The Monolith

[Fr8monkey]

@ Christopher Snow - Actually the dimentions are 1:4:9... 1 squared, 2 squared and 3 Squared... a sign that intelligent beings made it.

I read the book (I have a first edition) and in it the ship went to Saturn and the Monolith was in orbit around Titan. In the 1960's, Titan was thought to have an atmosphere resembling Earth in the distant past.

The monolith was a tool of aliens that boosted Creatures into sentience and giving them an evolutionary jump start.

[Skybird]

If there is one film on earth that is really fully open to interpretation, then "2001" and it's black monolith.

And if it were different, it wouldn't be so fascinating. Maybe considering then not wanting to get the ultimate answer too hard...!? What you think in thoughts about it, maybe is not so important. How it made you feel, and jumpstarted your imagination - maybe that is what counts. - "Imagination is more important than knowledge" (Einstein)

More recomended Kubrick movies are "Shining" and the usually underestimated "Eyes Wide shut". The latter also gives you the illusion that maybe you could know - but indeed it is just your own imagination. I can't stand Tom Cruise - but the movie stayed on my mind for the rest of the week after I saw it.

[SteamWake]

I hear its full of stars.

[Tchocky]

Could call it an evolutionary accelerator, put there by the same force that lifted Bowman and Hal.

[Frame57]

I had to do a book report on this back in the 7th grade. Pretty sure the book leads one to conclude the monoliths are precisely "evolutionary accelerators".

[Blacklight]

This is a topic I know a LOT about as 2001 is my favorite movie ever.

I read the books. According to 2001, the Monoliths represented an alien technology or intelligence WAY beyond our understanding. The one on the Earth kick started human evolution. The one on the moon waited there for humans to gain the technology to find it and sent the message that the humans had reached that ability to the one in orbit around Saturn (It was Saturn, not Jupiter in the book). The giant one in orbit around Saturn (or Jupiter in the movies) was a star gate to a higher plane of being. Kind of the final evolutionary step.. and also... after Dave Bowman was transformed by his passing through the stargate, the technology and intelligence of whaterver created the monoliths were still beyond his understanding.
So the monoliths pretty much represent some kind of unknown HIGHLY advanced intelligence. They could be machines. They could be the new form of the race that created them (Dave Bowman saw the entire evolution of the alien race that spawned them when he entered the stargate. The movie kind of glossed this over with a psychadelic lightshow). They are some strange kind of unknown that mankind will never be able to grasp.

The monolith from the moon, after tons of experiments were done on it, was cemented in the ground standing in front of the United Nations building as a symbol to say "Humanity needs to be united because we aren't alone" and it worked. There was pretty much world peace after the events of 2010. Also, they discovered the monolith buried in Africa as well in an archeologica dig.

We will never truely know exactly what the monoliths are. Arthur C. Clark never wanted us to know. They are beyond any understanding that we may ever have.

[Skybird]

What makes you so sure that you speka of the monoliths in plural? I personally always considered them to be one and the same.

Both views are highly subjective opinions only, of course - and necessarily.

I would remark that the film is not basing on Clark's book, but a short story by Clark, called "The Sentinel". The novel was written by Clark AFTER the movie was made. It also seems to me that Clark was not pleased with kubrick's open ending, open to speculation and mystic interpretation. Thus in his later novels "2010" and "Odyssey III" he gave almost boring, causal, rational explanations for example for the behavior of HAL. Clark was a rational, science-oriented man, basing in the fields of engineering very much. This is what also formed his style of Science Fiction. I think regarding the monolith, he and kubrick were a bit apart.

On the other hand, Clark did not deliver any explanation in his novel "Rendezvous with Rama" as well, so maybe my view of Clark does not do him justice. so understand this also to be my very subjective opinion only. "The truth, as always, will be far stranger" (Clark).