In which Stanley Kubrick film does a black monolith appear?

In which Stanley Kubrick film does a black monolith appear? The answer is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The monolith is one of the film’s defining images, appearing at several turning points in humanity’s evolution. It first emerges among prehistoric hominins, whose encounter with it precedes their discovery that bones can be used as weapons. Much later, a similar object is found on the Moon, directing human attention toward Jupiter.

Stanley Kubrick directed the film and co-wrote its screenplay with science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. The monolith’s perfectly rectangular shape, featureless black surface, and unexplained purpose helped make it a symbol of mysterious extraterrestrial intelligence. It is not a spaceship, robot, or ordinary monument; its meaning is deliberately left open to interpretation.

A common mix-up is confusing the monolith with the film’s famous rotating space station or with HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence aboard Discovery One. Those are important elements, but only the monolith connects the film’s evolutionary and cosmic episodes.