Seriously.
Uh...What? WTF!?
I feel like I should have smoked or dropped acid before watching that movie. There's not really any plot..And I kept waiting for the monkeys in the beginning to tie in somehow..Never really explains the whole monolith thing..then the floating in space fetus thing..and I'm just really, really confused.
metaphor, allegory.
seek a dictionary immediately.
I went to wikipedia and got the answers.
According to the books written afterwards, it's actually not a metaphor..He actually got turned into "an energy being" that can take the form of "a space baby." And he fuses with monoliths. And Jupiter turns into a giant sun. And HAL gets revived. And then he fuses with the space baby.
The author must have been on some really, really awesome crap.
Not sure the rest were Stanley kubrik approved but the first movie pretty much stands alone in terms of quality. I don't really view it in the context of the other three because I haven't seen them but they seem awful.
There's actually three books written after this movie takes place, all written by Stanley kubrik, that's what the info on the pedia is about. Only one of those books was made into a movie. And yes, they do seem awful.
But I guess the "message" from the original is supposed to be that aliens affected the development of earth. It's just that after the original, he takes the storyline on a crazy tangent that involves jupiter imploding into a sun, HAL and the main character fusing, monoliths trying to destroy earth, etc etc etc..Blech.
Better news! Tom Hanks wants to make those books into movies.
