MovieChat Forums > 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Discussion > Weird Moon Tonight (just 218 thousand mi...

Weird Moon Tonight (just 218 thousand miles away)

posted 7 years ago by countdown-to-zero
12 replies | jump to latest

Looks absolutely huge when you view it on the horizon, via the perspectival 'moon illusion'.

The (microscopic) increase in its gravitational force due to its greater proximity, and its effects, should be interesting, and will probably have the New Agers fantasizing that they're levitating and floating about in some yogic-jumping, cataclysmic Stonehenge Martian global brain Illuminati self-actualization ... and the arrival of the Trumped-up Anti-Christ.

The fish have migrated to the dark end of the pond.

[–] nakedgirl 7 years ago

what is an equation?

[–] Lester_Burnham_Risen 7 years ago

So that's why our apes were so jumpy when the monothing arrived

http://www.kindleflippages.com/ablog/

[–] Monkey_Banana_Serum_Business 7 years ago

Dazzled by the closeness of the moon's overpowering glow, Moonwatcher is struck down blind as a bat, but his bone now makes it all the way to the lunar surface, striking Floyd on the head, paralyzing him, freezing him solid like a statue, a human monolith, now 'deliberately buried' under the moon's regolith.

[–] raincoatriver 7 years ago

At 3am I watched the moon...it appeared a giant orange balloon...the apes and I began to swoon...hallelujah.

"gonna throw, my raincoat in the river...gonna toss, my umbrella in the sea"...Sammy Turner.

[–] countdown-to-zero 7 years ago

"The apes and I began to swoon."

They discovered methane, and made the world's first hot-air balloon.

[–] checkerouterofthings 7 years ago

At 3am I watched the moon...it appeared a giant orange balloon...the apes and I began to swoon...hallelujah.

Maybe we're all flashing back to that point in our genome where we were huddled together in a cave, scared of a strange new noise or an aloof new object in the night sky. Only in the morning there is no simple cinematic device to tell us things have changed, for better or worse. Kubrick made it too easy. But for us and our frail battered psyches we must wait to grasp the degree of malignant change that is coming. Time will tell. However dreadful, when it's all over thank god, there will be a new beginning, a new child in the sky. Right?

[–] raincoatriver 7 years ago

Plucking fleas from my ape-ly hair, I can't help but notice the bulbous thing hovering in the air. Orange of skin and blonde of hair, his followers emerge for the Zombie Fair. Model-like angels from the devil's lair throw handfuls of money to the blinded mob...waiting there. Captured women, rope-bound gays, shackled browns...hated for their ways. It's a "Brave New World"...the hidden have left their caves.

"gonna throw, my raincoat in the river...gonna toss, my umbrella in the sea"...Sammy Turner.

[–] checkerouterofthings 7 years ago

Are there any browns in the audience tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.

[–] 7 years ago

[deleted]

[–] checkerouterofthings 7 years ago

That was a brilliant poem btw.

[–] raincoatriver 7 years ago

Things just happened to check out :-)

"gonna throw, my raincoat in the river...gonna toss, my umbrella in the sea"...Sammy Turner.

[–] mickeyone 7 years ago

When I was growing up at my family's house we had this big table-top book put out by LIFE magazine called "The World We Live In". I remember on one page they had this artist's rendering of what the moon looked like back when the earth was still being formed. I remember this picture of this HUGE moon! It really captured my imagination (what would it be like to live back then to see this spectacularly closeup Moon?). But anyway, since they say the moon is slowly moving farther and farther away from the Earth, it makes sense it would be much closer if you go back in time far enough. So I am wondering, how long ago was the ape scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey" supposed to be? Did Kubrick show any shots of the moon including the scenery so you could judge how big the moon looked. I wonder if he made another mistake by not taking into account that the moon would have appeared larger back then (although I don't offhand know how much bigger it would appear). And I don't even know if it is the scientific consensus today that the moon would be the same as today but just much closer back then. Maybe the current belief is that at first (after the collision of Earth and Theia), there was just a mass of material circling the Earth. And then gradually it clumped together (due to gravity) to form the Moon. Which is kind of how all the planets were supposed to have been formed.