2001: A Space Odyssey's Epicness

 Dominic Mayhall


2001: A Space Odyssey's Epicness


        I have always heard about this movie, and I always thought it came out in 2001. I also know that David Bowie has a song called "Space Oddity" that he wrote six months after seeing this film. I was very clueless knowing what A Space Odyssey was really about. I'm glad I finally got around to watching it I was really impressed.


        There have been a couple space movies that I've seen that have probably taken inspiration from this movie. One that I just watched recently and that I love was "Interstellar". Both movies rely heavily on visuals more than actual dialogues. And as a viewer I prefer that more than having to pay attention to what the different characters are saying. The beginning of the movie has that iconic song with the timpani called "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss. I've heard that song so many times in other forms of media and I read somewhere else that this was the first film to use it. I don't know how true that is, but that's pretty cool if it is. The first twenty minutes of the film showing the dawn of man felt a little out of place. I understand why they put it in the movie. To show how far man has come from learning how to use weapons to space travel. But overall, it is a space movie, and they did focus more on the space aspect. At first it felt like it could've been a scene from "Planet of the Apes", and I recently found that both of these movies came out not even a week apart from each other. 


        I love the use of the visuals in this movie. You can tell that they're a little outdated, but not too far off from what's seen today in movies. I still appreciate the way the planets and different areas of the ship and space station are shot. It feels as if these different areas have their own personalities and own style. Not just a copy a paste design on all of the space gear. You can tell this is a 60's movies because even when they're in space, they still found a way to use a bunch of different vibrant colors.

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