Stanley Kubrick's influential sci-fi has been dissected and analyzed to within an inch of its life ever since it was first released 46 years ago, and one of the most impressive things about the movie is that its true meaning has never been fully explained. No feature film in history has been left open to interpretation more than 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is key to its timeless appeal. Philosophical, enigmatic, profound and visually stunning, there is no doubt that the movie is Kubrick's masterpiece. There is so much cinematic iconography packed into the four-act structure; the jump-cut from bone to satellite that condenses thousands of years into a single frame of film, the stars aligning above the monolith and the cold, calculated supercomputer HAL 9000 to name but three. Kubrick set out to make 'the proverbial good science-fiction film' and failed, instead delivering a seminal meditation on evolution and the relationship between mankind and technology. An incredible technical achievement, Kubrick spent over two years working on the special effects to provide the most realistic depiction of space ever seen on the big screen, and in true Kubrickian fashion the production went massively over-budget and behind schedule to match his grand ideas. 2001: A Space Odyssey influenced everyone from Steven Spielberg to Ridley Scott, and the singularity of vision on display has never been bettered in the sci-fi genre.
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