The Most Overhyped Space Movie<em> </em>
As the outer-space correspondent at The Atlantic, I spend a lot of time looking beyond Earth’s atmosphere. I’ve watched footage of a helicopter flying on Mars. I’ve watched a livestream of NASA smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid on purpose. I’ve seen people blast off on rockets with my own eyes. But I have never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This is an enormous oversight, apparently. The 1968 film is considered one of the greatest in history and its director, Stanley Kubrick, a cinematic genius. And, obviously, it’s about space. Surely a space reporter should see it—and surely a reporter should take notes.
What follows is my real-time reaction to watching 2001 on a recent evening, edited for length and clarity. Even though the movie has been out for 54 years, I feel a duty to warn you that there are major spoilers ahead. (If you’re suddenly compelled to watch 2001 first, you can rent it for $3.99 on YouTube.)
The movie kicks off with orchestral music that you’ve probably heard whether or not you’ve seen , a heart-thumping and foreboding melody, with that dramatic . (It’s “,” by the German composer Richard Strauss.) The sun rises over a flat, grassy plain. We slink from. We’re a few minutes in when my partner, sitting next to me on the couch, asks if we can watch this at 2x speed.
