Book: Space Odyssey

Remaindered book (2018) about the origin and development of "2001: A Space Odyssey." Lots of behind-the-scenes glimpses into this most iconic and groundbreaking film. Learning lots I didn't know. And I thought I'd read a lot about it...

A lot of footage was shot but never used.

I wonder if we'll ever see a deluxe edition of "2001" with deleted scenes? Or was Kubrick too much of a control freak to ever allow that?

Rewatching the DVD. Kubrick was astoundingly ahead of his time -- though his use of stock music (Strauss, Strauss, Khatchaturian, Ligeti) could be second-guessed. Alex North's unused score was pretty great, and I think would've made the film less ascetic.

I believe Carl Sagan's 1985 novel "Contact" (and the 1997 movie based on it) were his reaction to Kubrick's ducking the question of what David Bowman would find when he reached Jupiter and made contact with the alien civilization that had left "the sentinel" buried on the moon.  It's the biggest weakness, and to my mind a fatal flaw, of "2001."  Kubrick & Clarke spent YEARS trying to come up with a coherent answer to that plot point, and in the end simply punted with a psychedelic ightshow.

I hated the ending as a 14-year old.  I still hate it over 50 years later.

Sagan wanted to think the aliens would have a message for us, some advice.  After all, they had 4 millions years to prepare.

I have to agree with you that the conclusion of "2001" left something to be desired. But on the other hand, it left one with a gift of something to ponder. Rather than wrapping everything up neatly, the movie left something for your brain to play around with.
Of course, I was ten or eleven years older than you when I saw the move; I watched it at the Cinerama theater in LA; and I was somewhat stoned. Maybe a bit more than somewhat. Maybe quite ripped. But I have never resented the ending of the film.

One more comment.

In the late 1960s when the book and movie were produced, it seemed entirely reasonable that by 2001 we'd have orbiting space stations, colonies on the moon, explorations of other planets.

Why didn't we?  In other words, "Dude, where's my flying car?"

I believe the answer is in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the fruitless military adventures since then.  Our national expendable budget was hijacked and given to General Dynamics rather than NASA (Iraq and Afghanistan alone have cost $2.4 trillion, and Viet Nam was another trillion in today’s dollars).  Politicians found it easier to blow money on wars of convenience -- including the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the War on Poverty -- rather than science and such "public service" priorities as mass transit, renewable energy, universal healthcare and space exploration.  

Our Jetsons fund was eaten up by the Flintstones.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" has been rattling around in my brain since I read the book and re-watched the movie.

I always thought the light show ending and Victorian bedroom were a massive cop-out, when Clarke and Kubrick couldn't agree on a suitable ending.  That opinion hasn't changed.

But the events leading up to that scene are now bothering me.  Specifically:

• The hibernating crew were put aboard already asleep, because they had some secret mission at Jupiter.  Yet it's never explained what that mission was going to be
  
• HAL summarily terminates life functions of this crew when the ambulatory crew plots to take over the ship.  Why?
  
• HAL terminates the crew while Bowman is out of the Discovery, before he even forces his way back into the ship.  At this point HAL doesn't know for sure that the mission is compromised, that Bowman will be successful, that he'll terminate HAL's higher brain functions -- so why does he kill the Jupiter crew?  Wouldn't killing the interim crew -- which he tried to do -- make more sense?  At the point at which HAL is terminating the Jupiter crew, he could still reasonably assume he'd been successful in eliminating Bowman and Floyd.
  
• The particular event which triggers Bowman & Floyd to begin questioning the reliability of HAL is his incorrect diagnosis of an impending failure in a communications antenna thingy.  Was this intentional?   Did HAL cook up this whole "failure" as a pretext to get Floyd out of the ship?  If so, why?  There was no ship's mutiny on the horizon before this
  

HAL decided that the humans were a threat to him, so he set about killing all of them. Getting the one outside was a good first step because it drew Bowman outside, leaving HAL free to kill the sleepers. Bowman forgetting his helmet was a bonus.

But the hibernating crew onboard had specific mission instructions for once Discovery reached Jupiter. HAL was aware of, informed of the secret mission plans. Did he think he could carry out the mission better by himself, without the fallible wetware? This whole plot point makes no sense.

HAL was thinking survival, not mission.

The real hole is that he must have had a plan for how to get rid of Bowman if he had remembered his helmet. Why didn't he use that plan once Bowman got back inside?