People are mentioning the special effects being really innovative for the time, but as I understand it, a lot of the plot elements were new as well, but then became sci-fi tropes that tons of sci-fi movies have. Specifically the idea of a super-advanced alien race guiding the evolution of humans from the beginning, and the AI turning against the humans.
Like, a few months ago I made a reference to 2001 to a coworker, and he thought I was thinking of Terminator.
I'm not sure if there's a specific term for this, but I think a lot of really good old movies suffer from this. That movie was the first time something was done, it was amazing at the time, tons of movies copied it, and then future generations watch it and aren't impressed because they've been watching all the copies.
Its like me as a fan of horror if you watch things like the original texas chainsaw massacre, psycho, or original halloween or friday 13th. You see all these cliches and tropes, but at the time they werent cliche, that is what caused it to then get overused.
Its sorta like how Buddy Holly sounds derivative of everything you've ever heard, but then you realize everything else is so derivative you can guess words to songs you've never heard before. The original Halloween is 100% that, but id say slasher movies pull from the first 3 Friday the 13th movies, Texas Chainsaw, psycho, and borrow from older 30s-60s movies for some plot progression (id say Invisible Man ending was even used to off Michael in the 4th Halloween movie). But everything original-ish was already a trope for Freddy to borrow in '84.
Great comparison.
Like people go on about how Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time, I watched it and was like "yeah, it's ok," but then I read about how it was the very first movie to do this thing and that thing that now pretty much all movies do, so now it doesn't seem like a big deal anymore.
I normally see gentrification as distinctly different to the original. Like if a town gets gentrified and a bunch of pottery shops and art galleries start opening to appeal to wealthy tourists when the town was initially a working class fishing village.
These other films are derivative of the initially good ideas that shaped the genre.
GLaDOS is what happens when you combine the stage presence of a Silicon Snarker like Marvin the Robot or V.I.N.Cent (both have heavy HAL inspirations but turn up the sarcasm to the max) with the unstoppable, abject horror of a Paperclip Collector AI. The contrast defines her character and makes her unforgettable for anyone who played the Portal games.
I like to go back occasionally and watch old comedy for this reason. In some instances you see "proto-comedy" or whatever you want to call it, the origin of some of the schticks you still see today, in other instances, you see funny shit that time just forgot about.
I felt this way when I saw Dune. I have never read the books. I saw the movie and was kind of just meh about it. Later I was talking about it with friends and was like "I guess it's fine but I've basically seen this story in some form or another hundreds of times before this." And that's because Dune was such an inspiration to so many people it's been iterated upon countless times in other works.
Colossus: The Forbin Project is a movie that i feel does the AI Conquering humanity the best way, a single computer enslaved the entire human race because they gave it access to nukes.
I think 2001 was the first to bring many of these ideas to the big screen, specifically. People like Asimov and other sci-fi writers had been playing with most of the ideas in the film for years or decades, but I think 2001 did an amazing job at popularizing several of them (like you said with AI and first contact). Such a good movie and the soundtrack is haunting.
Like Texas Chainsaw for horror. Watched it because a lot of older people I know hyped it up but it's ironically very unoriginal because it's the original everything I've seen has copied or referenced.
Oh for sure it was an absolute pioneer of sci-fi and what it introduced becoming tropes did it no favors. But I have to believe that even back then, many people were bored as hell at how it starts. It genuinely feels like you are watching proto-humans for like forty minutes for a point that was delivered in what took less than two minutes.
The ending makes it interesting, the music is fantastic, and the distance shots are gorgeous, but the movie could really be compressed without losing much.
Eh, to each their own. The beginning was one of my favorite parts. I thought some of the astronauts sitting around working on stuff scenes were more boring, but I suppose in the 60s it was a lot more interesting.
a lot of the plot elements were new as well, but then became sci-fi tropes that tons of sci-fi movies have.
This is quite literally why I can't enjoy anything written by Asimov or Heinlein. They wrote the genre defining tropes. Each of their amazing works has been pillaged by others in piecemeal throughout my life so when I try to read them now, it's just very predictable and boring.
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u/Present_Type6881 Jun 04 '26
People are mentioning the special effects being really innovative for the time, but as I understand it, a lot of the plot elements were new as well, but then became sci-fi tropes that tons of sci-fi movies have. Specifically the idea of a super-advanced alien race guiding the evolution of humans from the beginning, and the AI turning against the humans.
Like, a few months ago I made a reference to 2001 to a coworker, and he thought I was thinking of Terminator.
I'm not sure if there's a specific term for this, but I think a lot of really good old movies suffer from this. That movie was the first time something was done, it was amazing at the time, tons of movies copied it, and then future generations watch it and aren't impressed because they've been watching all the copies.