Terror and aI In The wIld wesT
HBO’s latest drama series Westworld tackles the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin “This is violence between humans and robots. Robots can just get reprogrammed, patched up and turned off but real people can’t.”
Thandie Newton
THE new series Westworld was inspired by the 1973 motion picture of the same name, written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton, where a robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.
It explores a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged.
Show writer and director Jonathan Nolan explains, “Building on the incredibly evocative concept of the original film, we wanted to pose the question: If you could be completely immersed in a fantasy, one in which you could do whatever you wanted, would you discover things about yourself that you didn’t want to know?”
Co-creator Lisa Joy adds, “We also wanted to explore what it means to be human from the outside in — through the eyes of the ‘hosts’: The lifelike AI (Artificial Intelligence) characters that are the main attractions of the park.
“It’s a meditation on consciousness — the blessing and the burden of it — beautifully portrayed by our cast.”
One of its stars, British actress Thandie Newton, was immediately intrigued by the premise after reading about the show’s pilot episode.
“It feels like there are situations of sexual violence, but I knew that with Jonathan and Lisa, there had to be a purpose behind it.”
Featuring an ensemble cast including Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden, Westworld isa 10-episode sci-fi extravaganza, airing Mondays at 9am, starting on Oct 3.
Newton plays beautiful, razor-sharp madam Maeve Millay, who has a genius for reading people and a knack for survival, but her seen-it-allbefore world-view is about to be challenged. “When I read the pilot script, there was so much that I was horrified by the violence, the depravity. It was a question for me,” Newton comments.
Then she realised that the whole point of it is to shock viewers into the awareness that this is what humans do to each other. “You have to establish the depravity, and show the extremes of what we can do to each other, so that you can then comment on it. This is violence between humans and robots. Robots can just get reprogrammed, patched up and turned off but real people can’t.”
Newton, who starred in Mission: Impossible II (2000), Crash (2004) and The Pursuit Of Happyness (2006) didn’t think she was a sci-fi fan at first. Then, Jonathan and Lisa asked her if she had seen any films by Sergio Leoni, a wellknown director of Western flicks. “So
there I was, watching his film Once Upon
A Time In The West (1968), and it was absolutely exquisite.
“It was a lovely step into Westworld, because that is a lot of what the HBO series is about — questioning the nature of our reality.”
Among Westworld’s main characters are Dr Robert Ford (Hopkins), the brilliant, taciturn and complicated creative director, chief programmer and founder of Westworld, who has an uncompromising creative vision for the park.
The Man In Black (Harris) is the distillation of pure villainy into one man. Dolores Abernathy (Wood) is a provincial, beautiful and kind rancher’s daughter, who begins to discover that her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately constructed lie. Teddy Flood (Marsden), a new arrival to a small frontier town, quickly proves both his charm and talent with a revolver.
Newton reveals that the cast and crew shot the film and then a year later they reunited to shoot the series. So she didn’t know about the story arc at the beginning.
“The pilot was a completely different experience to shooting the whole show. We had a lot of time to talk through the arc of where everything was going to go. It was great that we had time to, because it was really important to get everything right. With Westworld, it’s incredibly important that everything that’s established is really concrete.”
She adds that they had to think about the audience, and the latter needs the
Westworld airs Mondays at 9am same time as the US, with a repeat at 9pm on the same day, on HBO (Astro
Channel 411/431).
starting point ingrained in them, because they’re going to need a place to go back to. “There were a lot of chats, and it was like we were all kind of learning a new philosophy for life.”
In her spare time, Newton splits her life between her human rights work and trying to end violence against women. That’s her passion, as a mother, as a wife, woman and an anthropologist.
“I do so much of that, but when I (work as an actress) for which I get paid, I find myself betraying those ideas. That’s why I used to get frustrated. I want to spend my life working on projects that are part of the solution.
“The visual media has enormous influence, and wherever possible, I want the money that I earn not to be destroying people. With Westworld though, every day I went to work, I was satisfying my human rights activism, my ending violence against women activism, just through the words I was saying, and the scenes I was playing.
“I haven’t had that kind of experience before, and that was why I was so excited to be part of this project.”
nstent@nst.com.my