Will HBO’s “Westworld” assume a seat next to the “Thrones”?
Imagine logging onto Expedia.com and finding a vacation destination that promised you absolute freedom, with no limits. That’s the alluring pitch attached to the futuristic theme park featured in “Westworld,” an epic, mind-bending new sci-fi drama from HBO. For top dollar, adult patrons are whisked to a vast wild-West realm where they interact with eerily lifelike robots that make Disneyland’s audio-animatronic figures look like dime-store mannequins. What’s more, guests can fulfill their every fantasy, whether it be kinky sex or some form of deviant deed, even murder.
“Guests have been told that they have free rein,” says executive producer Jonathan Nolan. “They can take their id on vacation. They can indulge in any whim, no matter how noble or dark, and, apparently, without consequence. It’s a fascinating premise: Who are we when the lights are off ? Who are we when we don’t think anyone’s keeping score?”
The series is inspired by the 1973 big-screen thriller by Michael Crichton. In that low-budget film, which starred Yul Brynner as an android called the Gunslinger, a glitch in the system ultimately had the machines going rogue and stalking the humans. The movie spawned a sequel (“Futureworld”) and a short-lived TV series (“Beyond Westworld”).
HBO’s rendition is much more nuanced and boasts impressive names behind and in front of the camera. Nolan (“The Dark Knight”) teamed up with his wife, Lisa Joy (“Pushing Daisies”), to develop the show, with J.J. Abrams serving as executive producer.
Anthony Hopkins, in his first leading role on a U.S. TV series, plays the theme park’s taciturn founder, Dr. Robert Ford, who has been described as a “cross between Walt Disney and Dr. Frankenstein.” Jeffrey Wright is his enigmatic right-hand man, Bernard. The cast also includes Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton and James Marsden.
That kind of talent, along with incredibly lavish production values and lots of advance critical praise, have industry insiders wondering if “Westworld” will be a “Game of Thrones”-sized hit for HBO. One immediate difference: “Thrones” had the advantage of a huge, ready-made fan base, thanks to George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels.
It also remains to be seen if viewers will plug into the complex storyline of “Westworld,” which delves into topics of consciousness, oppression, identity and morality, while examining the evershrinking gap between human life and artificial intelligence.
“(The show) is questioning: Where does life begin, and what characterizes the importance of life?” Joy told reporters at last month’s TV critics press tour. “It’s a constant examination of that line. Where does consciousness begin and end?”
The series has taken an extremely long time to come to fruition. Nearly 20 years ago, Crichton, who died in 2008, met with Abrams about doing a bigscreen remake of “Westworld.” At that point, Abrams couldn’t crack it and the project languished on the back-burner until he came to see it as a potential TV series.
And then there were more delays. Originally slated for a 2015 premiere, “Westworld” got pushed back when production was halted. The break led some to believe the project was in trouble, but Nolan insists it was simply a case of wanting to precisely map out the show’s complex mythology into future seasons.
Unlike the film, the series unfolds largely from the point of view of the synthetic beings because, Joy says, it was vital that viewers develop an “emotional connection” with them. They include Delores (Wood), the sweet-natured daughter of a frontier rancher; Maeve (Newton), the local madame; and Hector (Rodrigo Santoro), a ruthless outlaw.
Referred to as “hosts,” they interact with guests in a series of “storylines” that play upon familiar Western movie tropes. Their memories are erased and reset after a guest “kills” them.
So what could possibly go wrong? Plenty. When a mistake in a programming update is made, some of the hosts veer off-script. And then things really get messy when they begin to recall all the past abuses that park guests have inflicted upon them.
In another major divergence from the film, the gunslinger — or The Man in Black (Harris) — is not an android but a coldhearted human who has been visiting the park for 30 years. Working from his own mysterious agenda, he’s taking Westworld’s lawlessness to vicious extremes while mastering its various quirks like an expert player advancing to lofty levels in a video game.
Says Harris, “When he first arrived, he was just really exploring what this place was like: ‘OK, I can do anything I want? I can kill people if I need to, or make love to strange, robotic prostitutes.’ (Then) something happened to him at some point where he realized that there’s a part of him that’s very dark and violent. So he embraces that part of him when he comes to the park and does a lot of damage to the AI folk.”
For the actors playing those AI folks, the major challenge was trying to come across as lifelike while still conveying some sort of mechanical behavior.
“We settled on a place of subtlety,” says Wood. “And those were the things that made the differences between the hosts and humans very unsettling: One slight little movement, or shift, or freeze. Figuring out how to do that — with the intense focus it took — was fun.”
For Newton, the experience of playing her character, and the existential questions it raised, was like a “meditation.”
“I felt,” she says, “more perfectly, beautifully, exquisitely human than I ever have.”