2001: A Space Odyssey
Influence

2001: A Space Odyssey is widely regarded as among the greatest and most influential films. It is considered one of the major artistic works of the 20th century, with many critics and filmmakers considering it Kubrick's masterpiece. In the 1980s, critic David Denby compared Kubrick to the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, calling him "a force of supernatural intelligence, appearing at great intervals amid high-pitched shrieks, who gives the world a violent kick up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder". By the start of the 21st century, 2001: A Space Odyssey had become recognised as among the best films ever made by such sources as the British Film Institute (BFI). The Village Voice ranked the film at number 11 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. In January 2002, the film was included on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics. Sight & Sound magazine ranked the film twelfth in its greatest films of all-time list in 1982, tenth in 1992 critics' poll of greatest films, sixth in the top ten films of all time in its 2002, 2012 and 2022 critics' polls editions; it also tied for second and first place in the magazine's 2012 and 2022 directors' poll. The film was voted no. 43 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008. In 2010, The Guardian named it "the best sci-fi and fantasy film of all time". The film ranked 4th in BBC 's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2010, it was named the greatest film of all time by The Moving Arts Film Journal.

Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned. On a technical level, it can be compared, but personally I think that 2001 is far superior.

—George Lucas, 1977

The influence of 2001 on subsequent filmmakers is considerable. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and others—including many special effects technicians—discuss the impact the film has had on them in a featurette titled Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001, included in the 2007 DVD release of the film. Spielberg calls it his film generation's "big bang", while Lucas says it was "hugely inspirational", calling Kubrick "the filmmaker's filmmaker". Director Martin Scorsese has listed it as one of his favourite films of all time. Sydney Pollack calls it "groundbreaking", and William Friedkin says 2001 is "the grandfather of all such films". At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott said he believed 2001 was the unbeatable film that in a sense killed the science fiction genre. Similarly, film critic Michel Ciment in his essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" wrote, "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete."

Others credit 2001 with opening up a market for films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, Contact, and Interstellar, proving that big-budget "serious" science-fiction films can be commercially successful, and establishing the "sci-fi blockbuster" as a Hollywood staple. Science magazine Discover ' s blogger Stephen Cass, discussing the film's considerable impact on subsequent science fiction, writes that "the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000 and the ultimate alien artefact, the monolith, have all become enduring cultural icons in their own right." Trumbull said that when working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture he made a scene without dialogue because of "something I really learned with Kubrick and 2001: Stop talking for a while, and let it all flow".

Kubrick did not envision a sequel. Fearing the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet), he ordered all sets, props, miniatures, production blueprints, and prints of unused scenes destroyed. Most of these materials were lost, with some exceptions: a 2001 spacesuit backpack appeared in the "Close Up" episode of the Gerry Anderson series UFO and one of HAL's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of Hal's Legacy, David G. Stork. In March 2015, a model of the Aries 1B Trans-Lunar Space Shuttle used in the film was sold at auction for $344,000 in the United States. In 2012, Lockheed engineer Adam Johnson, working with Frederick I. Ordway III, science adviser to Kubrick, wrote the book 2001: The Lost Science, which for the first time featured many of the blueprints of the spacecraft and film sets that previously had been thought destroyed. Clarke wrote three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). The only filmed sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, released in 1984, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel. Kubrick was not involved; it was directed as a spin-off by Peter Hyams in a more conventional style. The other two novels have not been adapted for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks in June 1999 expressed a passing interest in possible adaptations.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film's release, an exhibit called "The Barmecide Feast" opened on 8 April 2018, in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The exhibit features a fully realised, full-scale reflection of the neo-classical hotel room from the film's penultimate scene. Director Christopher Nolan presented a mastered 70 mm print of 2001 for the film's 50th anniversary at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival on 12 May. The new 70 mm print is a photochemical recreation made from the original camera negative, for the first time since the film's original theatrical run. Further, an exhibit entitled "Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey" presented at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York City opened in January 2020.

In July 2020, a silver space suit was sold at auction in Los Angeles for $370,000, exceeding its estimate of $200,000–300,000. Four layers of paint indicate it was used in multiple scenes, including the Clavius Moon base sequence. The helmet had been painted green at one stage, leading to a belief that it may have been worn during the scene where Bowman disconnects HAL 9000.

Stanley Kubrick introduced Arthur C. Clarke to Joseph Campbell 's 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces during the writing of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are allegorical archetypal patterns of the " hero's journey " in this film. Clarke called Campbell's book "very stimulating" in a diary entry.
change_case:english_capital, detectable_format:title, startend:end_checker