Westworld

The enduring appeal of Westworld can be summarized as thus: murderous cowboy robots. Does this ignore the other virtues that power Westworld? Yes, and I fully admit that it’s a bit of an opening joke to get things going.

Truth be told, Westworld endures because it’s fascinating, engaging, and well-acted. There’s also a vague sense that the material has not entirely reached its maximum potential so its remodel into a hit television series is not surprising. Hell, even creator Michael Crichton took the basic premise, theme goes on the fritz with dangerous results, and reconstituted it into Jurassic Park.

Good ideas can become eternal well springs.

For those that don’t know, Delos is an attraction for the rich that allows them to indulge in their most depraved fantasies under the guise of the mythological time periods. You won’t die of dysentery while riding a stagecoach trying to move out west in this world, but you can become a black hat bandit and have fun in the brothel. There are complementary parks that provide similar fantasy structures in Ancient Rome and Medieval Europe. Without consequences, just who will you become and what choices would you feel free to make?

Our guides are a reoccurring visitor and a neophyte to the parks, and they decide to go through Westworld. A frequent highlight of the park is the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner, remote and calculating through body movements and projection), a character that will pick a gun fight with a guest. Pay attention to him as he becomes a proto-Terminator that stalks the characters as the park’s androids malfunction thanks to a rapidly moving virus. This virus switches off the safety protocols in the attractions that keeps them from harming the guests and leads to a bloody insurrection as the machines revolt.

The fear and distrust of technology and scientific progress is a through line between Crichton’s work, and it appears here. In fact, the crux of the plot is about how misplaced trust in technology can lead to our ruin, which is both mildly hysterical and a good point. There’s also plenty of material here pointing towards a jaundiced view on advertising and bending towards sparse B-western. It is an odd film, but one fully worth exploring.