...the other night I watched 2001 from about midway on, starting with the Odyssey on its way to Jupiter. It was on the Encore Mystery channel!
I didn't intend to watch all of it but got sucked in. It was a long time since I'd seen it and I was left a little baffled because the ending seemed sentimental in a way I didn't expect from Kubrick. I've never read the book. Is Clarke's ending more hard-nosed?
.......
Clarke's ending matches the *essence* of Kubrick's but benefits from leaving the visuals to his reader's imagination.
I say 'benefits' because although it's one thing to describe the transformed Bowman as a "starchild" -- the first example of a new species, fit for the terrors and delights of the interstellar medium -- it's quite another to show a massive, thumb sucking embryo floating in Earth orbit.
No matter how lusciously filmed and seriously treated, such an image can't help but seem absurd to some and excessively sentimental to others. Or both.
.d.