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Genre: Science-Fiction
Background: While Sci-Fi movies have existed in the form of isolated releases as early as the 1900's, as far as being a major, stand-alone genre of film (and not, for example, a pre-film serial made with props recycled from other movies), it wasn't until the combination of the Roswell "incident" and the beginning of the Atomic Age, and the renewed interest in aliens/science that they brought with them, that Sci-Fi really coalesced as its own thing in the 50's, with such significant releases as
The Day The Earth Stood Still, War Of The Worlds, and
Forbidden Planet helping to define it at the time. However, while those films created an iconic aesthetic for the genre, it's also a fairly dated one in retrospect, one that practically scream "THIS MOVIE WAS MADE IN THE 1950'S" at us, as a number of common elements ultimately relegated Sci-Fi to mostly be perceived as a "B" genre by critics, with often hokey effects, pulpy tones that were remnants of the
Flash Gordon era, and a grip on science that is laughably soft at times (my mind always goes back to the gag in the
Mystery Science Theater Movie, where an alien in
This Island Earth tells a character to grab a rail because it's been magnetized, to which Mike responds
"And if your hands were made of metal, that would mean something!"). Anyway, following this rush of productions and the advent of the Space Race in the late part of the decade, an event which rendered these films' depictions of space travel even more inaccurate than they were already, the genre lay mostly dormant (at least as far as major Hollywood releases), that is, until the film in question here changed everything.
How 2001 deconstructed it: By taking the genre, stripping away all of the camp that had characterized it beforehand, and replacing it with a sense of class that it had rarely been gifted with before on the silver screen, right from its iconic, "Thus Spake Zarathustra"-scored opening shot, with its Classical soundtrack providing the perfect musical accompaniment to the grandiose interstellar ballets it portrays, which are captured with the most realistic special effects, the most meticulous production design, and as much pain-staking attention to scientific accuracy as possible, with the noise-less vacuum of space and agonizingly slow pace of the spacecraft combining to create a state of cinematic hypnosis within us, ensuring that, even though it was released just the year before Apollo 11 took mankind farther than it had ever been before,
2001's depiction of space, technology and its overall vision of the future still feels far, FAR ahead of its time, and not dated by even a little bit, even over 50 years later.
2001 further distinguishes itself from previous Sci-Fi films by forgoing the overly talky, exposition-heavy, wonder-sapping scripts that often characterized the genre beforehand, instead, choosing a far more visually-based, "show, don't tell" style of storytelling that lets us soak in its wondrous sights for ourselves and draw our own conclusions from them. This leads me to the most striking way that
2001 differed from old-school Sci-Fi, with its more cerebral take on the genre, which previously had a more action/adventure-oriented bend to it, as opposed to 2001's more thoughtful, contemplative mood, especially with its depiction of an alien species that, instead of a paranoid, Cold War-era portrayal as being unceasingly hostile to mankind in one way or another, the ones in
2001 instead seek to
help us, in order for us to reach the next step in our evolution, even though we never actually see the aliens in the film, an absolutely brilliant decision, since not only does it convey how far beyond our comprehension they are, but it also keeps the film from having to visually conceptualize creatures that could never measure up to the feverish imagery our imaginations would naturally conjure up anyway (which, for the purposes of the film, beats a stuntman in a rubber suit any day).
Impact on the genre: 2001's transformation of Sci-Fi into a genre that even the critics could take seriously lead to a revitalization of it in the following decade, from Kubrick's own
Clockwork Orange, to other classics like
Close Encounters and
Alien, all the way to such modern “prestige” works such as
Arrival, and, even though it placed a far greater emphasis on the Fiction than the Science, one can't help but wonder if 20th Century Fox would've taken such a big gamble on making
Star Wars if it hadn't been for
2001 helping to pave the way for it beforehand. At any rate, the sense of cinematic respect that
2001 earned for Sci-Fi still hasn't worn off of it, and even over half a century since the film's release, its lasting influence on the genre can still be felt even today, and will probably continue to be felt for as long as Sci-Fi exists, even all the way beyond the infinite.