Remembering “2001: A Space Odyssey”: Do you get the ending?

the movie poster for "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Source: https://baddogposters.com

(May be subject to copyright)

Seeing a monkey smashing a bunch of bones with another bone, then seeing one of the shards spinning upwards towards the sky and seamlessly transforming into a space satellite is – weird.

My spouse and I watched “Barbie” two nights ago, and the movie opened by paying homage to that very scene. The way they did it was very tongue in cheek.

That scene is from “2001: A Space Odyssey”, a movie I saw a few times in the ‘80s, although it was made in 1968, and it brings back some memories. The biggest one is that I never really understood the end of the movie, but we’ll get to that.

Night time on CBC
The first time I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey”, I was maybe 10 years old. I was flipping channels and I came upon this scene of monkeys milling around. It caught my interest enough to keep watching. Suddenly, one of the monkeys started bashing a bunch of bones with a bone like a hammer and, pretty soon, we were seeing the view in outer space.

I found it odd then, and ended up watching something else. One of the things I did, which was easy to do in the three channel universe, is flipped to other channels when the show I was watching was in commercials. So I periodically flipped back to “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

The last time was right near the end. There was this astronaut in his orange space suit walking on what looked like a black and white checkerboard floor. Soon he was turning into a baby.

I was so confused.

Grade 8 science
One of the units that I, and my good friend David Perlich looked forward to in Grade 8 science was the unit on space. Dave and I had a common interest in science fiction and space. We had even written science fiction stories in Grade 6 and part of Grade 7, and sold them to our classmates. It was a series we called “Space Search”, and it was based on “Star Trek”.

Mr. Matson was our science teacher. He decided one of the ways to demonstrate space, and some of the stuff we were studying, would be to have us watch “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

So, we gathered in his room one day, and watched the first hour or so of the movie. That part of the movie really did illustrate life in space, and it was really interesting.

However, class ended before we saw the rest of the movie. Beyond that, Mr. Matson said, it really did not show much more that was related to our science class.

I was really hoping to see the rest of the movie. I recall hoping if I saw it when I was older, I would understand the ending.

I suspect other students had also asked Mr. Matson about seeing the rest of the movie. So he actually set it up for us to watch during our lunch hour.

So, again, we gathered in his room, and watched it. Sadly, it really did not shed much light on the subject for me. I still didn’t get the ending.

I think we asked Mr. Matson, and he didn’t have any answers for us either.

Sequel time
A couple years after that, my sister and I went to see the sequel to “2001: A Space Odyssey”. It was called “2010: The Year We Make Contact”, and came out in 1984.

Interestingly, the thrust of the plot involves a mission to find out what actually happened in deep space. In the end, I still really didn’t understand what happened at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, but I did like its sequel.

Parting thoughts
I checked out Wikipedia to see if it had a succinct explanation for the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, and it detailed a number of possibilities.

I was just glad I was not the only one who could make no sense of the ending.