Why is "2001: A Space Odyssey" considered such a good movie?

[Bohandas]

Why is "2001: A Space Odyssey" considered such a good movie?

It falls short in so many ways. It moves at a tedious pace. All the sets and props are drab and dull to match. And most importantly of all, it doesn't make a bit of sense; the plot starts out incomplete and by the end of the film is abandoned altogether in favor of what appears to be the director's hamfisted attempt to reproduce an LSD trip on film (apparently this is supposed to represent the protagonist being transported to an alien world and having his brain uploaded, but I only know that because I read the book. There's no way that you could get this just from watching the film).

What gives!?

[Yuki Akuma]

It was made in 1968.

[Bohandas]

I kind of get where you're coming from, but considered logically we have a much bigger need for a non-chemical acid substitute now than we did then, as I understand it was a lot easier to acquire back then. And at any rate, what was the point of the rest of the movie with the rogue AI then?

EDIT:
Or did you simply mean that by the standard of their time the special effects were very good? I was already aware of that, which is why I elected not to mention how terrible they are by our standards.

[MLai]

I was already aware of that, which is why I elected not to mention how terrible they are by our standards.

What are you talking about? The SFX is awesome. It still looks better than, say, Attack Of The Clones.
When I watched it as a kid (skipping around the "fun" parts) I thought it was a modern movie, not one I'm watching decades after it's made. There was no way I could reconcile it as coming out the same year as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or Barbarella.

[Kitten Champion]

It's a fantastically shot - meticulously composed with fanatical precision in its every aspect - epic that attempts to convey grandeur, terror, and possibility of the cosmos with dense imagery and a wonderful score. A vision realized beyond anything before it and much of what followed.

[Darth Ultron]

Why is "2001: A Space Odyssey" considered such a good movie?

2001, like most of Arthur C. Clarke's work, was more intellectual and less escapist. In order to properly appreciate it, you have to adjust your expectations accordingly. In other Sci-Fi movies the plot is spelled out for the lowest common denominator audience. The 2001 movie was largely non-verbal and slow-paced, which is a complaint of modern viewers who want a literal explanation of the plot and demand constant action to drive the story. Kubrick deliberately deleted narration in the final film’s cuts which gives the movie an extra-terrestrial observed quality. The movie relies more on its visual clues, classical music score, imagination, and mystery. Realistically, manned interplanetary space travel would involve long periods of waiting and anticipation, interrupted by brief flurries of intense activity.

This is an awesome movie, and was an SF groundbreaker. This is mainly due to Kubrick's visual style. He did multiple things that no one had done before. For example, no sound in space. Most SF films previously had ignored the fact that sound doesn't propagate in a vacuum. Kubrick did things like playing the Blue Danube Waltz, and having you listen to the astronauts' breathing inside their helmets. His depiction of zero gravity was a first. Remember, this is pre-CGI, and making a guy walk through a doorway and turn upside down while he was doing it was non-trivial at the time. He added neat little touches like Pan Am (a major airline at the time) running the shuttle going up to the space station.

The trick to enjoying and appreciating the movie 2001 is to read the book first, then watch the movie. If you do, it is one of the great SF movies of all time. And the last few pages of the book are awesome in a way that the movie can't be.

[Lethologica]

2001 is a VFX and SFX masterpiece for its time that holds up pretty darn well, and its cinematography massively influenced future work in and around that genre.

Pacing, on the other hand, really is just a matter of age. Stories are told faster now, on every level.

As for the plot, well, it's four distinct short stories. There's the silent movie about alien uplift of humanity; there's the trip to the moon that's really an excuse for spaceflight porn; there's the iconic malevolent AI short story; and the last part reprises the uplift story via acid trip. Not making sense is a charge I can understand, but it's entirely complete.

ETA: How exactly would one have 'fixed' the last part? We've had 40 years to come up with a way, and the best we could do was that garbage scene in Interstellar where McConaughey and a robot are expositing at each other as fast as they can in order to distract us from the movie.

[DeadpanSal]

I'm a screenwriting major. And I hate Kubrick.

This movie is so anti-paced that every shot cuts at least nine seconds after it should have. The ideas are great, but steamrolled by the terrible direction and auteur baloney that I think it's too removed from the source material to be enjoyed. Compare it to what he did with Stephen King's Shining and you get an idea who Kubrick is. He took King's cautionary autobiographical tale about a man who destroys his family with his addiction and made it into some dull, uneven spectacle that occupies the corpse of the original like some kind of 4Kids import. He destroys everything he adapts and his stylistic choices are just self-obsessed wank. In the movie of the Shining, Kubrick goes out of his way to give the family a different car than the one in the book, and then has them drive past a wrecked car that is the model of the one in the book. I mean, this guy was a hardcore jerk who makes a point to uproot the spotlight from the source material and make it into something that shines with his ego.

The book is better. The movie is good for its time, but would have been better if literally anyone else had worked on it. Paul W.S. Anderson could have made something with more subtlety.

[DigoDragon]

2001, in my opinion, is more like watching art than a movie. Yeah, the pacing is pretty dead, but some of the shots are beautiful visually. And as Darth Ultron noted, it is more an intellectual kind of film.

For more of an up-front story and action pacing, its sequel (2010) is not that bad.

[Ruslan]

Many great movies from the past are, by today's standards, unwatchable. They are there to be studied, to inspire, to influence, but not to be watched.
It's not the fault of the movies, which still remain, as they have been, a work of genius. It's us that have changed.

[Ramza00]

I'm a screenwriting major. And I hate Kubrick.

This may seem out of left field, but what is your opinions of HBO's / David Chase's Sopranos.

I bring it up for it is a different style of storytelling for tv except really it isn't in much the same way people say Kubrick movies were different than other movies yet it isn't.

Chase also loves his homages to Kubrick.

So do you have any opinions of the Sopranos?

[MLai]

As for the plot, well, it's four distinct short stories. There's the silent movie about alien uplift of humanity; there's the trip to the moon that's really an excuse for spaceflight porn; there's the iconic malevolent AI short story; and the last part reprises the uplift story via acid trip.

So according to this movie, humanity's development is currently in mid-late Stage II: Commercialized Spaceflight. We still have to survive our own AI Uprising stage before a space-baby messiah will come visit us. Sounds about right.

Compare it to what he did with Stephen King's Shining and you get an idea who Kubrick is. He took King's cautionary autobiographical tale about a man who destroys his family with his addiction and made it into some dull, uneven spectacle that occupies the corpse of the original like some kind of 4Kids import. The book is better. The movie is good for its time, but would have been better if literally anyone else had worked on it.

Are you saying that The Shining TV movie is better than Kubrick's The Shining? That satisfies your requirement of "If literally anyone else had worked on it."
Stephen King's stories have always been better when the director disrespected the source material. Always.

[dps]

2001, in my opinion, is more like watching art than a movie. Yeah, the pacing is pretty dead, but some of the shots are beautiful visually.

Pretty much this. It isn't a traditional movie. A few points:

First, it ISN'T an adaption of Clarke's book. The movie and the book were a joint project, and you're supposed to read the book and see the movie to experience the total work. That's a big part of why the movie is so light on narrative--you're supposed to get that from the book. I don't think the movie by itself really works as a movie, but then again, it's not supposed to. It's not really a movie as we normally think of one; it's essentially an experiment in multi-media.

Second, the pacing is very slow, even by 1960's standards. Check out some other movies that came out that year; many of them are slow-paced by moderns standards, but are nowhere near as slow as 2001. Yes, the FX is ahead of its time, and many of the shots are beautiful, but as Master of Aeons, said, a lot of them go on much longer than they need to, or should. I went to Wikipedia and pulled up a list of films released the same year, and besides 2001, there are 21 movies that I've seen on the list. I don't think that modern audiences would find any of those 21 unwatchable (well, except for a couple that are just bad and audiences didn't find particularly watchable in 1968. either).

Third, no matter what the films other faults, HAL is one of the best antagonists in film history, and just a great character overall.

[MLai]

Third, no matter what the films other faults, HAL is one of the best antagonists in film history, and just a great character overall.

Especially once it starts rapping.

[Bohandas]

I'm a screenwriting major. And I hate Kubrick.

This movie is so anti-paced that every shot cuts at least nine seconds after it should have. The ideas are great, but steamrolled by the terrible direction and auteur baloney that I think it's too removed from the source material to be enjoyed. Compare it to what he did with Stephen King's Shining and you get an idea who Kubrick is. He took King's cautionary autobiographical tale about a man who destroys his family with his addiction and made it into some dull, uneven spectacle that occupies the corpse of the original like some kind of 4Kids import. He destroys everything he adapts and his stylistic choices are just self-obsessed wank. In the movie of the Shining, Kubrick goes out of his way to give the family a different car than the one in the book, and then has them drive past a wrecked car that is the model of the one in the book. I mean, this guy was a hardcore jerk who makes a point to uproot the spotlight from the source material and make it into something that shines with his ego.

The book is better. The movie is good for its time, but would have been better if literally anyone else had worked on it. Paul W.S. Anderson could have made something with more subtlety.

That's the impression I've gotten of Kubrick as well, and also that his stuff is insufferably pretentious, even moreso that James Cameron's later work.

[Bohandas]

2001 is a VFX and SFX masterpiece for its time that holds up pretty darn well, and its cinematography massively influenced future work in and around that genre.

Special effects are not sufficient to prop up a bad movie.

Why is it Stanley Kubrick is hailed as a genius for using special effects to hide bad storytelling, but when Michael Bay does it he gets lambasted for it?

[-D-]

Special effects are not sufficient to prop up a bad movie.

Why is it Stanley Kubrick is hailed as a genius for using special effects to hide bad storytelling, but when Michael Bay does it he gets lambasted for it?

Kubrick uses great cinematography and meticulous attention to details.

Michael Bay uses explosions.

Other than that, I agree. Kubrick films often fail as stories, but are held by stronger visual/aural side. Odyssey 2001 makes no sense unless you know story before hand.

[MLai]

Why is it Stanley Kubrick is hailed as a genius for using special effects to hide bad storytelling, but when Michael Bay does it he gets lambasted for it?

Every Frame A Painting explains Bayism. And once he explains it, you realize it's really not that complicated.

[Lethologica]

Special effects are not sufficient to prop up a bad movie.

And I claim that 2001 is not a bad movie. Just as I claim that the special effects are not bad even though you claimed that they are. That seems to have been dropped, though.

That said:

Why is it Stanley Kubrick is hailed as a genius for using special effects to hide bad storytelling, but when Michael Bay does it he gets lambasted for it?

Because Michael Bay only has one cinematographic trick and didn't invent any part of the playbook, so his movies aren't visually interesting either, just loud. See here for more on that (and also just because that guy is pretty on point with his film analysis in general).

EDIT: Ninja'd on the EFAP shout-out.

[Razade]

Special effects are not sufficient to prop up a bad movie.

Why is it Stanley Kubrick is hailed as a genius for using special effects to hide bad storytelling, but when Michael Bay does it he gets lambasted for it?

I think it's pretty easy on a couple levels. One, Kubrick never lived in an age of computers. He shot everything in practical effects. Everything was hand crafted, everything he used was real. You can't say the same about Bay.

Look at this scene from Eyes Wide Shut (possibly NSFW) The use of music. The wide panning shots. The perspective used when characters are just walking. There's tension, we understand without dialogue that the character is in peril.

Now look at one of Bay's. I think it speaks for itself.

[MLai]

Now look at one of Bay's. I think it speaks for itself.

LOL it's hilarious how Michael Bay can't help but do everything EFAP accuses him of doing, no matter what film it is. And even a novice like me can't un-see it.

[Bohandas]

ETA: How exactly would one have 'fixed' the last part? We've had 40 years to come up with a way, and the best we could do was that garbage scene in Interstellar where McConaughey and a robot are expositing at each other as fast as they can in order to distract us from the movie.

For one, I'd make every attempt to depict it literally, clinically, and from the outside. Not what appears to be a metaphorical representation of Bowman's impression of it. How though, I'm admittedly not sure, as the aliens are implied to be advanced beyond the need for components that are large enough to be visible to the naked eye or that require direct physical contact, so the part about being uploaded couldn't be done in any of the obvious ways like having him hooked into a matrix-esque pod or showing a group of robot arms disassembling and cataloging his brain neuron by neuron.

Perhaps he could be shown turning into a ball of energy which is then absorbed into the second monolith. After which a monolith appears in orbit above the Earth in place of the star child from the original.

And none of that multiple Bowmans of different ages weird BS. The second monolith would appear in the hotel mockup in a timely fashion

As for the gate sequence, it would be pared down to around 30 seconds, definitely not more that a minute at absolute maximum, and would be combined with the trope of dots appearing on a map (in this case a map of the galaxy or of the large scale structure of the universe) to represent travel.

[Lethologica]

Uh. Well, let's at least start with a closer approximation of the events of the movie, which are described here:

I don't want to [be specific about it] because I think that the power of the ending is based on the subconscious emotional reaction of the audience, which has a delayed effect.

Well, I can tell you what literally, at the lowest level of plot, happens. Bowman is drawn into a stargate. He is taken into another dimension of time and space, into the presence of godlike entities who have transcended matter and who are now creatures of pure energy. They provide an environment for him, a human zoo, if you like. They study him. His life passes before him. He sees himself age in what seems just a matter of moments, he dies, and he's reborn, transfigured, enhanced, a superbeing.

The movie is about as literal a representation of this as was possible at the time.

Insofar as the ending is unclear, I think it's the part I bolded. The absence of any representation of the godlike entities who sent the stargate makes the events of the reconstructed room unmotivated and apparently random. But representing those godlike entities would have been a significant technical challenge for Kubrick, and would likely have aged poorly, so it's not surprising that he decided to forgo any explicit representation.

Side note: an Indiana Jones-style map traversal? Eww.

[LaZodiac]

Special effects are not sufficient to prop up a bad movie.

Why is it Stanley Kubrick is hailed as a genius for using special effects to hide bad storytelling, but when Michael Bay does it he gets lambasted for it?

Because it's not bad storytelling just because you don't understand it. To use an example, if you pay close attention to the chessboard at the start of the space portion of 2001, you'll notice that HAL's comment on checkmate in however many moves is actually wrong. IS this a mistake in prop placement or an intentional hint at the robot's duplicity due to the nature of the mission, slowly causing his three laws compliant brain to go nutbars? It's clear from the rest of the movie's exquisite planning and all the thought put into it that it's clearly intentional, you just need to keep an eye open for it. And I got all this from just watching the movie, the one time I did.

Meanwhile Micheal Bay has a character justify his statutory rape of a character by having a lamented copy of the Texan law that say "naw it's cool".

[DeadpanSal]

So do you have any opinions of the Sopranos?

I never saw Sopranos, but I read an article about the end. Just as a quick generalization, I think I'd appreciate the creative intent but I didn't like the genre. Similarly, I liked Six Feet Under as an expression but thought it wasn't altogether a good story. Just really well made.

Are you saying that The Shining TV movie is better...

Whoa, whoa let's not get carried away! The TV movie is terrible. Just . . . gah. But I think the plot makes more sense at least. There are actual payoffs to the ability to Shine and complete character arcs, as well as a mystery that culminates in some way. And I think the ending twist where Torrance has "always been the caretaker" is just pointlessly cryptic and doesn't offer anything than a shallow, hard to actually qualify "Oooooo." It's like if the ending to The Sixth Sense had been utterly random, like if Crowe had been Cole's evil teddy bear. After you left the theater and the spooky had went away, you might think to yourself, "That wasn't all that well set up and doesn't hold up to its own logic. Was there some sort of stable time loop we're supposed to accept? Is that what the Shining ability is, to take dead people and move them back in time? To me, it's like if Kubrick's first draft was immediately printed in a Phantom Menace minute and no one ever gave him the note, "What happened to these 40 set ups from the beginning?"

The Shining movie is just a spooky premise, a dead woman in the bathtub laughing, a cut that makes no sense, followed by an ending that addresses nothing and then an Old Timey Photo Club picture from his yearbook. As bad as showing the topiary monsters was, at least there was a payoff somewhere in the paltry ABC budget.

Third, no matter what the films other faults, HAL is one of the best antagonists in film history, and just a great character overall.

HAL vs Dave is really the only valuable part of the movie. And that, in the care of a director that doesn't just turn off the monitor to look at himself in the reflection and then yell cut after he remembers his job, could have been told in a tight half hour.

Special effects are not sufficient to prop up a bad movie.

Why is it Stanley Kubrick is hailed as a genius for using special effects to hide bad storytelling, but when Michael Bay does it he gets lambasted for it?

Because Michael Bay is considered to be making movies for kids and that's stigmatized and naturally viewed as an inferior expression and Kubrick created mature, respected art. They're pretty much the same though. If you go nuts with effects and tell stories that people won't understand, they'll elevate your work into art. If you go nuts with effects and do some disposable fun, they'll denounce you as childish. If you stick to the middle of the road and use effects in the same way, they'll tell you Jurassic Park was the defining movie of the era.

...

But on the ending, I like it. I think it's a great concept and maybe [too] artfully done. Clarke's amazing premise is only lessened through the eyes of Kubrick and the concept of Show Don't Tell taken too far. If it's meant to be debatable, make it unexplained. But I don't think that's the intention. I think it's instead supposed to be alien and impossible to comprehend. I mean, we're talking about something that happens on the other end of a dimension that man isn't meant to know. My problem with it is that it makes too much sense when you look at it. The kaleidoscope is dated, too specific and a lazy metaphor. Blinking in different colors is meaningless. And then there's more padding that is just more of a lightshow than anything credible. The ending of Evangelion holds up to better scrutiny than Kubrick's depiction of the final dimension.

"My god it's full of stars!" makes sense. I can see that scene playing out. That's the line from the book. Dave didn't say, "My god, it's like an arthouse threw up and then someone off camera made that stretching out movement and then someone else forced me to look at a magic eye painting until my mom picked me up at the end of the lesson. 'What'd you learn, Dave?' 'DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE WITH HIM MUM'."

[Bohandas]

Now that I think of it, I think a well-executed version of the 2001 ending would very much resemble the ending 9f Contact

[eggynack]

The Shining movie is just a spooky premise, a dead woman in the bathtub laughing, a cut that makes no sense, followed by an ending that addresses nothing and then an Old Timey Photo Club picture from his yearbook. As bad as showing the topiary monsters was, at least there was a payoff somewhere in the paltry ABC budget.

I disagree entirely. The movie is about an abusive husband/father and his family that go to a hotel that just kinda happens to maybe be haunted. The Shining barely verges towards supernatural, with only a couple of things difficult to explain through simple insanity (the biggest being Jack escaping the locked room, which I understand is supposed to definitively state that the film actually has supernatural stuff). The core revelation of the "All work and no play" thing isn't that Jack is crazy. That's obvious. It's that Jack has been crazy from the moment he arrived at the hotel, and was probably crazy long before that. Isolation just kinda excacerbated that. Thus, the movie is only barely about spooky and supernatural imagery. Most of it is an entirely cogent story about an abusive father, his somewhat frail and weak willed wife, and their maybe or maybe not going crazy son. Also, as I recall, the twist was a payoff to Jack's earlier conversation with the ghost of the past caretaker, who said that Jack was the caretaker. Not my favorite part of the movie, but not completely out of left field.

Edit:

Because Michael Bay is considered to be making movies for kids and that's stigmatized and naturally viewed as an inferior expression and Kubrick created mature, respected art. They're pretty much the same though. If you go nuts with effects and tell stories that people won't understand, they'll elevate your work into art. If you go nuts with effects and do some disposable fun, they'll denounce you as childish. If you stick to the middle of the road and use effects in the same way, they'll tell you Jurassic Park was the defining movie of the era.

Feh. Kubrick movies are beautiful. Every element meticulously put together to create a level of aesthetic perfection rarely seen in films. Bay films are mostly just kinda loud, and big, and epic, in a way that pays no consideration for what a scene actually demands. . And it has nothing to do with Bay's movies sometimes being for kids. Cause, y'know, other movies that reach that kind of pure aesthetic beauty are works from the golden age of disney and basically anything Miyazaki has done. In other words, films primarily intended for children. Beauty is about more than spectacle. It's about using the imagery in a film to bolster the emotional resonance that you're creating with the other elements. Jurrasic Park was frequently beautiful too, actually. It uses the sense of scope that Bay uses in most shots in his films but only when it fits the purpose of the scene. Spielburg knows when to hold a shot, when to slow things down, when to make things small and delicate instead of big and crazy. In the end, it's not about making something people don't understand, because, as I noted, I understand the very vast majority of, say, The Shining, or A Clockwork Orange. It happens to be about what you said, that one set of movies is putting the effort into creating true art, whether for children or adults, and the other is arbitrarily going nuts with effects for your disposable fun.

[DeadpanSal]

I disagree entirely. The movie is about an abusive husband/father and his family that go to a hotel that just kinda happens to maybe be haunted. The Shining barely verges towards supernatural, with only a couple of things difficult to explain through simple insanity (the biggest being Jack escaping the locked room, which I understand is supposed to definitively state that the film actually has supernatural stuff). The core revelation of the "All work and no play" thing isn't that Jack is crazy. That's obvious. It's that Jack has been crazy from the moment he arrived at the hotel, and was probably crazy long before that. Isolation just kinda excacerbated that. Thus, the movie is only barely about spooky and supernatural imagery. Most of it is an entirely cogent story about an abusive father, his somewhat frail and weak willed wife, and their maybe or maybe not going crazy son. Also, as I recall, the twist was a payoff to Jack's earlier conversation with the ghost of the past caretaker, who said that Jack was the caretaker. Not my favorite part of the movie, but not completely out of left field.

I don't think that explains anything. It might make you feel better about the events, but you'd be suggesting that Jack is simply crazy and that everything has a more grounded answer than the supernatural. Which to me, means that his alcoholism and interactions with the ghosts are incidental because he's just imagining them as part of his psychosis. If isolation and his own insanity are the relevant parts of the plot, it explains less. It also completely undercuts every bit of importance from the ability to shine. The movie, The Shining has nothing to do with Shining. It's focused on a father who (by your take) needs no excuse to kill his family and his son's supernatural abilities do nothing and he just lets himself die.

And a twist being a payoff to something that someone said earlier in the movie doesn't make the twist credible. If I say the final sentence I write here is going to be rhododendron and nothing I say here has anything to do with flowers and doesn't lead to the reveal that I said rhododendron, then I'm just saying it because I think it's cool. It is the opposite of a payoff. It's cutting to a dog shifting its eyes just before the credits.

Edit:
Bay films are mostly just kinda loud, and big, and epic, in a way that pays no consideration for what a scene actually demands. . And it has nothing to do with Bay's movies sometimes being for kids.

The entire answer isn't as simple as a dichotomy in the demographics. Part of the answer is that Bay is loud and hamfisted, yes. But we also are more likely to reject Bay out of hand just because we would never submit Transformers as high art. Things for kids can be (and more times than not are) incredibly beautiful and well crafted. But we do have a stigma in film criticism that says that there is art and then there is trash. Stuff for kids are mostly thrown in the trash without a thought. Look how well Kubo and the Two Strings is performing. Look how often someone will vote whatever's Disney for Animated Film of the Year. Yes, Michael Bay is seen as trash and Transformers and Pearl Harbor belong in the trash, but a part of why we'd kick him back into the trash before looking at his next movie is because he's associated himself with kids media. Nobody in the film industry watched Avatar and said "Man, I thought that'd be about airbenders and I was disappointed." They called it genius. Nobody watched The Last Airbender and said "The kids cartoon was better." No, they said, "This is why cartoons don't get adapted into movies." It goes further than the unfair dichotomy and stale biases, but I'm just going to suggest that somewhere when Michael Bay moved from Armageddon to TMNT, a film critic poured himself a brandy and said, "Rhododendron."

[Bohandas]

Most of it is an entirely cogent story about an abusive father, his somewhat frail and weak willed wife, and their maybe or maybe not going crazy son.

Unfortunately, it's supposed to be a horror film.

EDIT:
As kind of a wild tangent, speaking of things that are supposed to be horror movies but lose the thread, can anybody out there tell me what's supposed to be scary about the movie Frankenstein? As far as I can tell it seems to be straight science-fiction with no horror elements in it.

[DeadpanSal]

Unfortunately, it's supposed to be a horror film.

EDIT:
As kind of a wild tangent, speaking of things that are supposed to be horror movies but lose the thread, can anybody out there tell me what's supposed to be scary about the movie Frankenstein? As far as I can tell it seems to be straight science-fiction with no horror elements in it.

Not to argue against my own stance, but even though The Shining is a bad movie, it's still horror. It's just more random with its horror than I'd like. Instead of jump scares, it has a woman in a suit laughing for three minutes. I wouldn't say it's scary but it might be disturbing. And it might have the necessary requirements for a slasher movie (guy with edged weapon, someone dies, someone who got chased survives).

Frankenstein is horror because it's grandfathered into the genre. It's a story that plays on the fear of technology getting out of control. Instead of what we think of in terms of now (such as sentient and lethal programs or genetically engineered monsters), it's playing on the now obsolete fears that electricity was god's territory and that it would lead to devastation. And because it's not our full on, post-1990s grade horror, the monster doesn't do anything more than just submit itself for evaluation. It's less of a thriller and more of a result of horror, and then a sort of boring tale about his master being the actual threat to humanity. We wouldn't get explosions and lens flares for another few decades.