Not many Bergman fans on this list, I can tell. 35 year old memory here, please don't crucify me if I miss a detail. My copy of the book is in a cardboard box buried in my basement. 2001 was an ART film as much as sci-fi; remember this. It's not a mindless "space soap opera" like Star Wars, you're supposed to walk away with more questions than answers, supposed to look inward. I'm assuming that it's the last portion that is misunderstood, but it is explained in the book. It's really just a repeat of the first portion of the film. Commander Bowman actually finds a huge monolith in orbit around Jupiter and "enters" it. The weird scenery depict alien worlds flashing by as he travels the stargate network. TMA-1 was just a device to alert the big monolith in Jovian space that humans had become advanced enough (and survived self-destruction) for the next step in the evolutionary process. Bowman becomes a tool of the alien intelligence and lives his life in a time-compressed fashion, or perhaps a non-linear fashion, from our point of view, within the confines of his own time-space continuum, to be re-born as the "star-child". The star child is the modern equivalent of the ancient monolith found by Moonwatcher and his tribe and serves as the seeds of that next evolutionary step. ("He wasn't sure what he would do next, but would think of something." Remember that's how the Moonwatcher portion ended as well as the end of the book, IIRC...) There's acutally a lot of religious iconography incorporated into the film and the abstractness is a way of presenting it somewhat covertly, Kubrick was probably trying to find some pan-theistic way of reaching as many people as possible without alienating specific faiths. Whether he succeeded or not is not important to the plot. The aliens are benevolent high intelleigences that, while not creating humanity, gave us the "spark" of creativity and set us upon the path to enlightenment. In this regard, they are not "God", but are part of God's plan for mankind, so there's no need for anyone to feel that their belief system is threatened. (It's just a MOVIE.) The whole HAL thing was kind of secondary, a lesson in hubris, designed to wake us up and take us down a peg, deservedly so. The sequels destroyed the simple elegance of the plotline, as it is made to be understood that the aliens themselves have either evolved beyond interest in their original intention or died-off completely, and the monoliths (sentinels) are just running old programs now, albiet about as sophisitcated as automated systems can get in this universe. The "digitized", "etherial", "spiritual" (whatever) version of Bowman realizes this and tries to keep it all together, keep humanity focused in the right direction. But none of the sequels are really of any import or up to the standards of the first film, the original stands alone and can be considered self-contained and complete. Does this help at all, Rich, or do you think I'm nuts? Rich wrote:

Guess I'm nuts, but I HATED 2001. Probably because I just didn't get it, back when it came out as a teen, and years later as an adult when I thought I might finally understand it, I hated it just as much the 2nd time as the first!

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