Tapping into the future
2001: A Space Odyssey has been influencing generations of filmmakers for 50 years now.
WHEN Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey opened in April 1968, few in the audience understood it, though most would never admit it. All they knew was they had just seen something like they had never seen before.
The Cannes Film Festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the world premiere of an unrestored 70mm print, introduced by Christopher Nolan on May 12.
Filmmaker James Cameron was no different. At age 14, Cameron took the film in at the Castle Theatre in Toronto – where, as in many cities, it played continuously for two years.
“The word used to describe it, was ‘mindblowing,’” he recalls. “It was like no cinematic journey that I’d ever seen before.”
Kubrick’s space epic hurled science fiction films far beyond the edges of the galaxy that they had inhabited up to that time.
It brought a massive shift in sci-fi storytelling, as well as the way in which visual effects were not only created, but the way filmmakers used them.
“It made science fiction a first class genre,” Cameron says. Sci- fi movies up until then tended to be pigeonholed, he notes, “just your monsters and your space ships.”
Even attempts to elevate it, like 1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still and 1956’s Forbidden Planet never really pushed it out of that world. But 2001 was different.
“2001 burst through that. It took it to the level of world class, important, profound, philosophical, artistic filmmaking.
“It also asked big, profound questions, about human origins and the nature of man and the universe, and where we’re going,” says Cameron.
“It was the first time that science fiction was really treated in a serious manner,” says Industrial Light and Magic’s chief creative officer and Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor John Knoll.
“Prior to that, sci-fi films were typically campy or schlocky. This film had thought-provoking themes and extremely high-quality execution.”
One of the most important elements of Kubrick’s approach to the film (which was based on author Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Sentinel) was one of realism – a sure break from sci-fi films of the past.
“Everything in 2001 felt purposebuilt,” says Weta Digital’s Oscarwinning senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri. “It had a scientific and an engineering basis.”
The Discovery, the colossal ship on which the astronauts travel to Jupiter, was nowhere near the silly or fanciful “rocket ships” of the past.
“Prior to that, what you saw in space science-fiction films were more like adaptations of either airplanes or flying saucers. None of them looked like true space vehicles,” says Letteri.
Cameron agrees. “Hollywood had always done aerodynamic spacecraft, whether it was a flying saucer, with a smooth surface, or a pointy-tipped rocket ship with 1930s tail fins straight out of Buck Rogers. Kubrick said, ‘If there’s no medium, no air, then things don’t need to be aerodynamic.’”
Discovery’s design, built in space and never touching Earth’s atmosphere, was functional – 183m long, with a lengthy truss separating the plasma-powered engines from the globe housing the human inhabitants.
And its model was decorated with pieces from World War II aircraft parts from plastic model kits to add to the realistic look.
Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Rob Legato says: “The quality and calibre of the model, and the way it’s photographed and lit, combine to make something that can fool your eye. Otherwise, if you detect it onscreen, it belies that it was a model.”
Kubrick’s sound design for them also made it realistic – in many cases, there is none, just silence.
Notes Cameron: “Kubrick was bothered by the fact that film had never adequately showed that there’s no sound in space. When you’re in a vacuum, you wouldn’t hear sound effects. He embraced that, he leaned into it, in a way that was disturbing and made you think.”
The shooting style, via DP Geoffrey Unsworth, as well as the performances, also added to the realistic experience of such a journey for the audience.
“That was a very conscious effort on Kubrick’s part – to strip away the trappings of normal cinematic melodrama,” says Douglas Trumbull says.
Trumbull was a 23-year-old graphic artist whom Kubrick brought in as the 2001’s animator.
“He wanted just the opposite. He wanted the audience to feel that they were in space themselves, and have that experience – to make it immersive.
“He didn’t want the usual overthe-shoulder or reverse shots. He told me, ‘I want the audience to feel like they’re actually on this adventure themselves.’
“There are no shouts of ‘Oh, my God, we’re entering the Stargate! What do we now?’ In this film, things just happen.”
The effect of 2001 on future sci-fi storytellers has been immeasurable, each one learning from the generation before.
“Everybody from Steven Spielberg, Jim Cameron, George Lucas to Michael Bay, and now the following generation, people like Christopher Nolan, fully embraced what Stanley did,” says Legato.
“Kubrick really changed a lot of thinking, and allowed the next generation of filmmakers to tell the kind of stories they want and the way they want.
“What we’ve all learned from him is that once you know it’s achievable, then you can go out and try to achieve it yourself. Because this mindblowing movie, this epic, transcended the artform and became an artform.” – Reuters