#15 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

"This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."
---HAL 9000

   The one thing that most people remember after watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is how sinister the computer HAL 9000 is.  For those who are paranoid about the eventual robot takeover the world may see centuries from now, this part of the film is the prime example of how man-made computers will take control and destroy their makers.  HAL sees it as his programmed duty to stop astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) from devastating their Jupiter mission.  This fight with HAL is only a section of the film: the majority of it is about man's evolution and space travel with the aid of an alien artifact known as the monolith.  However this is the most famous and most talked about storyline from the movies and thus will be focused on here.
   In the later part of the film, we are introduced to the astronauts on the secretive Jupiter missions, Dr. Dave Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole, and their computer companion and guide HAL 9000.  HAL boasts to being a computer system with the inability to fail its missions.  As a result, the astronauts put full trust in HAL's reports until something goes inexplicably wrong with one of their vessels.  When this happens, Dave and Frank begin to doubt HAL and consider the idea that he is trying to eliminate the astronauts from the mission.  The final confirmation of this idea comes when HAL releases Frank into space without oxygen or any way of getting back to the spaceship.  
   There isn't any love story in this movie, there isn't even a friendship, but we still feel an emotion akin to compassion when astronaut Dave must destroy HAL 9000.  As HAL's main computer board is slowly disconnected, he tries to reach out to Dave to try and stop him from destroying him.  He pleads to Dave, apologizes for his actions, and then slowly loses his memory and re-enacts his introduction to the scientists at the beginning of his life.  The final pull at the audience is when HAL starts singing "Daisy", a sweet song he must have learned early in his computer life.  As he slows down his speech, it is like a human dying and reliving their past right before their final breathe.  There is not much compassion in 2001 because we do not get a sense of the characters as people with real emotions (Dave and Frank were hired for this mission because of their complete lack of emotion even in stressful or unusual circumstances).  Strangely enough, the one character we feel sympathy towards, almost to a point where we can relate, is for a computer robot.


FUN FACT: The video screens inside of the spaceship's control panel are actually projection screens with an image projected from behind the astronauts!


FAVORITE QUOTE: "I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal." ---HAL 9000