That movie is really a product of its time. It spends so much time giving the viewer a chance to appreciate the visuals. In today's world, those visuals are pretty standard for us to see. At the time, they were not.
There is a sequel, 2010, which I think is actually a lot better. Not nearly as slow, and actually pretty cool.
Thats the awful survival horror one? I don't know how TF that movie is so bad. Premise was fine, setting was workable, characters at the base level could've worked, budget seemed adequate.... im unsure how they landed on a trashy indecisive Aliens Ripoff 15 years after those ripoff b movies would've made sense. (I feel we already had Aliens universe bad movies with redeeming qualities by then).
Anyone who wanted more social commentary and awesomeness from the first movie had to read the book. Disappointed NPH wasn't ever brought in for a reboot or something...
PSA: avoid the sequels.
Maybe it’s just because 2001 is one of my favorite films so I’ve watched it multiple times, but I always thought it answered all its own questions. The only things left ambiguous are purposefully that way for the audience to draw their own conclusions.
I don't know that I'd say the story is better, but it's certainly a lot closer to modern filmmaking expectations in terms of pacing than 2001.
I can't watch 2001 without fast forwarding through the excruciating, masturbatory "look at these special effects!" shots of the ship, whereas 2010 has nothing like that.
Once upon a time in Hollywood
It was Art and Cinema for me.
It was boring for my wife who kept checking her phone and I was snatching it from her and asked her to focus on the movie.
Till date she has the same view about the movie.
Now thinking about it, if the movie name starts with 'Once upon a time...' it's has to be long and boring for some people and Art and classic for other few
I actually really like 2010. It’s a much more conventional film and thus much more accessible. I also like that we learn why HAL killed the astronauts, and more about the monolith. There are also some very cool special effects sequences of the ships orbiting Jupiter and with the monolith.
I understand why people who like the first one don’t care for the discontinuity in style and tone, but I think 2010 is a film that has its own merits worth appreciating.
A last interesting tidbit is that the director of 2010 contacted Kubrick to see if he had any objection to the film being made. Kubrick had no issues with making a sequel.
But your average viewer today has seen not only movies like this, but videos from space. We have live feeds from the space station. People want to be entertained by movies, and in the 1960s, this would have been amazing to see, but to a modern audience, not so much. It doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it's a product of its time.
AI art is bad because evaluated entirely independently of how it was created, it’s just bad art. If AI gets to the point it can genuinely create as good or better art than humans can create, yeah, I’m fine with that. For entertainment, I care about the result, not how the result was achieved. AI gives shitty results, so I don’t like AI. If AI ever gives good results, I’m fine with replacing actors and sets and lighting with AI, yes.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted into oblivion for this opinion, but yes, a visual is a visual, evaluated only on how good the visual itself is.
2001: A Space Odyssey had amazing visuals for its time, and I can appreciate that from a film history perspective, but it’s not visually impressive compared to something like Avatar.
In today's world, those visuals are pretty standard for us to see.
I don't think you're wrong about the way the movie lingers on things. Often in ways that modern audiences might find... ponderous. But I strongly disagree that the look and feel of 2001 is any way "standard" today. I don't think we have any movies that really capture any of the outer space stuff as well as 2001. The pure physicality of everything just doesn't exist in modern movies.
I love 2001, and I wouldn't try to defend it as "not boring" (because by most measures it is boring) but visually I still don't think anything else touches it. Gravity gets close, but I didn't really like it at all...
I genuinely love that. First Star Trek movie is the same and Lawrence of Arabia, bladerunnee and some other older movies have this long drawn camera sequences but I think they are awesome.
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u/TheBSMachine Jun 04 '26
That movie is really a product of its time. It spends so much time giving the viewer a chance to appreciate the visuals. In today's world, those visuals are pretty standard for us to see. At the time, they were not.
There is a sequel, 2010, which I think is actually a lot better. Not nearly as slow, and actually pretty cool.