For a film that definitely didn’t break the box office upon its initial release, Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey has become one of the most oft-discussed films in mainstream science fiction and even popular culture at large. It is little wonder, however. Kubrick was one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation with films like The Shining, Barry Lyndon, and Eyes Wide Shut. His grand legacy is no small feat, as his era — New Hollywood — was one of the most fruitful, with Kubrick’s contemporaries being made up of the likes of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and more.
The film inspired the work of many other filmmakers — including Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky as well as contemporary filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh. Sometimes the influence is obvious, while for others they draw from the film in more subtle ways. Below you will find seven of its best successors.
7 Movies Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey
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'Solaris'
Unlike many of the filmmakers on this list, Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky was unimpressed by Kubrick's film, as he thought it failed in its goal to bring some humanity to science fiction. Solaris — based on the novel of the same name by Stanislaw Lem —i s often seen by critics as a response to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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'Star Wars'
Without 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is unlikely there would be any Star Wars at all. Kubrick's slow, deliberate special effects work paved the way for the zip-bang style space battles audiences would come to love in George Lucas's own project nearly a decade later.
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'Artificial Intelligence'
It's no secret that the project that would become 2001's A.I. Artificial Intelligence was to be Kubrick's next project before his passing in 1999. In his stead, his friend Steven Spielberg took over and did his best to blend his own style with Kubrick's own vision, which meditated on human nature in way similar to his earlier, iconic piece.
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'Solaris' (2002)
Steven Soderbergh's own adaptation of Solaris is not as frequently discussed as Tarkovsky's, but deserves acknowledgement in its own right. In some ways, it's constructed to respond to 1972's Solaris, which in turn is a response to 2001.
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'WALL E'
For a film ostensibly marketed to children, Pixar's 2008 film Wall-E is a bleak, honest look at the potentially future of planet Earth. In many small ways, the movie pays homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, most notably in the form of an A.I. that bears more than a passing resemblance to its predecessor's own HAL 9000.
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'Moon'
The 2009 Duncan Jones film Moon takes a lot of its plot beats from the second act of 2001: A Space Odyssey but goes a completely different direction with them. Sam Rockwell plays the sole human employee of a lunar outpost with only an A.I. played by Kevin Spacey to be his companion — until he makes a startling discovery.
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'Interstellar'
Christopher Nolan wears on his sleeve Kubrick's influence on his 2014 film Interstellar. It has mind-bending physics and a drawn-out narrative, but the resulting film is unmistakably Nolanesque.
