Film: 2001 - A Space Odyssey Directed by Stanley Kubrick

I watched this film to compare to 2010 close together. Nice to have the chance to skip forward in scenes that are a bit too arty and probably only worked on the big screen.

This film is a lot more polished, watching again having read the various interpretations over the years was interesting.

The initial part of the film contains no dialog and depicts earth and the apes living on the planet. I think the idea here is that they are dying out until the unseen push provided by the obelisk that suddenly appears, and seems to give them basic weapon and tool skills.

The film then goes straight into 2001, with man in orbit now around their planet. A magnetic anomaly is found on the moon, and excavation finds the obelisk buried. Something happens on further investigation that causes a deafening noise and radio signal to be sent directed at Jupiter.

The Discovery mission is then 18 months later travelling to Jupiter to investigate, all in secret preparation - scientists in hibernation aboard. Two crew members run the ship along with the HAL 9000 computer.

HAL has been given the real reason for the mission, to be revealed on arrival at Jupiter - but this somehow makes him paranoid and fearing the humans will make a mess of the mission. He proceeds by faking failures of the AE-35 part of the antenna in order to systematically kill the crew members.

The surviving astronaut deactivates HAL after forcing his way back into the ship from EVA. But now the Jupiter obelisk has been discovered - he goes to investigate.

Passing through what appears to be some sort of time distortion he arrives in a furnished room, and then we see scenes of himself ageing quickly before death.

The final scene is of a unborn baby overlooking the planet earth, a story of evolution assisted by an unseen influence.