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

Seems like they had pretty good ingredients for this season, but somehow managed it terribly unexciting. I mean, there was cloned androids with fake identities, family drama, betrayals, crazy god-like AIs, revolutions, the apocalypse... But mostly it just boiled to two or three people having portentous discussions in empty spaces, repeating the same stuff about free will vs. determinism again and again. Was it really necessary to stretch all this to eight episodes when it could've been done in three?

Basically the only exciting thing in the finale was the cliffhanger scene promising a full host-human war, but that was already implied by the previous season's cliffhanger, and the only thing this season changed is that we found out Dolores didn't want a war after all, and instead the instigator is... another Dolores. So yeah, was it really worth a whole season to get here?

"but somehow managed to make it terribly unexciting"

And I get it that they wanted to make a point that collecting behavioural data on a massive level and using it to predict and manipulate the future actions of people makes them just as much puppets as the hosts were, and that's why Dolores sympathised with humans and wanted to set them free like she did with the hosts at the end of season 1... The first three episodes or so, where they introduced those points and showed how the future world runs were genuinely interesting, but then they just kept hammering those points in again and again for the rest of the season, and it got so boring,

There might be a war but it wouldn't be host-human! The entire point of the finale is that Dolores decided she wants a full world of coexistence

so there could be multiple factions, but the main thing now is Caleb/Maeve/maybe Bernard looking for that world where hosts and humans live together and whatever the hell the Hale one wants, which is probably bad

tbf William wanted war but he's the third faction at this point and he got clipped by Halores

I was talking specifically about what the Tessa Thompson version of Dolores wants, which was implied to be something other than peaceful coexistence. Why else would she have built a host version of the Man in Black version of William?

It appears there does still manage to be some extinction level event, or at least massive depopulation, because no matter how remote that desert motel was, presumably someone would have eventually grokked an inactive host sitting in the middle of one of their rooms during the, presumably, years or decades it took for Bernarnold to get coated in dust.

it’s a desert, if they left the window open that’s like one sandstorm later!

I kid, I kid

didn't watch this season yet, questions: 1) is it worth it and 2) is it the final one?

not really and no

yeah I had that feeling.

Sorry that was glib. I'm still watching it because it's pretty and the futurism stuff is cool. Everything else is pretty hard-to-defend.

It is pretty, I think it's worth it for the architecture porn this season. And honestly, one of the better near-future set and prop designs I've seen on TV lately. Thought the rideshare cars and drones were really cool looking.

It was funny how useless the riot control robot was in an actual riot situation

Agree that when it comes to production design, architecture, technology etc., this was one of the best-looking and most credible future predictions I've seen on TV (except for the silly evil AIs, I guess). They really put a lot of effort in all those details, too bad the plot didn't quite live up to it.

TBH, I think this season would've worked better as an independent series without the baggage from the previous seasons dragging down the main plot, which was mostly self-standing anyway. For example, is there really much point in dragging Ed Harris and Thandie Newton around, when pretty much all they got to do was rehash the same character moments they did last season, which had little to do with the AI plot?

I was less into the architecture as a matter of plot because they used a bunch of existing buildings that are very aspirational and one-offs that get used as “the future” all the time! Very pretty, though

You could argue the use of buildings with those signifiers unironically are a strong indicator from the get-go that we’re seeing a dystopia

At some point I just turn my brain off for a minute and watch hot robots kill people and mech robots smash through Calatrava architecture

This was the only approach to this show and even then there were diminishing returns. It's one valuable service was revealing how bad Aaron Paul is at acting. He was Vince Vaughn in True Detective Season 2 level bad, just much less distinctive.

it was the slipping into batman voice whenever things got stressful that bugged me

Paul just played a host version of Jessie where they increased his aggression rating by 50% and decreased his Limp Bizkit rating 25%.

Couldn't think of a better place to post this incredible, wide-ranging interview with Thandie Newton, where she talks about...everything, pretty much. Here's the Westworld-specific part, probably the least incendiary bit of the whole thing but still worth excerpting:

In Westworld, your performance is so poignant, both ferocious and beautiful. Do you have conversations with the showrunners around the arc of the season or where you would like your character to go?
I like to stay sane about my position, which is that I am being employed to tell someone else’s story. Where I do have a degree of choice is in taking the role, but once I’m in, I’m a team player. I do have frustrations with Maeve, but that’s part of her story line.

What are some of those frustrations?
Well, season one, the evolution of this robot who then has the revelation that she’s not human, and that she had a past that involved a child, and the betrayal of that, and then using information to empower herself — it was such a powerful story. I’m not surprised that it hooked people in. And then the second and third season has Maeve with a different directive, but it’s not her own. She’s following other people’s leads, by and large. In the first season, she was driving, dominating, pretty straightforward. I think Maeve is a metaphor for the dispossessed in the world, and she’s become that kind of leader, but she’s not had a chance to lead, and I don’t think she necessarily should. She certainly doesn’t want to.

https://www.vulture.com/article/thandie-newton-in-conversation.html

This show was terrible, a more expensive version of some random SyFy series shot in Vancouver, but what kept me watching is the bizarre way the show clearly thinks of itself as good, and in some ways it instantiates the themes it clumsily keeps expositing; it is an artificial product built to provide cheap, repetitive pleasures that is slowly coming to concede it is not the real thing

It was distracting but also somehow great to cast Todd Chavez as a tragic hero and just have him play the character in the exact same way, so that he's running around shooting a machine gun and bemoaning that his whole life has been stolen from him by hidden powers while deploying the exact affect of a hilarious fuck-up stuck on the couch

Game of Thrones credit sequence: mechanical mapworld comes into being before your eyes.

Vinyl credit sequence: an LP comes liquidly into being before your eyes.

Westworld credit sequence: various biobots come liquidly into being before your eyes.

The Crown credit sequence: molten metal liquidly becomes a crown before your eyes.

I think we've found the MMteens' dominant visual cliché. It's the new teal & orange.

― marzipandemonium (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, November 14, 2016 8:51 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wheel of Time credit sequence: threads become a tapestry weaves itself before your eyes

I hope they did not replicate this trope for Kevin Can F**k Himself.

wheel of time kinda doesn’t count since the entire reason it exists is “we need a game of thrones” which lol

Daredevil is another one that fits this cliche

Also Foundation I guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SjmtYIAsSY

Looks like one company, Elastic, is resposible for a lot of them

https://vimeo.com/elastic

Wall is too humble to admit that his own work on Game of Thrones put his company, the design firm Elastic, on the map—but it has. Word of mouth spread since he won an Emmy for outstanding main-title design in 2011, and now these sequences have become a crucial part of Elastic’s D.N.A. On top of advertorial work, like producing the Comic-Con teaser for the Pacific Rim sequel and these viral videos for Batman v Superman, Wall’s team has collectively designed main titles for Westworld, American Gods, True Detective, The Night Manager, and The Crown—and that’s merely a surface-level rundown of Elastic’s prestigious and lengthy résumé.

...just as the design firm livens up the small screen on everything from HBO’s The Leftovers and The Young Pope to Netflix’s Daredevil and Iron Fist.

Apparently, it’s on bbc1 in a bit.

Apparently, it’s 1hr and 25 mins long…

Hmmmmm…..

Just looked it up, yeah it's not a long film!

I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself again

https://gizmodo.com/westworld-hbo-s4-trailer-evan-rachel-wood-aaron-paul-ed-1848903003?utm_campaign=Gizmodo&utm_content&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3M0oMGe4IBYBDhHj6g75lzsCMoyCBUxMH8cdl6dPwFUDgkTmqfF9DuHY8

Season 3 was fucking awful and yet I want to see if they can redeem themselves

I expressed somewhat positive thoughts halfway through season 3 upthread, but by the end, even I wasn't really enjoying it. It's become such a dumb show. I'm surprised they renewed for S4 after S3 was universally hated but maybe they made the decision early

This show was terrible, a more expensive version of some random SyFy series shot in Vancouver, but what kept me watching is the bizarre way the show clearly thinks of itself as good, and in some ways it instantiates the themes it clumsily keeps expositing; it is an artificial product built to provide cheap, repetitive pleasures that is slowly coming to concede it is not the real thing

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, December 28, 2020 10:00 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I stand by this judgment as an explanation of why I sat through all of the dire s3 and will do it again for s4

^^^

Anyone still watching?

First episode was..ok?

And possibly all in the same timeline? Although I guess 'Christina's' world could be distinct?

I thought it was a decent first episode. I've pretty much completely forgotten what happened last season and I'm sure that's probably for the best.

From what I could tell, it's same timeline, 8 years down the road, and confirmed in an article that ERW is now playing a completely new character unconnected to Dolores (or at least that's what they are telling the press at this point)

It’s getting really good. It’s such a relief to not regret sticking around for this season.

I would love a webisode where they show us what Stubbs did to kill time while waiting for X years while waiting for Bernard to wake up. Maybe a montage of Stubbs playing solitaire, doing push-ups, battling raiders, reading “War & Peace,” etc.

Are there enough people watching this to care about spoiler tags here?

I was wondering the same! I like this has gotten agreeably weird and I've given myself permission -- the show seems to have given me permission -- to not really care who anyone actually "is" at this point or what they're doing, it's all vibes

I haven't watched any of this season and don't know if I will but I feel that's the logical path for the show to take after the last season, where motivations for actions were impossible to decipher. I started enjoying the Hannibal TV show much more when it was obvious it wasn't going to make logical sense

Deep cut for the LOST heads:

Remember that show, and the character Michael who had such classic lines as "where's my boy?" and "WAAAAALT" and "I need to find my son!" (good lord did the writers do him dirty)

Well, in this show, Caleb is constantly worried about his wife and daughter. That daughter, in the many years later timeline, is played by Aurora Perrineau, the daughter of Harold Perrineau, who played Michael on LOST.

Such pretentious dreck! It is not even, exactly, a TV show at this point. Just a canvas against which familiar actors wander around trying to get their mouths around terrible lines and pronouncing them in ways that doesn't even sound like English as spoken by humans. Which I guess it is mostly in fact not supposed to be. I really have a sensation that they made a show for no one to watch for algorithmic reasons I can't understand.

that season finale was uh, not good

I’m not even gonna try to defend last night’s episode.

Kinda hoping Season 5 doesn’t happen after that, I’ve had enough.

i stopped after season 3 and was considering going back, this news is making me reconsider

Felt like an end but most media outlets seem to think there'll be one more final season xp

i stopped watching in s1 did they fuck any robots yet

yeah does seem to like itself a bit much dunnit.
But i did get through to the end.
Looks like Tessa Thompson had the right idea. & elegantly crushing one's own memory ball might be teh correct response to the prospect of another series.
But maybe they need to explain this one

I mean, if they do another season I’ll watch it with low expectations.

It would be cool if a noted author wrote a novelization of the whole series, fixing the various narrative problems and making it better, deeper, more fleshed out.

The whole concept is interesting, but it’s just so clunky and ridiculous in execution and ins and outs - a blockbuster, prestige cable series as envisioned by philosophers, theologians, set designers, stylists, executives, and effects people.