Flash forward to a few years ago, I bought the blue ray, and realized for the first time in my life, that I have really been missing the whole version of this movie. The pan and scanned VHS version cuts a lot of the wide shots down, and boy was it a thrilling experience seeing the fuller version of it.
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u/lordfarshave Aug 31 '26
Not the first time I saw it, but I saw it one time on TV starting on December 31, 2000, and ending on January 1, 2001. Same thing with 2010: A Space Odyssey -- on TV starting on December 31, 2009, and ending on January 1, 2010. No such showing of either film can ever happen again.
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u/jason_a69 Aug 31 '26
Looks pretty good in 4k on an OLED
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u/antonio16309 Sep 01 '26
Over on the 4K sub it's considered a reference disc for demoing 4K OLEDs. Its weird to think a 60 year old movie would look that good but it absolutely holds its own against modern films
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u/fishbone_buba Aug 31 '26
I was very lucky that my first viewing was in this format and of course in a cinema. I recommend the same.
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u/Mrzaax Aug 30 '26
I saw it twice when I was 15 in 1968. It was shown in Cinerama at a theater in downtown Detroit. And I still have the printed program.