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“Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

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Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#62
post #61

> Arthur developed polio in the 1980s, making travel increasingly difficult Polio in the 1980s??? How did that happen?

It's wrong. He contracted Polio in 1962. In the 80s he developed PPS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-polio_syndrome

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#63
post #61

> Arthur developed polio in the 1980s, making travel increasingly difficult Polio in the 1980s??? How did that happen?

Clarke was actually diagnosed in 1962 (http://www.clarkefoundation.org/about-sir-arthur/). He developped complications in the 80s. He has lived in Sri Lanka since the 50s, which was probably not the best place for access to the brand-new vaccine that was just being invented at the same period.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#64

Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission. Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era. Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immens…

You should watch the “Autofac” episode of Electric Dreams.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#65
post #34

Having read 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Lolita, I'd say Kubrick's end products justified his changes. Imagine A Clockwork Orange having a happy ending... Well, that's how the book ends.

Not sure which cut you watched, it does have a happy ending for the protagonist. He enjoys Beethoven again. EDIT: A friend who read the book initially just said it was not happy, but agreed it is when you only know the movie.

They both have happy endings. In the book, the final chapter is about Alex starting to mature into an adult.

The book is also organized into three sections of seven chapters meant to represent the three phases of childhood and ending in chapter 21: adulthood. The movie was pretty close to the book it just left off the 21st chapter as did the American version of the book.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#66
post #11

Kubrick was fairly known for heavily adapting the novels he used for inspiration. There are huge differences between the novel "Lolita" and Kubrick's adaptation. Same with "Shining" or "Clockwork Orange". TBH, I'm really happy we didn't get a version with voice-overs and all. Hard to imagine a concept of "documentary" would have been better than what we ended up with.

Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining", mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. While I expect "2001" would not have been improved by a lot of explanatory voiceovers, I think "The Shining" would be seriously improved by Jack not being obviously crazy right from the first.

Steven King got to write the screenplay for his own version of the shining in the form of a TV miniseries. It was so bad it was actually funny instead of being scary. I think it is safe to say here that history has proven Kubrick right on this particular point.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#67

Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission. Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era. Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immens…

Ghost in the Shell (1995) takes an interesting path away from the usual 'Frankenstein'-type AI narratives .

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#68

I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch. At the same time, it's maddening in its ambiguity. Seeing it as a product of this enormous gulf between creative approaches explains a lot.

> I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch.

If you were going to cut material from 2001 that made it unbearable to watch, the film would be 5-10 minutes long.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#69

This article CONSTANTLY refreshes on mobile, even after several minutes, making it next-to-impossible to read

The ads also interfere with navigation and Google's decision-tree based reporting system makes it impossible to report this. I gave up on the article.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#70
post #60

Did anyone ever definitively figure out what Kubrick was trying to do with "2001"? (The interpretation that made the most sense to me was the one where the monolith is a metaphor to the cinema screen and Philosopher's Stone.)

The book addresses this. The Monolith is an interstellar "seed" sent out to stimulate the development of other forms of sentient life. This scene is supposed to depict the Monolith stimulating humanity's primate ancestors to develop tool usage (bones as clubs/etc) and catalyzing our societal development as a result.

Next, we see Humanity discover the Tycho Monolith buried on the moon. As the lunar dawn strikes it, it unleashes a massive burst of radio energy towards Jupiter and goes silent. This is implied as being an alert that Humanity has reached a crucial stage of development and the stage is set for the completion of its mission. You can alternately view it as an energy-based life-form shifting from one repository/location to another. So the Jupiter Monolith could potentially be interpreted as being the same sentience/AI/etc.

The other confusing scene is the ending, where Bowman travels through the Jupiter Monolith and becomes a Star Baby. This is the Monolith finishing its mission, and allowing Bowman to shed his corporeal body and become a being of pure energy, like the Monolith and its creators.

So all in all, the movie depicts the Monolith guiding humanity through all the stages of its evolution, from primates to a higher plane of existence. Then we have several artistic interludes that connects these scenes... an idealistic depiction of humanity's technological development as Floyd travels to the moon, and then a horror sequence as one of our creations malfunctions and becomes murderous.

The book is vastly more comprehensible than the movie, without some of the narration that Kubrick cut it's pretty difficult to follow what's going on. On the other hand, from an artistic perspective, narration would have ruined the film (imagine David Attenborough narrating...) so it's easy to see why Kubrick didn't go that route, and his imagery actually does fit the sequences Clarke describes perfectly, as long as you understand what's going on. It just does a shit job of explaining what's going on, for the most part.

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