Classic 2001: A Space Odyssey

Essay #1 – Evaluation
English 2121 Writing & Research
Richard Carr, Hennepin Technical College For this assignment, you will evaluate a movie or film (not a TV show; no concert films or documentaries; use good taste, please). The evaluation essay is kind of argumentative essay, and as such, you will argue that the movie is good, bad, a little of both, or something in between. This will tell the reader the overall value of the movie—your evaluation. While this essay is similar to the movie reviews we are accustomed to seeing on TV, in the newspaper and on the internet, our analysis will be more formal and our presentation perhaps more rigorous than the reviews found in the entertainment media. We will assume our readers are
He achieved this realism through the painstaking use of mechanical techniques. In the tubular corridor scene, for example, in which the space stewardess walks up the side of the curved wall until she is walking upside down on the “ceiling,” Kubrick rotated and the entire corridor set in tandem with the camera, which was rigidly attached to the set itself, thus allowing the actress to walk upright and naturally as the scene was shot. Similar techniques were used to shoot models of Space Station V spinning serenely in orbit around the Earth and the ship USS Discovery One gliding sedately through space on its long journey. On the other hand, later science fiction films utilized newer techniques and technology unavailable to Kubrick, such as the digitally controlled Dykstraflex motion control camera used by George Lucas in the Star Wars movies of the 1970s and 80s. In Star Wars, the special effects are not only realistic but also fast-moving, enabling Lucas to present spectacular, high-speed, entirely believable space battles. Although the special effects in 2001 pale in comparison to those of Star Wars, they were perfectly adequate for a movie without any complex space battles, and indeed, in their time, Kubrick’s special effects were compelling and even
• Evaluation: difficult to understand (compared to the book by Arthur C. Clark).
• Examples: apes, astronauts, “space infant” (with the monolith as connecting image/symbol/theme).
• paragraph excerpt: While the evolution of tool-using ape to space-traveling man makes sense, the evolution of a modern human into the “space infant” does not exhibit an obvious logic. Although the presence of the mysterious monolith at each evolutionary juncture provides a visual clue that links all the stages, the lack of logic in the last phase leaves the mystery unsolved and the viewer befuddled. Thus is it difficult to understand the movie’s plot without reading the book, in which Clark explains all.
• Aspect: pace (whether it should move so slowly).
• Evaluation: tedious, too much slowness (the end compared to the beginning).
• Examples: fighting apes at the beginning and space walk at the end.
• paragraph portion: The violence of the apes in the opening scenes is exciting, but this quickly gives way to painfully slow space sequences. Clearly the slow pace is meant to represent the vastness of space, but the final scenes—deep in space, and thus even slower—are overly long and, considering the confusing plot,