How has it taken you over nine hours to finish a movie only 134 minutes in length? How high are you?

Seriously Chucko, you're killing me. Your hipster douchetart drivel gives me serious gastrointestinal cramps.

I love it.

Greatest. Post. Ever.

I just finished doing a critical watching of "2001".

I'm pretty much convinced that Star Wars is 2001 for Dummies.

For example, when the PanAm ship pulls into the center bay of the wheeled space station...and they have people in these giant bays on all the walls.

How many times did Star Wars do that?

Also check out the command module of the Discovery spaceship. Anything Death Ballish about it? Yessir.

Ok, now thematically you might say that no, these cannot have anything to do with each other.

But what is the central theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Artificial and natural selection....evolution.

Ok so one tribe of apemen gets sand kicked in its face.
Then they get The Knowledge from the obelisk.
Then they posse up and kick that other groups ass.

Same in the space station.
The America scientist kicks the Russian scientists asses.
No you can't know what's on out base...we found it first.

What about HAL 9000?
The whole cruise to Jupiter is one bitter asskicking after another.
There was more petty gamesmanship than in an academic lounge.
And there was some bloody battering too.

2001 is a brutal movie.

The theme emerges...that which is superior, naturally asskicks that which is inferior.
It then moves on, to the next challenge round of asskicking.

There is no "working together to solve a problem" in 2001. And it's winner take all.
One ape grabs the bone and takes charge...and eats the meat.

One spaceman gets to go through the gate, his "pod" trailing a propellant like the flagella of a sperm. One man out of billions becomes the Star Child (who then, according to the book at least, promptly explodes all the nuclear weapons to clean house on the leftover inferior men).

Ok, so Star Wars. Same thing. Luke starts off as a punk with some skills. But he's had his ass kicked all his life (just like those apemen). What helps? Self-study? Books? No -- he need a deus ex machina to give him The Knowledge about how to fight in the rest of the galaxy. The Jedi are the Obelisk.

As in 2001 there is constant sparring for supremacy. Han Solo, Luke, Leia, Obi Wan, the droids, Vader. Everyone is looking to assert their superiority...their claim to rule.

Then Luke becomes the Sperm...in his Y-fighter. All the pilots are reduced down until one..only one can penetrate the Death Star -- the Egg.

It goes on and on....

Nobody knows where the mind of Charles will go... least of all himself. It's best to just sit back and enjoy the ride. Pot helps.

rural folk to the rescue!

I think the Emperor's biggest 'black swan' was Vader's redemption/betrayal.

All I'm saying is, yeah, for sure. At seven, seven fifty a pound, I can live without Ewok. But if Safeway marks it down to $6.00/lb then you do the math, OK? Guess what's for dinner.

Frankly they can't be that sophisticated an animal if they're that easy (and cheap!) to hunt.

@9 Try supplementing with either Soylent Brown or the new Green flavor.

Charles, the first step is to admit you have a furry problem.

I love that Charles likes Star Wars.

@2

Troll harder, guy.

Your mom's a poorly behaved function.

@5:

I'll give you a B-minus for effort; some of your arguments are compelling, but they don't hold together when one really examines the films in question.

First of all, the reason one sees such a visually stylistic similarity between 2001 and Star Wars is due in great measure to the relationship between Douglass Trumbull, one of the four Visual Effects Supervisors on the former film, and his protege, John Dykstra, who took on the same duties in the latter film, having previously assisted his mentor in creating visual effects for Silent Running in 1972. So, it's a very simple matter to make a direct connection between the two films in that regard, which has less to do with imitation (and truly, practically every S-F film in the post 2001 period has utilized that particular effect, which was itself used repeatedly by Kubrick in the film. Also, it should be noted that this effect was not particularly new, even in 1967; as such "insertion shots" can be traced as far back as 1927 to Lang's Metropolis, which used a somewhat similar technique, known as the Schufftan Process, to insert live actors into miniature backgrounds and modeled exteriors.

Furthermore, while evolution is certainly a central thematic element of 2001, your chain of logic falls apart at the end, in that, while HAL may have indeed exacted a "bloody battering" (albeit, one that is completely bloodless, and more chilling in its effect by being so), ultimately, it is the computer's "inferior", a human being who emerges victorious, in an equally brutal, bloodless fashion. In this sense, the "evolution from ape-like proto-human, to homo sapiens, to artificial intelligence, to Star Child has in fact been thrown off-track. Given your chain of progression, it should have been HAL that went through the Star Gate to receive the ultimate knowledge of the builders of the monolith, not his evolutionary "predecessor". But, Kubrick, despite his seeming misanthropy, clearly was not indicating a preference for machine intelligence being superior to human intelligence. After all, the "final" phase of evolution shown in the film, is not a mechanical one, but is, instead, unambiguously biological in nature.

And while I understand the reference to Bowman's pod "trailing a propellant like flagella of sperm" in the final moments of the "ultimate trip sequence", the shot is simply another in a long series utilizing the ink-in-oil technique from which many of these images were created, and its resemblance to an EVA pod at this point in the film is purely coincidental.

It's good that you've read the novelization in addition to viewing the film, as obviously there are some significant differences between the two. However, you somewhat misinterpret the book's finale, in which Clarke clearly refers to the Star Child detonating only the orbiting nuclear devices, and not "all of them" (by which one must conclude you mean both those in orbit AND earthbound). I refer you specifically to the penultimate paragraph of the novel:

"A thousand miles below he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling weapons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe."

Finally, your suggestion that, because both 2001 and Star Wars deal with themes of supremacy and power, that somehow Lucas stole directly from the former, is, well, rather questionable. Such themes are predominant in practically ALL dramatic literature, going back to Gilgamesh. It's akin to positing that, because "The Merchant of Venice" and "Trailer Park Boys: The Movie" both have court room scenes, that the latter clearly borrowed from the former. It's sloppy logic and shows, at best, a very superficial understanding of the material.

what gets me is the beginning of each film. a 'long time ago in a galaxy far far away....
..star wars..'
it makes me deeply sad that this shit is old and universal.

These posts are why I think that Charles isn't a person, but rather a running joke by the stranger staff.

It wasn't the Ewoks who turned the tide in the overall battle and thus the war. If the Ewoks had remained neutral, Leia, Han, and Chewie would have been captured. The Rebel Fleet would have lost capital ships, but Admiral Akbar was a genius. No military genius commits to battle without a Foxtrot plan. If the Ewoks hadn't been a factor, the Rebels would have jumped away and the Emperor still would have died at the hands of his Creature.

@18 Interdictor ships with Gravity well projectors.

Duh.

I'd have liked it better had Luke decided to go to the Dark Side, the Rebel Alliance was destroyed and that fucking stupid moon of Endor was blasted from the stars with those fucking stupid teddy bear creatures.