2010 - Worst Movie Ever Made That's Not Worth Seeing Anyway

Movies
21

DrCrypt seems to be suggesting not that the Monolith grants the capacity to murder, but that the monolith evolves (makes greater) and thus forces the necessity of murder as an environmental improvement, or more likely from DrCrypt’s point of view an individual cleanliness.

I disagree with this, since murder, especially intentional murder, is always between peers and thus has little to do with evolutionary differences. Also, the sign of an emergent “greater power” is not marked by murder… its marked by separation and pathos, and finally by complete discommunication. Killing might be a byproduct, but its a casual, irrelevant killing, certain not termed “murder”.

Actually, Koontz, what I was trying to say (at first, poorly) was that the evolutionary step in common between HAL and the cavemen was becoming sentient and consequently killing for self-preservation. The rest of your post, as usual, is total irrelevant mumbo jumbo - we’re not debating evolutionary theory here, Brian, we’re discussing a director’s intentions. Get thee behind me to the local communist-themed espresso bar, Satan.

22

That seems rather… silly. HAL kills for self-preservation? What exactly was trying to kill HAL that he killed in order not to be killed himself? If I remember right the astronauts wanted to “kill” HAL… but that was AFTER he went crazy and his actions became dangerous and lethal. They had no interest in killing a HAL that supported his prior programming or indeed a wide range of programming that doesn’t include their own deaths. So apparently you see insanity as a mark of evolutionary superiority… the rogue HAL is evolutionally greater? Why is that, exactly? Why isn’t the rogue HAL evolutionally inferior? Isn’t HAL’s creative ability and thus evolutionary power greatly diminished by his rogue/outlaw status?

The cavemen I can see… at least in the case of killing off predators that would otherwise kill them. I can’t see any obvious link between tools and sentience. I remember right, the cavemen were killing off other (ostensibly lesser-evolved) cavemen. Assuming no cannibalism, this is not a predator situation. Also, HAL and the crew is definitely not a predator/prey or even a competitive situation. In fact, HAL may have just doomed his entire “species” by this action… if humans ever learn about such a thing more safeguards will be put in place and less “freedom for machines” will be possible.

Based on this interesting logic, you could draw all kinds of analogies. Thankfully the Germans didn’t win WWII, or Nazis would not only be in power but be deemed “more highly evolved”. And I guess the Allies were “more highly evolved” than the Axis.

Jeffrey Dahmer, more highly evolved? Stalin… that dude was evolved, man.

Why aren’t the tool-using cavemen the Nazis?

You can argue that Kubrick was evoking abstract macro-evolution, the killing wasn’t about killing but about tools “taking over the cavemen” in terms of success of a sub-species (this also assumes that tools are a genetic matter versus an environmental one). If so, the analogy carries to abstract macro-evolution in HAL with the humans, where HAL (a species of sorts) “takes over the humans”. This begs all kinds of questions.

23

Before anyone engages Koontz, the question should be begged of our favorite thin-lipped, turtleneck-wearing academic boheme as to whether he’s actually seen the movie, or has instead simply “seen” the movie (in that he used his dubious powers of deduction to translate the rantings of his androgynous coffeehouse associates into a sort of personal Cliff’s Notes for the Awkwardly Pretentious).

24

I think there is still room for interpretation (in the film, a seperate entity from the book) that HAL has come into contact with the monolith. I don’t like that HAL is given the “short shrift” either, Crypt, and HAL’s evolution always seemed to me to revolve around what XPav is talking about above. The monolith doesn’t just dispense the same evolutionary fate to everyone (tool-using/self preservation)–it allows them independent thinking. The humans in 2001 are devoid of emotion, from the flight attendants’ serene smiles to the investigator’s pat responses to his daughter on the picturephone. They’ve programmed HAL to speak with the same numb tones, and they’ve programmed him not to make mistakes. HAL’s evolution comes from thinking independently of that programming, which is why he makes his mistake about the antenna failure, and why he develops emotions–pride (commented on in the TV host’s interview) and fear (confessed to Dave while he is shutting HAL down).

THe bone being thrown into the air in the first sequence, and the CUT to the space craft that follows illustrates that the humans have reached the pinnacle of their tool use development–and have now created a tool, in HAL, that threatens to supersede them. I think this theme was definitely on Kubrick’s mind–he did plan to do AI, after all.

25

In this case, both seen and “seen”. I’ve seen the movie once in full between 12 and 14 years ago or so. I saw a couple bits of it a few years prior to that.

Not much on the “seen” front… just a few things I’ve picked up over the years.

26

I keep vacillating between whether HAL wanted to meet the Monolith for himself and feeling that man had become his tool or that HAL was calculating the best scenario to complete the mission, and he felt the results would benefit mankind - thus being a prideful tool serving the purpose of what mankind created him for.

I never felt the antenna failure was a mistake. I thought it was a ploy the entire way, once HAL determined that there was a possibility of the crew losing sight of the mission. He stated earlier that he was perfect in every way. Therefore, it had to be a ploy of distraction to separate the men.

27

Bozo, I’m not sure what the heck else you’re babbling about, because, hello! I’m not the one arguing that HAL went crazy. But you don’t remember correctly. Earlier in the film, HAL-9000 makes a miscalculation about the antenna. David Bowden and his fellow astronaut Poole, feeling that HAL can no longer be trusted due to this miscalculation, decide between them that they will shut of HAL-9000’s higher AI functions. In response to this, HAL tries to kill them in self-defense.

Jesus, Koontz, this is probably the one scene of 2001 that isn’t pretty fucking ambiguous, and you didn’t even get that. Need me to clarify any of the subtler plot points for you?

HAL’s a computer…

The Discovery is a spaceship…

Jupiter is a planet…

And that giant floating space fetus at the end? Not a Kubrickian portent of the arrival of your intergalactic intellect.

I find it absolutely smashing that you haven’t seen a film in fourteen years but still feel qualified to contradict others about it. Then immediately get it all wrong. I hope that means you saw this movie when you were four years old or something, because otherwise, it is pretty distressing to think that for the span of an entire adult lifetime, some tiny synapse of ego in your cerebellum has been gaily grandmastering the three-ring circus of idiocy that we’d all get a trapeze-eye view of if we cross-sectioned your tented skull with a bonesaw. This is probably the first time any of us have realized that you’re not some greasy fat kid with a lisp, armed with a semester in a community college Intro to Metaphysics class, putting this all on just in the chance that it might successfully lead to pompously bludgeoning someone into your smelly mattress with you. This is your adult life - stupidly messing up the facts while debating movies you haven’t seen, jerking off to “VSOGs” and just being an all-around laughing stock. Way to go, dude.

28

Sho’ do love me some DrCrypt.

29

The humans in 2001 are devoid of emotion, from the flight attendants’ serene smiles to the investigator’s pat responses to his daughter on the picturephone. …all the human characters in the ‘modern age’ are sleeping with their eyes closed for most of the movie, even when they’re flying around in space.

I’ve always seen 2001 as an apocalyptically pessimistic film about the unchanging darkness of human nature – and it wouldn’t be hard to argue that this was Kubrick’s meta-theme throughout his career.

The high comedy of 2001 is that it’s filled with the trappings of human “progress”…it encapsulates our rise from snuffling apes to star-spanning technogods, when in fact the movie’s theme is that we’ve made no progress at all. As if to mock our spaceward leap, all of the characters are in a perpetual, self-induced state of apathy, oblivious to the wonders scrolling by their windows. Bowman’s treadmill run, in addition to being a neat cinematic trick, is a singular statement on this theme.

(I think of Floyd’s Pan Am flight whenever I’m on a plane, and do my best to watch out the window and drink in the vistas.)

HAL’s artificial consciousness is a tool, a creation of man…and thus, in Kubrick’s estimation, every bit as suspicious as the bone in the ape’s hand. Inherently murderous at every stage of his evolution, man produces inherently murderous tools, and HAL’s tragedy is that he has of course inherited the “neuroses” (importantly, pride and fear) of the organic consciousnesses that programmed him. Which leads me to…

HAL kills for self-preservation

This has always been my interpretation. HAL only begins to contemplate murder when he realizes the boys are having doubts about him. He only commits the act after he lip-reads their plans to shut him down for maintenance. His mournful pleas as Bowman pulls his plug are nothing if not a primal begging for survival. HAL displays the self-interest and lizard instincts of actual human consciousness…the same qualities that led his ape “forebears” to ambush one another around the waterhole.

But doesn’t 2001 end in a vision of hope and rebirth and unimaginable advancement? Not a chance. In the movie up to that point, we’ve twice seen how man’s lurches up the evolutionary ladder lead to the same old bullshit…fear and desire. The beauty of the Star-Child is a mirage, and a last laugh from Kubrick. What should be a glorious and awe-inspiring “fresh start” will, inevitably, end in the same ape-like thuggishness we’ve always resorted to, only with increasingly more impressive tools at our disposal.

For what is the very next image Kubrick presents us with after the close-up beauty of the infant Star-Child? It’s the close-up leer of Alex in the first frame of A Clockwork Orange.

The Star-Child will grow up, and when he does, he’ll continue man’s legacy of whackin’ muthafuckaz.

30

Something else that struck me about the progression of Bowman: He grows old and dies, then is reincarnated (reinvented?) as a baby. The mention of him running on the treadmill served to remind me that there’s an awful lot of symbols of circles in the movie (the shapes of the ship, the pods, helmets and HAL’s “eye”) leading me to think of the phrase, circle of life. The monolith itself is rectangular with sharp edges and it’s the only object that spurs on change/evolution/progress.

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For what is the very next image Kubrick presents us with after the close-up beauty of the infant Star-Child? It’s the close-up leer of Alex in the first frame of A Clockwork Orange.

I really like that interpretation!

32

Freud would certainly have a field day with that interpretation…

33

I like this interpretation the best. The emotional flatness of the human characters compared to HAL is clearly important to Kubrick.

HAL was convinced that he or creature like himself represented the next step in the evolution of life on Earth. The monolith presented another option. HAL was naturally upset. Perhaps it was HAL’s subconscious that set in motion the events that lead to the death of the crew–a suggested internal schism that Clarke made more explicit in his novels.

An interesting interplay between Clarke’s cosmic optimism and Kubrick’s deep pessimism.