I tried to like it. I really did. In the end my aversion to anything Western got the better of me and we turned it off about halfway through.
Funny thing is I enjoyed the movie.
Loved it loved it loved it. Just beautiful and dark and precisely tuned throughout. When I caught on as to why that orchestral piece sounded so familiar it was a heck of a spit-take.
Oh wow, I’m dumb.
I completely missed all that stuff with the flies. Or rather, I saw it, but didn’t tie it to the “not hurting a living thing” point at all, nor realised that it was a trigger for the sheriff’s breakdown. I just assumed that they hadn’t been programmed with that sort of sensitivity/reflex or something and it was just meant to remind us they’re not human. And Delores’s squashing at the end was her escaping her programming or whatever.
Not to worry. The show throws a lot at you in that first hour, particularly if you’re not familiar with the Westworld premise before watching. Nothing is quite how you expect it to be, which can make it hard to catch up. I’m seeing a lot of “What, this isn’t a digital world and those robots are real?” chatter elsewhere on the 'Net, simply because Westworld being a form of VR is what a lot of people were expecting. (The giant AR display they use in the control room is confusing people for the same reason.)
VR being today’s default expectation is kinda ironic, because back when I saw the original movie in 1973, physical robots seemed way more plausible than computers simulating and rendering a digital reality. How times have changed!
Re: host actors we liked. Yep, I hope we get to see more of Trevor. But the actor I really want to see more of is the guy who played Delores’s dad. He did a phenomenal job in his interview scene. The good news is that since hosts get re-used he can come back as a completely different character!
Oh, I’m familiar with the premise, though I don’t think I’ve watched the original all the way through since the 90s. I’m just generally oblivious to that sort of thing until it’s pointed out to me. I didn’t figure out half of the plot/symbolism of Upstream Colour until I read about it afterward, for instance.
Saw this last night. Really liked it, and will definitely watch the series.
Nothing really happened in that episode that surprised me, but I’m not against a bit of character development and having a chance to tour the worldbuilding. So I enjoyed the time spent there. And I’m definitely anticipating the day when Teddy develops some backbone!
Did anyone else feel like they were trying oh-so-hard to copy the feel of Game of Thrones’ opening theme? Yeah, this one is different but I get the sense that GoT’s theme inspired about 90% of what they did. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Edit to add: Can’t pass up a chance to promote Jeffrey Wright’s IMDB bio:
[quote]
Quite possibly the most underrated and underexposed actor of his caliber and generation, Jeffrey Wright’s undeniable talent and ability to successfully bring to life any role he undertakes is on a par with the most praised and revered A-list actors in the business. [/quote]
Go get 'em, Jeff!
Hosts get reused, yes, but I don’t think he will be. That seems like the point of the place they put him.
Same composer.
HBO went to their A-Team for this. They got Elastic to do the credits, and Elastic did the credits for Game of Thrones and True Detective, winning Emmys for both. Elastic is Angus Wall’s company. He’s David Fincher’s editor, and he owns a couple Academy Awards.
In other words, they’re pretty much the best in the business.
He may not get reused, but they’re pretty clearly setting things up for that cold storage facility to stop storing them.
True Detective season 2 was crap, but the credits were amazing.
Edit: And the Westworld and GoT theme composer is Ramin Djawadi. I bet he and John Williams have a lot to talk about at awards shows. “So I say, how about I give you something in another style? And they say, ‘No, no, we want it just like Game of Thrones/Star Wars. Only, you know, different!’”
No argument there.
I love HBO and the premise of the show - the more expansive exploration of the themes of the original show, the open-world RPG design/game aspects, and the cast is of the usual HBO-quality. The first episode was a slow burn but there was a lot of potential depth.
That said, there was a dearth of likeable characters, at least on the human side - other than Jeffrey Wright - and where it seems to be heading already seems telegraphed (AI sentience and eventual rebellion, malevolent human planning for the use of the androids beyond use in the simulation) and not just because of the original movie, and I’m still not convinced there is enough depth to these themes to sustain a show in an extended, interesting way.
The show is exploring “big ideas”, such as the nature of life (can’t get any bigger than that!), but I’m not sure that those ideas can necessarily generate sufficient action/credible and differing character motivations/perspectives to appropriately supplement the introspection in order to translate into a sustainable serial narrative. I’m already concerned that it’ll be repetitive and heavy-handed.
But I’m definitely sticking with it for the duration. I did love the incorporation of Crichton-esque ideas such as the possibly unintended consequences of seemingly unimportant changes to AI code, or generating higher thought simply by inadequately erasing memories of earlier experiences/character roles “Life will find a way” (that said, I lean towards the interpretation that Hopkins deliberately wanted to create more capable and sentient AI).
I actually also loved the original movie, which Crichton essentially rewrote as Jurassic Park. One thing I’m disappointed at is that there don’t appear to be other theme world settings (Medieval world, Roman world), as in the original movie. I’m also concerned that it’s impossible even for HBO, in today’s world, to fully explore some of the more interesting “evil role-playing” roles that some people would gravitate towards as empowerment fantasies - role-playing sexual fantasies with machines is not “rape” by any sensible definition, but doing so could screw up character perspectives outside of the simulation (as could inflicting any other form of violence, let alone murder, in such a life-like simulation). By necessity, some of the more interesting themes are going to be both heavily sanitized and explored in a very heavy-handed, predictable way.
Nolan already handled Person of Interest with the whole AI theme pretty well and Westworld has really more potential for additional depth so I don’t think this will be a problem. We know they have already planned their (main) plot for 5 seasons so that gives me hope they won’t run out of steam after 1 or 2 seasons.
Regarding the lack of likeable human characters… I think that was kinda an intentional thing of the pilot to set the stage. As far as I know (and looking at the preview trailer) there will be at least one more human character which could serve as viewer surrogate and I really doubt that the narrative will end in some black and white stuff when it comes to the human/AI relationship (the people involved are too good at what they do for this to happen).
The interesting thing about exploring “big ideas” usually isn’t to what conclussions you come, it’s the way that lead to those. There were already a lot of strong character moments in the pilot which totally depended on their execution and less on the bigger philosophical implications.
It’s one thing to create another AI uprising story but it’s a totally different thing to create one in which you are rooting for that uprising (though I don’t think it will be a “simple” AI rebellion in the near future).
I’m actually pretty interested in this aspect of the show. Not rape specifically, but the way people treat the robots, and how that might be reflected in our real world in the future.
Let’s say you program a really sophisticated AI that “feels” pain. Let’s further say you program responses into the AI that mimic life. It cries, screams, and tries to get away from whatever is “hurting it.” At what point does abusing a toaster become abusing a life form? How would society treat that abuser?
Observe the way people immediately empathized with Atlas, the Boston Dynamics biped, when a video was released showing a human pushing it around and knocking things out of its hands.
Even though it’s called Westworld I wonder if future seasons would switch to a different setting. Seems the company behind it would have many themed worlds to offer different tastes.
It does seem like a pretty easy transition to go from Westworld to Romanworld or Renaissance Faire World (or whatever). I mean, you could have the entire first season about the AI developing sentience in Westworld and at the end have some of the self-aware AIs escape to other themed worlds. And all of a sudden Season 2 is Romeworld!
One question I just thought of - have they explicitly said how much time it takes to go through a ‘story cycle’ is in Westworld? I recall they talked about advancing the guy-killing-townspeople storyline by “a week” when they were recalling the defective bots, so the Westworld experience has to be at least 2 weeks… but it could be longer. I know we see James Marsden waking up over and over in the space of an hour so it seems like it’s over in a flash, but that’s obviously not the case in terms of elapsed time? They established that humans pay a lot for this trip, so I can’t imagine it would be a super short visit.
I understand why they’re trying to humanize the robots in this story, but it makes it lose sense to me. In the old movie, it was Jurassic park with robots, robots go haywire and are also not totally understood, not being designed by humans anymore. The corporation was the bad guy, the robots were faulty hardware, like a cell phone exploding.
In this one, ok, faulty robots killing humans isn’t going to be much of a story to follow for x years, so, make them more complex. Okay. But why would the robots feel pain? Why would the guns hurt them at all? So the company needs to rebuild them? That’s expensive. Just simulate the damage somehow, keep the robot damage free. Emotional damage? Why? Simulate emotional response X to the situation, but having the information that unit whatever isn’t in danger, isn’t going to die, etc, etc.
We’re not talking about robots being used in the real world and getting abused / attacked there, people doing stuff outside what the robots had been designed for. We’re talking robots build to simulate not being robots, built to be among other things, abused / attacked, in an environment you control. You design them for that.
That’s all stuff no one outside of the show really knows. There may be good reasons for doing things in a roundabout way (the dialogue between Simon Quartermain and Sidse Babett Knudsen hinted at some other purpose outside of tourists’ gratification) and maybe the show will let us know in later episodes what that is. Frankly, though, it doesn’t matter. Like most classic sc-fi, the setup is just a means to discuss “big questions” using whatever contrivances it needs.
The cheapest option for all this would be a matrix-style VR environment. You can fulfill any sick wish a person could want in the theater of the mind. But then, you wouldn’t have an excuse to examine sentience and how humans treat a new life form.
Those of us who have seen Futureworld can perhaps guess what that purpose is (all five of us.)