Someone on imgur has uploaded a whole lot of fantastic images depicting the filming of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are 100 of them, and boy, do they provide a lot of fascinating detail about one of the most ambitious movie sets ever constructed—especially in terms of the available technology. It’s great to see how much of this is analog—I mean we know it had to be analog, but the contrast with today’s CGI way is stark. I especially love the stills where you can see the grandeur of the massive stage sets, how they solved the problem of filming, for example, a set in which the inside of a massive wheel is a continuous flat surface in a zero-gravity space vessel.

I feel like I run into the opinion fairly often that 2001 is boring, dated. I couldn’t disagree more. My dad first took me to see 2001 in Vienna in 1982; I was 12. It really did blow my mind; I didn’t understand a thing. I watch 2001 every five years or so and I have never watched it and not been tremendously impressed and enthralled.

(Even so, I can admire the wit behind Mad Magazine’s snippet of dialogue in their satire 201 (Min. of) A Space Idiocy, poking fun at the movie’s ending: “What did you expect…!? You just crashed through the brand-new 105-story Jupiter Museum of Op Art!”)

These pictures appear to be a heterogenous collection from a variety of sources; it’s more a feat of collection and curation than anything else. The pictures are cleverly arranged in the approximate order of the movie’s unfolding, so it feels a little bit like watching the movie itself. Really, hats off. 

Remember, there’s a lot more where this came from, so be sure and look at the rest.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Here’s the official trailer, which is quite a piece of work in its own right:
 

 
via Tombolare