Movie review Childhood's End

I believe the real danger of AI is due to the expanding "connectivity"  across the world. I don't like it. I see it as something like the accumulation of power which has taken place in the medical system, our federal government, the media and many other areas, but potentially much worse. Fewer institutions control more power and are presented with fewer limits on the exercise of their power. This basic threat was known by our Founding Fathers and expressed brilliantly by a Brit, Lord Acton. "All power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely." 

Google is the biggest villain in this area. 

Yes, confirmed. 2001: A Space Odyssey starts to enter the event horizon of a cinematic black hole when Dave Bowman and Frank Poole enter the pod to talk about HAL.


When Poole and Bowman do enter the pod and close the door in order to discuss what to do about HAL, they are already facing away from HAL's camera. But they tell HAL to rotate the pod and this brings HAL's camera into view through the pod window. Talk about a McGuffin.

And I already mentioned the stupid plot point of lip reading. If they were so deathly afraid of HAL, why did they not forget this rather obvious precaution?

And it is clear that they are deathly afraid of HAL. But they then proceed to take no sensible precautions. Poole goes outside in the pod to replace the electronics box (which HAL had incorrectly said would fail) back into the antenna with the plan to see if it would fail on its own as HAL had predicted, despite the two astronauts finding no fault in the components. No precautions are taken or even hinted at.

Then when HAL kills Poole during Poole's EVA, Bowman gets in a pod – without his helmet – to retrieve Poole's body. This becomes yet another stupid plot point because HAL won't let Bowman back into the ship. Bowman tells HAL (at this point, why tell HAL anything?) that he will use the emergency airlock. HAL states that he may find this difficult without a helmet.

Soon after Bowman enters the ship (now with a helmet that he's picked up somewhere...he's finally taking his first precaution) and disengages HAL's higher function. We then basically cut to the dumbest ending in movie history, although I'll grant that in the early stages, it is very colorful. The IMDB trivia sections states:



That's the first I've heard of that. It sounds made up, although I don't doubt that some bums and hippies took drugs just to enjoy the end of the movie. Obviously that is the only way the ending can make any sense. They have a quote from Rock Hudson about the movie:



That's a very sensible point of view. However, child-molester Arthur C. Clarke stated: "If you understand '2001' completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."

That is the point of view of a complete intellectual asshole. There are no questions raised. The only logical viewpoint from the point of view of the audience is that the film makers themselves were on drugs when they made this.

The movie was already crumbling before the final psychedelic sequence. But had that final sequence engaged in just a minute or so of the crazy colors, and then had some kind of ending that made some kind of sense (even if a little obscure), you would have had something.

But watching the ending yet again confirms that these guys were either on drugs or were seriously drinking some kind of weird cinematic kool-aid. It's hard to believe that anyone thought this was good. It just runs on for too long. And if there was a point to be made about Bowman being transported into some kind of other dimension or place, that point is lost in the sheer randomness and stupidity of the lengthy ending graphical sequence.

Maybe one day (and I expect this will happen), ChatGPT or some other smart AI robot will rewrite the ending so that it is interesting and makes some kind of sense.

I believe this is exactly that case. It's exacerbated as more and more people are crammed into inherently faceless cities.

We may laugh at the artificial sense of "community" that many try to reach via marching in this or that parade. But at the end of the day, if you don't know your neighbor, and don't care to know your neighbor, it isn't "community" that you are partaking in but basically yet another low-level and meaningless political statement masquerading as something genuine.

I'm not saying that the Almighty should do so, but if every city of the population of 500,000 or more was suddenly destroyed by fire-and-brimestone, we would not be worse off.

Today, big cities are the breeding ground for almost all the social pathologies that plague us. Maybe A.I. will truly be intelligent and will tell yutes, "Go outside and play. Don't spend so much time interacting with faceless machines and pretending that the people you know online are your friends."

Yes, the use of the Strauss music was exquisite. There is a lot about 2001: A Space Odyssey that is extraordinary. But then the cinematic Icaruses (Icarusi?) flew too close to the sun in their attempt to outdo their own majestic and transcendent themes. And the wax melted and the movie fell completely apart.

But, yes, those are some pretty spectacular colors for the first moments. And then it goes on. And on. The wax begins to warm and then becomes pliable. About the time we are flying over some planet that obviously is rendered using some Stupid Filter Tricks, one wing has detached and Icarus begins spiraling out of control.



This is, of course, the very Mission Statement of all the arts these days. The past may be ignored, for we modern artists are not constrained, especially by the common influencer of art which was religion. We are not to be constrained by any outmoded and repressed notions of decency or beauty.

So you have entire generations of pseudo-adult artists who basically have been taught (contra one of the main themes of traditional Kindergarten) to specifically draw outside the lines, just for the sake of doing so.

And if beauty is passe, then let us be daring and explore various forms of the ugly, perverse, and antagonistic.

That's not to say the Stanley Kubrick and others necessarily were drinking that kool-aid at the time. But the ending, to my eye, does speak of the idea that we Golden Children cannot be held to the same cinematic constraints as others. For a movie to "make sense" is just an old fashioned notion.