2001:space odyssey did you get the ending??

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thugfella

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i know the movie was made in 1968...pretty good to be made back then...but i didnt get the ending..and i didnt think it was good as what most people on here are saying the parts i mostly didnt understand was when the dude goes to jupiter and then im guessing the planet exploded? then somehow he is in this room and he is really old then he see's that black thing..then he turns to a baby or a alien? and he comes to earth....anyways i thought someone can explain it to me thanks..
 
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spacechump

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Read the book. It explains the transition in much more detail. Once at Jupiter (Saturn in the book) Bowman takes the pod direction <i>into</i> the monolith (no the planet doesn't explode...that happens in 2010). He essentially enters a wormhole that takes him to a place that was prepared for a human visitor by whatever race had built the monoliths. There is transforms in stages into what what is known as the starchild...a being of incredible power and he returns to earth....I have simplified it pretty heavily.
 
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mattblack

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Nothing wrong with your simplification. Clarke himself pointed out once that an Astronaut going through the Stargate and the things after would be like taking a caveman, tying him up, throwing him in the backseat of a Taxi and driving him at speed past the lights of Broadway or downtown Las Vegas. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p>One Percent of Federal Funding For Space: America <strong><em><u>CAN</u></em></strong> Afford it!!  LEO is a <strong><em>Prison</em></strong> -- It's time for a <em><strong>JAILBREAK</strong></em>!!</p> </div>
 
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brad14146

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First, the fetus is a metaphor there isn't really a fetus floating in space. What is it a metaphor of, rebirth of course. Now to have a good understanding of the ending you need to understand the movie as a whole. I the beginning we start with primitive apes that out of necessity learn how to use tools. Throughout our evolution we expand these tools and create better, more advance tools. In 2001 we are at are peak we've our most advance tool ever--HAL 9000. Our tools become to advance for us and begin to take control. HAL kills all but one member of the crew--Dave. Dave stops HAL our most advance tool by using the simplest of tools.... The screwdriver. Dave separates himself from his tools, but is now trap in space. Dave embarks on a final journey which is death. He finds himself in a room (which is not a real room) facing an older version of himself. Now a very important part is coming up. The old man sits down to eat (last supper) and knocks his wine glass off the table. The glass breaks but the wine remains. This is symbolic of death the vessel dies but the spirit remains. This brings us to the final scene with the fetus in space. The fetus as mention before is a metaphor for rebirth. What is being reborn is opening for interpretation. Is it Dave or something else? Personally I feel it is a rebirth of the human race to there next evolutionary stage. Hope this helps I tried to keep it simple and short so there is a bunch left out, but I feel I got my point across.
 
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rhodan

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<i>I the beginning we start with primitive apes that out of necessity learn how to use tools.</i><br /><br />Well, the book was pretty clear about this; the primitive apes - or primitive man rather, apewise they didn't seem primitive at all <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> - didn't learn how to use tools out of necessity, but because the alien monolith brainwashed them, lit their intelligence so to speak. Only after they have been in contact with the monolith do they begin to use tools, the irony being their first tool is a weapon.
 
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tom_hobbes

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Yes. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#339966"> I wish I could remember<br /> But my selective memory<br /> Won't let me</font><font size="2" color="#99cc00"> </font><font size="3" color="#339966"><font size="2">- </font></font><font size="1" color="#339966">Mark Oliver Everett</font></p><p> </p> </div>
 
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aaron38

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Without reading the book I would admit that the ending would not make much sense. Or, like an abstract painting, could easily be interpreted many different ways.<br /><br />However, my favorite way to watch the ending of 2001 is to turn off the sound and play Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Start it at the title card Jupiter and beyond the infinite. The wormhole is quite a trip.<br /><br />
 
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wmdragon

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I thought that only worked with the Wizard of Oz <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#993366"><em>The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.</em> <br /> --- James Clerk Maxwell</font></p> </div>
 
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zavvy

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You really should read the book.<br /><br />It makes much more sense..
 
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vogon13

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Those were the days. <br /><br /><br /><br />sigh<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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telfrow

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<font color="yellow">When I first saw the film in 1968, I remember all the hippies in the theater getting stoned during the intermission or popping their marijuana brownies in order to be "ready" for the wormhole lightshow! </font><br /><br />Hey...that was <b>me</b>! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>
 
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arit

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Uhmmm... All this time I thought the monoliths were some sort of Von Newman devices... <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <span style="font-size:6pt;color:#009999;font-family:Verdana"><span style="font-size:6pt;color:#009999"><font face="Times New Roman"><strong><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#009999;font-family:'CourierNew'"><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#009999;font-family:'CourierNew'">"We will either find a way, or make one!" - Hannibal<br /> </span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#009999;font-family:'CourierNew'"><br /></span></strong></p></span></strong></strong></font></span></span> </div>
 
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beartooth

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Those were the days. <br /><br />Just for that I'm not going to let you have the concrete for your next bunker level! So there!
 
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vogon13

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I'll need quite a bit more cement for the detention level. Vivisection amphitheater finished in 2003.<br /><br />Got the home theater (in the bunker?) finished. 3D 360 degree holographic view pod, total immersion physio-sound, and Odorama! Earthian technology will not be the equal for 25 years. (tough getting the remote programmed though)<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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lunatio_gordin

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I had to read 2010 before it made sense. I didn't realize he came back. maybe i missed something.
 
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beartooth

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What about the Vogons Throne Room? We simply MUST have pictures of this most sacred of all places.
 
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CalliArcale

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I didn't get the ending until I read the book. I like the way the movie does it very much, but it makes no sense whatsoever without the book. Rumor has it that there was originally narration, but Kubrick cut it. Pity. So what I recommend to everybody wanting to understand the movie is this:<br /><br />1) Watch the movie.<br />2) Read the book.<br />3) Watch the movie again.<br /><br />I like the movie better in many ways; it really is beautiful. But it's a bit incomprehensible. The book will also make the beginning make more sense. (There's a lot going on with the apes that you don't really get because there's no dialog or narration.) Be advised, there are a few differences mainly due to technical challenges in the SFX arena:<br /><br />* The monolith in the book is a transparent crystal. This proved impossible to film, and always ended up looking wrong. So Kubrick had the prop painted matte black. This solved the problem, and actually made the monolith look weirder in some respects. Clarke once wrote about stumbling upon the prop stashed incongruously in the back of a studio and getting quite a shock at how unearthly it looked -- much better than the see-through attempt.<br /><br />* In the book, HAL goes nuts at Jupiter, but the mission continues on to Saturn. A monolith is waiting on the moon Iapetus (which Clarke spells "Japetus", a legitimate alternate spelling of the ancient god after whom the moon is named). This is the monolith Dave encounters. In the movie, the monolith is orbiting Jupiter. This was done because the SFX team couldn't get Saturn's rings to look right. But Jupiter looked fantastic, so they stuck with that. (How did they do the planets? They painted them carefully by hand on big glass circles, which were then illuminated from behind.)<br /><br />* In the movie, there is absolutely no dialog after Dave disconnects HAL. But in the book, he's got some more dialog: as he enters the monolith (that's what's going on at the end), he's transmi <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
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CalliArcale

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Okay, now for a short explanation of what in the Sam Hill was going on in 2001. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />BEGINNING:<br /><br />An ape named Moonwatcher leads a tribe of apes that is not doing well. They're being outcompeted by a stronger group and not getting enough water or food. Then a monolith shows up. They are all astonished and go to check it out, but Moonwatcher is the boldest. He actually touches it. It does things to their brains that they can't understand. Then they all go to sleep. When they wake, none of them remembers seeing the monolith. (Unbeknownst to them, it has gone to the Moon, or signalled an identical monolith sitting on the Moon near what will one day be known as Tycho Crater. I don't quite recall which.) But after some of the usual scrabbling, Moonwatcher starts looking at some bones a little differently. He suddenly gets an inspiration: it can be used as a weapon. They take bones and use them as weapons to bring down prey. They now have full bellies. The next step is water. When they reach the water hole, the stronger tribe is already there and warns them off. But Moonwatcher's group is working differently now, and kills some of the others. The rest flee in terror. They have become tool users; evolution has been pushed down a different path.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the monolith on the moon begins a long wait. It buries itself, or is buried by its creators, and waits to be discovered.....<br /><br />MOON, 3 MILLION YEARS LATER:<br /><br />Dr Floyd has been sent to the Moon on a top-secret mission. The cover story is that there's a quarantine on Clavius Base, but not everybody is buying the story; at the space station, a group of Russian scientists try to tease the truth out of him. When he arrives, he briefs a team on the real story: an alien artifact has been found. They're calling it Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One, or TMA-1. A survey team found an inexplicably strong magnetic field and started digging to see wha <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
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JonClarke

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Nice summary, except I think that at the end of the book 2001 the nuclear warhead was directed against the arrival of the starchild. The juxtaposition of "alarms were flashing across the great radar screens" and "a slumbering cargo of death had awoken and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit" points clearly to this. The starchild detonates it although "its neeble energies could pose no possible harm to him". In 2010 nobody admits to owning the bomb, it is jokingly referred to as the Vatican's.<br /><br />Jon<br /><br />Jon <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>
 
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5stone10

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About the dialogue in 2001 - Kubrick was a master of minimalist or lack of dialogue. In almost all Kubrick movies he conveys a moral ambiguity combined with, usually, a banal or non-narrative dialogue. The effect to me has always been fascinating - these are two of the main characteristics which make Kubrick films distinctly his.<br /><br />Lack of conversation is used most evidently by Kubrick in 2001. My understanding is that he intentionally removed much of the intended dialogue in the movie. Two examples of classic Kubrick dialogue occur in the 'TMA1 Act'. One where Floyd is en route to the TMA1 site and comments on the sandwiches "getting better and better all the time", as well as saying with his mouth full while observing one of the Monolith photos - "I don't suppose you know what the damn thing is?" Also Floyd's speech to his collegues upon arriving at TMA1 - where he explains the need for a cover story in an overly 'canned' and 'wooden' speech wonderfully conveys the sense of foreboding about what might be discovered about the Monolith. <br /><br />About the only other director IMO who can compare to Kubick in terms of minimalism would be Clint Eastwood. I'm reminded of one of the opening scenes of 'High Plains Drifter' where with one word of dialogue - the word "Room" - Eastwood was able to immediately convey to the viewer the type of character he was playing [as well as directing]. I thought that Ridley Scott in 'Alien' was also able to convey a lot with few words of dialogue, to name another example.
 
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