4. Why Did Dave Turn Into The Star Child? - 2001: A Space Odyssey
The Cliffhanger: 2001: A Space Odyssey ends with the protagonist, Dave, seemingly turning into the so-called Star Child, a gigantic baby who sits in space, staring down at Earth. Um, what?
The Answer: Kubrick co-write the script with renowned sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, and it actually does explain what the Hell we just saw. Originally, these scenes had a voiceover attached, but Kubrick, in typically provocative fashion, decided to remove it to blow our minds that little bit more. Basically, remember the monoliths that we saw with the apes at the start of the movie? They are actually machines devised by advanced aliens to speed up human evolution. Thus, at the end of the movie, when Dave interacts with a monolith himself, it has simply turned him into an extremely evolved form of human being, the Star Child seemingly being the zenith of humanity's potential.