On a laptop, it was maddeningly slow. I couldn't bear that scene where the spaceship docks on the space station while the Blue Danube Waltz played. Excruciating. I wish there was more explanation, as my mind was wandering watching this dull film.
In a theater, I experienced a completely different film.On the big screen, I could imagine the scale of this achievement, of a man-made spaceship landing on a man-made space station, all this coordination, against the Blue Danube waltz, and it was all I could see in my field of vision. Not distracted by other things as I was on my laptop. I didn't need explanation. I just felt it. I finally felt that I had "gotten" the movie. It was an experience. Not just plot and explosions and super heroes, like most movies are today.
A powerful film is expressed in images! Film. It's called a motion picture. The more a film can be expressed in images, the more "pure" it is to its medium! And most of the film was silent.
I'm glad Clarke got the chance to make it a novel, and told it in the form most fitting for him.
Kubrick was a filmmaker and Clarke a writer. I think it is natural that they would disagree on the telling of this story. Different mediums call for different ways to tell the story.