2001: A Space Odyssey (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) [4K UHD]

A classic film that looks beautiful in 4K. Excellent picture and sound, the details just pop. A must-have for film collectors!

This movie is very obtuse in it's grand meaning. It's one of those moves that's better if you sit back and burn one or eat a handful of magic mushrooms. In fact, that's how the studio re-marketed it after it was released and had very few seats sold except for those filled by stoners. They had new movie posters that I can't remember the exact wording but it referenced a ultimate trip or something like that. I suppose if you live in New Mexico where it is legal to have mushrooms it would be very cool to watch a movie like this. There isn't much dialog and the best dialog belongs to the infamous H.A.L. artificial intelligence computer. His name is in reference to I.B.M. because if you go up one letter in the alphabet on each letter in the acronoym that's what it spells. At the time there weren't all these computer hardware and software companies I.B.M. was it and obviously made some like the director Stanley Kubrick paranoid. In general I love his movies and this one doesn't dissapoint. He is the director's director. His films tend to speak a lot though visuals so as to make you interpret the film as much or (in 2001's case) more. The art direction and special effects are way way ahead of it's time. No Robbie the Robot here. Except for the lasers the art direction isn't any worse then Star Wars which came out 8 years later. It's really hard to believe this movie is from the 1960's when you see how great everything stands up to time all limitations considered. As of this writing it's been awhile since I've seen this movie but since Amazon has emailed me 3 times to review it even though I don't have it yet I figured I'd just go with the broader sense then the specifics of this movie. Too me it's getting more and more ridiculous to buy movies with everything on demand and how good it looks but this is one of the few movies that is a mush have in your blu-ray collection. It's always in the top 100 movies list and there is good reason why. It's a movie that lets you sit back and contemplate without having to engage your attention for every spoken word or miss the meaning of the movie. You can easily watch it with a friend and have a conversation about the film while it is playing (another reason why stoners like it so much). If you like classic cinema, trippyness, thought provoking cinema by one of the masters of 20th century film-making you cannot go wrong with this film but of course I'm biased because I like all of Kubrick's work. Anyway, Amazon always has it cheap so that should be incentive as well. Buy it and you will not regret it. Edit* By the way I see a lot of reviews saying this movie is too slow. If you think this is slow don't go anywhere near the far inferior sequel 2010. Talk about a snooze fest!

I first saw this film when I was 14, in the year it came out - and to say I was dazzled, confounded, stirred to my soul, is understating my reaction. Certainly I didn't understand its depths at that point, but the surface alone was enough to captivate me & make me think. Since that time, several decades have passed, and I've watched it many times over, gaining more with each viewing. The wildly divergent opinions in the previous reviews tell a story all their own, and demonstrate what a cultural & philosophical Rorschach test this film truly is -- love it or loathe it, there don't seem to be many neutral responses to it. It's definitely not a film for those with short attention spans, or those who want to stay inside a very secure comfort zone. Comfort is the last thing it offers! No need to offer a synopsis. Even if you haven't seen it yet, its themes & images are known to just about everyone -- the apes, the monolith, HAL. Anyway, this isn't a typical narrative. It's much more of a symphonic poem than a regular plot-driven story -- you should surrender yourself to it. The slow, measured pace is integral to understanding it on a deep, visceral level, because it takes the viewer outside of ordinary time, allowing us to set aside the distracting speed & information overload of everyday life. So, we're in cosmic time here, an oceanic infinity where the everyday no longer applies, where swarms of byte-sized factoids are irrelevant. In a way, it's like meditation -- slowly shutting off the chatter of the monkey mind, so that we gradually become aware of something far more immense & vast. It's not a thrill ride of sensation & immediate gratification. It's intensity of experience, building gradually & inexorably to a crescendo, a breakthrough of perception. Rational, logical explanation isn't the point while watching ... although afterwards, you'll have plenty to think about & discuss with others! That discussion will cover a lot of ground, too -- the origins & ultimate fate of humanity, the nature of the universe, the essence of the sacred, the limits of technology, dehumanization, the meaning of existence -- and that's just the start. It offers questions, not answers, and challenges all who watch it to search for those answers themselves, within themselves. The depth psychologist Carl Jung once said that the hardest thing in the world for anyone to do is simply sit alone in an empty room with his or her thoughts. "2001" puts you in that room, just as it put Dave Bowman in the same room. A safe, familiar, but sterile room -- and he emerges from it reborn, ready to grow into his expanded universe. Like any great work of art, that's precisely what this film offers each viewer. As in Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo," it tells the viewer, "You must change your life." Whether you choose do so is up to you. To those who find it boring or meaningless -- wait awhile, then give it another try. Sooner or later, life will have you asking, "What's it all about?" Slow down, reflect, and you may find that the film opens up to you at last. Most highly recommended!

From our simian ancestors to galaxy probing cosmonauts ,the full expanse of human experience and aspiration is embraced by "2001: A Space Odyssey" , one of the most ambitious films ever made. Filmmakers such as the Lumiere brothers and Melies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had been fascinated with the moon and other celestial bodies. In 1968, writer/director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke created the gold standard for science fiction films, and now Amazon is offering this masterpiece for an obscenely low price so that no video collector has an excuse for not buying it. In the sixties, audiences were stimulated by the Oscar winning special visual effects as well as the classical musical compositions such as "The Blue Danube Waltz" and the tone poem "Also Sprach Zarathustra", a perfect fusion of image and sound. The restored and remixed soundtrack is a joy for the ears as is the sharpened and intensified cinematography for the eyes. The coolness for which Kubrick was famous is reflected in the performances of Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood as the mobile (the other three are in suspended animation) cosmonauts on their way to Jupiter to learn what they can about the origin of a mysterious sentinel uncovered by a space colony. The sentinel's ear shattering shriek seems to point in the direction of Jupiter. (Spoiler alert: I'm about to highlight some of the film's most notable elements. ) The spacecraft is governed by the film's most notable "character" , a computer nicknamed HAL, which, although created by man, imagines itself to be infallible. His "death" is the most moving element in the film while the death of the Gary Lockwood character is perhaps the loneliest ever recorded in fictional film. His lifeless body drifts away into the awesome and awful immensity of space, alone in his spacesuit/coffin. It remains for the surviving cosmonaut, played by (a very intense ,in some scenes), Keir Dullea to be guided through the final stages of his existence and re-emerge as the highly ambivalent "star child" headed back to earth. The last phase of his former existence was as the sole exhibit in an extraterrestrial zoo maintained by the unseen forces who control his fate. Unfortunately, there is no Montana Wildhack available to assuage his loneliness. For over 50 years, "Space Odyssey" has intrigued and delighted us. It continues to do that with this superb and provocative disc, and its accompanying special features supplemental disc as well.

I’ve loved going back to this movie many times. The early prehistoric segments are too long. The light show at the end is cool but just cut most of it. It’s like Vyger in Trek. Ok first time it’s ok as it was intended but repeats aren’t kind to it. Excellent movie though. That’s why I bought it

This review covers the film — not the specific BluRay presentation. I’ll review that later. Within the industry and art form of motion pictures, the importance and influence of Kubrick’s “2001: a space odyssey” cannot be overstated or even overestimated. There is quite possibly no other film that has had the level of impact and inspiration on subsequent generations of filmmakers and the art of filmmaking that 2001 has had. Yet for many modern film viewers, the movie is often perceived as dull, opaque, unfathomable and pretentious. In fact, when 2001 debuted it received many of the same criticisms. The film was pilloried by critics and at premiere screenings audiences booed and even walked out of theaters. But despite this initial reaction, audiences lined up to see the movie. The film became not just a commercial success, but a popular phenomenon with the younger generation of movie-goers in the 60s. Partially fueled by the drug and counter-culture of the time — 2001 was ultimately accepted in the way Kubrick had intended — people went to “experience” the movie. Instead of being told a clear, specific story with conflicts and resolutions, 2001 presented the audience with a grand mythological journey — from the origins of humans to their technological future and beyond. And it did so by abandoning the conventions of storytelling and asking the viewer to simply absorb the sights and sounds of the film and allow themselves to have an instinctual, emotional response. 2001 is not a movie that delivers the standard conventions of plot and character in a 3 act structure. It does not follow the rules and precepts of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero Of a Thousand Faces” that so many thousands of screenwriters were told to adhere to lest they lose the audience’s attention and interest. 2001 is a narrative. But it is a meta narrative. Its story concerns the very nature of existence. It proposes a secular solution to the mystery of life. How did we get get here? Are we alone? Clarke and Kubrick imagined a a story that answered the notion of why humans are self aware and technologically capable by way of a mythology that is based on the mystery of science. Science so deep and advanced, we cannot distinguish it from magic. Kubrick wanted a movie that told the story of mankind’s evolution in the universe — from lowly ape to early man to eventually a Superman. The next step in higher intelligence. Kubrick was drawn to an Arthur C. Clarke short story that suggested an advanced alien race travels the universe looking for nascent intelligence and then once discovered, helps it along in critical next steps steps of cognitive abilities. Just enough to see if the formative intelligence becomes capable of developing technology that allows that to start traveling their local solar system and exploring their origins. The aliens leave a buried artifact on the closest nearby moon that — when uncovered — signals to the aliens that — yes indeed — this group of intelligence has made the leap — and are now possibly ready for the next step in evolution. To achieve this — Kubrick felt that trying to tell this story in ordinary fashion with lots of dialogue and conversations and drama would come off as pretentious or hokey — or at the very least would drain the mystical and magical quality he felt the film needed. He knew he had to get the audience to experience such moments of alien contact and alien manipulation of the human mind in way that felt experiential — magical and holy. He knew he needed viewers to have a personal, spiritual experience with the film — not a dramatic one. What Kubrick was seeking was much closer to the experience one has when walking quietly through a massive cathedral — one of the grand medieval cathedrals of Europe — where the person is overwhelmed by the stunning beauty and grandiosity and silence of the cathedral — Kubrick knew he needed the viewer to experience space in this manner. And that is why the movie seems slow to many modern, younger viewers. Kubrick needed you to sit in the cathedral of space — and in the austerely beautiful technology of 2001 — in order that you could absorb the reality of the mind-bending spiritual myth he was laying on you. SPOILERS In traditional narrative-sense, Kubrick actually moves the story along at quite a clip. Man-apes are fighting for shrubs in a desert. Alien artifact appears. Man-apes learn to use weapons. First murder in human history. A bone club weapon cuts to an orbital nuclear weapon 200,000 years later in 2001. Mystery of something dug up on a moon base. It’s the same artificat we saw with apes. It sends a signal to Jupiter. Humans follow that signal to Jupiter to find out where alien artifact came from — or is leading them to. Along the way, humans murder the first machine intelligence it ever created. A test? The last vestige of violence humans will leave behind? END OF SPOILERS All along the way — Kubrick is telling you the story with an incredibly efficient, fast moving narrative structure — but he also needs the viewer to settle into the elongated time-scape of space travel. Why? Because it’s vital the viewer experience the space mission in a way that gets them to fully believe in what’s happening. To get them to accept what they are watching is real. So that the viewer stops thinking they’re watching a movie. Think of it this way — you’ve gone to see your Dr and you’re placed in a Waiting room — expecting bad news. The longer you sit, the more you absorb all the various specific elements of the waiting room. All the mundane details and objects you see become more than just real — they become important — and the stakes about what you’re going to hear gather weight. Now imagine your Dr is about to tell you mind-bending news about having cancer and needing chemo therapy. Your body is about to be transformed. That long, long moment in the waiting room is all about accepting the reality of that journey. In 2001, humans are in a waiting room about to meet their alien doctor — their alien overlord — who will deliver the prognosis of their future. Life, death or transformation awaits. In other words the “boredom” of 2001 is not a flaw — it’s a feature. A vital feature. Beyond that — it’s nearly impossible to explain to the young film movie-goer how far advanced the effects of 2001 were at their time. Today’s films have the advantage of powerful computers to easily create seamless special effects of almost type. But back in 1966-67 there were no computer—generated effects. No CGI. It was all created on film. Analogue film. Multiple shots on differed strips of films are combined in an optical printer to look like they are all in one shot. Think of it as “artisanal” special effects — hand-crafted special effects. Even Doug Trumbull’s breakthrough slit-scan device that created the very computer-generated-looking Star Gate sequence that gives a dizzying sensation of flying through a wormhole of wildly colorful light — was a hand-built machine that achieved the illusion of fast movement with stop-motion animation — requiring days of filming to create just seconds of screen time. Same with the interior sets. All real. All painstakingly built by hand. Many of them rotated. The giant centrifuge set for the Discovery set was a massive Ferris wheel. Cameras and actor bolted to floor while it turns. The Dawn of Man man-apes were created with costume designs that were decades ahead of their time — all donned by a mime troupe that spent months studying real ape movements. The effect was so convincing that many people simply assumed real apes had been trained to “act out” the scenes. To the point where make-up and costume designer Stuart Freeborn’s amazing accomplishment was completely overlooked by the Academy awards — giving best make-up effects instead to the much more primitive and unconvincing “Planet of the Apes.” In the end, 2001 is not a film to be seen like one would go see Star Wars or a Marvel movie. It’s not entertainment. Its not a consumable flight of fancy — no matter how enjoyable those types of movies are. As pretentious as this sounds — 2001 is a work of art. It’s meant to challenge the viewer. To stimulate their senses and creat an instinctive impression. It’s not meant to be easily understood. It is a film that was made to present a mythology of how humanity came into existence. So it’s meant to be an experience. You can’t have normal movie expectations when you watch it. There’s no bad guy. No good guy. Justice is not served. It’s much bigger than that. It’s more — “What if we’re here because of alien intervention? And what if we passed the aliens’ first test? And they want us to take the next step in evolution? Evolution that will open our minds the inner workings and mysteries of the universe? We will become beings that will be capable of transforming matter and energy in a way that appears entirely magical to us now? Kubrick knew he couldn’t tell that story in normal Chris Nolan terms. Not even in Marvel Thanos Iron Man Capt Marvel tesseract terms. That’s why 2001 is not a normal movie to watch. It’s a cinematic experience the likes of which we have never seen before.

Enough with the story line synopsis already! Most everyone buying this knows the story line. The main question is how does it look? 2001 has always been one of the cleanest sharpest visual science fiction pieces of artwork to ever be made even if it is almost 60 years old. So how does it look now with the 4K do over...FREAKING FANTASTIC! Thats how good it looks under 4K remastering. The music of course is amazing as it is composed by several of the worlds greatest composers but the visuals are even more stunning than I thought it was going to be. The sound effects pop and the silences are deafening. The imagery, which has always been referred to as the greatest in Sci Fi history is simply amazing. It looks like something that was made today with the greatest of technological prowess with a visual hint of nostalgia for 60s sci fi. If Kubric was alive I think he would have wept as I think this is how he always saw the movie in his mind but was held back by technology. 4K remastering and UHD TV sets bring this masterpiece of his to life in a way I have never seen it before. I thought the BluRay version was nice so I really wasn't planning on being too impressed and I was so wrong. If you love this movie like I do or just enjoy visually stunning science fiction, then this release is for you. I hope this helps you out more than yet another 1000 word essay on the nuances of the plot or another hamfisted homage to Arthur C Clarke or Stanley Kubric.

Very interesting film. I’m trying to watch all of the classic movies. It’s almost like I’m taking a college level film class including taking notes and with the help of ChatGPT analyzing symbolism. 2001- A Space Odyssey is not something one would watch for pleasure. It’s more of what an experience in space might be like. Is the movie fun … no. Is the movie interesting and rewarding … yes.