History YMMV / TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey

* OnceOriginalNowOverdone: Some viewers may find that the "Star Gate" sequence reminds them of the audio visualizers in [=MP3=] player software.
** The film as a whole has become this in the eyes of many science-fiction fans, who praise it for its contributions to the genre but find that aside from HAL and the movie's overall surreal tone it is a fairly standard sci-fi film.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The Soderbergh recut mentioned above. Some of the cut scenes include exposition regarding the Moon monolith and even includes most of the EVA pod conversation, resulting in audio synchronization issues (e.g. during the moonbus landing sequence, the beeps from the landing guidance displays start long after the POV has changed to the Tycho base ground station, where they shouldn't be audible), and a lot of monolith and Stargate-related scenes include flashes of HAL's eye in places that don't seem to make much symbolic or narrative sense, especially one of HAL's still-on eye ''seconds after he's been disconnected.''

** Does the famous bone-to-satellite MatchCut indicate technological progress - from the use of primitive tools to complex machinery - or does it, when you consider that said bone was used as a weapon by a man-ape to kill another ape, indicate a ''lack'' of progress, when you consider that the satellite that matches the bone is actually a ''nuclear weapons launching platform''? Note that despite the 4-million year cut, it's all included in "The Dawn of Man" segment of the film.

** Some fans see HAL in a much more sympathetic light. Midway through the movie HAL has a sit down with Dave, asking about the peculiarities surrounding the mission. Dave knows that the ship A.I. would know exactly what is going on and catches on that HAL is fishing for something. HAL, realizing he slipped up, changes the subject by saying the AE-35 unit is acting up, and that it needs to be repaired. Dave and Frank try to do so, only to realize that it is working perfectly, and later discuss if HAL is malfunctioning and the possibility of disconnecting him, which appeared to be the equivalent of lobotomizing or even killing HAL. It is a bit harder for the audience to sympathize with HAL, since he is a faceless A.I. who decided to prioritize completing the mission at the expense of the ''entire'' human crew. If he were human, since HAL's colleagues were planning to harm him out of distrust at best, and for a trivial mistake at worst, having [[FreakOut an emotional break]] and responding by taking action against Frank and Dave would have been completely justified.

** The film was passed over for an Honorary Oscar in Makeup in favor of ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'', despite the makeup in ''2001'' being arguably superior. Many joke that the ape makeup in ''2001'' was snubbed because the Academy thought that the film used real apes rather than superior makeup, or more seriously, ascribe it to chicanery on the part of ''Apes'' producer Arthur Jacobs. It's probably more likely that the Academy specifically wanted to honor the make-up artist on ''Apes'', John Chambers, who had worked on a huge number of movies and TV shows back when studios generally didn't consider make-up artist to be a role worth crediting on-screen. In addition, giving this film an award for its ape suits would have been redundant seeing how it had already won the Best Visual Effects award.

** Among the film music community, it's a bit of a sticking point as to whether Kubrick should've used the studio-commissioned score by Alex North or if he was right to keep the temp tracks as a PermanentPlaceholder. Fans of North's score say that it has a more unified and cohesive sound compared to the eclectic groups of classical composers used in the final cut, and that Kubrick junking it made the film worse by robbing it of a more grounded, emotionally resonant score. Defenders of Kubrick's decision say that North's score tried too hard to have an "epic" tone that would've been [[SoundtrackDissonance completely at odds with the film's cerebral tone]], and that the pieces Kubrick chose fit the images of their scenes perfectly. As Creator/RogerEbert noted in a retrospective review, North's score tried to underline the action and give the audience emotional cues like a conventional score, but Kubrick's final track is great because it exists outside of the action on screen. Both sides agree that Kubrick not telling North that his score was junked was a low blow, however. (For what it's worth, while North said he was devastated by Kubrick's decision at the time, in hindsight he felt that his "Victorian approach with mid-European overtones" was [[CreatorBacklash a bad fit for Kubrick's vision.]])

* CreepyAwesome: HAL is one of the most outright disturbing artificial intelligences in fiction, but also one of the most iconic.

* DracoInLeatherPants: HAL in a weird way; there are fans who insist he only attacked the crew out of self-preservation.

* FandomRivalry: Among cinephiles, ''2001'' is paired against Tarkovsky's ''Film/Solaris1972'' with the debate on which is the better space movie. Tarkovsky claimed not to have seen ''2001'' when he made ''Solaris'', and after seeing it thought it was a very cold, sterile film. Interestingly enough, both movies have the opposite views on space. Kubrick's film is about the universe being filled with things beyond our comprehension, while Tarkovsky's film is essentially about the loneliness of being in space, being apart from Earth and the ability of astronauts to readjust to civilian life after spending time "up there". Ironically according to Kubrick's producer Jan Harlan, Kubrick himself liked ''Solaris''.

* HarsherInHindsight: Pan Am, in 1968, was all but ubiquitous--it was ''the'' international airline for the US and a cultural icon. Pan Am folded in 1991, partially absorbed by United Airlines (Pacific routes) and Delta (transatlantic routes).

** As to the ''design'' of Kubrick's space liner...something about a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_orbiter winged orbiter with stubby delta wings]] with a [[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Glasscockpit.html cockpit of centralized computer displays]] that can rendezvous with a [[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/index.html large space station]] should be a little familiar. Harry Lange, the head of NASA future-projects, helped design the ships of the movie.

** HAL's control panel monitors display text and graphics in white on a background of bright solid color, which makes them look a lot like the Microsoft "Metro" design language from Windows 8 and 10, Windows Phone and Xbox 360.
** Not only is HAL a one letter shift from IBM, IBM later built the sophisticated AI Watson, who successfully defeated the two most successful Series/{{Jeopardy}} contestants ever WITHOUT being connected to the internet.
** In one scene, crew members can be seen using devices that are remarkably similar to modern day iPads.

** Does anybody ''not'' know what HAL does by now? The phrase "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" has become far and away the most known aspect about the film, basically giving his true colors away to any first time viewers.
** Dave becomes a space fetus in the GainaxEnding, a scene which has received countless parodies and later became a focal point of the sequel's advertising.

* MandelaEffect: A lot of people remember the famous line "My god! It's full of stars!" being uttered in the movie, when it's really only said in the book, in the sequel and in an audiobook where it is also said, which may be why some people claim to so clearly "hear" someone saying it in their memories.

** Apes, monkeys or general monkeying around... to Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

* {{Padding}}: Done for [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools artistic]] rather than budgetary reasons, but still, let's not kid ourselves: this is a veerrry looong and veerrry sloooowwww movie, one that's 140 (or in some versions, ''160'') minutes long but only has about 70 minutes worth of actual plot.

** That said, at the end of the Dawn of Man sequence, as we view the ape man pounding the skeleton with his weapon before throwing it into the air, some of the low-angle shots make it clear that this is an individual in a costume, whereas suspension of disbelief is easier in the scenes leading up to it.
** Notably, the minor special effects failures are frequently cited in arguments about moon landing conspiracies. For example, non-rigid objects, like hair, don't behave at all like they would in zero-g. More damningly, on the scenes actually set on the Moon, there is no attempt to fake the lower gravity at all. The characters just walk around like they would on Earth.

** The close ups of Dave jogging around the centrifuge have a very strange angle, making it look like he's leaning 45 degrees to the floor.

** Hell, even the computers look better than most of what came between this and the CGI era, or even the ''real life computers'' from TheEighties.

** When Kubrick adapted the book to movie form, he changed a setting: instead of having ''Discovery'' head to Saturn and its moon Iapetus, he moved it to Jupiter and its moon Io. He did it because he couldn't create the special effects to make Saturn. Lo and behold, in 1979, the Voyager probes discovered that the next moon out around Jupiter, Europa, is very icy, and later observations have found it likely has a tidally-heated subsurface ocean of ''liquid water''. Not only did it inspire ''Film/TwoThousandTenTheYearWeMakeContact'', but today Europa is considered ''more likely to harbor extraterrestrial life than Mars!''
** Also, Pan Am, in 1968, was all but ubiquitous--it was ''the'' international airline for the US, and a cultural icon. Pan Am folded in 1991, partially absorbed by United Airlines (Pacific routes) and Delta (transatlantic routes); its nearest rivals for "official airline of the United States", TWA, was bought in all but name by American Airlines in 2001. Obviously, Kubrick had no way of knowing any of this in 1968, and so naturally extended current tendencies in the airline world to space...but that doesn't keep the presence of Pan Am spacecraft from being hilarious {{Zeerust}} to modern audiences.

** Among the film music community, it's a bit of a sticking point as to whether Kubrick should've used the studio-commissioned score by Alex North or if he was right to keep the temp tracks as a PermanentPlaceholder. Fans of North's score say that it has a more unified and cohesive sound compared to the eclectic groups of classical composers used in the final cut, and that Kubrick junking it made the film worse by robbing it of a more grounded, emotionally resonant score. Defenders of Kubrick's decision say that North's score tried too hard to have an "epic" tone that would've been [[SoundtrackDissonance completely at odds with the film's cerebral tone]], and that the pieces Kubrick chose fit the images of their scenes perfectly. As Creator/RogerEbert noted in a retrospective review, North's score tried to underline the action and give the audience emotional cues like a conventional score, but Kubrick's final track is great because it exists outside of the action on screen. Both sides agree that Kubrick not telling North that his score was junked was a low blow, however.

* ReCut: In the early 2010s, Creator/StevenSoderbergh released an edit of the film on his website (through Vimeo) as part of a personal project to practice editing techniques. His edit trims about half the length of the film off, and notably inserts HAL's eye frames into monolith-oriented scenes.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Some viewers may find that the "Star Gate" sequence reminds them of the audio visualizers in [=MP3=] player software.
** The film as a whole has become this in the eyes of many science-fiction fans, who praise it for its contributions to the genre but find that aside from HAL and the movie’s overall surreal tone it is a fairly standard sci-fi film.

** Also, Pan Am, in 1968, was all but ubiquitous--it was ''the'' international airline for the US, and a cultural icon. Pan Am folded in 1991, partially absorbed by United Airlines (Pacific routes) and Delta (transatantic routes); its nearest rivals for "official airline of the United States", TWA, was bought in all but name by American Airlines in 2001. Obviously, Kubrick had no way of knowing any of this in 1968, and so naturally extended current tendencies in the airline world to space...but that doesn't keep the presence of Pan Am spacecraft from being hilarious {{Zeerust}} to modern audiences.

** The technique used to create the "Beyond the Infinite" sequence -- a {{camera trick|s}} known as "slit-scan" -- was impressive enough to be reused well into the early CGI era, and still holds up excellently more than half a century later. So impressive was the sequence that it inspired a bevy of similar slit-scan sequences in other media, including Creator/{{ABC}}'s ad campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s, the title sequence for ''Series/DoctorWho'' from 1974 to 1980 (which became iconic enough over the years to serve as a template for later title sequences in the show from 1996 onwards), the credits for ''Film/{{Superman}}'' in 1978 (which improved on ''2001'''s techniques by using an animation stand, rather than the room-size contraption ''2001'' used), and a whole bunch of other pre-CGI motion graphics work in TheEighties.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: The film's climax. Don't forget this was the late 1960s, too; many, many hippies [[JustHereForGodzilla saw it just to see that one sequence on LSD]]. Clarke (who didn't even drink alcohol, let alone use drugs) related an anecdote in which he was handed an envelope with a letter of thanks and an assurance that the remaining contents -- a white powder -- were "the best stuff". (He flushed it down the toilet.)
** The filmmakers, or at least the distributors, apparently knew damn well who the movie's most enthusiastic audience was; one of the ad campaigns was a poster with the tagline, "The Ultimate Trip."

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: Many accuse the film of indulging in this trope, which isn’t an unreasonable conclusion. Though to be fair there aren’t many other ways anyone could convincingly portray an alien race millions of years more advanced than us.

** It's really hilarious to see people's reactions when you tell them that it was released '''before''' the lunar landing. To the point that some {{conspiracy theorist}}s are convinced that [[MoonLandingHoax Kubrick was specially selected to fake the moon landing]] based on his work in this movie. (One particularly brilliant joke is that "Kubrick ''was'' hired to fake the moon landings, but he was [[DoingItForTheArt such a perfectionist]] he insisted that [[LogicBomb they actually film on the moon]].")