Alex Pappademas writes about 2001:

5. Chances are you’ve absorbed 2001 by pop cultural osmosis. But just in case, here’s Kubrick summarizing the plot in a 1969 interview. “You begin,” he told Joseph Gelmis, “with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man’s first baby steps into the universe — a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there’s a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.

“When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he’s placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man’s evolutionary destiny.”

6. But Kubrick prefaced all of that with the assertion that plot was the least important thing about 2001. It’s not a complicated story — apes becoming men! Men becoming star children! — but the number of words generated on the philosophical and/or spiritual implications of those events could plug a black hole.

Grantland review of Interstellar:

The Fault in Our Stars: The Empty Wonder of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and the Overwrought ‘The Theory of Everything’

More Interstellar on Grantland:

Brothers in BRONG: How Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan Make the Boldest Scores in Hollywood

Should You See Interstellar? A Curious Consumer’s Decision-Making Guide

Floating in a Most Familiar Way: 21 Notes About Sci-Fi After 2001: A Space Odyssey

We Went There: Tunneling Through the Hype of the Interstellar Oculus Rift Experience