Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

This will annoy a lot of people, but: turn on the subtitles and turn up the speed. Large sections of it can be zoomed through at 4x or 8x speed, returning to normal once people are talking.

Large ares of it are basically "wow factor" shots which looked really impressive in 1968 and lack a lot of that to present-day viewers. Sometimes it feels more like an agonisingly slow pan across the concept art.

View on HN

For the last part of the movie, sure, speed through.

In the early part, the slow pace of the journey into space heightens the sense of isolation. It's something a modern movie couldn't get away with, and is a unique part of 2001 that you should really experience.

I'm in my late-30s but I think I'm simply to young to appreciate the impact of the space imagery in '2001' because I grew up post-Voyager and came of age in the post-Hubble world. I'm a huge fan of Kubrick and I'm highly tolerant of slow pacing but '2001' just never really grabbed me.

I was enraged at Gravity's rendering of space, which at the opposite extreme of 2001's: a crowded backyard playground, with plenty of traffic and people wandering around and having a great time.

I believe space is black, silent, and immobile- though this might be just the lasting imprinting of 2001. I doubt you'd see anything resembling Hubble images up there.

To be fair to Gravity, low Earth orbit isn't exactly a great comparison to the interplanetary travel taking place in 2001.

Is it actually any different, if you don't look in the direction of Earth?

I actually enjoyed Gravity. But it was also the first example I thought of where something like 2001's long journey could have enhanced the feeling of how far they were from rescue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com