2001 space odyssey movie11/17/2023 You might have thought escapism would be in vogue, and 2001 offered that, but moviegoers in this uneasy but heady era were also in a mood to be provoked and challenged, even baffled, and they had never seen anything like 2001-literally, in terms of the film’s painstakingly realistic portrayal of inter-planetary space travel, with special effects that still hold up, and figuratively, in the sense that 2001’s elliptical storytelling was as confounding to many viewers as, for others, the film’s cosmic scale, mythic reach, and wordless, psychedelic finale were exhilarating (if still confounding). The film was finally released to the public on April 3, 1968, four days after President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election in the face of increasing opposition to the war in Vietnam, and just a day before Martin Luther King Jr. At a subsequent press screening one skeptic was overheard sniping, “Well, that’s the end of Stanley Kubrick.” Many early reviews were just as dismissive. Some audience members had fidgeted and talked through the movie’s first private screening a few had walked out. Kubrick’s project promised the moon and then some, but executives at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feared they had a disaster on their hands when the picture was finally ready for release, 50 years ago, in the spring of 1968. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey took more than four years to develop and make, at a cost of more than $10 million-a formidable price tag in mid-1960s Hollywood.
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