"Man is forever transformed by his own tools." This was the most shocking sentence I saw in 2001. The first thing in the film after the director has taught the apes to use tools is violence—this is Kubrick's idea: the history of human use of tools is the history of violence. Clark is much simpler. There are three times in the film that Zarathustra says so, at the beginning, at the first use of the tool by the apes, and at the last child of the star. This implies the evolution of human beings - from undeveloped chaos to the use of tools - a symbol of intelligence; and the second evolution of human beings - from life on the ground to life in the universe. What the heck is a black stone? Kubrick did not give an answer. Clark gave a relatively vague answer: "They are not people or distant relatives of people, but they are also made of blood and flesh... Gradually they learned how to store themselves in the structure of light itself... They are intelligent Farmers. Sometimes they sow, sometimes they reap." It doesn't matter what the black stone is. What matters is man himself—a metaphor for himself, a metaphor for evolution.
"Now he's the king of the world. He has to think about what to do next."
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