2001

I went into Stanley Kubrick's epic only knowing that it had been parodied everywhere from South Park, The Simpsons, 2 or 3 Futurama episodes, and probably Dexter's Lab to pretty much every movie involving man vs machine. I also knew most of the more famous lines and that somehow there was gonna be a giant space baby. I had no idea what the actual plot was, which is probably for the best since it kept me in a constant state of anticipation and pleasant confusion near the end instead of total boredom and annoyance. Still good.

I found myself checking the DVD box every couple of minutes to recheck the year, but it always said 1968, which I'm pretty sure is impossible since most of the effects look better than any of the trickery used before and after CG ruined audiences (except for the one part with the wobbly tray on strings). Most of the time I'm pretty sure they were just doing the rotating ship effect to prove they could. The light show near the end was less impressive but that's ok, it was hippie season at the time so 40 minutes of light and eerie sounds to show the birth of the universe was probably an in thing.

I usually demand instant gratification from my entertainment, so I was really surprised at how interesting Kubrick managed to make long periods of silence (but not inactivity). Years of 

B-movies and video games have conditioned me to expect horrible things whenever whoever's on screen starts breathing heavily for more than 30 seconds. That's probably why all the scenes between Dave and HAL at the climax of act 3 had me freaking out that something horrible and tentacly was about to jump out. That just would have been silly, especially since i knew how everything was going to turn out, but i still enjoyed shaking out of habit.

Another thing I'd like to commend the movie on is how its vision of the future wasn't so ridiculous, even if the time was a little off. The "AI gone rogue" is now a staple of any sci-fi, good or bad, and is probably right between nuclear holocaust and zombie jesus on the list of possible doomsday theories. I never felt like any of the technology was a case of the director trying to predict the future and make us all wish for hoverboards and dust-proof book jackets by 2020. Long range, high cost phone service; all purpose food paste; and no magic vacuum of space that carries sound all show a director who wanted to make an epic story in a future setting and not a showcase of marvels with a story tacked on to string the effects together.

I'm slightly uncomfortable with the idea that the next step in human evolution is giant, planet sized space monsters. The only star child I'll accept as a possibility is seven feet tall, shoots lightning from his eyes, and has an army of acid spitting super-mutants, but that's just me.

I should note that while writing this entry, I went onto Hulu and watched some of the "Most Watched Movies", namely Dragonheart and The Scorpion King because apparently I hate myself. I understand why so many filmmakers choose to follow the cookie cutter formula of adventure/odyssey movies - it's a low risk investment for the studios with a potentially high pay off depending on how large you write the biggest star's name. There's the dashing hero, the comic relief sidekick who makes a final sacrifice to prove he's not a coward, the big gruff guy with a heart of gold, the fiery princess, and the vaguely homosexual villian. These sorts of movies sell tickets because even though you know exactly what's going to happen, you also know that there'll be titties and sword fights and maybe the comic relief will slip on a banana peel or something. My actual point is that movies like 2001 are so rare not because we've exhausted our creativity or have had a brain drain of artists over the past decades (i hope), but because they'll either end up as one of the greatest movies of all time and set the standard for an entire genre, or end up like waterworld where the main character drinks his own piss and the director thought having a child as a main character would be a good idea.

I know we all sometimes wish that someone would just start a bloody filmmaking revolution and burn all the executives at the stake then set up a writers inquisition to stamp out hackneyed plots and low brow comedy. I loved 2001. I'm glad I finally got to watch the movie that officially established my favorite genre. But I don't think I could live in a world with only movies that reach right into my brain and mess around with the wiring. Sometimes we need the shit movies with meaningless explosions and worlds where 3 plucky friends can bring down an entire kingdom, even if it's just to make the real films look better.