Other mistake: There is something drastically wrong with the design of the spherical 'Aries' moon shuttle. Some seats and many fixtures are 'upside down' relative to the up-down orientation of the shuttle itself, and we see loose food trays and equipment about the place as if this is routine. But - the shuttle is designed to land on the moon. What happens then? The moon has gravity, remember? There are going to be quite a few very disgruntled people dangling upside down like spiders, and there will be loose gear (and perhaps a stewardess or two) bouncing about all over the place. It is not a matter of stowing loose gear or lying flat on landing - some parts of the shuttle are upside down relative to others, which is why the stewardess has to do that famous 180 degree upside down walk. Whichever way you look at it the shuttle is going to encounter serious problems when it reaches a gravity well, which will occur whenever the engines are fired up, never mind landing on the moon.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Gary Lockwood, Keir Dullea, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Frank Poole is killed while outside of the ship by HAL. David Bowman doesn't realize Poole is dead so he leaves the ship to try and rescue him. While he is getting Poole, HAL kills all of the hibernating crew of the Discovery One. After Bowman gets Poole's body he asks HAL to open the pod bay door so he can get in. In a famous quote ("I'm afraid I can't do that Dave.") HAL refuses and Bowman ends up going through the emergency airlock and risking his life.
He then puts on a suit to protect himself if HAL attempts to shut off the oxygen and goes to HAL's brain room to shut him off. HAL admits to Bowman "I'm scared Dave, I can feel it slipping away." and eventually loses all of its memory except for knowing a song called "Daisy" that his instructor taught him. He asks Bowman if he wants to hear it and Bowman tells him to sing it while he disconnects HAL.
After he does, he finds out that the Discovery One reached the orbit of Jupiter and he receives a pre-recorded message of from Dr. Heywood Floyd about what the mission was about. The crew was supposed to explore a new life form whose evidence was found in a black monolith that was buried on the moon, transmitting radio signals to Jupiter. The film enters it's final stage "Jupiter and Beyond" as Bowman finally sees the 3rd monolith and departs in a pod to see it. The monolith transports apparently through a black hole or worm hole through multiple dimensions and through different universes and galaxies and Bowman goes into a state of shock.
Suddenly, he is in a hotel room with no exit. He sees himself outside of the pod and suddenly the pod is gone and he is alone in the hotel room. He walks into the bathroom and sees that he has aged and his hair is gray. He then sees an even older version of himself eating supper acting as if nothing is wrong. The old Bowman at the table looks in the bathroom and sees no one there. He goes back to his meal acting as if he's lived in the room his entire life. He forgot the mission until accidentally breaking a crystal glass, which makes him wake up out of the trance for a second. He looks over at the bed and sees himself, only older to the point of mummification. The Bowman at the table is gone and the almost corpse one in bed is moments from dying.
He looks over and sees the fourth monolith at the foot of his bed. He silently raises his arm to it then falls back dead. He is then "reborn" into a supernatural being. A "Star Child" with the ability to travel through space and different worlds freely. The entire hotel sequence is a terrarium set up by the aliens to make Bowman comfortable and allow his "rebirth. The "Star Child" heads back to Earth and the movie ends with the Star Child outside of Earth looking at it with wonder that it is the primitive place it came from while "Also Sprach Zarathustra" blares triumphantly.
Monty
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Question: Maybe I need to read the book, but can someone explain the whole ending sequence to me. Why all the flashy over dramatized pictures? It's artistic but is there some other meaning to it?
Chosen answer: All the flashing images are supposed to represent Bowman travelling past far and distant galaxies, this is what happens in the book, where he travels to that white house place.
Answer: At the end, in the Arthur C. Clarke's story, both Dave Bowman and Frank Poole (who survived) went to a moon of Saturn to investigate the second Monolith. Dave Bowman tried to touch the Monolith with his space pod and was sucked into a wormhole that transported him to a star on the other side of the universe - at which point, Dave's last transmission is "My God, it's full of stars!" All of the "slit-scan" visual effects by Doug Trumbull (based on effects created by John Whitney years earlier) represent an almost instant voyage to the other side of the universe. Whether this is supposed to be a quantum-jump is not explained, but it's millions of times faster than anything ever depicted in Star Trek or other space fantasy knockoffs.
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Suggested correction: The shuttle lands "on its back" with legs extending beyond the engines. As in most traditional sci-fi, and ALL actual, space flights to date, the launch (and landing) orientation for humans is to be on one's back. This minimizes blood being sucked down to your feet if you were sitting upright at launch - you could pass out. So we see this when the shuttle lands on the moon - the cockpit (red window) faces up (pilots on their backs, facing out the window). When we presume that the passenger cabin was 180 degrees spun around from the cockpit seating, they're still on their backs. Any loose objects would have been stowed before landing - the airlines don't lock down your bags, newspapers and coffee cups, right? They're loose in the cabin during flight, but put away on takeoff and landing.
Airliners do not fly upside down. The Orion shuttle cannot possibly operate the way it does if it lands in a gravity environment - some rooms are upside down relative to others - why else would the stewardess do the 180 degree vertical walk? It is an idiotic design flaw, and the posting is 100% correct.
The Aries passengers sit and stand with their feet down towards the moon. The pilots sit with their back down to the moon, as conventional astronauts do on Earth. But the attendant's 180-degree walk is completely wrong to the orientation of the shuttle's interior: it should have been only 90° if you look at the Aries exterior. One assumes that Kubrick preferred a longer, more cinematic shot, over a technically accurate shot. But nobody was upside-down to the moon.