2001: A Space Odyssey - personal review

For a long time, I’ve been an admirer of science fiction and I’ve watched and read plenty of titles. There were some that I used to skip simply because they were too old. Visual effects have never been a priority for me, but the lack of them can still be off-putting. Despite that, I decided to go through some of the “eternal classics,” and it was finally time to add this film to my personal collection. Here is my personal and non-professional review.

Visual Effects

I’m starting with this because I already mentioned it as something that can turn me away from a movie. Even though the film is from 1968, it turns out the effects are on a very high level. I can even say it looks better than some sci-fi movies made today. Incredibly impressive for its time!

The Moon, Earth as seen from space, Jupiter, and the ships themselves looked wonderful. There were a few things that annoyed me, but not enough to ruin the experience. One such thing was the size of the station and the ship with the rotating drum. The idea of artificial gravity through rotation isn’t new or astonishing, but the math just doesn’t work. A ring that small simply wouldn’t function.

After learning about the constant-acceleration drive concept in The Expanse for generating gravity, it’s hard for me to go back to the idea of centrifugal force — especially since Discovery’s design just isn’t realistic.

Characters

The actors here seem to be present purely for the sake of acting and art. That’s the impression I got. No checkbox casting, no politics, no modern casting trends.

However, in the actual film we barely get any character development. We meet some of them only briefly. I didn’t even remember most of their names — only Dave. And HAL. I consider that a minus, because the story felt interesting and immersive. It was intriguing to see how everything layered and unfolded on screen.

There were also scenes I’m not sure why they were included — like Dr. Floyd’s conversation with his daughter about her birthday. It adds nothing to the plot of an already slow-moving film.

Pacing

This is one of the slowest films I’ve ever watched. Back in 1968, when it was released, humans hadn’t yet landed on the Moon, and the film must have been breathtaking. But by today’s standards, with sufficiently good CGI and space scenes widely available, listening to classical music while watching a station approach for ten minutes… that’s more like background noise while I do something else.

This isn’t really the film’s fault, but it is something today’s audience has already seen plenty of, and in some aspects even done better.

I tried to watch everything, but in the second half I couldn’t endure it anymore and started skipping some of the space scenes. Too much time passed with nothing happening, just watching the ship move millimeter by millimeter across the screen.

HAL 9000

I can’t help but say that this part felt very relevant today — especially with modern AI and the “capabilities” it demonstrates. In the film, things unfold exactly the way I would expect them to unfold in our world as well: an AI that hallucinates convincingly and believes it’s infallible. We’re already observing this with language models.

In 2001, HAL is an interesting character, and I liked the depth of his abilities. Everything felt completely plausible — from his control over the station to his conversations with the crew, including reading lips.

His creativity also felt believable to me.

Overall Impression

Everywhere I read that Kubrick is a visual director and tells his story through effects and imagery. For a modern film, this is a double-edged sword. It takes far too long to tell a story this way. A direct example is the beginning of the film. I understand that the concept is to show human evolution from primate to spacefaring being, but the scenes with the apes were difficult to watch. They lasted forever. At one point I wondered what movie I was even watching.

Despite the slow pace of every on-screen event, the film itself felt like it had an interesting plot and theme. I understand why it’s considered one of the timeless classics. Slow and heavy, but with wonderful effects and a good story.

My personal rating is positive. I’m not a literary or film critic, but I would watch the movie again in 10–15 years. Still, it’s not in my personal top 10 sci-fi films.