Rules: explain why
Ready player one.
That has to be one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it’s “WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU’RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE” message and the whole “corporation bad, the people good” narrative seems written for toddlers… The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.
Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is “ugly”… Like wtf?
Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.
2001: A Space Odyssey was rightfully not well received when it was first released. It is incredibly well crafted in terms of visual effects and has about 30 minutes of great, tense sci-fi in it. Shame about the other six hours (perceived) of tedium. Even in the late 60s people in ape costumes smashing things while the soundtrack goes aaaAAAaaUuuAaa wasn’t interesting for more than a minute, don’t even get me started on the stewardess, docking, moon journey or the damn screensaver. Which, yes, is iconic, but 20 minutes?
It does make sense that people would get high before subjecting themselves to this and then put on a Pink Floyd album during all the tedious scenes.
2010 is a better movie. It starts with dialogue and knows when slowing down increases tension.
I like to say that 2001 is an important film, just not a good one.
Based on this you’ll love Tarkovsky and Bergman.
I had the same experience as you and even bounced off it entirely and didn’t finish the movie. But I would highly recommend Matt Colville’s series of video essays on 2001. It can’t change how you first responded to the film, but it’s really well-reasoned and definitely gave me reason to think more about the movie.
(It’s an 8 video playlist, but only 3 are actually about 2001. Sorry, I just figured this was easier than linking each video individually.)
When I first watched it, I had the benefit of a nerd who’d read the book explaining certain scenes that weren’t super clear on what was happening in the film, and I feel like that is what made the experience for me