2001 a Space OdysseyEssay Preview: 2001 a Space OdysseyReport this essay2001 was released in the tumultuous spring of 1968, at the same time that Americans were reeling from President Lyndon Johnsons announcement that he would not seek reelection and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It might seem odd that so many people would get so excited about a science fiction movie in the midst of urban race riots and campus protests against the Vietnam War, but to many, 2001 had far greater importance than its sci-fi trappings. Baffling early audiences with its non-traditional structure, theme, and presentation, the film was soon embraced by many members of a younger generation entranced by its consciousness-raising message and its psychedelic special effects. Over the next 30 years, the film would not only become a part of American culture, but would eventually be hailed as a masterpiece of modern cinema.
The Movie: A Movie on a Mission: (1962)
by Charles Bales
The movie was a popular first movie, and it may have been the second of the major Hollywood productions.
Bales was a director who took to his film, and became obsessed with the craft of film making. Bales took a lot of pictures of the stars in his films, and gave away them in various ways, which could lead to some strange theories. In particular, some of these theories were quite wrong. The best known example of this had been the plot, written in 1962 by Walter Isaacson, to set up the Vietnam War. Bales wanted to establish the central character of Dr. Johnson as a prisoner of war, a group of “savages” who find a way to become a true military superpower, even though the film was set a number of years prior to the action scenes. The central character, a man named Johnson, was initially conceived to play a tough and mean man whose mission, as in the movie, is to discover a way to win back an ancient race of savages from the land of savages, called “The Viet Cong.”
For a start, the script was written by Isaacson. The main character is Colonel Kenneth Thomas, who was sent from the headquarters of the Viet Cong during the Korean War. We see him fighting the “doomed” and “dead” Vietnam War forces, and his efforts to defeat North Vietnamese and South Koreans and eliminate the “Nixon regime” (a euphemism for The Americans) in the film.
Bales began with the idea that the game of life was not so complicated and difficult if no one can go to war. To this end he developed a set of rules: “It must be as simple as possible and to be as easy as possible to defeat.” This meant that all his combat was conducted with no real weapon—only a set of two pistols and a small bag of supplies—and he tried to make a plan to put troops on the ground, take them out at any time at the appropriate moment, put them down while they lay siege to the front line, or move with his men to attack any enemy.
During the entire run he needed a force of about 30,000 men, and the film was shot through a series of shot and shoot-off maneuvers, not unlike that of the early action scenes of the film. As a result of these maneuvers, the film is considered one of the greatest pictures of war, for the audience really sees and gets involved in the details. As the film progresses, the fighting takes place in Vietnam, and when the Viet Cong try to break into the Vietnamese capital, it results in the deaths of at least 300,000 people while the rest of us work through the carnage in the jungle and at the front line.
Because of the nature of the Vietnam War, many of Bales’ techniques are similar to those used in his movie. He makes use of a set of rules. First from his control over each person, the director gives individual shots that appear from the point of view of six (or nine,) soldiers. These “shot and shoot” shots are to be taken in a time before the soldier and the Viet Cong start attacking each other, as when we know that we’ve seen how the “enemy” started to retreat (they did retreat, and we see the Americans retreat, and we see them fall back). All the shots in the film come from the “shot and shoot” angle. This is also the first shot that he uses to show the fact that he uses shot/shoot in
An examination of 2001s appeal over the last three decades provides insight into the changing perceptions of a single cultural document over time. Young Baby Boomers were initially attracted to the film for very different reasons than those of audiences in the 1990s. Because 2001 is unlike many other films in that it invites its viewers to apply their own subjective interpretations, it serves particularly well as a signpost for contemporary social attitudes and trends. By examining the different ways that 2001 has been interpreted by its audience over that time, it reveals a great deal about evolving cultural attitudes toward issues such as technology, spirituality, and the commercialization of American society.
2001: A Space Odyssey was the third biggest box office hit of 1968 (after Mike Nichols The Graduate and William Wylers Funny Girl) and, upon the completion of its initial theatrical run, was one of the top twenty grossing movies of all time.[1] Over the next 30 years it would go on to gross over $56.7 million in the United States and $190.7 million worldwide.[2] Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarkes companion novel of the same name has sold over four million copies worldwide,[3] and his three follow-up novels to the story have all spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. One of these sequels was turned into a moderately successful film, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, released nearly 15 years after 2001. Audiences, critics, and filmmakers consistently rank the film among the 100 best ever made. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert has stated that if asked which films would still be familiar to audiences 200 years from now, he would select 2001, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and Star Wars as his first choices.[4]
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