2 ms·

I feel the pacing, particularly in the HAL scene with long pauses between words, dramatically builds up the suspense.

• mmjaa 9y ago
  I agree with you, but then I think the same can be said of movies such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", wherein the pacing was awesome back in the day, when you had to actually be somewhere to watch a movie, but now when everyone can stream to their own private space, 'tis a bigger challenge. I watch a lot of 70's movies with this slow, boring pace ..
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    That's probably not primarily a factor of needing to be somewhere to watch a movie as much as it's a factor of changing expectations set by other media: the effect was frequently commented on as early as the 1980s, and widely attributed to, among other media factors, the impact of MTV and music videos.
    • WorldMaker 9y ago
      I've also seen it commonly attributed to Star Wars. Star Wars, for better or worse, completely and almost single-handedly changed the pacing of sci-fi movies in the 70s. You can almost spot Star Wars as a line in the sand and tell which sci-fi films predate it, which postdate it, and which got stuck being released too close for comfort (the multiple editing cut fiascos of Blade Runner and Star Trek: The Motion Picture seem to be in part due to the pull of pre-Star Wars pacing versus changing film audience expectations).