
The night sky is full of stars and space, and most of it is not able to be seen with the naked eye. Earth is a just another rock drifting around the sun amongst trillions and trillions of other stars, planets, and galaxies in the universe. Humans have descended from millions and billions of years of evolution. It is astounding to consider what humans have accomplished all the way from building such a unique society on earth to stepping foot on the moon. The driving force of a progressing civilization is evolution. Evolution is the key to improvement and transition into a new species or society. The movies “Interstellar” and “2001 a Space Odyssey” both convey why evolution plays such a huge role in our universe. They both support evolving and progressing as a civilization, but also have some differences in the messages they portray. Evolution is the key to life and humanities’ guide to its next step.

Both Interstellar and 2001 are science fiction films about humanity pioneering space and the universe. Interstellar is about a dying earth and the search for a new planet. Thanks to a higher civilization that places a worm hole near earth, Astronauts are able to travel to an entire new area of the universe in search of a habitable planet. 2001 starts off by showing how a monolith sent to prehistoric times teaches apes to use a bone as a weapon against other tribes. In this case, the monolith sparked the course of evolution for apes to eventually become humans. In present day, a monolith is discovered on the moon where it sends a radio wave blast to Juipiter. Orbiting Jupiter, a group of scientists are betrayed by their supposedly error free artificial intelligence. While one scientist avoids the evil super computer, Hal, he is sent to investigate another monolith discovered orbiting Jupiter. The monolith then takes the scientist, Bowman, into a realm not comprehensible to humans. In both films, Humans are helped by a 5th dimensional being or civilization. However, both films portray the existence of these higher beings in different ways.

In Interstellar, the higher dimension is a world for another civilization. They placed a wormhole by Saturn to guide humans to possibly habitable planets. Throughout the film, these beings interact with Cooper and the other scientists by distorting space time right in front of them while they are traveling through the wormhole. Finally, at the end of the film, cooper must go into a blackhole in order to save the teams mission of colonizing one of the planets. The space inside the blackhole has a prebuilt tesseract that cooper falls into. The tesseract allows cooper to interact with his daughter at any point in time and at any place as if he were a 5th dimensional being. It is this moment that cooper realizes humanities next step is to evolve to exist in the next dimension.

2001 has a very similar message about evolution. To start off, the monolith is sent to teach apes how to use bones as weapons and tools to spark the first step of mankind’s evolution. Unlike interstellar, 2001 has actual monoliths that play a part in the problems the scientists and Hal run into on the Jupiter mission. The movie also has no direct reference to an existence in the next dimension. At the end of the film when Bowman is taken into the vortex by the monolith. In this realm, he is exposed to a cosmos of bright colors and lights, strange land forms, and what appears to be the formation of the earliest galaxies and solar systems. Finally, at the end of Bowman’s journey in the realm, he sees himself through every stage of life until his own death where he evolves into a spiritual being watching over earth. It can be inferred that this realm is the 5th dimension because of Bowman’s inability to comprehend what is happening.

Interstellar and 2001 are very similar in the aspect of evolution because they both convey the same point. The point that evolution is the key to humanities next step, but they also open a new aspect of evolution as well. The concept of evolving to exist in another dimension sounds crazy and incomprehensible. This is probably because humans are built for the 4th dimension. It can be inferred that humans have reached a point in mental awareness that we could be ready to evolve. These films really put into perspective how far we have grown as a species but also how little we have come in the big picture. The monoliths were sent to us to help us evolve further just as the wormhole was placed to make interstellar travel possible. Both movies have some sort of higher being that guides humans on whatever it may be. Reaching the monoliths and the wormhole require incredible efforts, and in both movies these efforts almost appear to be a test of humanities ability to overcome and persevere. The tesseract in the black hole from Interstellar and the star gate realm in 2001 both resemble the 5th dimension. While these theories, being science fiction are very farfetched, they really show how the value of human life is equal to that of the higher beings. This is because they are always trying to assist us and guide is on what humans must do to survive. Adapting to living in another country can be challenging, but it very doable as many people do this. However, adapting to a new dimension is something only evolution can help mankind with.
