2001: A Space Odyssey (Film) Stanley Kubrick

Box office

In its first nine weeks from 22 locations, it grossed $2 million—equivalent to $20.15 million in 2023—in the United States and Canada.[125] The film earned $8.5 million in theatrical gross rentals from roadshow engagements throughout 1968,[129][130] contributing to North American rentals of $16.4 million and worldwide rentals of $21.9 million during its original release.[131] The film's high costs, of approximately $10.5 million,[112][65] meant that the initial returns from the 1968 release left it $800,000 in the red; but the successful re-release in 1971 made it profitable.[132][133][134] By June 1974, the film had rentals from the United States and Canada of $20.3 million (gross of $58 million)[132] and international rentals of $7.5 million.[135] The film had a reissue on a test basis on 24 July 1974 at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and grossed $53,000 in its first week, which led to an expanded reissue.[135] Further re-releases followed, giving a cumulative gross of over $60 million in the United States and Canada.[136] Taking its re-releases into account, it is the highest-grossing film of 1968 in the United States and Canada.[137] Worldwide, it has grossed $146 million across all releases,[e] although some estimates place the gross higher, at over $190 million.[139]

Critical response

2001 polarised critical opinion, receiving both praise and derision, with many New York-based critics being especially harsh. Kubrick called them "dogmatically atheistic and materialistic and earthbound".[141] Some critics viewed the original 161-minute cut shown at premieres in Washington D.C., New York, and Los Angeles.[142] Keir Dullea says that during the New York premiere, 250 people walked out; in L.A., Rock Hudson not only left early but "was heard to mutter, 'What is this bullshit?'"[141] "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"[143] "But a few months into the release, they realised a lot of people were watching it while smoking funny cigarettes. Someone in San Francisco even ran right through the screen screaming: 'It's God!' So they came up with a new poster that said: '2001 – the ultimate trip!'"[144]

In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor ... The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing."[145] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future ... it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film."[146] Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth."[147] Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D.W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man ... Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch."[148] The Boston Globe's review called it "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere ... The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life."[149] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, saying the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale".[50] He later put it on his Top 10 list for Sight & Sound.[150] Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews in various issues in 1968, each slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review of 27 December 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."[151]

Others were unimpressed. Pauline Kael called it "a monumentally unimaginative movie".[152] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic described it as "a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull".[153] The Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky found the film to be an inadequate addition to the science fiction genre of filmmaking.[30] Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring".[154] Variety's Robert B. Frederick ('Robe') believed it was a "[b]ig, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic ... A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark."[116] Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life ... 2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points."[155] (Sarris reversed his opinion upon a second viewing, and declared, "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist."[156]) John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines ... and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans ... 2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story."[157] Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. deemed the film "morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long ... a film out of control".[158] In a 2001 review, the BBC said that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon its initial release.[159]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 92% based on 118 reviews, with an average rating of 9.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "One of the most influential of all sci-fi films – and one of the most controversial – Stanley Kubrick's 2001 is a delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity – and folly – of mankind."[113] Review aggregator Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, has assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100, based on 25 critic reviews.[160] 2001 was the only science fiction film to make Sight & Sound's 2012 list of the ten best films,[161] and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of greatest science fiction films of all time.[162] In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed it as the 19th best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.[163] Other lists that include the film are 50 Films to See Before You Die (#6), The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th century (#11), and Roger Ebert's Top Ten (1968) (#2). In 1995, the Vatican named it one of the 45 best films ever made (and included it in a sub-list of the "Top Ten Art Movies" of all time.)[164] In 1998, Time Out conducted a reader's poll and 2001: A Space Odyssey was voted as ninth on the list of "greatest films of all time".[165] Entertainment Weekly voted it no. 26 on their list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.[166] In 2017, Empire magazine's readers' poll ranked it 21st on its list of "The 100 Greatest Movies".[167] In the Sight & Sound poll of 480 directors published in December 2022, 2001: A Space Odyssey was voted as the Greatest Film of All Time, ahead of Citizen Kane and The Godfather.[168][169]

Science fiction writers

The film won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, as voted by science fiction fans and published science-fiction writers.[170] Ray Bradbury praised the film's photography but disliked the banality of most of the dialogue and believed that the audience does not care when Poole dies.[171] Both he and Lester del Rey disliked the film's feeling of sterility and blandness in the human encounters amidst the technological wonders, while both praised the pictorial element of the film. Reporting that "half the audience had left by intermission", Del Rey described the film as dull, confusing, and boring ("the first of the New Wave-Thing movies, with the usual empty symbols"), predicting "[i]t will probably be a box-office disaster, too, and thus set major science-fiction movie making back another ten years".[172]

Samuel R. Delany was impressed by how the film undercuts the audience's normal sense of space and orientation in several ways. Like Bradbury, Delany noticed the banality of the dialogue (he stated that characters say nothing meaningful), but regarded this as a dramatic strength, a prelude to the rebirth at the conclusion of the film.[173]

Without analysing the film in detail, Isaac Asimov spoke well of it in his autobiography and other essays. James P. Hogan liked the film but complained that the ending did not make any sense to him, leading to a bet about whether he could write something better: "I stole Arthur's plot idea shamelessly and produced Inherit the Stars."[174]

Awards and honours

In 1969, a United States Department of State committee chose 2001 as the American entry at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival.[184]

2001 is ranked 15th on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies list from 2007[185] (up from #22 on AFI's original list from 1998),[186] was no. 40 on its 100 Years... 100 Thrills,[187] was included on its 100 Years... 100 Quotes (no. 78 "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."),[188] and HAL 9000 was selected as the 13th greatest villain on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list.[189] The film was voted the 47th most inspiring film on the 100 Years... 100 Cheers list[190] and the no. 1 science fiction film on AFI's 10 Top 10.[191]