2001: A Space Odyssey (film) - Parodies and Homages

Parodies and Homages

2001 has been the frequent subject of both parody and homage, sometimes extensively and other times briefly, employing both its distinctive music and iconic imagery.

In print and advertising

• Thought to be the first time Kubrick gave permission for his work to be re-used, Apple Inc.'s 1999 website advertisement "It was a bug, Dave" was made using footage from the film. Launched during the era of concerns over Y2K bugs, the ad implied that Hal's weird behavior was caused by a Y2K bug, before driving home the point that "only Macintosh was designed to function perfectly".

• Mad magazine #125 (March 1969) featured a spoof called 201 Minutes of a Space Idiocy written by Dick DeBartolo and illustrated by Mort Drucker. In the final panels it is revealed that the monolith is a movie script titled "How to Make an Incomprehensible Science Fiction Movie" by Stanley Kubrick." It was reprinted in various special issues, in the MAD About the Sixties book, and partially in the book "The Making of Kubrick's 2001".

In film and television

• Mel Brooks' satirical film History of the World, Part I opens with a parody of Kubrick's "Dawn of Man" sequence, narrated by Orson Welles. DVDVerdict describes this parody as "spot on". (Ironically, Brooks had earlier defeated 2001: A Space Odyssey in competition for the Best Screenplay Oscar.) A similar spoof of the "Dawn of Man" sequence also opened Ken Shapiro's 1974 comedy The Groove Tube in which the monolith was replaced by a television set. (The film is mostly a parody of television. Film and Filming held that after this wonderful opening, the film slid downhill.)
• Woody Allen cast actor Douglas Rain (Hal in Kubrick's film) in an uncredited part as the voice of the controlling computer in the closing sequences of his science-fiction comedy Sleeper.
• Kubrick was both a great fan of The Simpsons and in friendly contact with the show's producers, according to his stepdaughter Katharina. Analysts of the show argue that The Simpsons contains more references to many films of Stanley Kubrick than any other pop culture phenomenon. Gary Westfahl has noted that while references to "fantastic fiction" in The Simpsons are copious, "there are two masters of the genre whose impact on The Simpsons supersedes that of all others: Stanley Kubrick and Edgar Allan Poe." John Alberti has referred to "the show's almost obsessive references to the films of Stanley Kubrick." Simpson's creator Matt Groening is also the creator of Futurama which also has copious references to various Kubrick films.
  Of the many references to Kubrick in Groening's work, perhaps the most notable Space Odyssey reference in The Simpsons is in the episode "Deep Space Homer" in which Bart throws a felt-tip marker into the air; in slow motion it rotates, before a match cut replaces it with a cylindrical satellite. In 2004 Empire magazine listed this as the third best film parody of the entire run of the show. In the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket" a sentient spaceship revolts in a manner similar to Hal. Total Film listed this as number 17 in its list of 20 Funniest Futurama parodies, while noting that Futurama has referenced Space Odyssey on several other occasions.
• Peter Sellers starred in Hal Ashby's comedy-drama Being There about a simple-minded middle-aged gardener who has lived his entire life in the townhouse of his wealthy employer. In the scene where he first leaves the house and ventures into the wide world for the first time, the soundtrack plays a jazzy version of Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra arranged by Eumir Deodato. Film critic James A. Davidson writing for the film journal Images suggests "When Chance emerges from his home into the world, Ashby suggests his child-like nature by using Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra as ironic background music, linking his hero with Kubrick's star baby in his masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey."
• Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a scene (using actual footage from A Space Odyssey) in which the monolith morphs into a chocolate bar. Catholic News noted that the film "had subtle and obvious riffs on everything from the saccharine Disney "Small World" exhibit to Munchkinland to, most brilliantly, a hilarious takeoff on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey."
• Andrew Stanton, the director of WALL-E, revealed in an interview with WIRED magazine that his film was in many ways an homage to Space Odyssey, Alien, Blade Runner, Close Encounters and several other science-fiction films. The reviewer for USA Today noted the resemblance of the spaceship's computer, Auto, to Hal. The same year saw the release of the much less successful film Eagle Eye, about which The Charlotte Observer noted that, like 2001, it featured a "red-eyed, calm-voiced supercomputer that took human life to protect what it felt were higher objectives"
• Commenting on the broader use of Ligeti's music beyond that by Kubrick, London Magazine in 2006 noted Monty Python's use of Ligeti in a 60-second spoof of Space Odyssey in the Flying Circus episode commonly labeled "A Book at Bedtime".
• The poorly reviewed Canadian spoof 2001: A Space Travesty has been occasionally alluded to as a full parody of Kubrick's film, both because of its title and star Leslie Nielsen's many previous films which were full parodies of other films. However, Space Travesty only makes occasional references to Kubrick's material, its "celebrities are really aliens" jokes resembling those in Men in Black. Canadian reviewer Jim Slotek noted "It's not really a spoof of 2001, or anything in particular. There's a brief homage at the start, and one scene in a shuttle en route to the Moon that uses The Blue Danube...The rest is a patched together plot." Among many complaints about the film, reviewer Berge Garabedian derided the lack of much substantive connection to the Kubrick film (the latter of which he said was "funnier").
• Among spoof references to several science-fiction films and shows, Airplane II features a computer called ROK 9000 in control of a Moon shuttle which malfunctions and kills crew members, which several reviewers found reminiscent of Hal.
• John Landis incorporates references to a fictional film entitled See You Next Wednesday into most of his films, the title of which was inspired by the last line spoken by Frank Poole's father during Poole's videophone conversation with his parents in Space Odyssey.

In video games and software

• 2001: A Space Odyssey has also been referenced in multiple video games, usually either with reference to either the monolith or Hal. In SimEarth and Spore, monoliths are used to encourage the evolution of species.
• In Metal Gear Solid, the character Hal Emmerich was named in-world by his father after HAL 9000.