In Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', an enigmatic monolith is discovered on the moon, triggering a quest to Jupiter. The journey's crew must confront HAL 9000, an increasingly sentient and dangerous onboard computer.
A glowing fetus floats in space, looking at Earth, looking at us. Kubrick refused to explain it for the rest of his life. The shot proposes that humanity’s next form, like its first, will simply arrive.
Kubrick films space as the genre's altar. The match cut from bone to satellite is the entire history of technology in two frames; HAL is the future the genre is still arguing with.
Revolutionary special effects for its depiction of space
