Looks interesting but not enuf to spend extra $$ on. I havent done HBO in about a year.
No, “Black Hole Sun” was 100 years “after the events they are portraying”, not 200.
Who knows what year it is in the show. Could be 200, 500 years after the 1880s.
When the security team goes to the basement and walk out into that big room, isn’t that one of the places from the movie?
Sorry. Yes, you’re right. I misinterpreted the post I replied to.
I’m not sure (I never saw the movie), but that place reminded me of a empty shopping mall. I just watched an episode of “Abandoned” on Vice where they went to a bunch of closed down malls in Ohio and that’s what the “basement” reminded me of.
MtM
There’s a similar abandoned mall in the book and movie Gone Girl - an American consumer playground gone dark and creepy.
The security team goes to the lower levels armed and ready - sounds like the hosts have turned violent before.
As to purposeful anachronisms, the Anthony Hopkins character says he included some Gertrude Stein in one host’s speech program, even though he knew it was wrong for the 1880s Wild West.
The lack of piles of horse manure in the streets is a major giveaway, I reckon.
Well, that’s just corroboration that most people don’t really want a completely accurate simulation.
I thought it was good and interesting, and I’ll watch anything with Evan Rachel Wood, but it wasn’t an immediate “Holy shit this is awesome!” experience like the first episode of Game of Thrones. Perhaps that’s too high a bar, but all the hype had me hoping for something on that level.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir;19673219
As to purposeful anachronisms, the Anthony Hopkins character says he included some Gertrude Stein in one host’s speech program, even though he knew it was wrong for the 1880s Wild West.[/QUOTE]
That was not for the Wild West use of the android – those were fragments retained from its previous use in other settings. The only one I remember right now was in some horror show (when it ranted about vengeance.)
Perhaps the horses are robots as are the “hosts”.
Well… yeah. You can see the horses being fabricated and tested.
I think the concept of the show is fraught with pacing issues. US tv dramas have a tendency to go on too long. There is always the temptation to make an extra season or two of a series after the natural arc of a show finishes. If the reported budget of Westworld is to be believed the show will probably not be a short lived affair. You could basically finish a “robots go crazy” storyline in one series. I expect Westworld to be dragged out to no less than 4 seasons. The success of multiple seasons of the show depends on the writing. I expect it to be paced rather slowly.
I have to say I really enjoyed the pilot.
No perhaps. They show some of the horse-bots.
The Ed Harris character says he’s been coming to the park (and presumably robo-raping the shit out of Deloris) for 30 years. Since Deloris is the oldest Host, it’s 30+ however long it took to develop v1.0 of her. Maybe another 10 to 20.
Not yet obviously. 
I think the show is going to be more than just the robots go crazy and murder everyone. They allude to some larger outside corporate interest in the working of the Hosts. It’s not hard to imagine a use for lifelike AI androids beyond prostitutes and target practice in a live-action version of Red Dead Redemption.
I remember watching the original on TV as a kid (parents where next door for a party and I had a freedom to watch what I wanted on the tele). It scary the bejesus out of me. Not so much that it was scary-scary but that bleak-physiological element it had got to me!
I’ll be totally looking forward to this!
…I think there is plenty to explore with “robots go crazy”. Nolan’s other work: “Person of Interest” was about the birth of artificial intelligence. In Westworld: that already exists. The nature of what is and what isn’t “life” was explored extensively in POI, and I fully expect the showrunners to continue to explore that here. Nolan has said this:
So I would expect that along with the main story arc they will tell mini Asimov “fables”, similar to “Little Lost Robot” or “Runaround”. Which would be awesome, because no-one has really captured Asimov’s work on screen.
I had the impression it was also for Westworld, just in a different storyline. The host was playing a father on a farm, and before that he was some religious/cult leader of a group that turned to cannibalism. I think they move the hosts around if something isn’t working well, or just to have different things going on for repeat visitors.
And mention of the horror storyline breezed right by me because just the rest of the conversation between the host and Anthony Hopkins was creepy, but the horror story brings up some things I hope they mention again. At first I had thought that it would be a storyline that visitors would stumble upon and then run for their lives, like going to a very realistic haunted house. But after thinking I’m sure that at least some visitors join in with the cult and on the cannibalism.
The original Westworld is one of the few movies that I remember giving me nightmares as a child. My family went to see it at a drive in, and unlike my younger brother I did not fall asleep in the back seat, but watched the whole thing. As you put it, it scared the bejesus out of me.
I enjoyed the first episode of the series, and it did not give me nightmares.
You’ll want to check out Harlan Ellison’s illustrated screenplay for I, Robot. A shame it was never produced (the Will Smith movie, as you probably know, is much different).
Agreed. That’s what I heard, too.
Fascinating pilot.
The production values were absolutely stellar, as we would expect from a big budget HBO show, and it’s clear that a lot of thought was put into the details of how a park like this would actually work… the overlapping storylines for the guests, etc.
I do have tons of logistical questions about the show. I assume that all the firearms in the park are fakes of some sort, so that guests don’t shoot each other, and the robots have built-in squib capability to allow gunshot wounds in any location. But when the Marsdenbot shot at Ed Harris, you could see the shots hitting him, just not killing him.
And is there some way for guests to recognize each other? Certainly you don’t want a guest bashing and a female guest who he thinks is a robot.
And the moral issues are fascinating. Is raping a robot evil? Killing one? Fake killing one if you know it won’t actually remain “dead”? Torturing one, if its memory will be wiped before tomorrow?
Definitely looking forward to the next episode.