![\"metropolis\"](\"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/metropolis.jpeg\")
<\/a>The vast majority of films that try to depict the future, particularly anything with a science fiction slant, fail miserably both in dramatics and accuracy.\u00a0 Fritz Lang\u2019s Metropolis <\/i>(1927) shows a bleak world of labor unrest and a severely divided culture.\u00a0 HG Wells\u2019 Things to Come <\/i>(1936) foretells a second World War that is stunningly accurate, but Wells\u2019 war lasts for 30 years and degrades into global tribal conflict, a worldwide Afghanistan.\u00a0 The triumphant moon landing does not occur until 2036 and is technically incorrect in almost every way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Learning from his mistakes in Metropolis<\/i>, Fritz Lang tried again with Woman in the Moon <\/i>(1929), which is amazingly accurate up until the rocket lands on the moon.\u00a0 This is, no doubt, largely because Lang hired advisors from the scientific community, many of whom went on to work on the German V-2 rockets and, later, the American Apollo program.\u00a0 Similarly, producer George Pal hired only top people for his Destination Moon <\/i>(1950), which, despite some very hokey dramatics, holds up pretty well.<\/p>\n But 2001 <\/i>is in a class by itself, and always has been.\u00a0 Novelist Arthur C. Clarke simply projected the American space program forward into the future, making the assumption that we would maintain a constant level of funding.\u00a0 That was his only major mistake, because the Apollo program was not the beginning of a slow ramp of progress, but a bubble of innovation in a sea of lethargy.<\/p>\n 2001<\/i>\u2019s gleaming spaceships, rotating space stations, and moon colonies never came to pass, not because they were impossible or impractical, but because we did not care to pursue them.\u00a0 Where Lang and Wells had been overly pessimistic and lacked technical vision, Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick miss the mark only because America decided to cut back space exploration.<\/p>\n Kubrick employed groundbreaking techniques at every point in 2001<\/i>.\u00a0 It was the first time in history that a movie based in space was truly convincing.\u00a0 George Pal\u2019s 1950s epics had come close, as did Forbidden Planet <\/i>(1956), but 2001 <\/i>topped them all.\u00a0 It was the start of a career for Douglas Trumbull, who has continued as an innovator in the field of special effects.<\/p>\n After 2001<\/i>\u2019s triumphs, the movie industry went back to doing cheesy, unconvincing special effects, simply because it was too expensive to do them the way Kubrick had done.\u00a0 It was easier to invoke the spirit of Flash Gordon <\/i>with ray guns and buzzing rockets than to do the stately effects that Kubrick produced.\u00a0 2001 <\/i>represents a gigantic step sideways, out of the mainstream of cinema.\u00a0 It was not until George Lucas made the process more economical with computer-controlled model work that the same degree of conviction came back to movies.\u00a0 Lucas managed to combine the fun of Flash Gordon <\/i>with the more convincing feel of 2001<\/i>, and he did it without being a budget buster.<\/p>\n From a dramatic standpoint, 2001 <\/i>represents another giant step sideways, a step that has not been replicated.\u00a0 Kubrick strove to make his film visually engaging with a minimum of dialogue.\u00a0 At many points, Kubrick\u2019s directorial technique recalls silent cinema.\u00a0 He challenges the viewer to keep up with the story.\u00a0 It is not brainless and transparent in the way that many comic-book movies are today.\u00a0 2001 <\/i>demands constant attention and participation from the viewer.<\/p>\n 2001<\/i>\u2019s uniqueness in film history does not make it culturally irrelevant.\u00a0 The film depicts many key innovations that did come to pass.\u00a0 Scientist Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) flies to the moon in a shuttle not dissimilar to the later space shuttle.\u00a0 He makes a video telephone call to his family.\u00a0 Astronauts Poole and Bowman (Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea) use computerized tablets that parallel modern iPads.\u00a0 In fact, the similarity has been used as a complex legal defense in a lawsuit between Apple and Samsung (http:\/\/io9.com\/5833739\/samsung-uses-2001-a-space-odyssey-as-prior-art-in-apples-ipad-lawsuit<\/a>)<\/p>\n We still have no modern computers that talk and interact like HAL, voiced by Douglas Rain.\u00a0 Rain\u2019s creepy, emotionless delivery is one of the most memorable in the history of cinema. It was the inspiration for Anthony Hopkins\u2019 eerie portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs <\/i>(1991).\u00a0 Apple\u2019s new Siri functionality on the iPhones comes closest to HAL, but Siri hardly seems as threatening as a room-sized computer that controls all of the life-support systems in a gigantic spaceship.\u00a0 Siri also bumbles and misinterprets in a way that HAL never did.<\/p>\n Ironically, HAL has the greatest amount of dialogue and screen time of any of the characters in 2001<\/i>.\u00a0 Many of the humans are denied closeups and establishing stories, making 2001 <\/i>feel cool and distant toward most of its key characters.\u00a0 The story <\/i>is not about individual humans but about the larger class of humanity itself.\u00a0 It is HAL\u2019s conflicted view of humanity that causes the plot to move forward.\u00a0 The mysterious monoliths seem to nurture and encourage humanity to go off and pursue new horizons.<\/p>\n Ultimately, 2001 <\/i>is not outdated, but simply a story of a future that never occurred.\u00a0 Its use of sparse dialogue and deeply technological themes foretells a cinema that never occurred, or an alternate universe.\u00a0 After more than 40 years, there still is no other film quite like 2001<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Film readers: I wrote this for another blog as a guest, but they didn’t use it. \u00a0But I can’t just trash a useful blog posting, so you get to read it now! People from Generation Y, often called Millennials, are being lumped into a group by our media.\u00a0 They are said to have a … Continue reading “2001: A Sideways Odyssey”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,4],"tags":[135,137,136,138,139],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-views-and-reviews","tag-135","tag-film","tag-future","tag-millennials","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1917,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions\/1917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a>