The next lines in their algorithms have gone on a walkabout and the hosts forget to chop the bit of wood needed to progress the theme park’s overall plot. The bug in the AI update seems to be messing up certain storylines, causing hosts to diverge from their scripts. Unsettling situations are borne of the bug in which some robots seem to go insane, while others are stuck in an absurd Waiting for Godot situation. The other half of Westworld that doesn’t deal with hosts takes place on the administrative side of the park. The Western isn’t the only genre employed here either. Many scenes take place between two hosts, with no guests to be seen for miles, and so when brothel operator Maeve tells her employee about a bad dream she had, the real kernel of the scene is trying to empathize with the thing spouting a pre-written script that you’ve already heard a few times before. The cinematography, the dialogue, and the violent set pieces are all well worn tropes, but because they are designed to be that way in the world of the show, you are encouraged to give yourself over to the character archetypes, the cliches, and the sort of style that in a regular straight up Western might otherwise be criticized for its derivative nature. Westworld does have all the action, adventure, and intrigue of the ideal Western film, but that’s all a veneer for tourists, under which lies a rich maze of philosophy, science fiction, and genre criticism. If that sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Is it programming or is it sentience? The cast members are so adept that every scene – even ones that don’t involve any known hosts – becomes a take home Turing test. The hosts are robots that can be programmed and told to do whatever guests (or their makers) desire, but that algorithmic nature is buried under so many layers of performed humanity that it is impossible to decipher what motivates any given machine. Standing on the shoulders of the aforementioned Battlestar Galactica, Westworld presents its most interesting aspects by using its high concept to explore ideas of humanity. They are programmed with a script that repeats on a loop, written by the park’s head narrative artist, and that can improvise and course-correct based on input received from park guests. Now that I spell it out like that, it does sound a lot like robot-cowboy- Jurassic Park, but there’s just so much more to Westworld than the makings of a traumatic Yelp review.Ībout half of Westworld’s cast are animatronic characters, called hosts, with AI modeled after Western genre cliches. A violent Man in Black (Ed Harris) is eviscerating robots in search of clues that will lead him to a secret level to what he calls “The Game.” And the park administration are overworked and overwhelmed, unable to get a handle on the effects of the bug and keep track of the park’s mysterious (possibly scheming) founder, Dr. The latest update rolled out to the park’s AI inhabitants has them acting a little strange, giving them access to memories from past story lines and dreams of another, more real world. But all is not well in this wild west fantasy utopia. The series is set wholly within a massive outdoor theme park in which tourist pay top dollar to have an authentic wild west experience, humans interact with the aforementioned robot cowboys and cowgirls and cow children, in what equates to a live action open world video game experience. The show is set in an ambitious high-tech theme park populated with robot cowboys that exist to give tourists an authentic wild west experience, but Westworld the show has more in common with ensemble driven sci-fi mystery shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost – only with a lot more cool hats and gun massacres. HBO’s Westworld is not Jurassic Park with robot cowboys, though that’s probably how you’ve heard it pitched by people who remember the original 1973 Michael Crichton film.
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