When the robots go rogue…
WESTWORLD is a bizarrely fascinating sci-fi series that has TV buffs talking.
Inspired by Michael Crichton’s 1973 movie of the same name, this series plays out like a pastiche of The Truman Show, The Maze Runner, Memento and Groundhog Day.
In the first episode, the line between fiction and reality blurs in this created Western utopia. Most of the residents are hosts, who help the human guests live out their fantasies. They are all monitored by a full team comprising the creative director of Westworld, the operations leader, the head of security and developers of the synthetic androids known as hosts and so on. The robots are there to feed the fantasies of the guests. So you have the sheriffs, the prostitutes, the gunslingers, the outlaws. All of the hosts are programmed with memories and emotions that are monitored.
Creator, writer, director and executive producer, Jonathan Nolan, sheds more light on the genesis of this series, on which he teams up with Lisa Joy.
He says: “Lisa hadn’t seen it. But I saw it as a kid and remained terrified by Yul Brynner. JJ Abrams (Lost), meanwhile, 20 years ago, had sat down with Michael Crichton to talk about remaking the original movie. It sort of stuck in his head, and then, decades went past. And, sadly, Michael Crichton’s no longer with us. But a thought clicked in JJ. He thought, well, maybe it’s not a film. Maybe there’s a series there. And he reached out to us. The key point of departure that JJ suggested, and that we embraced and built from, was this idea that you would turn the original film inside out. Instead of coming to a theme park with a group of guys on a bachelor weekend, we would start from the perspective of the hosts.”
Of course, this series has to evolve to incorporate the birth of artificial intelligence.
The hosts are terribly life-like and oblivious to their real purpose.
At first, we see Dolores relive the same day – she is reset. However, the outcomes are slightly different. There’s also much bloodshed in the unfolding gun battles.
Thandie Newton as host Maeve Millay, who is the madam of Westworld, James Marsden as host Teddy Flood, who is hopelessly in love with Dolores and Ed Harris as the mysterious and sadistic Man in Black, have ample screen time.
Meanwhile, the politics at play among those playing “God” with the unfolding events also form a cornerstone of the narrative.
Anthony Hopkins is Dr Robert Ford, the ingenious but enigmatic head of the entire project.
Joy adds: “In this series, we examine human behaviour, those impulses, be they beautiful and transcendent or terrible and tragic, that are hardwired into our own code, in our own DNA.”
The arrival of William (Jimmi Simpson) and his friend Logan (Ben Barnes) steers the narrative in a different direction. While William is reluctant to enjoy the experience, a hedonistic Logan doesn’t suffer the same moral conundrums. Memory forms one of the overriding themes. Westworld magnifies the narcissism and inner conflicts of people, where some are the heroes and others the unredeemable villains in the story. Westworld airs on M-Net Edge (DStv channel 102) on Mondays at 9pm.