2001 A Space Odyssey ending explained ...

I've been on a Stanley Kubrick "kick" lately, and rewatched "2001" last week. Like many ... the ending somewhat confused me ... until I watched Stanley explain the ending to a Japanese host over the phone.

I have to admit, it made A LOT more sense after the explanation...which is shown below...

What amazed me is that Kubrick, one of the most private directors that, for the most part, NEVER EXPLAINS HIS MOVIES ... pretty much explained the entire ending over this one phone call .. dude must have been in one fantastic mood that day!!

What also shocked me initially was that the Japanese guy said the title of the movie wrong; in the call he calls the movie "Space Travel 2001". But I checked and the Japanese name of the movie was ２００１年宇宙の旅。。。So I guess it's understandable.

So from what I can gather, the basic plot of the movie is the following:

The aliens in the movie are w.o form, and composed of pure energy They created the black MONOLITHS to help accelerate evolution of organisms ... One was placed on the earth in the "DAWN of MAN sequence" which caused the apes to start using tools ... (which unfortunately, also started the process of war ... ) Another MONOLITH was buried on the moon, which activated when sunlight hit it .. signifying that mankind had evolved to a point where they had space travel technology. Once activcated it sent a signal to Jupiter. 18 months later, Earth then sends a ship to investigate. The ship housed some researchers and the HAL-9000 computer. (Oddly, the letters H-A-L are all just one-letter shifts from I-B-M). HAL was told NOT TO EXPLAIN details of the mission to the crew until they arrived.. this caused the AI to malfunction and it killed the entire crew except for Dave Bowman. It malfunctioned as it not was constructed to withhold information or lie this caused the breakdown ... it eventually reasoned that with the crew all dead .. it would no longer need to lie of conceal anything. Bowman eventually disables HAL. He then continues to journey... He enters a stargate and then lands on what seems to be the homeworld of the aliens. (as Kubrick explains above) The aliens put him in a zoo and study him... they also put a monolith by him to speed up his evolution. He's then reborn as the star-child and sent back to Earth ...

The ending of 2001 - A Space Odyssey explained ... by Stanley himself!