Link related - Carl SaganThey had no idea how to end the movie - that's when they called me in to try to resolve a dispute. The key issue was how to portray extraterrestrials that would surely be encountered at the end when they go through the Star Gate. Kubrick was arguing that the extraterrestrials would look like humans with some slight differences, maybe à la Mr. Spock (Ed. note: like Clindar). And Arthur was arguing, quite properly on general evolutionary grounds, that they would look nothing like us. So I tried to adjudicate as they asked.
I said it would be a disaster to portray the extraterrestrials. What ought to be done is to suggest them. I argued that the number of individually unlikely events in the evolutionary history of man was so great that nothing like us is ever likely to evolve anywhere else in the universe. I suggested that any explicit representation of an advanced extraterrestrial being was bound to have at least an element of falseness about it and that the best solution would be to suggest rather than explicitly to display the extraterrestrials.
What struck me most is that they were in production (some of the special effects, at least) and still had no idea how the movie would end.
Kubrick's preference had one distinct advantage, an economic one: He could call up Central Casting and ask for twenty extraterrestrials. With a little makeup, he would have his problem solved. The alternative portrayal of extraterrestrials, whatever it was, was bound to be expensive.
The ending is perfect. The movie is one big sexcapade. The ship is a phallus. Bowman is the sperm. The monolith an egg. Bowman, much like the apes before him, reaches the monolith on Jupiter and is transformed into the Star Child. The psychedelic wormhole represents the act itself and the vast knowledge being passed to him by the monolith. The whole white room sequence is an allegory for life and death. The human race is old and has reached it's peak. Bowman, reborn as the Star Child, is the next step in evolution.
What is great about this is it goes directly against the whole idea of "Movies are for showing". Like in writing you have to describe things to the reader, what a room looks like, how the characters are situated, where that gun is above the fireplace. But in movies you're supposed to just show that there is a room. Instead, leaving a bit of mystery has made this a classic.