Keir Dullea, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” 1968 MGM / The Hollywood Archive
Released in 1968, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has been inspiring audiences and filmmakers for half a century. Stanley Kubrick’s mind-blowing meditation on the inherent dangers (and wonders) of technology, the limitless vistas of space and the future of the human race is that rare motion picture that seems to reveal more with each successive viewing – particularly when seen in its original wide-screen format.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of this seminal film, Warner Bros. Pictures is releasing an “unrestored” 70mm print of Kubrick’s groundbreaking science fiction epic in select theaters. A true photochemical film recreation, this print was struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects or revisionist edits. This is the unrestored film, which recreates the cinematic event that audiences experienced 50 years ago.
Christopher Nolan, a longtime fan of 2001, was a driving force behind this new print. “2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is one of the greatest and most radical cinematic experiences of all time,” the acclaimed director said. “I consider it a great privilege to be involved in offering that experience to a new generation of moviegoers in its original analog glory.”
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY– Trivia according to IMDB
There is no dialogue in the first 25 minutes of the movie (ending when a stewardess speaks at 25:38), nor in the last 23 minutes (excluding end credits). With these two lengthy sections and other shorter ones, there are around 88 dialogue-free minutes in the movie.
An early draft of the script had narration.
The only Oscar won by the film was for special visual effects. It was awarded to Stanley Kubrick–and was his sole win from 13 nominations. However, while Kubrick designed much of the look of the film and its effects, many of the technicians involved felt it was wrong for him to receive the sole credit. Following this controversy, the Academy tightened its eligibility rules.
In the premiere screening of the film, 241 people walked out of the theater, including Rock Hudson, who said, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?” Arthur C. Clarke once said, “If you understand ‘2001’ completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.”
The last movie made about men on the moon before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked there in real life. More than 40 years later there are still conspiracy theorists who insist that this is not a coincidence, claiming that all footage of Armstrong’s voyage was a hoax film directed by Stanley Kubrick using leftover scenes and props from this movie.
The initial idea for the device that would eventually become the black monolith involved a transparent screen, which would show the australopithecines how to use objects as tools and weapons. Arthur C. Clarke later dismissed it as ‘too naive’. Also, the H.A.L. 9000 computer started out as a mobile robot, but as Clarke feared that this view of artificial intelligence would become hopelessly out-dated in the coming decades, the omnipresent red eye was conceived.
The entire film contains only 205 special effects shots, compared to 350 in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) and over 2,200 such shots in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005).
Stanley Kubrick had several tons of sand imported, washed and painted for the moon surface scenes.
Although HAL9000 is depicted in the film as an expert chess player, the actual on-set computer was a very weak chess player. This caused much amusement for Stanley Kubrick, himself an expert player, who would routinely beat the primitive automaton, and called it a “bumbling pisswit”.
HAL 9000 never once says, “Good Morning, Dave,” despite this line being one of his most recognized quotations.
Rather than using bluescreen, Stanley Kubrick filmed all the model shots against black backgrounds and required the compositing work to be done by a team of British animators painting travelling mattes by hand frame-by-frame to mask out each element. When production ended, most of the animators signed onto Yellow Submarine (1968) in order to work on something colourful after spending two years painting little black blobs.
Filming the special effects shots took 18 months at a cost of $6.5 million (the film’s total budget was $10.5 million). Stanley Kubrick was determined to make every effects shot look extremely realistic, something previous science-fiction films rarely bothered to do.
Favorite movie of Christopher Nolan, who directed Interstellar (2014), which has multiple similarities to this film–for example the inside of black holes in both films.
The only scene from the film not shot in the studio was the “skull-smashing” sequence in which Moonwatcher realizes that he can use a bone as a weapon. That was shot in a field a few hundred yards from the studio on a small platform. This allowed for a low-angled shot with a vast expanse of sky in the background, though it also required a halt in shooting whenever a plane flew overhead. They almost ran out of animal skulls as Stanley Kubrick shot take after take. The final shot of the sequence was finally achieved when Kubrick walked back to the studio tossing bones into the air and filming their flight with a hand-held camera.
To create the facial make-up for the australopithecines, technicians first made a plastic skull substructure with a hinged jaw. After making molds of the actors’ faces, the make-up men applied rubber skin to their faces and added hair one strand at a time, as if they were making a wig. Lip movements were achieved by using false teeth and tongues to hide the actors’ real mouths. This freed the actors to use their tongues to operate remote controls that moved the lips. Only the actors’ eyes were visible, and the masks were made up right to the eye-lids.
Floyd and everyone else on the Moon walk around completely normally. The Apollo landings later revealed that a loping gait was required in the Moon’s 1/6 gravity.
The scene on board the spacecraft taking Dr. Floyd to the moon in which the flight attendant walks up the side of the ship’s interior and appears to be upside down was filmed with a stationary camera bolted to a room set that revolved, so the actress was always on the bottom but it was she, not the set, that appeared to change position. The technique was invented by silent-film comedian Buster Keaton for the final scene of his 1924 film “The Navigator,” in which he and his girlfriend (Kathryn McGuire) are rescued from a derelict ship by a submarine that turns over underwater. The same system was used by Fred Astaire for his solo dance to the song “You’re All the World to Me” in “Royal Wedding” (1951).
The bulging ‘eye’ of Discovery One’s infamous computer was a Nikkor 8mm f/8 fisheye lens provided by the Nikon Corporation of Japan.
One of the only MGM films in which Leo the Lion does not roar at the beginning.
Foresaw the Apple iPad tablet design which looks amazingly similar to the portable tablet-like devices Bowman and Poole use to watch BBC news during their meal.
Is considered by many to be the greatest science-fiction film of all time.
Having HAL read lips was Gary Lockwood’s idea, when Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were stumped on a way for HAL to get wind of the astronauts’ plan to deactivate him.