Group A, Post 3, Carter Messner - 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is a story I first read in high school, but I was left wondering many things about some of the objects in the story because the story didn't go into enough detail for me on the origins of the Monolith and how HAL was able to "murder" the crew members. So like any sensible teenager I decided to watch the movie to see if I could come to any conclusion with visual help. What I found out while researching is that many people believe HAL malfunctioned while I believe that HAL was deliberately doing things to get rid of the humans, but I will start where the movie begins with the Monolith.

The Monolith appears in the movie only a couple of times but the recurrences of it are at significant times in human development, first it appears when the first man like creatures use the first tool (bone used as a club), the second time is on the moon showing that man has now left the boundaries of their own planet, and the third is before David Bowman who was part of the two man crew on the same ship as HAL, is turned into the Star-Child, showing the change from a living creature to an extra dimensional being. Now, what I believe the reason for this Monolith being, is to be a watcher over the evolution of mankind and most likely other life in the universe, to follow and track the progress until it eventually becomes a being of higher dimensions. When I read the book, I thought of the Monolith gave the knowledge of using tools to man to start the evolutionary process. But, the movie never hinted to this idea, the Monolith has just been tracking the life on the planet waiting for a form to evolve to the ability of tool making. I also found it interesting that in the story it said that the Monolith looked to has been deliberately buried in the moon, showing that it knew that humans were going to go there someday.  

That story line is sort of a background story in the main plot of the movie. The crew members on the ship Discovery One, Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole are on a mission to Jupiter after the discovery of the Monolith on the moon, and they have an AI computer, HAL 9000, helping them on the trip there. The computer eventually goes crazy and ends up trying the kill the crew members, in an article I found on the HAL malfunctions, it was said that "the crew gradually figures out the computer is malfunctioning and faced with the threat of disconnection and hence loss of control; HAL 9000 reasons that with the crew dead it can continue to operate while concealing its malfunction from mission support staff on Earth and sets about killing them." (Hinton), but again I interpreted it differently. Computers don’t typically malfunction, now I know that this is science fiction and basically anything can happen, but I don't believe the computer was having a psychotic breakdown. The computers purpose was the get the crew to Jupiter, but the computer had one problem that was keeping it from doing its' job, the humans who were trying to shut HAL down. The computer figures out that it can finish its job only if it can stop the humans from shutting it off, so the only logical answer is murder. This is my opinion, but I feel like an entertaining spin on the story to think about if you are going to check this movie out.  

This is another example of the book being better than the movie, but only because of how slow moving the story line in the movie is. The graphics in this movie are still pretty good since the movie is now 50 years old, it is a classic for any science fiction movie lovers.  

Hinton, Russell. "Movies in mind – 2001: A Space Odyssey", Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 01/2018, Volume 52, Issue 1. January 10, 2018.