9. It's Too Long
The main narrative drive of the movie is the entire history of humanity and more, so of course the story has to be long. 2001 is a certified epic film in every sense so making it 90 minutes would ruin everything that makes it so involving. The story can't be told in any other way or else Kubrick would have to sacrifice a significant deal of his artistic integrity here. For a director of his stature this would have been a cinematic tragedy. This criticism, like the one before it, is another that falls on modern audiences more than the film's original audience. We're too over-saturated with frenetic storytelling and short, concise films that we have trouble appreciating something that doesn't fit that box. Nobody seems to complain about the length of the latest Transformers movie and it was longer than 2001 by 12 minutes. Kubrick has laid out everything in the story in a very precise nature, as his famous perfectionist tendencies often caused him to do, in order to allow the film to naturally progress in his desired pace.