2001: A Space Odyssey/YMMV


 * Alas Poor Villain: HAL 9000. You can see Bowman basically tearing up as he lobotomizes him.
 * Contested Sequel: Two Thousand Ten the Year We Make Contact.
 * Fanon: See the Wild Mass Guessing page.
 * Fan Dumb: If you dare to say you dislike this movie then there are several fans who will label you an idiot who can't enjoy a movie unless it has fart jokes and an explosion every five minutes, or at the very least tell you that you "Just didn't get it".
 * Freud Was Right: Long phallic space-ships, docking bays opening up to receive them, music climaxing as the ship touches down, narrow slit windows with red light shining through, women emerging from doorways that look like vaginas, the Star Child. Really, this list could go on forever.
 * Fridge Horror: Humanity only evolves once it develops the capacity to murder. Not merely kill, but carry out deliberate and premeditated violence. The first tool is a weapon. The first expression of intellect is an act of violence. And the famous Match Cut links it all together: the bone becomes the orbital weapons platform. We go from humanity's first weapon to what is, in essence, its last weapon. Millions of years of evolution, and our primal nature remains unchanged.
 * Hype Backlash: People who don't like this movie tend to hate it all the more for the praise it receives. The film has breathtaking visuals and a good story, but it's sluggishly paced and deliberately unexplained.
 * It Was His Sled: Does anybody not know what HAL does by now?
 * Mainstream Obscurity: There are way more people who know about the monolith and the HAL 9000 than the amount of people seen this film, especially thanks to the Weird Al Effect.
 * Memetic Mutation: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
 * "My God, it's full of stars!"
 * Not that anyone actually says that in the Movie.
 * The Monolith, and its intelligence-advancing effect.
 * 2001: A Space Odyssey (Film)/Nightmare Fuel
 * Older Than They Think: Most people who watch the film and do not know its age believe it to have come in the wake of Star Wars or thereabout - i.e., the late 1970s. Part of this is the impeccably accurate portrayal of modern spaceflight, technology, et all, and part because of the gorgeous quality of the cinematography and special effects, which rival Star Wars and make it appear as though it were made in the late 70s.
 * It's really hilarious to see people's reactions when you tell them that it was released BEFORE WE LANDED ON THE MOON - ONE YEAR BEFORE to be exact.
 * Tear Jerker: Amazingly, HAL's death scene.
 * Now with video. "Stop, Dave. I'm afraid." and of course, the eponymous portion at 3:50 - "Daisy, daisy... give me you-r... answer... do."
 * True Art Is Incomprehensible
 * Visual Effects of Awesome: This film was made in 1968. Try finding a subsequent non-CGI movie that has better space scenes.
 * Hell, even the computers look better than most of what came between this and the CGI era, or even the real life computers from The Eighties.
 * Double-hell, this looks better than anything in CGI.
 * And the technique used to create the "Beyond the Infinite" sequence -- a camera trick known as "slit-scan" -- was impressive enough to be reused well into the early CGI era. It was later used for ABC's "This is the place to be" ads of the early 1970s, as well as the Whooshing Credits for Superman: The Movie (which improved on 2001's techniques by using a computer-controlled camera) and a whole bunch of pre-CGI motion graphics work in The Eighties.
 * Weird Al Effect: As time progresses, it becomes more likely that the first time somebody will see something related to the film will be as a Shout Out made in another more current work rather than in the movie itself.
 * What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made On Drugs: The film's climax. Don't forget this was the late 1960s, too; many, many hippies saw it just to see that one sequence. Clarke himself relates an anecdote in which he was handed an envelope with a letter of thanks and an assurance that the remaining contents (a white powder) were "the best stuff".