Stanley Kubrick explains the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey in newly discovered interview

A newly unearthed interview has explained the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Photo / Supplied

In a newly unearthed interview, the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey has finally been explained by the 1968 sci-fi movie's director, Stanley Kubrick, himself.

For 50 years the film's ambiguous ending has been the subject of debate among fans, with numerous theories providing a possible explanation. But now, for the first time in history, a re-emerged interview with Kubrick has revealed exactly what happened at the end of the film.

According to the YouTube account that shared the footage, the interview is an excerpt from a 1980 documentary by filmmaker Jun'ichi Yaoi on the paranormal. Yaoi interviewed him for the film as Kubrick was in the process of filming his horror classic The Shining.

Although the documentary was never released, io9 reports that a VHS tape of the raw footage was sold in 2016, and has mysteriously made its way online this week.

In the footage, Kubrick admitted that he had avoided explaining the ending because, "when you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they're dramatised one feels it."

The acclaimed director then goes on to explain the final scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea), after travelling through a psychedelic "Star Gate", awakens to find himself in an ornately decorated bedroom, where he ages rapidly, before being seemingly transformed into an unborn child, floating through space in a halo of light.

"The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form," Kubrick explains in the tape.

"They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time.

"They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn't quite sure. Just as we're not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment.

"Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman.

"We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest."

This article originally appeared on the Daily Telegraph.