Yes, that last scene was chilling. Kubrick mentioned in an interview that in
that final scene the character played by Keir Dullea is supposed to be in a
"zoo". The soundtrack was intended to suggest alien lifeforms shuffling by and
watching their rare specimen in the same idle way we humans behave at one of
our zoos. That passed me (and everyone else) by at the time. But I understand
the aliens finally transformed our man into a higher life form and sent him
back to Earth to be re-born as the Star Child to lead us on to our next stage
of evolution. It was the same aliens who gave our apeman ancestors the nudge,
of course. Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End has a similar theme - an
alien race appearing over Earth to engineer humanity's future evolution -
old-school humans don't recognize the new breed as being human anymore.
That's how I like my aliens - totally "other". Either very, very scary -
Alien/Pitch Black - or completely beyond our ability to communicate with -
2001/Solaris.
Barry wants humour in sci-fi. John Carpenter's Dark Star had black humour in
spades.
