We still have a long way to go...

[Blaggard]

I am going to keep this fairly short because the attention span and time constraints on most people are necessarily short, and that is no one's fault not even the Romans.

But the film 2001: A Space Odyssey tries to address the human condition, but in a round about way.

Let me sum up the plot very succinctly so as not to bore you, an alien race decides to find other intelligent races in the universe and finds there are almost none or very few, so decided on the matter they send obelisks to worlds to try and increase evolution on worlds where intelligent life looks promising.

In the beginning scene we see pivotal moments in human development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEaGQb6dJk

You don't have to watch this but it would help if you did.

Anyway let's discuss the ascent or often rather descent of man accordingly. Did Arthur C Clarke have a point? Or was he arrogant in his depiction of human evolution?

[Ginkgo]

I am going to keep this fairly short because the attention span and time constraints on most people are necessarily short, and that is no one's fault not even the Romans.

But the film 2001: A Space Odyssey tries to address the human condition, but in a round about way.

Let me sum up the plot very succinctly so as not to bore you, an alien race decides to find other intelligent races in the universe and finds there are almost none or very few, so decided on the matter they send obelisks to worlds to try and increase evolution on worlds where intelligent life looks promising.

In the beginning scene we see pivotal moments in human development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEaGQb6dJk

You don't have to watch this but it would help if you did.

Anyway let's discuss the ascent or often rather descent of man accordingly. Did Arthur C Clarke have a point? Or was he arrogant in his depiction of human evolution?

The problem with it from my point of view is that these creatures appear suited to an arboreal landscape, not open savanna/desert landscape. It would also seem to me that such an open landscape would be best suited to upright creatures that could move rather quickly in order to track down their prey. On this basis it would also require these creatures to be relatively hairless.

[Blaggard]

I am going to keep this fairly short because the attention span and time constraints on most people are necessarily short, and that is no one's fault not even the Romans.

But the film 2001: A Space Odyssey tries to address the human condition, but in a round about way.

Let me sum up the plot very succinctly so as not to bore you, an alien race decides to find other intelligent races in the universe and finds there are almost none or very few, so decided on the matter they send obelisks to worlds to try and increase evolution on worlds where intelligent life looks promising.

In the beginning scene we see pivotal moments in human development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEaGQb6dJk

You don't have to watch this but it would help if you did.

Anyway let's discuss the ascent or often rather descent of man accordingly. Did Arthur C Clarke have a point? Or was he arrogant in his depiction of human evolution?

The problem with it from my point of view is that these creatures appear suited to an arboreal landscape, not open savanna/desert landscape. It would also seem to me that such an open landscape would be best suited to upright creatures that could move rather quickly in order to track down their prey. On this basis it would also require these creatures to be relatively hairless.

Ah and that was your only problem... Interesting...

You do have to remember though both Stanley Kubrik and Arthur C Clarke were trying to tell a tale, the specifics are of course poignant, but I think what is more so is the films ideals and ideas...

The music in the opening scene is Strauss: Thus Sprach or Thus Spake Zarathustra it then goes into a Strauss waltz: The Blue Danube when we see the ape throw the bone into "space". I think that was very telling on the intricacies of the film... That said I am in danger of disappearing up my own ass at this point but you get the general idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqOOZux5sPE

[Ginkgo]

I am going to keep this fairly short because the attention span and time constraints on most people are necessarily short, and that is no one's fault not even the Romans.

But the film 2001: A Space Odyssey tries to address the human condition, but in a round about way.

Let me sum up the plot very succinctly so as not to bore you, an alien race decides to find other intelligent races in the universe and finds there are almost none or very few, so decided on the matter they send obelisks to worlds to try and increase evolution on worlds where intelligent life looks promising.

In the beginning scene we see pivotal moments in human development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEaGQb6dJk

You don't have to watch this but it would help if you did.

Anyway let's discuss the ascent or often rather descent of man accordingly. Did Arthur C Clarke have a point? Or was he arrogant in his depiction of human evolution?

The problem with it from my point of view is that these creatures appear suited to an arboreal landscape, not open savanna/desert landscape. It would also seem to me that such an open landscape would be best suited to upright creatures that could move rather quickly in order to track down their prey. On this basis it would also require these creatures to be relatively hairless.

Ah and that was your only problem... Interesting...

You do have to remember though both Stanley Kubrik and Arthur C Clarke were trying to tell a tale, the specifics are of course poignant, but I think what is more so is the films ideals and ideas...

The music in the opening scene is Strauss: Thus Sprach Zarathustra it then goes into a Strauss waltz: The Blue Danube when we see the ape throw the bone into "space". I think that was very telling on the intricacies of the film...

It's been a long time since I have sen the movie so I guess the big question still centres on evolution coming about with the aid of a skyhook or built from the ground up. My apologies to Dawkins

[Blaggard]

It's been a long time since I have sen the movie so I guess the big question still centres on evolution coming about with the aid of a skyhook or built from the ground up. My apologies to Dawkins

Well you kinda missed the point of the film but ok.

This is intervention to "create" intelligent life by a vastly superior being, not unlike God, at least compared to us.

I edited by the way, sorry about that. You might want to go back and get the Nietzsche shit on board, I am not enamoured of Thus Spake Zarathustra per se, but clearly Strauss was.

Ah nm. You got it.

[Ginkgo]

It's been a long time since I have sen the movie so I guess the big question still centres on evolution coming about with the aid of a skyhook or built from the ground up. My apologies to Dawkins

Well you kinda missed the point of the film but ok.

This is intervention to "create" intelligent life by a vastly superior being, not unlike God, at least compared to us.

I edited by the way, sorry about that. You might want to go back and get the Nietzsche shit on board, I am not enamoured of Thus Spake Zarathustra per se, but clearly Strauss was.

Ah nm. You got it.

Yes, I don't really remember much of the film. Do you think my reference to "skyhook" is relevant? That is, relevant in terms of a 'helping hand' for the process of evolution.

Failing that I will have to watch the film again.

[Blaggard]

It's been a long time since I have sen the movie so I guess the big question still centres on evolution coming about with the aid of a skyhook or built from the ground up. My apologies to Dawkins

Well you kinda missed the point of the film but ok.

This is intervention to "create" intelligent life by a vastly superior being, not unlike God, at least compared to us.

I edited by the way, sorry about that. You might want to go back and get the Nietzsche shit on board, I am not enamoured of Thus Spake Zarathustra per se, but clearly Strauss was.

Ah nm. You got it.

Yes, I don't really remember much of the film. Do you think my reference to "skyhook" is relevant? That is, relevant in terms of a 'helping hand' for the process of evolution.

Failing that I will have to watch the film again.

Yeah I think the sky hook thing was relevant, nicely put, no you don't have to watch the film again unless you want to, I think you pretty much got it the first time.

Mind you why any alien race would feel so ronery they would want to seek out other intelligent life forms is of course what the films were about.

Questions such as are we alone in the universe, is their intelligent life out in space and so on were basically what the A C Clarke films and books were trying to establish.

Roll on 3001 the final part.

[Ginkgo]

Nice chatting with you Blaggard, but I have to go. Perhaps we can continue at a later date.

[Blaggard]

Nice chatting with you Blaggard, but I have to go. Perhaps we can continue at a later date.

Indeed perhaps we can...

[thedoc]

It's as if Clark and Kubrik were saying that man could not have evolved without some kind of intervention, divine or alien was not made clear. They also hinted that man's evolution was not finished, again with some kind of intervention.

BTW, I had the LP of 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' and listened to it, long before the movie used the first few measures. The rest of the piece is very good, you should listen to the whole composition. To me the part they used in the movie was just a brief introduction to the real body of music.

[thedoc]

In the 2nd movie, Hal turned out to be much more altruistic than might have been indicated in the first movie. There seemed to be a touch of Marvin in him.

[Blaggard]

In the 2nd movie, Hal turned out to be much more altruistic than might have been indicated in the first movie. There seemed to be a touch of Marvin in him.

Arthur C Clarke wrote 4 books and the end of the film it shows the birth of the star child a possible evolutionary leap that brings the aliens who seeded the obelisks within some sort of speaking terms with humans, before of course any attempt at communication was completely unfathomable to our limited minds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXS8P0HksQo

Hence this becomes a little more understandable in those terms.

In the second film Dave appears to be timeless and immortal, this is the aliens again trying to communicate in terms our feeble minds might comprehend. As it happens HAL was benign he did the only humane thing possible.

I have killed God, and I have killed man,thus spake Zarathustra: the star child expresses the aliens assertion that they are the most powerful beings in the universe whilst they try to convey that to Dave, his eventual realisation means he is reborn as an unlimited being or a star child who then appears at various times to various people in the 2nd film.


I presume 2060 and 3001 will be made at some point tying up all the loose ends that were left unexplained at the end of 2010.


Spoilers for 3001: The Final Odyssey

Plot summary

This novel begins with a brief prologue describing the aliens who created the black monoliths. They apparently evolved from "primordial soup", and over the course of millions of years, turned into a space-faring species. As they explored the Universe, they saw that few intelligent species ever successfully evolved. Therefore, they travelled the universe and catalysed the evolution of intelligent species wherever they went, including Earth, by increasing the evolving species' odds of survival. Upon reaching Earth, they performed experiments on many species to encourage the development of intelligence. Then they left, leaving their black monoliths behind. After visiting the Earth, the extraterrestrials continued to evolve, eventually to the point where they found a way to impress themselves into the fabric of space and time, thus becoming noncorporeal beings. Meanwhile, back in the Solar system, the alien monoliths continued to watch over humanity. However, sometimes the monoliths were prone to degenerating and acting independently of their original programming.

3001 follows the adventures of Frank Poole, the astronaut who was killed by the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey by tearing his spacesuit open and casting him on a trajectory into deep space. One thousand years later, Poole's freeze-dried body is discovered out in the Kuiper belt beyond the orbit of Neptune by a human spaceship, a comet-collecting space tug named the Goliath. The advanced medical science and technology of that age is able to bring Poole back to life. Being freeze-dried and then kept near absolute zero for the intervening centuries preserved Poole's body and brain well enough for him to make a full recovery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3001:_The_Final_Odyssey

Essentially the aliens are so powerful as to make the concept of God redundant. If they are not gods there is no appreciable difference between them.

[Blaggard]

Incidentally I just watched Gravity and I recommend it if you liked the Space Oddyssey films. One thing I did get out of that film and perhaps is as profound as it gets is Sandra Bullock has a nice ass.

Seriously though you could do worse, it's a good story well told and with a realistic depiction of space for a change, the special effects are particularly impressive.

[thedoc]

Incidentally I just watched Gravity, One thing I did get out of that film and perhaps is as profound as it gets is Sandra Bullock has a nice ass.

Yep. And philosophy is reaching new heights.

[R2D2]

This is unrelated but speaking of Stanley Kubrik is it true that he helped create the fake trip to the moon by filming the scenes in the studio? Or is it just another conspiracy theory?
Thanks