Last Saturday, we looked at the film’s opening thought: “Technology and weaponry are the same; therefore . . .” To explore this premise, let’s dive into the movie’s opening scene again. It is often referred to as “The Dawn of Man.”

Before discussing the Dawn of Man scene, I should mention a couple details that are important during the opening. First is the music that plays right at the beginning. The song, commonly titled “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” is a tone poem written by German composer Richard Strauss. The song is a tribute to a book of the same name, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883‒1885), by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. There, Nietzsche introduced the concept of the übermensch, or overman.

Transcending evolution via technology

Nietzsche’s basic idea is that man might be able to choose his own morality and no longer be influenced by traditional moral codes. The overman is essentially an attempt to refute the nihilism that came with the rejection of Christianity. Nietzsche is famous for the saying “God is dead” but the rejection of Christianity posed a problem: how is humanity supposed to move forward without God? His solution was basically that man should become his own god.

Fyodor Dostoevsky had thoroughly refuted Nietzsche’s idea in his own book Crime and Punishment (1866). But for the purposes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the music itself is introducing the film’s story question: Can man overcome?” Overcome what? Well, in this case, overcoming means to transcend evolution with the help of technology.

Natural or supernatural?

While this tone poem is playing, the audience is shown celestial bodies aligning, symbolizing an alignment of events, but whether this alignment has natural or supernatural causes is left open-ended. The important thing to remember is that the aligning of the celestial bodies is most often shown at the same time as the Monolith. The Monolith seems to be some kind of manifestation of this alignment that brings some revelation meant to lead mankind into the next phase of human advancement.

Homage to Wells

So, as with H.G. Wells’s work, evolution is affirmed. But the theory is treated as an adversary. The writers submit to the idea that death and destruction are necessary components when it comes to the creation of life, but the objective is to transcend this process. I should also mention here that Arthur C. Clarke co-wrote the screenplay with Stanley Kubrick, and he was a big fan of H.G. Wells. In fact, Kubrick’s film was primarily inspired by Clarke’s short story titled “The Sentinel,” which was published in 1951. Clarke’s book, also titled 2001: A Space Odyssey, was written alongside the screenplay for the movie.

The Monolith, considered

With the opening music and shot established, the film begins with a tribe of human ancestors, mimes in suits, trying to survive in some vacant wilderness. One tribe of these primitive ape-men is driven from a watering hole by another tribe. During that night, the audience sees them cowering and afraid in the barren landscape. But the following morning the notorious Monolith appears.

There are several things to note about this Monolith apart from the fact that it is seen with the alignment of the celestial bodies, the sun and moon. Although the strange object is supposed to be bringing knowledge with it, haunting music plays whenever it appears. If I were to guess, I would say the purpose of the music is to hype up the mystery of the device. But it also seems to suggest that the knowledge the Monolith presents also features some great danger attached to it. Technology can either save us or destroy us.

The Monolith also presents an obvious question: who sent it and why? Perhaps, narratively, this isn’t a big deal because, once again, we’re getting into the subject of soft vs. hard magic systems as they pertain to sci-fi. As I noted in my articles on time travel, a hard magic system has multiple rules attached to it. When done properly, these rules help advance the plot. A soft magic system has few if any rules and is used to play up the mystery behind a process, object, or character. A soft magic system can be used to make the process, object, or character, represent destruction or salvation for the protagonist.

In this film, the Monolith is clearly a part of a soft magic system. It is meant to represent a great mystery and presents the possibility of either salvation or destruction for the main characters. Strictly speaking, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke are playing fair by not addressing who sent the Monolith. This is not laziness. It is a stylistic and narrative choice.

However, I personally didn’t care for their decision. I felt that addressing why the Monolith showed up when it did was relevant to the story. The alignment of events that led to man’s next evolutionary step should’ve been explored.

The mystery of the inciting incident

The arrival of the Monolith is really the inciting incident for the film. Normally, a writer doesn’t have to explain the inciting incident because it’s just the event that begins the plot. Chance events happen all the time, and, as long as the writer doesn’t lean on chance throughout the story, the audience is willing to accept an occasional unlikely circumstance, especially if the interesting aspect of the plot is the unlikely nature of the opening event.

Think of a rags-to-riches tale. It’s unlikely that a poor girl from the village is going to become a princess, but something inexplicable happens to make it so. So the story question becomes, what is this fish-out-of-water going to do in her unlikely situation? However, the problem here is that the Monolith returns three times in movie and I wanted to know why it keeps appearing.

I would argue that providing an explanation would’ve removed a distracting question from the plot and might’ve helped foreshadow the peril of knowledge that the computer Hal represents later. Something about man’s behavior should prompt the arrival of the Monolith, and that behavior must have pros and cons to it. But explaining why the Monolith appeared would require revealing who sent it, and doing so would kill a large part of the mystery it represents, so I understand why the two writers chose to keep things ambiguous. This part is just a question of taste, not flawed writing.

The Monolith as a computer screen?

I’ll end for now by saying that there was some debate while the film was in production about how the Monolith was meant to convey knowledge to the ape-like ancestors. The idea of putting a screen on the Monolith that showed the tribe how to do various things was floated around but eventually rejected. I think this was a good choice, but it did pose another problem. How is the Monolith conveying the desired ideas to the tribe? I’ll discuss how the two writers chose to address this problem next Saturday.