Has anyone read the book? Clark and Kubrick Worked on it together while the film was being made. You notice several inconsistencies. For instance, Clark wanted it to be about Saturn but Kubrick went for Jupiter. In the end Clark ended up agreeing and wrote 2010 with Jupiter instead of Saturn. Is there anyone who watched the movie but did not read the book understand the ending? I didn't understand it until I read the book and it's the same with all my friends.
Seen the movie like 12 times, read the book three times. If I recall correctly, Clark wrote 2010 with Jupiter instead of Saturn because he recognized that more people were familiar with the movie version. ACC was much more concerned with "what makes sense narratively" while Kubrick was focused on "what can we pull off". It was definitely collaborative but the shift from ACC's 2001 to Kubrick's 2001 for 2010 kinda walled off some interesting shit.
I definitely was a bit lost and I bet watching the movie in pieces didn't help at all but the review that camarillobrillo shared, in the second to last paragraph gave me an "Aha!" moment that helped make sense of it all ...is that man will eventually outgrow his machines, or be drawn beyond them by some cosmic awareness. He will then become a child again, but a child of an infinitely more advanced, more ancient race, just as apes once became, to their own dismay, the infant stage of man.