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The film's story is about a trip to Jupiter after they discovered a black monolith transmitting a signal to it. They are going to Jupiter to search for intelligent life. The first time you see the monolith is a thousands years before the trip. In a scene called dawn of man, where there are apes around. The whole film is about exploration and discovering new things. During the expedition the crew discovered that there computer, called a HAL 9000 can make an error. The error that HAL had made was predicting a fault happening to a unit. The conversation they have with mission control was such a big scene. The people at home called it a snag but it did not feel like it. It was big problem and the crew tried to devise away to talk without HAL hearing. The film pulls you in and makes you root for them. So it was such a downer when HAL could still find out what they were saying by reading lips. This meant there re-entry into the ship to dismantle HAL was just much harder. Another thing that pulled you into the film was the scenery. At the beginning of the film you see a vast rocky desert where the apes live. Throughout the film there will be times where you will just be looking at the scenery as there is no action. This is because 2001 Space Odyssey was the first film to be done in wide-screen. After about twenty minutes of that you see a space station floating in space. It then zooms into a rocket ship with seats like a standard plane. The music helps with the scenes, all of it being classical music. For example when they go off to Clavius and you can see a rocket moving through space. There is uplifting music to tell the audience that the rocket is travelling. There is also a contrast in the music played throughout the film. In the beginning scene when the apes finds a bone and starts smashing the carcass of animal into smaller pieces it is accompanied by dramatic music. This has a powerful effect to the scene as it exaggerates the accomplishment of the ape. Without the music it is just ape smashing something to pieces. However with the music the ape has found a tool that he uses to cut a carcass of an animal into pieces. The acting is good it helps with the scenery to make the audience believes that humans had advanced enough to travel to different planets and venture into space. Stanley Kubrick the director shows the advancement like normal air travel to allow the audience to easily understand the situation the film presents. One scene which help propel the story and it greatly focused on the acting was the meeting at space station. HeyWood Flyod was question about what was happening in Clavius where he would be going. The people questioning had heard there is epidemic there. This help set up the scene where Heywood in Clavius at a meeting talked about epidemic being a smokescreen. This was done so they could talk privately about the black monolith sending a signal to Jupiter. Another thing that help the belief in the story was the mention of having a IAS Convention. This is basically rules of flying in space much the same as the airport and flight regulations you get today. Another thing about the acting was the HAL 9000. The voice acting was quite good. Douglas Rain who did voice acting of HAL did very well making it an arrogant person. The way HAL 9000 acted saying he made no mistakes and implying that he is better than anyone made the computer more human. It allowed the audience see the interaction between Hal 9000 and the astronauts as bunch of athletic and emotional intelligent people versus a high IQ person. Also the HAL 9000 can also be seen as how businesses sell their products. Overall 2001 Space Odyssey is a marvellous film and the way Stanley Kubrick directed it made sure that you do not care about the length of the film as you are immersed into the environment that the film presents |