> What is the viewer supposed to think about the space baby that's actually grounded in something within the movie? Let's see. At the beginning of the movie we

> What is the viewer supposed to think about the space baby that's actually grounded in something within the movie? Let's see. At the beginning of the movie we witness the dawn of Man. That is, we see tribes of apes shaken by beastly emotions, fear, rage, aggression; eaten by predators, sleeping under rocks, fighting with each other for food and water. Not a pretty sight. The tribe that wins and will give birth to mankind is the most violent one, the one that discovered how to use tools to kill. But jump forward a few million years of evolution, and a seemingly refined humanity is travelling in space and having civilised (if somewhat cautious) conversations about science and current events. On the spaceship (curiously spermatozoa-shaped) that is sent to investigate the mystery of the monolith, there's a crew of hyper-rational astronauts together with science's latest, most refined tool, an evolution of man itself: a super-human intelligence that embodies an ideal of rationality and civility. And how does this end up? In a violent bloodbath, with men fighting to death, tooth and nails, with their own super-human creation. Clearly, anything men can produce is tainted by the original sin of violence. So David Bowman is transported to a place that seems to be outside space or time, a room decorated in a style that's the essence of civility but also of sterile coldness; in this space he sees himself living by a futile ideal of sophistication, only to proceed towards his inevitable decay and death. And as he's approaching his last moments, the monolith (the otherness) intervenes again, extracting from his consumed shell, at last, a really new kind of humanity. Does it make sense? :)