[subversive]

this is interesting..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um4s6E9S6s8

[neo_wales]

Clarke said the story is simple.

Monolith 'kick starts' the brains of the Primates (weapons) to help ensure their survival.

Had no need to really monitor things so buried a monolith on the Moon knowing its magnetic field would be discovered and it sent a signal when uncovered...now the human race was worth looking at.

Ship sent off, the survivor is transformed to Star Child.

So its a basic story, aliens helped transform us, Apeman to man, man to Star Child.

[spiney2]

that's the clarke novel. not the screenplay. and not at all what kubrick made of it ........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpr...zsche_allegory

Yeah. That's right! There's an entire wiki article on "interpretations of 2001" .......

[marcusgv]

It's great to see that 2001 can still inspire discussion so many years after its release.

The film is concerned with the creation of myth. The monoliths are the creations of an advanced alien race who may have intervened in the development of mankind. At one level they are simply symbolic of this divine intervention but they may also be the actual catalysts of change.

[spiney2]

clarke got his "supermind" partly from olaf stapledon, and partly from j d bernal's marxist treatise: the world the flesh and the devil. this was free online last time i looked.

kubrick had a different angle and went for hegelian synthesis.

the monolith is indeed more a symbol than a physical object ......

[neo_wales]

Originally Posted by spiney2

that's the clarke novel. not the screenplay. and not at all what kubrick made of it ........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpr...zsche_allegory

Yeah. That's right! There's an entire wiki article on "interpretations of 2001" .......

Its how Clarke described the film when interviewed, he could not grasp why people looked for 'meanings' that just were not there.