Stanley Kubrick

Kojima first discovered 2001 in 1978, in his third year of junior high, when he bought a mook—purchased for its Star Wars coverage—that also included full-color images, diagrams and interviews about Kubrick’s film. As a reader of hard SF who dreamed of becoming an astronaut, he felt more drawn to 2001 than to space-opera. While waiting for a rerelease he read Arthur C. Clarke’s novel and listened to a radio-play adaptation, and he was fortunate to see the film for the first time in Cinerama in Osaka. From then on he attended every subsequent rerelease on the big screen.

As a teenager, Kojima used science-fiction years—1984, 1997 and finally 2001—as future milestones that reality turned into the past. When 2001 arrived he discovered the film still belonged to the future and said his internal clock would remain stopped there until the world reached its perfection and creators managed to surpass it; for him the film was the monolith placed in the path by a god named Kubrick.

“Things that leave a deep impression on me, like Kubrick, are innovative or new things. They can split opinion. But ultimately, it's precisely these things that stay with you.”

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s DIGGER reminded Kojima of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and the BBC nuclear-war drama Threads. Tom Cruise’s monologue also brought Chaplin’s The Great Dictator to mind.