Tom Hanks has said that seeing Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ as a teenager profoundly changed his view of cinema. The film showed him that movies could be more than straightforward entertainment, broadening his artistic ambitions and appreciation of what the medium could achieve.

Before watching it in eighth or ninth grade, Hanks largely associated films with James Bond, John Wayne and the 1966 science-fiction adventure ‘Fantastic Voyage’. He was struck by ‘2001’’s extended near-silent opening and its reliance on imagery, atmosphere and ambiguity rather than conventional exposition. The article places his reaction in the context of the film’s enduring reputation as a highly influential, though sometimes divisive, work.