I really want that monolith in my room.
On a more serious note, 2001 is a really interesting, albeit slowly-paced science fiction movie released in the great space era of 1969. It honestly couldn't have come out at a better time. And for this reason, I feel like the movie was both a success from an artistic standpoint as well from a physics standpoint.
It may be young ignorance, but I always thought Stanley Kubrick was a bit of a pretentious loony. He really was. Any research into the guy will yield some interesting finds concerning the way he treated his actors on set and so forth. I only mention this because it's evident through how the plot progresses. It's Kubrick's story, and obviously he felt like that too in the way he didn't care about what the audience may or may not have thought on the fluidity of the plot's events; it escalated just as fast as he saw fit.
But his "pretentiousness" in my eyes isn't all bad. Through his meticulous eye for detail, he undoubtedly made a pop culture phenomenon. But while it aged well in some regards, it didn't in others. The effects by today's standards are actually still pretty solid. Nothing blew me away of course, but it's a testament to his production team that even after 45 or so years, the effects are still only marginally flawed.
And now on to the meat of the movie: the physics. One may be baffled that a movie so old could be so scientifically sound, but I think it actually makes perfect sense when you take one thing into account: it was released in the space era. This information was literally all they knew. Space, and all the variables concerning it, were so fresh and current that they literally had no other source to pull it from. Aside from the popular Star Trek and Doctor Who shows on televisions which were released in the prepubescent space era, this was on the heels of actual interstellar discovery. And Kubrick having his eye for detail, there's no way he could ignore such current information. And thus, we have many of the factual aspects of the movie: "soundless" space, Velcro shoe-wearing hostesses in zero gravity ships, rotating space stations to create artificial gravity, and so forth. This, however, only leads me to be even more baffled at the moon scene and why they seemed to be walking on a gravity similar to Earth. But this just could have been accosted to set restraints, or maybe even more realistically, some "profound" and bizarre artistic statement Kubrick was trying to make. Who knows, it's Stanley Kubrick we're talking about.
In conclusion, I acknowledge the brilliance in "2001: A Space Odyssey", but that's about all I could do in that room. Did I like it? Well, it was 8 o'clock on a Monday night after a long day of classes. I wasn't really in the mood for an introspective mind-bleep. Maybe one day after a proper viewing I can fully appreciate it. But like I said, even though I wouldn't recommend it for popcorn viewing, there's no denying the artistic and scientific achievement Kubrick had with this film.
There is certainly no requirement that you like the film, but I think you have to acknowledge that it did a better job, overall, of representing space travel than any movie except possibly "Apollo 13". And there is an amazing introspective quality to the movie; you may not have been able to appreciate it at the time, but it's there.
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