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Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

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Mistakes

During the base briefing all the participants are walking quickly as they would on Earth. This kind of motion is impossible in the lower moon gravity and it is made clear throughout the film that no artificial gravity technology exists that might allow Earth-normal movement. Later, at the monolith excavation site, the walking is slower and more deliberate as it should be. See more...

Trivia

Almost every company whose product was advertised in this film is no longer in business. See more...

Mistake pictures

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - 31 corrections

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Gary Lockwood (add more)

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

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Entry In the zero-G sequence of the shuttle approaching the moon Dr. Floyd is served a meal in a zero-G tray with straws. While Dr. Floyd sips through the straws to eat from the zero-G food tray, the food puree falls back down the straws into the tray wells (leaving them "clear") after he finishes sipping, an effect of gravity. In zero-G, the food puree should remain visible in the straw, and not fall. [Current packages designed for consuming liquids in space, have a minor vaccuum in the container and a valve to maintain it in the straw, to keep the liquid from escaping. I see no reason they wouldn't have them in that future.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot Time
Entry How could there be dust clouds when the lunar probes land when there is such a thin atmosphere on the moon? It happens twice when Dr. Floyd is going to check out the monolith. [There isn't a thin atmosphere on the moon - there is no atmosphere. The dust is stirred up by the exhaust of the landing rockets on the shuttle. True, it doesn't behave exactly as it would on the moon, but this is an accepted film convention, not a mistake. You can't film in a vacuum.]
Time
Entry When David Bowman is travelling through the space portal, many streaks of light can be seen passing him on both sides yet when we see David Bowman himself, the streaks are reflected in his helmet and they don't seem to be moving at all. [The reflections in the helmet are of the instruments inside the pod, which we see again after the pod has stopped in the room.]
Time
Entry When troubleshooting the AE-35 unit in the pod bay, the unit is resting on a console, unsecured. The unit should float, since the pod bay doesn't possess artificial gravity, only the main living space does. [Magnets, velcro, Blutac, double sided sticky tape, adhesive coating on the console ... there are a hundred different methods of securing loose equipment in a microgravity environment. Think the designers of The Discovery didn't think of just one of them?]
Time
Entry In the scene where Bowman is attempting to force entry into the Discovery by using the pod's robotic arm to manually open the exterior door, the error is that the force needed to turn the door opener in a weightless environment should have twisted the pod in the opposite direction as it wasn't physically locked to the mother ship anywhere else by the other arm. [We see the arm opening the hatch in close ups. We don't see the rest of the pod. As the pod is not spinning, there must be something keeping it stable such as the pod's thrusters firing or a powerful gyroscope.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot Time
Entry Poole takes a pod out to replace AE35. We see this pod spinning off into space. Bowman takes pod 2 out to retrieve Poole. He eventually blows the door to get back inside Discovery. There is no indication that he bothers retrieving this pod: He is occupied with HAL. Bowman takes pod 3 to check out Stargate. He and the pod are sucked in. So where did pod 4 come from in the movie 2010? [Since you refer to the sequel "2010", Let me point out that in that movie they allude to the fact that Dave Bowman Also jettisoned the bodies of the three dead crew members who were in hibernation (which we never saw him do...) They go on to say that he continued on with his mission to Jupiter after he disconnected HAL's higher brain functions. So since we know all this, isn't it plausible that he retrieved the pod after taking care of HAL?]
Time
Entry In the scene where Dave is going into the room to shut down HAL, he is wearing his space suit and his sleeve becomes unattached from his glove when he is opening the door. This would be lethal, given that HAL messed up the pressure and drained the oxygen. [I got the impression he was wearing his suit just in case HAL depressurized, not because he already had. If HAL had depressurized the ship, Dave would have been dead by this point because he would not have been able to repressurize the airlock and get a spare helmet. Further, it seems unlikely that HAL would have the ability to depressurize the ship on his own, crazy or not.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot Time
Entry When Frank Poole and HAL are playing chess, HAL states his move as (in what is called "Descriptive Notation") "Queen to Bishop Three". This is not true, the move he makes is "Queen to Bishop Six". [The game might be too complicated for Frank to figure out but not for HAL. Because of how complicated it is, HAL can basically do anything he wants, because Frank assumes that HAL is perfect. ]
Time
Entry There is a scene where one of the astronauts is drinking out of a juice box in space (zero gravity). When he is done drinking from the straw the juice falls back down the straw as if there was gravity. [The juice was sucked up due to the difference in air pressure caused by sucking on the straw. As such, when he stops sucking, the juice is sucked back into the carton].
Time
Entry When the ship's computer and one of the crew members are playing chess, the computer stated a mate in 2, which is not true. It's mate in 3. [This actually is an intentional mistake. This error is showing that HAL is starting to fail. If you notice that the whole thing is so complicated that it's hard for the crew member to figure it out so he believes it to be a victory for HAL.]
Time
Entry When they try to hide from HAL, Dave comments that there is a malfunction in the "C" pod. HAL should protest because it doesn’t detect anything wrong, but it doesn’t say anything. [HAL is already suspicious of the pilots, obvious from the fact that he reads their lips through the window of the pod. Perhaps he ignores this lie in order to learn of their plans.]
Time

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