[asianthrowaway]

The thing with movies like interstellar and inception is that they're ultimately action/romance movies set in a sci fi context. 2001 is the only movie that I know of which is exclusively about themes such as human evolution, alien life, etc... and dispensing of all "hollywood fluff". I'm not trying to diss interstellar or inception (I loved both of them), but they're not of the same caliber as 2001.

[copperx]

In my opinion, 2001 feels cold, empty, and sterile when compared to Solaris by Tarkovsky. They both use space travel to touch on themes about the human experience, but Solaris is miles ahead dealing with human psyche.

It's like Kubrick sanitized humanity out of 2001.

[Udik]

Kubrick didn't think much of humanity, it's pretty clear in 2001 and in all his movies. His gaze is naturalistic: individuals are struggling for power and sex, sometimes they climb hierarchies through cunning and violence, sometimes they fall. He didn't seem to be that heavily interested in the human psyche.

On the other hand, 2001 is precisely a movie about humans trying to transcend themselves by suppressing anything emotional about them and exhalting pure reason- this is also a factor for the sterile appearance of the movie.

[camjohnson26]

Sunshine by Danny Boyle dealt with human extinction, although the focus was on reigniting the sun instead of colonizing planets. The cinematography is beautiful and it gets into some heavy themes.

[jacobush]

Exactly, Interstellar is good. The setting is a backdrop, but it's not a bad backdrop at all. In fact, I like how sci-fi and colonization of the solar system is made to look normal, it might give future generations a feeling of "of course we are going there". While it being a good love story in its own right.