1) an actual giant Star Child hovering in Earth's orbit?
2) an actual human-sized (looking giant due to forced perspective) Star Child hovering in Earth's orbit?
3) a visual metaphor only for the rebirth and future advancement of Mankind?
Not sure if there’s an exact answer but I’m guessing after they locked Dave in their interpretation of a human zoo they either turned Dave into the next stage of human evolution or created the next stage of human evolution and the Star child is either going to go to Earth to advance the species or watch over Earth kind of like a “God”
shareIf we take the scene at face value, another question is how long in the future does the Star Child appear in our orbit, since we don't know how much time has passed in the White Room?
shareI assumed that Dave just lived the rest of his life out and he was in there far longer than what we are shown, which would mean that’s like 60 years later or so
sharedoes time move at the same speed in limbo land, faster, slower, or is time entirely fluid?
shareI've always wondered about that myself. If the power behind the monolith could transcend normal space-time to bring Bowman across the universe (so to speak), couldn't they just as easily control the flow of time for him in the white room?
shareVery good point, but to the people on Earth it would have been at least 60 years later even though it may have only been a few hours or so for Dave and whoever controlled the monolith
shareUnless the alien power simply sped up time for Bowman, so that his lifetime & transformation took place in the few minutes that we saw onscreen. It's open to many possibilities ... which is what I love about the film.
shareChristomacin I have absolutely no idea but in this movie I would certainly say that it would be possible to speed up time
shareLOL... do I detect a note of sarcasm?
shareNo I am being serious the beings speeding up time seems within the realm of plausibility
shareOK... he he. I think Clarke's intention was that the Star Child was literally hovering in Earth's orbit, but I'm not so sure about Kubrick. Clarke seems to have pretty much walked it back in 2010, though, as the Star Child didn't do much more than make a cameo appearance and no one on Earth seems to be aware of its existence.
shareI don't know, but it was a terrible ending to an otherwise great film. When Dave ended up in that room is when it totally lost me.
shareI don't see how any other ending would have worked as well. A pat explanation would have completely negated the sense of Bowman (and the audience) being confronted with something utterly beyond all human comprehension.
shareYes.
I understood it as 3), but I didn't give much thought to the size of the Star Child. But either 1) or 2) would work.
In the world-wise words of Damien Lindelof "All Three"
But seriously, I think the A.C.C.'s story falls short by the novel's end and Kubrick could only extract an interpretation that made some semblance of finality but ended up being anti-climactic, which is why I think Kubrick chose the theme music to lend brevity to the whole thing.
I think a better story line would be the monoliths trying to educate us humans but by the 2001 timeline all it ended up doing was creating a militarily-driven space race resulting in warfare (The first "star wars") between the US and Soviet Union. Since the monolith inspired violent intelligence in our ape-like ancestor it stands to reason that humans can advance with technology but we only end up perpetuating our violent nature which is embedded in us.
Well, I think this does happen in the movie in a way. Although the Cold War is downplayed in 2001 much more so than 2010, it is still going on, albeit at less intensity than the in the year film was released. We know this because we jump from the bone weapon to an orbiting Soviet nuclear weapons platform (or so said the script, although it isn't really clear in the movie). So we have advanced from the bone weapon (the first technology) to nuclear weapons (the latest technology), but despite our technology, we sill have violent natures which are reflected in the use we make of our tools. Still, for a film in 1968 to make a prediction that a nuclear war would NOT occur and we would all still be here was an optimistic prediction in itself. So, it isn't as dystopian as some science fiction stories, but there is a dark side. An even more advanced tool, the AI computer HAL-9000, becomes so dangerous that it turns against humanity and becomes our enemy. Bowman must murder HAL to reassert man's dominance over machine. Only after Bowman does this is mankind ready for the next step, as he ventures out towards the monolith in his pod. The movie also seems to be suggesting that humanity has become somewhat complacent and stuck in a rut, which is perhaps the explanation for why Poole and Bowman are depicted in such a cold, robotic fashion. Man and machine are hard to distinguish. So 2001 is both optimistic, though not exactly utopian, but at the same time a bit dystopian as well.
shareI agree, but my point was with the final sequence when Dr Bowman enters the Monolith and turns into an abstraction of space and time. It leads us to interpret what happened in the end, but it doesn't really feel like a narrative pay-off. The rest of the movie is quite brilliant and superbly paced, especially the journey towards Jupiter and the whole unraveling of HAL 9000. You really get the sense that humanity's ingenuity can only advance us so far, and I might even argue that it would have been more interesting to see HAL kill Dr Bowman and take the ship to Monolith on his own terms. On a side note, Star Trek the Motion Picture kind of picks up on my idea where V'ger returns to his creator after amassing intelligence and his own identity.
share"I might even argue that it would have been more interesting to see HAL kill Dr Bowman and take the ship to Monolith on his own terms."
Problematic. I think this would require a change in the film's title and a change of name for Keir Dullea's Dr. Bowman. The title "A Space Odyssey" is an important clue, I think, because it is identifying the protagonist. The story of The Odyssey, as you know, concerns the warrior Ulysses trying to return home safely after the Trojan War. So, if the movie is meant to parallel that story we have to ask who the "hero" is and what is the journey they are taking. Ulysses was also an archer, so the name Dave BOWMAN seems to indicate that it's mankind's journey and David Bowman is the hero of the story. I don't think the story could have just switched gears and become HAL 9000s story without fundamentally altering all that came before. Music cues like Also Sprach Zarathustra (based on Nietzsche's writing) make a lot more sense if mankind is the hero of the story. Beside, having HAL defeat Bowman would be too on the nose with it's dystopia. 2001 is threading a fine line between giving us hope for the future but also warning us about it. The film has elements of Prometheus and Frankenstein but it was given the name "A Space Odyssey" for a reason.
"On a side note, Star Trek the Motion Picture kind of picks up on my idea where V'ger returns to his creator after amassing intelligence and his own identity."
This raises an interesting point. Who does the monolith identify with more, HAL 9000 or Bowman? It's possible that the monolith itself was created by a race of beings and may have even rebelled against them as HAL had. What if for the monolith the "wrong" side won? We don't know if the monolith is a data collecting AI that became aware like V'ger, or if it actual is a receptacle for the individual or collective consciousness of the alien(s) that created it. We don't really know how they feel about HAL. They may have had to overcome dangerous AI themselves and have an aversion to HAL, or they may feel more comfortable with him. We don't really know.
This leads us back to the end of the film again. I think the question is whether there was some better way to depict what Kubrick was going for, or did he do as good a job as humanly possibly dramatizing something that is impossible for humans to grasp? There may have been other ways of showing it, and it may have been a product of its times, but could anyone else have been any more successful then or now? I'm not so sure.
This raises an interesting point. Who does the monolith identify with more, HAL 9000 or Bowman
> Hal is amicable and compassionate in his interactions
Especially when he is murdering humans and lying about it. Great poker voice! ;-)
I mean, come on, after all it is Dave Bowman that the Star Gate opens up for, and Earth's dominant killer species that the advanced "old ones" set out to follow and save?
All this lifelike and conscious AI stuff was not much in consideration back then, so it is arguable that anything to do with HAL9000 is a newer take on the movie tacked on. Since it was only 2001, and the state of technology was not far from the actual 2001 I'd say that HAL was a supporting cast member, not the star of the movie.
> Hal is amicable and compassionate in his interactions
Especially when he is murdering humans and lying about it. Great poker voice! ;-)
I mean, come on, after all it is Dave Bowman that the Star Gate opens up for, and Earth's dominant killer species that the advanced "old ones" set out to follow and save?
All this lifelike and conscious AI stuff was not much in consideration back then, so it is arguable that anything to do with HAL9000 is a newer take on the movie tacked on. Since it was only 2001, and the state of technology was not far from the actual 2001 I'd say that HAL was a supporting cast member, not the star of the movie.
....He’s a highly specialized brain. He may be a complex of micro-electronic circuitry, but mentally and emotionally he is a conscious being, capable of pain and pleasure. In this way, he is very similar to a person.share
I see why they left that HAL scene out.
shareOne could say that the only reason the threat of nuclear war is held over our heads is to keep every super-power's citizens in line and producing for their corrupt elites. Everyone knows that nuclear war is a no-go, and yet everyone keeps developing better ones, and refuses to do anything in a cooperative way about unstable powers developing nuclear weapons. This shows that our ruling classes are stupid, corrupt and unable to manage a status quo that has evolved over the power of us stupid humans to deal with it. It is sort of a pity that Kubrick with all the great stuff in that movie was not able to be a bit more specific and relevant to that issue ... but I guess people would argue that it would not have made the movie any better. I think maybe it could have.
In the book I think the ending scene envisioned by A. C. Clarke was Bowman/Starchild exploding all the nuclear platforms in space as both a warning and an assist to humanity, but it's been a long time since I read the book.
I choose door number 3.
Did I win anything? ;-)
A BRAND NEW CAR!
https://youtu.be/uQ0BXUkzRqM?t=6