literally hal is the whole appeal of 2001 like this story would not grip me so badly if it didnt have the little funky computer dude

ok so i think, as always, the book was better than the movie... ie, some final Thots on 2001 a space odyssey

like idk i just think the concepts were easier to work with when put down in words than purely visuals unless they built in stuff to provide explanation which idk how lol...

also they dedicated a huge amount of time to just fucking. visuals and nothing else it was actually kinda tedious like five whole minutes of just different shots of the same thing with some choir of human voices just doing monotone noises it was... weird lol. i think that time couldve been cut down and instead used to like... pace this shit better lmfao

like i think if i hadnt read the book i’d be INCREDIBLY confused about Everything. and the weird pacing didnt help......... like if there was more time dedicated to bowman making his way alone to jupiter (in the movie, saturn in the book) then it’d be better and it’d show his alteration in psyche.. instead we got a time skip... and then there was a whole process for him entering the star gate but in the movie its just him staring out the window at jupiter and then suddenly some weird line appears and BOOM PSYCHEDELIC TRIP like LOL what??? ALSO LIKE -50 POINTS FOR NOT HAVING THE LINE “OH MY GOD IT’S FULL OF STARS” BECAUSE THEY TOOK AWAY THE STAR GATE!!!! and again fuck you for not showing the inverted colors place i was PSYCHED to see that on screen but uh ahhaha no its just a bunch of landscapes in weird neon colors for like 5-10 whole minutes.. ok.........

the hotel scene couldve been done better too :/ in fact i think the tone of several scenes kinda got lost.. like hal’s death was, it was ok i guess but it didnt have as much of an impact on me as it did in the book. but i DID like how there was actually a reaction from bowman during it which wasnt really in the book beyond “wow this is harder than i thought lol” as if he isnt purposefully killing what he considers another crewmate for his own survival LOL

but uhm yeah the entire final act of the book .. bowman had basically said fuck it to a normal life lol he literally was like “i’ve made it this far and im not gonna be stopped now” he just went right fuckin into that star gate and he embraced the hell out of it.... the entire time he was in awe and he even said he wasnt very afraid. he took notice that despite being in such a dangerous situation he was being taken care of so obviously whatever brought him there wanted him alive and safe... he only ever got cautious when in the hotel room. there, he was anxious for the first time bc he thought he was like the representative of the human race so he didnt want to be stupid and fuck it up, but he also was afraid of being overly cautious in case that was Being Stupid.. so he went around the room investigating stuff, he noticed that the room was a decoy set up by the aliens based off what was portrayed in human media and it was used to put him at ease, he literally took a shower and went to sleep.. idk there was a lot of nuance in that scene that i didnt appreciate at the time but the movie just . lol ok. the movie removed all of that and its really quite incomprehensible. i only understand what was going on because i read the book. the scene really accomplished nothing for the narrative in the movie but in the book it tied up all the loose ends (the giant shockwave of static when the monolith was exposed to sunlight was the aliens collecting all humans transmissions - thats how they learned to replicate the hotel room for bowman, cause familiarity puts one at ease. the movie retained the radio static but in removing the details of the hotel room scene that shit is like literally never explained so lmfao)

ALSO. the man apes at the beginning. the movie literally never says that they evolved because of the monolith. it vaguely implies it but unless you read the book im like 99% sure it would go over your head. legit the man apes dance around the monolith and then start using bones to beat the shit out of animals and each other and thats it LOL. in the book it showed the monolith forcing them to learn how to use tools, even accidentally killing one in the process, and then it showed how they begin to think along the lines of predators and using tools as weapons. also the book said that the man apes didnt care about the monolith at all bc they thought it was just a rock and like who cares about rocks when you’re fighting to survive everyday, and even when it proved to be more than a rock they still didnt care when it was suddenly gone lol, meanwhile the movie had the fucking one ape wake up and immediately start screaming and waking the others up when it saw the monolith and then they all started gathering around it and stroking it like uhm lol what.. the whole point of this part is that theyre more like animals than humans still and i dont think animals are really that aware of things.. yeah they may be curious as to a new object and maybe start sniffing it but like WOW it was a HUGE deal to them in the movie lol????????)

ALSO I DIDNT LIKE HOW THE MOVIE CHARACTERIZED HAL. hal was made to be sympathetic in the books, in fact its never explicitly said but he’s... very near a human in psyche at least. he never kills anyone on purpose - they only die on accident. he acts out due to guilt over hiding the truth of the mission from bowman and poole, panic when his attempts at thwarting them start to go wrong, and naivety, when he doesnt know what sleep is because he’s a robot and he thinks sleep is equivalent to death and so he thinks bowman and poole are going to kill him. theyre all very human emotions, and even bowman says that he can sympathize with that despite being a direct victim in all this lol. yet in the movie hal seems to generic Evil Robot’s True Evil Nature Is Revealed As Robot Goes Rogue And Kills Humans. his interactions with bowman and poole are very ominous and he seems to be deliberately lying to them, while in the book he seemed kinda hesitant about it.  and then movie hal goes and kills poole, bowman goes out to save him (which he doesnt do in the book), doesnt let bowman back in????, and then deliberately kills the other crewmembers currently in stasis.... but in the book hal killed poole to keep him from discovering that hal was lying, bowman gets suspicious that hal is going Bad so he goes to wake up the 3 other crewmembers, hal opens the airlocks when bowman is waking them up, killing the 3 and attempting to kill bowman out of self defense due to bowman planning to disconnect hal, which hal thinks is Death. i mean ultimately, yes hal killed them all, but the motives behind it are different and characterize him much differently as a result.. hal just seemed like an AI who was programmed to do a task even if it resulted in bad things in the movie, but in the book he genuinely felt almost human, and his artificial intelligence only really factored in when it came to him actually being able to deal with human emotions... a normal human would not kill people when their lie was starting to come unraveled (depending on the severity of the lie i guess), but hal has never dealt with this guilt and he literally doesnt even know what sleep is because hes not human, and thats what makes him do these bad things, and even then we never know for sure if he ever actually intended for them to wind up as murder lol

i mean the movie had fanTASTIC visuals but from the story perspective its uh. lacking lol.