The 1960's was a period of great experimentation in the film industry. With the end of the giant movie studios' monopoly of the creation, distribution and showing of films, more independent projects began to make it into mainstream theaters. This greatly affected the formulas for making a film and the style in which the story is told. In an attempt to compete with this trend many of the older major studios began to recruit younger directors to distribute their projects through their studios. MGM studio was looking for a cutting edge project when they approached Stanley Kubrick about distributing his next film. When MGM released 2001: A Space Odyssey in April of 1968, it was clear that they had set a new standard for the cutting edge.

Kubrick's approach to 2001 came from a true desire to make an imaginative but realistic science fiction film. His desire...