Oriphiel

That's not fair. The movie never leans in favor of the monoliths being strictly literal objects placed by aliens, or metaphors. Again, you're using the novel to try and justify your interpretation of the movie, which is perfectly fine if that's what you enjoy, but you can't demand me to have the same preferences or interpretations. The movie and the novel are two seperate entities, and whether they are to be put together is up to each individual audience member.

I was making a point. The answer to each question asked in this thread so far has been a matter of interpretation, and yet you keep insinuating that there is only one way of looking at the 2001 canon (that aliens were responsible), and that the novel gives concrete answers (when in reality it is simply the elaboration of Clarke's personal take on the story). By that logic, should fans of The Last Airbender be forced to accept Shyamalon's recent movie into the canon? It's up to every fan to decide for themselves.

But there are different versions; the movie and the novel. If both Clarke and Kubrick wanted their collective work to be viewed as a whole, why did they both end up creating different stories altogether? Each was dissatisfied with the other's interpretation; why else would Kubrick feel the need to deviate so far from Clarke's idea of "aliens", as well as Clarke feeling the need to write a novel after the fact clarifying his specific version?

I'll be blunt; we're discussing the movie, not the novel. You bringing it up every five seconds is like jumping in front of a movie reviewer and yelling "Read the book first!" The movie reviewer is there to review the movie, which should be capable of standing on it's own. We can talk about the novel some other time, preferably when I've actually had the chance to read it.

That's great, but again, we're discussing the movie. Maybe you're right, and the book really will help me to like the movie, but that is a different discussion for a different time. I'm here strictly to elaborate on how I felt about the movie after watching it.

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Chula Vista

Ok. Fair enough. Did you know that people walked out of the theater during it's initial run? People were pissed wondering, what the hell is this about? A lot of critics ravaged the movie in 1968 upon its release. A lot of those same critics now consider it among the greatest cinematic achievements of all time.

Kubrick was a complex man - understatement of the millennium. He made movies that he knew wouldn't even be close to be fully dissected for decades after their release. He understood Clarke's vision and then turned it into a mind f*ck for the ages. The fact that you and I are having this discussion 47 years after the movie first came out only cements what he hoped to achieve with his vision of Clarke's story.

The monolith/screen aspect ratio is fact. He sang to the audience in the theater as a preface to the monolith singing in the movie.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Oriphiel

Sure, Kubrik's influence is massive, and 2001 in many ways gave birth to the modern sci-fi movie, but honestly I could talk about any movie like this. I mean, I don't exactly have the best taste in movies that I consider "good" anyway, since out of all the movies I've seen, this is still one of my favorites:

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