WestWorld: ...Where nothing can possibly go worng!

the cast means i'll def check out the first few episodes

im a big fan of jeffrey wright recently

I rewatched the film a few months ago, it is not "great."

i did like how Dick van Patten has maybe the 5th-biggest role, and perhaps 10-12 lines of dialogue

Yul is awesome obviously

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Z__wbpDa4

yeah, I feel like there's almost no way this isn't incredibly stupid

in

in

someone told me ed brubaker is a writer on this... true?

looks like it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(TV_series)#Episodes

I've enjoyed Vincenzo Natali's tv directing work, so the episode that credits Brubaker as primary writer and him as director sounds promising

I think they may have broken some kind of record for Idiot Plot in a television series - only 40 minutes in and you have a dude interrupting his boss to say "Isn't this a Bad Idea?"
Followed by the schtick villain played by Ed Harris doing schtick and then uh

Oh maybe next week they'll use string arrangements of songs that have the color "blue" or "white!"

Anyway, I think I can dig it, even if it does turn out that Jeffrey Wright and/or Sidse Knudsen turn out to be robots, which btw I'm just calling that now
If they DO run with the color-by-song-title arranged-for-faux-period-instruments idea, I think I'll actually end up liking it even more

helped by the fact that I was expecting a hot mess, I enjoyed that. I wonder if it was the pilot or the subsequent episodes that HBO had to retool?

the review I read that said it was kind of formless for four episodes... what kind of narrative devices and exposition are these people looking for?

already starting to get the suspicion that stockpiling all your decommissioned androids in the basement, when the glitchy oldest models have been known to just "wake up," might not be the best idea

imo Anthony Hopkins is the surprise android out there in the world, and the original creator is in cold storage or dead somewhere

watching the original film, a couple of funny moments. The scientists / engineers around a table.. "in some cases the robots have been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work." ?! WHAT

James Brolin looks like Patrick Bateman

Yul Brynner so creepy

http://i.imgur.com/EDCBW3B.jpg
1880s American Psycho

"check all the snake central mechanisms during tonight's repair period."

this is about like sex robots in the old west or something right

I think post-LOST sci-fi television really needs to quit it with the obvious tvtropes.com twist-begging garbage. I want to like this show, but we're being set up for:

* There's a DELOS globe in the sub-basement. Delos destinations! So the old west is just one, hmm hmm wonder what else is out there

* None of the "guests" have any home life that we get to see - nobody really doing a departure from future NYC, nobody changing into their period wardrobe, etc. OMG IS IT EVEN ON EARTH? IS ANYONE oh oh oh oh

* Wait up folks what if they're ALL ROBOTS?

I desperately hope there's no pan away to space, no obvious reveal that Jeffrey Wright is really an android, or god forbid some bullshit about how Ed Harris is an antihero (as opposed to the other obvious non-twist that he's the human version of Yul Brenner's Gunslinger because SCRIPT - FLIPPED!)

There's a lot to be said for Mad Men pulling the Dick Whitman reveal early and then moving on from it. But that was a show ostensibly about a real period and with real events to serve as milestones for the characters. SF/near-future TV needs to try harder to be like The Expanse or even, yeah, Firefly, and get away from stunts altogether. The audience is too ready for it and that makes it impossible to enjoy.

And by "the audience" I mean me and by "impossible to enjoy" I mean I have fun watching it but the way I watch it is thoroughly tainted by an unruly compulsion to decipher the entire production as if it were some kind of goddamn cryptic crossword and I blame M. Night Shyamalan & Chuck Palahniuk for everything. People with five syllable names wtf

You are making me not want to watch this

I should get paid

The Simpsons parodied this book/movie when the family visited the Duff beer theme park. If you liked that episode, you might also like this movie. /amazon.comrecommends

the last scene was telegraphed throughout the entire first episode but was still satisfying

I see the only book was a novelization; it was an original screenplay by Crichton in '73. He has nothing directly to do with this series, right?

well, he's dead

haha

i don't keep track, i assume it was some horrible theme-park mishap

longer version would be that Abrams mentioned having talked to Crichton 20 years ago or so about remaking it as a movie but nothing came of it

I think he got some sort of weird climate change-related cancer, of which he did not believe

What I've read (spoilers?) said that in the first 4 eps provided to critics, there is no robot rampage/human death toll. The question the review raised is how a theme park robot rampage can sustain a series, let alone a second season.

season two is when the robot virus makes it to eastworld

i watched last night and was entertained.

tomboto's Lost reference above seems apt. i watched Lost. all of it. i groaned many times. in some ways it was really predictable and in others just completely nonsensical. sometimes it was a really fucking awesome show. i ordered pizza with friends and watched it together when new episodes came out and tolerated the one friend in the group who was way waaaaaay into Lost.

let's just hope westworld doesn't end up putting out the equivalent of a Jack's Tattoo episode, though

eastworld is the set of cheers

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=115066

Is there a Five Night's at Freddy's Netflix series in development?

xpost
so it has already begun

I enjoyed it

i ordered pizza with friends and watched it together when new episodes came out and tolerated the one friend in the group who was way waaaaaay into Lost.

i did this, too, and it actually makes me a lil misty about LOST

i thought this was fine, and about what i would expect from a pilot ep. trailer had my expectations higher, tho

Is it just me or was Harris channeling a little bit of Peter Weller

"The question the review raised is how a theme park robot rampage can sustain a series, let alone a second season."

i was under the impression this was a one-off limited series

anyway, I really liked this. you all are picky

It's not. They've talked about doing five seasons

This is basically HBO's big roll of the dice for a post-GOT blockbuster

@ least no horses will get shot, probably

this was fun, but tempered by the post-LOST certainty that it will be sloppy and insulting within four eps

scriptwriting award of the year goes to [looks at robot while holding old photo of son] "good as new huh? sometimes i envy your forgetfulness"

iirc LOST really went off the track when Abrams wandered off to do other things

Person of Interest was kind of ho-hum and samey after a while but never went off the rails, so there's hope?

doubt i will become accustomed to softly jarring danish lady accent

appalled by the brit bloke. could they not tell or were they just not interested in the difference between annoying character and godawful acting

must admit i smirked @ old timey piano 'black hole sun'

took me quite a while to place the tune

friend of a friend at HBO said this was in development hell for years and went through a million script revisions. allegedly, HBO is in a panic over not haven't a replacement queued up for GoT

they kept pushing back the release, maybe they have been editing the hell out of it

this wasn't terrible or anything but if there are any riffs left to be had on "ai-becomes-sentient" i don't think they're coming here.

I’m actually relieved.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/hbo-cancels-westworld-1235255955/amp/

I didn’t even realize they’d done a 4th season

Maybe for the best, good chance it'd just be another half-baked season

is there any reason to watch the last season of this?

Not really. Started out ok but got progressively worse as it went on.

^^ otm

Was considering a rewatch of the first season but, uh, apparently Max also wiped this show.

I can't remember another show that started out so highly regarded and crashed so spectacularly.

I have season one on DVD, which, you know … that’s the best season.

(Season two has moments.)

jimbeaux OTM

Jon, check your local library.

The last season of this kind of feels like it was a dream I had

Last season would have been great to close out the series if they had a more cohesive and concise plot structure and tied up all the loose ends, but alas. Another show getting dragged well past its plot due date that can't compensate for the intrigue and mystery of season 1 once the scope expands. Season 2 felt like it dragged and so did season 3. Could have been so much better.

Here's hoping Severence doesn't fall into the same trap!