Am I the only one that found 2001 to be a terrible movie? In my opinion, it's pretense at it's worst, with twenty minutes of substance stretched to over two hours of "Oooh, look how pretty the sets are!", with the horrible habit of blaring classical music every five seconds (because classical music = smart, right?). And everyone kept gushing to me about the ending, hyping it up as if it was some grand thing that was open to so much interpretation. Turns out it was just either an obvious metaphor for the next logical step of human intellectual development (i.e. enlightenment, wherein someone sees their whole existence before them, and how it is both distinguishable and indistinguishable from the rest of existence), or if you look at it as a literalist he gets abducted by aliens and shot into space as a fetus. That's two interpretations, and hell even horrible movies like Frankenhooker have people debating over two or so interpretations of the meaning of the ending (hilariously enough). It had some cool scenes, and I get what Kubrick was trying to do, but he could have done it much more effectively if he'd cut out the filler. So yeah, that's how I feel about 2001. Non-existant characters, decent (but far too sparse) dialogue, pretty sets/effects, and a well meaning plot bogged down by wearing twenty coats of pretense.