Explain the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey

[Wings80]

It's what you think it is.



Note: Now watch 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

" A new time, a new odyssey, a new chance to confront enigmas arising from the daring Jupiter mission of 2001. Crew members aboard the Leonov will rendezvous with the still-orbiting Discovery. And their fate will rest on the silicon shoulders of the computer they reawaken, HAL-9000."

[NathanDrakeFan]

Originally Posted by Wings80

It's what you think it is.



Note: Now watch 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

" A new time, a new odyssey, a new chance to confront enigmas arising from the daring Jupiter mission of 2001. Crew members aboard the Leonov will rendezvous with the still-orbiting Discovery. And their fate will rest on the silicon shoulders of the computer they reawaken, HAL-9000."

That's the problem. I was so confused, I literally have no idea what I think it could be

[dallywhitty]

I've not read the novel that was released around the same time (although I've owned it for several years -oops), but didn't it suggest that Bowman was crafted some sort of zoo by the different species whilst he transformed into the perfect life-form?

This thread makes me want to re-watch the film. It's been a while and it really is an experience.

[iam1bearcat]

if i were you OP, i would just sit and think about the film for awhile. don't literally just sit and think about it, but don't force yourself to try and understand it on one viewing. it may take 2 or 3 or 209372 and you could think something different each time.

i personally wouldn't want to hear other people's ideas and thoughts until i'd be completely set on mine otherwise it might cloud your judgment and thoughts on it. especially if you've only seen it once.

and for more answers, check out the 2001 thread, over 500 pages (i believe) in length, gotta be some goodness in there.

[Alpha]

Think about the monolith and at what times we saw it. Then think about who/what was behind it (not literally of course). At the end, we witnessed life in a blink of an eye.

Why/how is up to you

[Kryptonic]

Read the book. It explains everything.

[Mandalorian]

Originally Posted by iam1bearcat

if i were you OP, i would just sit and think about the film for awhile. don't literally just sit and think about it, but don't force yourself to try and understand it on one viewing. it may take 2 or 3 or 209372 and you could think something different each time.

i personally wouldn't want to hear other people's ideas and thoughts until i'd be completely set on mine otherwise it might cloud your judgment and thoughts on it. especially if you've only seen it once.

and for more answers, check out the 2001 thread, over 500 pages (i believe) in length, gotta be some goodness in there.

Perhaps I lack the mental capacity for a film this sophisticated. I've rewatched it, and tried to force myself to comprehend it, but the scenes near the end

[Show spoiler]with the bright color flashes, the well decorated house with white rooms, the man eating, the man in bed, the giant baby, etc

go right over my head...

EDIT: P.S. I was watching the last 10 minutes as I typed this comment, so all the comments just before me pretty much answer my comment.

[Alpha]

Originally Posted by RJ Smoove

the man eating, the man in bed

It's all apart of the cycle of life.

[Agent Bond]

Why didn't you just post this in the 2001 thread? Oye. Anyway:

[Show spoiler]An ancient and unseen alien race uses a mechanism with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life, which made the apes smarter after coming into contact with it at the beginning of the film and eventually turned them into human beings.

At the end of the film, the monolith turns Dr. Bowman into a new immortal entity or an alien called The Star Child, that can live and travel in space. He returns to Earth, purpose unknown.

In short, I took it as a sign of another step in man's evolution.

[Mandalorian]

Originally Posted by Agent Bond

Why didn't you just post this in the 2001 thread? Oye. Anyway:

[Show spoiler]An ancient and unseen alien race uses a mechanism with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life, which made the apes smarter after coming into contact with it at the beginning of the film and eventually turned them into human beings.

At the end of the film, the monolith turns Dr. Bowman into a new immortal entity or an alien called The Star Child, that can live and travel in space. He returns to Earth, purpose unknown.

In short, I took it as a sign of another step in man's evolution.

The basic meaning of the film...your spoiler just opened my mind a bit. Now I can rematch it with that in mind. I've never actually researched it...

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Agent Bond

Why didn't you just post this in the 2001 thread? Oye. Anyway:

[Show spoiler]An ancient and unseen alien race uses a mechanism with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life, which made the apes smarter after coming into contact with it at the beginning of the film and eventually turned them into human beings.

At the end of the film, the monolith turns Dr. Bowman into a new immortal entity or an alien called The Star Child, that can live and travel in space. He returns to Earth, purpose unknown.

In short, I took it as a sign of another step in man's evolution.

IOW, the story is based (and, as with most Kubrick films, loosely) on Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel", which only goes as far as the astronauts finding the monolith on the moon, and wondering who expected them to get this far, from ape to astronaut...

Clarke's book for 2010:tYWmC dumbs the argument down to words of one syllable (and offers a rational defense for HAL's much-maligned motivations), but like Wings80 says, you might want to watch the Roy Scheider version as a companion piece--
No one was able to explain Kubrick's ending then, and we can't explain it now, but consider it a favor to the cause of film literacy that we can still be talking about it to the next wet-eared generation of little kiddies on Blu-ray.

[nf0603]

Originally Posted by iam1bearcat

if i were you OP, i would just sit and think about the film for awhile. don't literally just sit and think about it, but don't force yourself to try and understand it on one viewing. it may take 2 or 3 or 209372 and you could think something different each time.

This is true. The first time I saw it (my boyfriend had it on DVD), I was "this is supposed to be the greatest sci-fi movie ever made?" even though I did find the cinematography to be beautiful. I still don't fully "get" the movie but it is something that is less boring the more you watch it. Even after just one viewing I knew it'd be worth getting on Blu (since it's commonly on sale for $10 or less, I got mine for $7.49 at FYE) and rewatched it and did find myself more into it than the first time.

[Kryptonic]

You could read the book or various websites to fully comprehend the events...or you could just keep watching the movie over and over again until you get it. I vote for the latter. More fun.

[RetroGamer]

15 years after watching it the first time, I still didn't know. So I read the books. All 4 of them (and it's not really my type of reading either - but I wanted ALL the answers after 15 years of random confusion).

So:

Mission going to Jupiter (Saturn in the book). Unrelated to monolith. Cryo crew told about monolith mission, 2 awake crew (Dave and Frank) were not.

Computer told of the new mission, told not to tell awake crew. Computer programmed not to lie - so it went wacko.

Crew discusses disconnecting HAL after incorrectly finding a fault in their antenna system. They hide in pod to be out of earshot. He reads their lips.

Computer tells crew antenna is faulty again. Computer kills Frank when he goes outside the ship to fix it. Uses his pod to knock him free (a la Sir Isaac Newton).

Dave goes to get Frank's body that is now floating away. Computer tries to kill Dave by locking him out of the ship.

Dave gets in anyway via airlock, but had to let Frank go again. Dave 'Kills' computer.

Dave gets in pod, goes to monolith. It's a 'stargate' of sorts - so it's 'full of stars'. On the other side of the gate, it takes him to a place 'familiar to him' - hence a hotel room. In the room, he physically 'dies' hence the aging, etc - and is 'reborn' into a 'higher form of life' that is supposedly pure energy - hence the Fetus.

AFTER THAT - it gets even wierder. and the ending of the fourth book pretty much Sucks in my opinion.

WHY did it even happen? Supposedly an experiment by these 'energy people.' They taught primates to use tools. Planted monolith on moon to see if we'd find it. We did. Sun hit it for the first time, it sent signal to Jupiter (again, Saturn in book). So, we followed the trail to find the main one. Dave made it in, so he passed the test.

This is all how I understand it, anyway. Again, I'm not a 'George McFly type of Sci-Fi guy' though...


And, unless you are a sci-fi nut, can't say I'd reccomend reading all the books... I won't be doing so again. But now that damn fetus in 2010 doesn't freak me out since I have a general idea what's going on...

[Gaius Marius]

I've always thought that the movie was about human evolution (and this conclusion took me a few times through the movie to reach). The monolith was placed by higher beings to help accelerate human evolution. (tool use/space travel/star child).

It is an incredible movie, and, as other members have said, the best thing to do is watch the movie again (as many times as it takes) and figure out your interpretation.

[brawlyjunk]

Originally Posted by dallywhitty

I've not read the novel that was released around the same time (although I've owned it for several years -oops), but didn't it suggest that Bowman was crafted some sort of zoo by the different species whilst he transformed into the perfect life-form?

More or less. The space apartment he is hanging around in is the aliens best recreation of a human home, based on intercepted television signals and the such. He's then transformed into the star child, where his job is to watch over earth, and at the conclusion of the novel

[Show spoiler]stops a nuclear war between the US and the Soviets.

[botley]

Last month, I caught a 70mm screening of this movie in Toronto along with a lecture by Douglas Trumbull, the amazing visual effects director. He had a lot of great insights to share about the making of the film's effects... no big revelations about its meaning, though!

I think that it's impossible to completely explain everything, but the monolith probably represents some kind of alien intelligence that takes an interest in helping us reach each new step in our evolution. Also, the use of Richard Strauss' famous theme music "Also Sprach Zarathustra" at key moments is certainly intended to be a reference to Übermensch theory from Nietzsche's philosophy.

So, what do we take from that? The movie opens with Strauss' theme, at the dawn of man. The monolith arrives and while Strauss' theme repeats, we take an evolutionary step from apes to technologically-equipped human beings, and then when we reach the moon it appears again (deliberately buried, with a signal pointing us towards Jupiter). When we finally reach Jupiter, it appears again and Bowman takes another leap forward into an unknown realm. At the finale it appears one last time along with the return of Strauss' theme, as Bowman takes another evolutionary step into a new kind of being, floating above the cradle of Earth.

[ewsjr]

So my interpretation? Seventy-year-old Dave is no longer a true human being, he has evolved into a sort of, according to interviews with Kubrick, this "civilized man" who is being kept in a sort of terrarium decked out in the sort of style like Louis XV and, as far as I can tell, is being observed by the alien creatures who originally placed the monolith (you can make out laughter on the soundtrack). I've read that Kubrick always felt that in the film, human beings were the missing link between the apes and this so-called civilized man. I think that the aliens are rewarding Dave for finding them (though he has evolved into the form that the aliens approve of, Dave still shows that he is imperfect when he knocks over a glass and breaks it). Because after he dies and sits up and points at the monolith the camera moves inside the slab and suddenly we are in space. The star child (looking very much like Dave) is floating through space toward Earth. The evolution of man from ape to angel is complete. Man has seen his origins and has come back-his odyssey over-in a higher form to begin the second millennium. So take your pick, whatever it is that is out there that is interested in man-be it God or a super intelligence-it has once again changed man's destiny. It does have a sort of Christ-like message and I always thought it was interesting that Jesus was sometimes (I think in the Book of Matthew) was called the son of David and, of course, the main character here is named Dave.

[ArrestedDevelopment]

Originally Posted by ewsjr

So my interpretation? Seventy-year-old Dave is no longer a true human being, he has evolved into a sort of, according to interviews with Kubrick, this "civilized man" who is being kept in a sort of terrarium decked out in the sort of style like Louis XV and, as far as I can tell, is being observed by the alien creatures who originally placed the monolith (you can make out laughter on the soundtrack). I've read that Kubrick always felt that in the film, human beings were the missing link between the apes and this so-called civilized man. I think that the aliens are rewarding Dave for finding them (though he has evolved into the form that the aliens approve of, Dave still shows that he is imperfect when he knocks over a glass and breaks it). Because after he dies and sits up and points at the monolith the camera moves inside the slab and suddenly we are in space. The star child (looking very much like Dave) is floating through space toward Earth. The evolution of man from ape to angel is complete. Man has seen his origins and has come back-his odyssey over-in a higher form to begin the second millennium. So take your pick, whatever it is that is out there that is interested in man-be it God or a super intelligence-it has once again changed man's destiny. It does have a sort of Christ-like message and I always thought it was interesting that Jesus was sometimes (I think in the Book of Matthew) was called the son of David and, of course, the main character here is named Dave.

How do people always infer some connection with christianity/jesus...

[SellmeyourDVD]

Originally Posted by batman713

How do people always infer some connection with christianity/jesus...

Because that is what religious people do