Such directors as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron have acknowledged its profound influence.Īuthor Michael Benson explains how 2001 was made, telling the story primarily through the two people most responsible for the film, Kubrick and science fiction legend Arthur C. 2001's resounding commercial success launched the genre of big-budget science fiction spectaculars. Although some leading critics slammed the film as incomprehensible and self-indulgent, the public lined up to see it. Strangelove, director Stanley Kubrick wasn’t yet recognized as a great filmmaker, and 2001 was radically innovative, with little dialogue and no strong central character.

In its way, this story about the making of 2001 is as compelling and eye-opening as the film itself.Regarded as a masterpiece today, 2001: A Space Odyssey received mixed reviews on its 1968 release. Benson is clearly in tune with the film-he calls it at one point “essentially a nonverbal experience” and, at another, “a masterwork of oblique, visceral, and intuited meanings”-and he follows the story of the movie’s creation with an eye for small, precise detail.

Strangelove, had it vaguely in mind to make a science-fiction film, and taking us through the story’s numerous iterations the shifting nature of the extraterrestrial elements the evolution of the supercomputer HAL the construction of the film’s remarkable sets, with their almost mind-boggling attention to scientific realism the creation of the groundbreaking special effects the selection of the film’s music and much more. Author and filmmaker Benson celebrates the movie’s fiftieth anniversary by chronicling the creation of the 1968 film, starting when Kubrick, coming off the success of Dr. Those whose copies of Jerome Agel’s classic The Making of Kubrick’s 2001 (1970) are getting tattered from rereading will be thrilled to learn there is a new and remarkably comprehensive look at the complex relationship between the two men whose collaboration led to one of the greatest films of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey: director Stanley Kubrick and sf master Arthur C.

Space Odyssey by Michael Benson