In the 50 years since “2001: A Space Odyssey” was first released, on April 2, 1968, no movie has matched its solemnly jaw-dropping techno-poetic majesty.
It’s still the grandest of all science-fiction movies, one that inspired countless adventures set in the inky vastness of deep space (notably “Star Wars”), remaking the DNA of cinema as we know it.
It completed the transformation of Stanley Kubrick into “Stanley Kubrick,” and was greeted by critics with a mixture of ecstasy and derision (Pauline Kael: “a monumentally unimaginative movie”).
But after its shaky original release, which resulted in Kubrick trimming 19 minutes out of it after opening weekend, “2001” was re-marketed as a psychedelic youth-generation cult film (“The Ultimate Trip”), and that’s how it finally caught on.It remains such a staggering experience, so mind-bending and one-of-a-kind, that you’d be hard-pressed to think of a moment in the film that isn’t iconic.
The awesome opening solar alignment,
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