thezeppo1138 wrote:The FAR isn't technically canon in either universe, right?

Douglas Trumbull, the special effects supervisor on 2001, is noted as saying that Kubrick initially wanted the monolith constructed out of Lucite in order to facilitate the projection of light and images onto its surface, but unsatisfactory results forced him to abandon the project. Indeed, in a 1969 interview, Kubrick referred to the monolith as an “advanced television teaching machine,” and noted that in early parts of the script, the artefact was more akin to a screen than an alien entity, becoming “milky and luminous.” However, whilst this literal projection idea was discarded in the final cut of the film, that is not to say that it still does not metaphysically linger, for according to this theory, isn’t the whole film merely a projection onto a cinematic monolith?

Q: To take one specific, in the novel the black monolith found by curious man- apes three million years ago does explicit things which it doesn't do in the film. In the movie, it has an apparent catalytic effect which enables the ape to discover how to use a bone as a weapon-tool. In the novel, the slab becomes milky and luminous and we're told it's a testing and teaching device used by higher intelligences to determine if the apes are worth helping. Was that in the original screenplay? When was it cut out of the film?

A: Yes, it was in the original treatment but I eventually decided that to depict the monolith in such an explicit manner would be to run the risk of making it appear no more than an advanced television teaching machine. You can get away with something so literal in print, but I felt that we could create a far more powerful and magical effect by representing it as we did in the film.