Well, yeah, maybe it really is about some dude near Jupiter....

I had the same sort of questions. That was one hell of a movie, by the standards of the times. But most people never seemed to get past the knockout audio visual side of the thing, which was pretty splendid I think.

If you read the books, Clarke explains a lot of things which the movie doesn't. For example, he details the scenes with the apes, from their perspective. They learn to do all sorts of things after encountering the first monolith. There's a lot more about this in the book, beyond one ape killing another with an old bone.

There was a sequel, both a book and a movie; 2010. They pretty much complete the story, and add some more of what the first book/movie was about. Also, there was a "Making of" 2001 book that went into detail about the cinematography, models, effects, monkey suits, and so on.

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