chanster

Easy. If you read screenplays of the film, you will find it is similar to the book.

But what Kubrick did in the movie is to abandon some of the screenplay and then edit some more after the shooting to make it more minimalist and open for interpretation.

I guess the question is how Clarke's vision was much more concrete than Kubricks. For many, Kubrick's 2001 is very different than Clarke's 2001. I found Clarke's 2001 (and subsequent novels) to be pretty boring.

aroney

Hmm, I guess I always assumed that the "alien" tampered with Hal so they could end up with the (hu)man (Bow-man) ready for the next evolutionary step - the starchild. Bowman survived. The rest of the crew did not. He becomes the starchild.

rennervision

Aside from the 2010 explanation, I never gave it much more thought than what could be seen in the movie. The way HAL speaks pretty much creeps me out. He just strikes me as a raving psychopath that made self-preservation his number one priority after misdiagnosing a problem with the radio.

caligulathegod

Thank you.
Clarke wrote it but he just doesn't get it. He takes the whole thing either too literally or misunderstands the point. All you have to do is read 2010 and the other sequels. 2001 was, for all its abstract-ness, about the next leap in human evolution. First through the use of tools then beyond them (remember, use of tools was generally used as a definition of humanity). We saw at the beginning of the film the leap that brought us to us and the Star Child represents this abstract notion of the next level. It's symbolic. It is ineffable for us just as we would be for Moonwatcher. Anyway, Clarke just has Bowman become some kind of superman-cypher for the aliens whose purpose was to turn Jupiter into a Sun so that Europa could spring to life. WTF does any of that have to do with the next step in our evolution? It is an interesting SF story in its own right but takes 2001 into a direction not intended. 2001 is not a Science Fiction story. It is Kubrick's idea of THE Science Fiction story. He took the pre-eminent SF writer to help him understand the idiom and together they crafted the story but only Kubrick understood the philosophical implications of what he intended. Clarke treated it is a straightforward SF tale. Clarke is not a dummy, but Clarke understands the story in his own way, just not the way Kubrick really meant it.

rennervision

Good point. I don't regard 2010 too highly. gets one big "Huh?" from me. We were better off without a sequel trying to explain all the intricacies of 2001 that were open to interpretation.

And then there's the big mystery as to why interplanetary travel is accurately displayed in 2001 within the soundless vaccuum of space, but, just nine years later, outer space suddenly has really cool sound effects.