Stanley Kubrick broke science fiction
2001 : A Space Odyssey rewrote the mythos of the future
It’s not immediately obvious to people that science fiction is myth.
Myths are stories that play a functional purpose in a culture. The myth of Romulus and Remus told Romans where they came from, in the same way the myth of the Wild West tells Americans where they come from.
It’s not necessary for a good myth to be true to be effective. Myths are for the questions we can’t answer with facts.
Questions like the future.
Science fiction spent much of the 20th century creating a myth of the human future. In this future humans would build starships, travel to other solar systems, meet alien races, and colonise other worlds.
Stanley Kubrick thought this myth was naive. It appeared to be based on scientific fact, but up close it was really just a projection of humanity’s recent past into its near future. Science fiction looked much more like the colonial era of warring empires than like a credible future.
So Kubrick decided to rewrite science fiction as a better myth. He agreed to direct a movie about space exploration, and hired Arthur C Clarke to cowrite the script. The movie was supposed to be a celebration of all the technologies powering the space race. Clarke’s script featured long, detailed explanations of all the technologies shown on the screen.
But in the final phase of production Kubrick, who insisted on complete creative control and final cut of all his movies, went into seclusion. Clark was locked out, and Kubrick had his “novelisation” of the script delayed for over two years. Kubrick cut the voice overs, and replaced them with music, including the famous Blue Danube sequence.
The movie that Kubrick delivered was not a celebration of science and technology, but a critique. Kubrick condenses the entire history of human technological progress into the most famous jumpcut in cinema history, from bone to satellite. Then takes the audience on a psychedelic odyssey into a different future all together.
Kubrick rewrote science fiction from a myth of technological transformation to a myth of the transformation of consciousness.
That radical rewrite is clearest in 2001s divisive final act. People who believe in the myth of starships and alien worlds tend to absolutely despise Kubrick’s psychedelic snoozefest, which is definitely too long for anyone not literally tripping on acid.
But the scenes of Dave Bowman’s accelerated aging in a dimension beyond time and space, then his rebirth as the iconic Space Baby, are the only true attempt to depict the birth of a new stage of human consciousness on screen.
Even people who love 2001 find it hard to articulate what the movie is about. After many years of cogitating the matter I collected all my thoughts in a video essay on the Science Fiction channel.
