snapshot Westworld
Westworld
When, where: Daily on SoHo PopUp channel 210
Rating: (AO) ★★★★+
What it’s about: Westworld is a theme park where the very wealthy go to indulge their fantasies, which are either violent, sexual or both. The theme is the Wild West, and as far as patrons are concerned, when they step off that train, they step off into another century. The socalled ‘‘hosts’’ who inhabit this world are perfect cyborgs, made in a secret location, and programmed by Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright). They each follow an elaborate
‘‘narrative’’ which is written by one of many authors who work in the bowels of Westworld, far out of sight of the guests. These narratives play out over and over again, in an endless loop cycle.
One day, Lowe notices, uhoh, a possible glitch in a host, while Dr Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), who oversees the whole shebang, is puzzled by behaviour in certain ‘‘recoded’’ hosts, notably one who quotes Shakespeare, specifically
Henry IV. These hosts, programmed to talk and behave like people on the wild frontier, and to die violently when guests decide to off them, are not supposed to do that.
Then, there are the guests. You shall get to know one only as ‘‘The Man in Black’’ (Ed Harris). Treacherous and brutal, he’s come back to Westworld to indulge more than just fantasies. Two of the hosts, Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) may eventually learn all the secrets of this place.
The show is based on the 1973 movie of the same name, which was written and directed by Michael Crichton. Jonathan Nolan (The Dark
Knight) is creator and showrunner
here.
My say: Where the rest of us see long lines, endless days and fervently hope to avoid personal bankruptcy when it’s all over — in other words, that family trip to Disney World — Michael Crichton saw the distillation of our hopes and dreams, then the exploitation of them, which lead to
. . . our collective nightmares.
HBO’s adaptation of Westworld still embraces Crichton’s obsessions and themes — notably technology’s perverse assault on the human soul — but also the obsessions of so many other cinematic and literary landmarks. There’s a little bit of Frankenstein here and a whole lot of
Bladerunner. The Matrix shadows Westworld — how could it not? — but so does Shakespeare’s The
Tempest where (after all) ‘‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on’’. This theme park built on hubris and plastic is also a dreamscape, run by Hopkins’ Dr Ford, who practically demands you think of him as Prospero.
If all this sounds heady, pretentious or derivative, then Westworld may eventually turn out to be guilty as charged, but it is also a genuinely different series that offers something even better than that: It’s genuinely engaging.
Westworld works on many levels, but the most obvious is the visceral, bloodspilling one. Sam Peckenpaugh must have inspired the authors of the show’s many narratives, because more bullets fly, bodies fall and blood spills than even he could have hoped for. The violence is searing, appalling, and mitigated only by the knowledge that it’s not real. Those host bodies fall, only to be reanimated by Dr Lowe.
That’s another key theme here. The patrons of Westworld are inured to the violence, but use it to feed their sadistic fantasy life. This might not just be a cautionary tale on the potential dangers of virtual reality but a commentary on television in general.
Bottom line: Lots of big ideas, lots of farflung literary/cinematic references, and lots of violence. Yup,
Westworld is a lot — but also a winner with a potentially exciting payoff.