Christopher Nolan: The power of people and why 2001 should be preschool viewing

Well in the end of the movie it turns out that the future humans built the tesseract (I believe it's called) and the wormhole, leading the humans to survive and in the future built the tesseract and the wormhole, leading the humans to survive and in the future built the tesseract and the wormhole... you get the idea.

It's a time travel movie, and the whole thing becomes a paradox - if the humans didn't survive they wouldn't have developed to be able to make wormholes and time travel magic, but they did survive because of time travel magic.

So which came first? It's a paradox. One explanation is that there was nothing that actually came first but everything just happened as it should and there was no other way it could've happened, thus, predetermination.

But yeah, time travel paradoxes, fun stuff.

Stable time loops imply predetermination.

> Even if you take into account quantum uncertainty, as Hawking points out, it is determined probabilities. That the probabilities are governed (determined?) by precise equations doesn't mean that quantum mechanics isn't stochastic; it gives us only probabilities. The indeterminacy principle is a better better name than the uncertainty principle. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.

What I find worrying about the comments on the movie was why it was disliked. It sounds like the movie doesn't contain enough "action" to spark interest.

On the other hand, I watched High Sierra recently and the pre-Bullit notion of a car chase scene was, uh, less than thrilling.

I couldn't enjoy 2001 until I knew about all the detailed model work that went into it. The uncut version is still super boring, but it's easier to stay awake knowing what to look for. It's kind of the same situation with the various '90s Star Trek series. I am no longer impressed by long scenes of a ship passing by planets, so the intros are boring.

They will need to "discover" these things on their own. The best thing you can do is to make sure they have opportunities to see this stuff and to talk it up when possible.

One of the best pleasures of being a teen is discovering, on your own, how rewarding a great film can be and developing "a taste" for films, music and other aesthetic experiences. You simply can't force this stuff.

> I attended the Los Angeles premiere of the film, in 1968, at the Pantages Theater. It is impossible to describe the anticipation in the audience adequately. Kubrick had been working on the film in secrecy for some years, in collaboration, the audience knew, with author Arthur C. Clarke, special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull and consultants who advised him on the specific details of his imaginary future -- everything from space station design to corporate logos. Fearing to fly and facing a deadline, Kubrick had sailed from England on the Queen Elizabeth, doing the editing while on board, and had continued to edit the film during a cross-country train journey. Now it finally was ready to be seen.

> To describe that first screening as a disaster would be wrong, for many of those who remained until the end knew they had seen one of the greatest films ever made. But not everyone remained. Rock Hudson stalked down the aisle, complaining, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?'' There were many other walkouts, and some restlessness at the film's slow pace (Kubrick immediately cut about 17 minutes, including a pod sequence that essentially repeated another one).

> The film did not provide the clear narrative and easy entertainment cues the audience expected. The closing sequences, with the astronaut inexplicably finding himself in a bedroom somewhere beyond Jupiter, were baffling. The overnight Hollywood judgment was that Kubrick had become derailed, that in his obsession with effects and set pieces, he had failed to make a movie.

To be fair, it is certainly a long way from a movie like The Killing.

So I dunno, I'd say it depends on the kid. Might also depend on the era in which it's viewed, because I viewed it shortly after we had first landed on the moon. After forty years of Star Wars, maybe it doesn't seem so cool anymore.

This is how we get the JJ "uh oh, two characters talked for more than 30 seconds, better cap this bit with an action scene even if it does precisely nothing to provide characterization, exposition, or advance plot" Abrams school of film-ruining.

Kubrick, via wikipedia[1]: "There are a number of differences between the book and the movie. The novel, for example, attempts to explain things much more explicitly than the film does, which is inevitable in a verbal medium. The novel came about after we did a 130-page prose treatment of the film at the very outset. This initial treatment was subsequently changed in the screenplay, and the screenplay in turn was altered during the making of the film. But Arthur took all the existing material, plus an impression of some of the rushes, and wrote the novel. As a result, there's a difference between the novel and the film ... I think that the divergences between the two works are interesting."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)

“And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the field of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”

It was a good call at the time, since that's what got them awards, but I'd like to see both of them with the non-critical bits sped up to see if it improves my viewing experience.

It didn't happen with any previous SW movies, in fact maybe this was unique experience. For both of us. I didn't question logic of anything (which I usually do), everything just clicked and hummed along the story.

When I checked IMDB, I couldn't wrap my head around why it's rated so low and first 50-100 user reviews gave it either 1/10 or 2/10 and kept repeating how disappointing it is and how it is a worst movie in cinema history. Didn't bother to check their arguments, I enjoyed it profoundly and I still smile when remembering those moments.

Maybe I was in right mental setup for it, but that would be valid for both of us symmetrically.

In fact, as writing this, I recall once I watched Apocalypse Now, and somehow, for some reason, it felt very similar. I saw it before, and I saw it after this, but it was never so intense, so 'right'

Eraserhead was a trip, I still haven't totally figured it out. But in terms of pure cinematic enjoyment Blue Velvet would be my favorite.

Now that I hear other Lynch fans talk about Inland Empire I'm really excited to watch it.

With that in mind, the Netflix binge is a good example of how immersion is still very much a thing.

It wasn't until the blu-ray release came out that I felt the same experience and immersion in the film as I did with viewing in a theatre.

His films are good and incredibly entertaining, but Kubrick is on a completely different plane.

Auteur - that was the word I was looking for. It's interesting how people deride the auteur concept (including Nolan!), but "auteurship" is exactly how I have found many movies I love: I'll take a chance on something I know nothing about, and if it's really good, I go looking for other movies by the same director or screenwriter. Similarly, I skip anything by Michael Bay or McG. I've not oft been disappointed with this process.

But it's hard to ignore the deification of certain individuals through celebrity. If some of society's foundational institutions are failing, it's fair to suggest the deification of power brokers as a root cause.

On some new movies the rating is very high, but it goes down sharply.

IIRC one of the Fast and the Furious "movies" had a stupidly high rating, which is now more sane.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/franchise/the_fast_and_the_fu...

IMDB seems to suffer from this less.

The only useful thing on RT is their one line blurb.