Goofs for
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: After Dave Bowman takes his food out of the food slot, two of the containers in his tray exchange positions by themselves. When he first removes the tray, there is a dark red container all the way to the left and a grayish one next to it. When Dave makes his way to the table to eat, the red one and the gray one have switched places.
  
  
• Continuity: In the 70mm version you can see passengers moving inside the illuminated windows of the Pan Am space shuttle enroute to the space station. However, the following interior shot shows that Dr. Floyd is the sole passenger.
  
  
• Continuity: When the astronaut leaves the pod to replace the AE-35 unit, he is holding it in his right hand so he can use his left hand to control his thruster backpack. In the next shot showing him maneuvering toward Discovery, the AE-35 is in his left hand.
  
  

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Bowman reenters the ship, he is exposed to vacuum for no more than 10 seconds before operating the repressurization valve. Scientific evidence shows that this would indeed be survivable without grievous harm, notwithstanding the sensational depictions in other movies.
  
  
• Factual errors: In one of 2001's best known visuals, the moon shuttle stewardess turns upside down to go from the cabin to the cockpit. Although there is no "up" in space, this is not a practical ship design: when it enters an atmosphere, one or the other will be upside down at landing. They can't have it both ways, literally.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On one of the computer monitors in Bowman's pod (visible in the widescreen version only), scratches and a rather obvious film-edit splice can be seen, giving away the fact that the computer graphics are rear-projected film clips. The same scratched-up section of animation is seen in two or three subsequent shots of the pod's control panel.
  
  
• Continuity: The quantity of food changes twice while Bowman and Poole are eating.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dave is showing HAL his sketches, and HAL questions Dave for his crew psychology report: Dave's seating position and the way he holds his sketch pad is not consistent between scenes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the PanAm shuttle closes in on the space station, the shuttle and station rotate synchronously, so you see the station stay still through the shuttle's windows. However the computer schematic displayed in the cockpit keeps rotating.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: To come up with a convincing effect for the floating pen in the shuttle sequence, Kubrick decided to simply use a pen that was taped to a sheet of glass suspended in front of the camera (in fact, the shuttle attendant can be seen to "pull" the pen off the glass when she takes hold of it). If you watch carefully around the upper left corner of the screen just before she catches the pen, you can see the glass briefly reflecting light as it rotates to give the floating effect to the pen.
  
  
• Continuity: The phase of the Earth reverses while the moon bus is en-route from Clavius to Tyco.
  
  
• Continuity: In the Pan Am lunar shuttle, we see the Clavius Moon Base approach through the viewing window of the pilot's cockpit in a view like an airplane approach. In the next shot, we see the exterior of the craft, and the cockpit is shown pointing straight up towards the black sky as it lands on the landing gear beneath the craft. It would be impossible for the pilots to view the Clavius approach from the cockpit if landing with reverse thrust engines. All they would see is the sky straight above, and it would be relatively still from their point of view.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bowman is disconnecting HAL in the logic center, he turns a key and a corresponding clear plastic block slides out. However, when he skips the #1 block in one series and turns the key for the high number in the next series, the #1 block in the previous series slides out.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): HAL's verbal description of his chess move (Q-B3), given what he shows on the screen, are from Frank's point of view. This is often regarded as an error, since in descriptive chess notation, the rank is described from the point of view of the player making the move. It should be Q-B6. HAL's errors can be considered either script goofs or clues revealing his internal conflict, since he is supposed to be infallible.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): HAL has apparently forgotten to wish Frank a happy birthday until Frank's parents' video reminds him. This is either a breach in his usual social graces or a lapse in memory. What are the chances that the ship's computer does not have each crewman's date of birth on file?
  
  
• Continuity: When the spaceship is docking at the station, the ship and the station are rotating at the same speed as can be seen in the scenes from the ship's point of view. But in the exterior, zoomed out shot of both of them, they are clearly rotating at radically-different speeds.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While Poole and Bowman are watching the BBC 12 interview, the right flat screen is slightly ahead (about two frames). This is due to both screens being rear-projected film clips from two projectors. An actual video feed would be completely synchronized.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Floyd has finished flipping through photographs on his way to the TMA-1 moon base, during the cut where he says "Deliberately buried," he is holding a different photograph from the one he is holding in the preceding and succeeding shots.
  
  
• Continuity: In the initial running scene with Dr. Poole on the ship, at the beginning the side with the two occupied long term sleeping units are on his left. In the last shot, they are on his right.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Heywood Floyd is talking to his daughter on the picture-phone, she moves slightly out of frame but remains in the shot. Modern cameras can move around to "follow" a person, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke foresaw this.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Floyd is giving his speech during the debriefing, his hands are alternately (not) resting on the podium.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Dave goes out to repair the AE-35 unit the first time, he parks the pod away from Discovery and rotates it so that the door faces the spacecraft. During the rotation, the lights of the pod reflect on the let side of the screen.
  
  
• Plot holes: Spacecraft will always have redundant computer systems. Even with the HAL9000 series having had up until then flawless operations, no craft in deep space would be without one or more back up systems, especially for life support on the crew that were in suspended animation.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first view from the space station looking at the approaching ship, the stars are moving clockwise, so the station must be turning clockwise from the ship's point of view. But in the next shot, the station is turning counter-clockwise from the ship's point of view.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On the space station, right after Dr. Floyd clears security, and before he meets the Russians, he and another man are strolling along the curved floor of the station. Their bodies' orientation should be radial to the curvature of the floor, appearing to lean forward in the frame, but instead they are perpendicular to the orientation of the frame: they are walking downhill rather that walking along the bottom of the curved floor.
  
  
• Factual errors: During Bowman's EVA, stars are moving by, as though the ship was moving at about 5 light years (30 trillion miles) per second. In reality the star field would be stationary. Discovery's velocity of 28 miles per second is insignificant relative to interstellar distances.
  
  
• Continuity: As Heywood Floyd approaches the Tycho Monolith in the shuttle, the Earth is on the moon's horizon. But a short time later, when Floyd stands at the monolith and it emits its signal, the Earth is directly overhead.
  
  
• Errors in geography: Earth should appear closer to the horizon at Clavius than at Tycho, not vice versa.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Earth Shuttle stewardess enters the passenger cabin and moves towards Heywood Floyd, she stumbles on the walkway. The nature of the misstep reveals that she is not weightless.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Subtitles on the DVD misspell Clavius as Claivus during the conference.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: A weightless environment like the Discovery, which was built in orbit, would have no need for ladders anywhere on the ship other than the centrifuge.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: HAL 9000 calls his favorite song "Daisy." Although some viewers argue that "A Bicycle Built for Two" is the correct title, the 1892 copyright record lists the title as "Daisy Bell," so HAL is using the correct title, abbreviated.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Bowman inhales deeply before attempting to re-enter the ship from the pod. Arthur C. Clarke in an interview later noted that this is incorrect. Bowman should have exhaled, as the vacuum of space would have damaged his lungs had they been full of air.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: THe people and props in the Clavius meeting hall, and the moon bus to TMA-1, move around and rest in gravity that shows they are on Earth. Moon gravity is 1/6 of Earth's gravity.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the moon shuttle lands it kicks up swirling clouds of dust. In the vacuum of space the dust would shoot out straight, as with the real-life Apollo Lunar Modules.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: (At 01:48 - DVD special edition) When Dave is flipping switches in the pod prior to entry through the emergency airlock, his sleeves are hanging from his arms. They should be weightless.
  
  
• Continuity: As Dave Bowman climbs into HAL's logic center to shut him off, the seal on his suit's left hand is broken and the glove separates from the suit (due to the swing). The glove is reattached once he enters the logic center.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: At the end of the film, Dave uses the last remaining pod to get a closer look at the huge monolith. The hangar bay door that opens is the one in the center. The center bay was from the pod that killed Frank and was drifted into space. The bay door to the left (outside perspective, looking at the Discovery) was from the pod Dave used to retrieve Frank's body. The pod became useless upon explosive re-entry of Dave in the Discovery, so the only left pod should be the one at the right bay door and not the center door.
  
  

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