Trivia: Much has been written about the scene where Bowman enters the air lock without his helmet. Studies done by NASA have shown that humans can survive in vacuum for brief periods if they do not hold their breath. Some have commented that Dave appears to hold his breath before blowing the hatch, but careful study of the scene does not show this, as it seems he is simply grimacing, bracing himself for the coming effort. When the film was first shown in theaters, many of them handed out souvenir booklets which included references to this study.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
22 trivia entries
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Gary Lockwood, Keir Dullea, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Continuity mistake: When Dave gets his supper, the order of the slop from right to left is yellow, light brown, light brown, dark brown. Later when he's eating, the order is yellow, orange brown, dark brown, light brown. (00:59:00 - 00:59:50)
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Question: Maybe I need to read the book, but can someone explain the whole ending sequence to me. Why all the flashy over dramatized pictures? It's artistic but is there some other meaning to it?
Answer: At the end, in the Arthur C. Clarke's story, both Dave Bowman and Frank Poole (who survived) went to a moon of Saturn to investigate the second Monolith. Dave Bowman tried to touch the Monolith with his space pod and was sucked into a wormhole that transported him to a star on the other side of the universe - at which point, Dave's last transmission is "My God, it's full of stars!" All of the "slit-scan" visual effects by Doug Trumbull (based on effects created by John Whitney years earlier) represent an almost instant voyage to the other side of the universe. Whether this is supposed to be a quantum-jump is not explained, but it's millions of times faster than anything ever depicted in Star Trek or other space fantasy knockoffs.
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Chosen answer: All the flashing images are supposed to represent Bowman travelling past far and distant galaxies, this is what happens in the book, where he travels to that white house place.
troy fox