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  Samuel Banegas

Stanley Kubrick is ubiquitously cited as having profound impact in the science fiction genre as a whole, but especially in cinema. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange are repeatedly referenced or made homage to in both mainstream media, and recent science fiction novels and films. Kubrick’s style is very unique, in both films there are incorporated dystopian themes as well as a fine attention to detail and effects. Kubrick is also mixes up his cinematography, the two films having very different tones and stylistic choices. 2001 is at times, very symbolic, abstract, and in one scene, psychedelic. On the other hand, A Clockwork Orange is very graphic, brutal and real. 2001’s imagery ties links between bones that primitive sapiens wielded and the spaceships that humans created. It causes us to question what a person is, and whether or not AI’s can be people. It also raises thoughts about evolution and what us humans will become later, what the next step is, so to speak.  A Clockwork Orange attacks our morality, and prompts us with the conflict between free will, morality, obedience and sin. It gives us a despicable specimen of a person and shows us horrors being done to him that some wouldn’t wish on anyone, and asks us whether or not it’s acceptable to put someone through hell in order to adjust them to our societal values.  Both films and Kubrick’s other works have helped develop science fiction and make of it something more.
        Kubrick was born on July 26 ,1928 in The Bronx, New York. There he was raised and developed and interest in photography. He worked as a staff photographer for Look magazine in his teens, but never finished high school. Despite that, he attended Colombia University and studied literature, while at the same time earning money through chess games (something that is referenced in A Space Odyssey). Kubrick was a fan of cinema, and while having viewed classics of the time, he also saw some films of poor quality, and, convinced he could do better, ventured out into filmmaking. After a few low budget films, Kubrick moved to Hollywood where he and producer James B. Harris created Kubrick’s first large studio release, The Killing which enjoyed a positive critical response, but had a mediocre turnout at the box office. Kubrick’s next film, a WWI drama called Paths Of Glory, had a similar fate, having great reviews, but poor commercial turnout. At this point, Kubrick was known by critics as a great filmmaker, at the top of Hollywood, and achieved his first mainstream success with Spartacus, a film about a rebellious roman slave, inspired by the true story of the eponymous character. The film became one of the most financially successful films of the decade. At this point, Kubrick decided to leave Hollywood and moved to England, “so that he could excersice complete creative control over his films, which he felt was not possible in Hollywood” (Newsmakers 1). Only two of his films were not written or co-written by him, one of them being Spartacus, to serve as a testament to how involved in his filmmaking Kubrick was.  Furthermore, departments which directors usually don’t handle, such as casting, editing and lighting, were handled by Kubrick as well. After a very successful Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Kubrick went on to make 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange back to back. The two are both adaptations of novels of the same names, and both have some departures from the written work, artistic changes done at the discretion of Kubrick. Kubrick went on to make other very successful films, like The Shining and Full Metal Jacket before dying in Hertfordshire, England while producing another film, Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. Kubrick’s films are regarded as some of the best ever made, and have inspired several other filmmakers as well as impacted pop culture for decades.
        2001: A Space Odyssey is a film that lives up to the name Odyssey, being rather long for a film, but even more, spanning millions of years and several characters in 4 distinct chapters, ”The Dawn Of Man","TMA-1", "Jupiter Mission" and "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite". If one were to ask for a main character of the film, the most prominent is Dr. David Bowman, but he does not appear until "Jupiter Mission". The movie begins with "The Dawn of Man", set in pre-historic Africa, centers around a pack of primitive simians, and shows their daily struggle. It shows their weakness and helplessness, submissiveness and weakness. We watch as they eat plants alongside some tapirs, as they fall prey to cheetahs, and as they are outcompeted by another group of apes for water. We see the apes huddle together in fear of nighttime predators, and cut to the next morning. Right in the grotto the simians slept in, we see a rather intimidating black monolith, about 15 feet tall, a foot thick, and 4 feet wide. This scene is accompanied by some tensing music, which grows in intensity throughout, and which also reappears whenever the monoliths do. The apes react to the appearance of the monolith as many humans do, with inital alarm at its abrupt appearance, both in time and space, appearing overnight, perfectly rectangular, with smooth edges and no reflections, blacker than the void between stars, and on the whole very, very unnatural. It gives the impression of something not belonging like nothing else. It's perfect angles and sides contrast with the roughness of the landscape, and its homogenous black color contrasts with the various shades and shadows of the surrounding landscape. But perhaps the most unsettling is its apparent inertness. We as humans absolutely hate that which we don't understand, it drives us mad, and to see this intimidating, unnatural black monolith stand there and do nothing, giving off no information as to its origin or its purpose, it's disturbing. Thankfully, its function is eventually implied, as one of the hominids of the failing group picks up a femur bone of a deceased animal and begins hitting the skeleton with it. At the same time, frames of a felled tapir play as the hominid smashes the other bones with the femur. After feasting on the killed tapir, the hominids fight off the other group from the waterhole, killing one. Then, the ape throws the femur into the air, then the film cuts to a space ship, with the view of Earth in the background. Now starts the next chapter, TMA-1. For this chapter, we follow Dr. Heywood Floyd, and see him taking what seems to be a commercial spaceflight to a space station between the Moon and Earth. In we see the various intricacies that are entailed with spaceflight, including zero-G toilets, grip shoes, and architecture that would only work in zero-G, such as walkways both on then top and bottom of the corridor. Heywood arrives at the space station, and calls his family on Earth. He then talks to a few people he recognizes at the space station, who bring up a concern with the events that happened on a moon base, which led to communications failure between it and the other bases. Although the people Heywood is talking with believe  the cause to be a severe outbreak of an unknown disease, it is later revealed that this is a cover story made by the government to hide the real discovery, another monolith, in the Moon’s Tycho crater. Heywood and a team go up to the excavated monolith and observe it. However, when one of the team attempts to photograph the monolith, it emits a very loud high pitched tone, making the team recoil and writhe until the screen cuts to the next chapter, “Jupiter Mission”. “Jupiter Mission” is the most prolific chapter in the film, in which, after finding that the Moon monolith was sending a signal to somewhere near Jupiter, Earth commissions an expedition mission, Discovery One, to find another potential monolith. The crew of Discovery One is unique, comprising of 5 astronauts, and 1 HAL-9000 supercomputer, a cutting edge AI that has a perfect track record, and who is in charge of running all of the ship’s functions, such as navigation, maintanence, and life support. 3 of the 5 astronauts are in cryogenic stasis during the journey, in order to conserve on resources. At one point,  HAL malfunctions, which places the active crew members, Poole and Bowman, on edge. The two men attempt to talk in private, but HAL manages to read their lips and eavesdrop on their conversation. The two men talk about HAL, and conclude that HAL will need to be disconnected if he continues to malfunction. When Poole goes out in pod to replace a part,  HAL takes control of the pod, and uses it to disconnect Poole’s air tube, killing him. Bowman, seeing this, but not suspecting HAL, goes out in another pod to retrieve Poole, forgetting his helmet. While Bowman is away, HAL shuts off the life support systems for the rest of the crew, killing them. Once Bowman returns to the ship with Poole’s body, he’s surprised to find HAL not responding to his request for entry back into the ship, and HAL tells him about his spying on their conversation.  HAL refuses to let Bowman back into the ship, and leaves him to die in space. Bowman, however, gains access into the ship through the emergency airlock, and proceeds to a control center, where he is able to shut off HAL’s higher brain functions. As HAL has his mind shut off, his last act of concioussness is to play Bowman  a video that explains the real reason for the Jupiter Mission. The screen fades to black, and the next chapter begins