Just watched this a few days ago (it's on HBO Max for those who subscribe, and it's a very high quality digitization). It's a fantastic movie that still holds i

Just watched this a few days ago (it's on HBO Max for those who subscribe, and it's a very high quality digitization). It's a fantastic movie that still holds its own as a science fiction tale and work of art. The setup (spoilers): - Impending malfunction that can't be duplicated by Hal's twin back on Earth - Poole and Bowman discuss what to do in the pod - Bowman goes out to fix the antenna and his pod-like vehicle sneaks up on him - something happens (not shown) that causes Bowman and the vehicle to go spinning off into space - Poole goes out in a second vehicle to retrieve the body - Hal [apparently] shuts down the hibernation pods of the three other astronauts - Hal refuses to let Poole (without helmet) back onto the ship, shuts down discussion - Poole removes the emergency hatch and blows himself back into the ship - Poole disconnects Hal's memory and logic controllers, as Hal pleads with him to talk things over. In this portrayal, Hal is a sentient machine, not a brain in a vat connected to life support systems. This is made clear in the final sequence in the list above. For audiences watching the movie (as opposed to reading the book), it's not clear if it acts with malice, detached self-interest, psychopathic delusions, or something else. Science Fiction at this time (mid-1960s) was already using crazed robots or corrupted/untrustworthy machine intelligences as a storytelling device, for instance in Herbert's Dune and Destination: Void, so these scenarios would not have been unfamiliar. This is quite different than say, a Tesla driving its trusting owner off a cliff or a military drone programmed to kill or directed by human operators to fire a missile.