#www.Kubrick2001.com

[radwolf76]

FLASHBack: Week 92 - www.Kubrick2001.com

So far on FLASHBack, we've covered over ninety Flash animations that were intended to amuse and entertain in some fashion or another, either with humor, stunning visuals, catchy music, or over the top action movie style violence. This time around, we're going to do things a bit differently, and look at a Flash that was made to educate the viewer on a particular point of view. In 1968 Stanley Kubrick released the landmark science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, loosely based off of the short story "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke (Published in 1951 under the title "Sentinel of Eternity"). As a cinematographic work, Kubrick's intent was to leave its meaning up for interpretation, but this left many a moviegoer wondering just what it was they had watched. In honor of the fact that by one reconstruction of the story's timeline, this week in 2002 (September 21th to be exact), the spaceship at the core of the film, Discovery-1, launched from lunar orbit to set out for Jupiter, we're going to look at an early Flash animation that offers up one possible interpretation of 2001's themes and meaning.   The site www.kubrick2001.com went online, aptly enough, in the year 2001, on 20 January. In its original form, it was available in eight different languages, selectable in an interface patterned after the scene in the film where National Council of Astronautics Chairman Haywood Floyd checks in with voice print at Space Station V's Customs Desk. Over the years, another four languages have been added. They've also upgraded from Flash to mp4 video, at a 20x increase in file size. Their videos are also now upscaled from the original 550x290px Flash Animations to 720x1008px (vertical), targeting consumption on mobile devices. It has garnered many accolades, including a Golden Web Award for 2001-2002, USA Today's Hot Site of the Day, El Mejor Sitio de 2001 from Yahoo! en Español and mentions in major international newspapers such as O Dia, Le Monde, and la Repubblica.  

Now, normally on FLASHBack, there's an explanation of the content of the Flash. However this Flash is already an explanation, and we don't need to go deeper into the layers; this is supposed to be about Stanley Kubrick's 2001, not Christopher Nolan's Inception. (Though I can understand the confusion, the sets were pretty similar at a quick glance.) So, I'm going to follow the strategy of the very first FLASHBack post and just say go watch the thing, especially if you're familiar with 2001 itself. What I can do, however, is note some minor changes from the original Flash and its current video form.   At the end of the Dawn of Man section, where the commentary notes that when facing the Monolith on the Moon, man "shows none of the ape's fear and wonder", the Flash would go on to note "Instead, he makes a video ...". It's not clear why this line was cut from the script; It coincided with audio of Neil Armstrong's "One small step for (a) man", so it's possible it could have been cut to distance this commentary from the Moon Landing Deniers who claim Kubrick was in on the conspiracy, but the fact that the second half of the quote, "One giant leap for Mankind", remains in the current version makes that reasoning unlikely.   In the Jupiter Mission section, the scene where Bowman first goes outside the ship to retrieve the AE-35 unit is uncharitably described as "the scene where a lot of people get up and leave", this was later revised to a more neutral statement on the length of the scene. The offer to skip it is present in both, but in the original flash, there was a working skip button. The scene where HAL takes over the EVA Pod by remote control to attack Poole during his spacewalk has been re-edited: The original is a straight zoom in whereas the current version makes it clear that the target is Poole's air hose. Another edit occurs at the scene where HAL refuses to open the Pod Bay doors for Dave: where the mp4 version asks "Game over?", the original Flash reads "The computer has won" followed by several cuts back and forth from the EVA Pod's view of Discovery and Discovery's view of the Pod, echoing the back and forth of the dialogue during the standoff in the scene from the film. One final difference in this section is that the original flash labeled the screwdriver.   Unfortunately as this Flash was structured as a main Flash that loaded other Flash files in the background, I haven't been able to find an archived version of the final section to compare to the modern video version. It is worth noting however, that the current version pays homage to the notion that Pink Floyd's song Echoes synchs up nicely with the opening to the Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite portion of the film.   And on that musical note, we'll close for this week. Next week, more music.