Literally this film summarized in 7 bullet points. I gotta admit that the visual effects are absolutely perfect, completely flawless, and the cinematography makes all the action on screen clear. But that's it, the rest is boring and gay.
First 3/4 of the film felt like a detailed and realistic looking but cold and boring documentation video of operating a space ship. What the fuck is this? I want to watch cinema, not documentary disguised as a flick.
Solaris (1972) did a great job at toning down the unnecessary technical aspects of the film and putting an emphasis on the humane conflicts. In 2001, it's like kubrick forgot that he was supposed to make a film with human characters in it, not a futuristic airport commercial with a cast consisting of nothing but supporting actors. The only remotely interesting character was HAL 900000, and it's not even a human.
The camera works are good, but I think Solaris had more colorful cinematography, like the part when the camera rotates and one of the actors suddenly re-appear in the other side of the camera, all in one cut. Or at the early scenes of the film when there is a beautiful sequence of gently swaying seaweed. Why should I care about some bland carton food the astronauts eat?
In the last quarter of the film (Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite chapter), it was like kubrick smoked a sack of weed, turned 360 degrees, and decided to take the film into a whole new direction. The whole chapter is insequential, it makes no sense. It's just a bunch of epileptic visuals that ended with the astronaut dying in a baroque bedroom and got turned into a floating space fetus because AYYYYLIUMS therefore it doesn't need a shred of logic or explanations.
I think this film was certainly a great visual spectacle, but a shit movie. Kubrick is like an autistic Fritz Lang and KKK Griffith wannabe that fails to understand the definition of art. I don't understand how people can like this film, for any reason other than the visuals of course.