I thought she was acting on the script until she decided to go back to find her daughter. At least, I hope so because otherwise the story isn’t very interesting if the hosts aren’t developing some kind of AI.
This report came out this week from one of the world’s top 2 think tanks:
It seems worth noting that we don’t actually have evidence that Dolores murdered any humans at all.
Look at the scene again and you’ll see a lot of shots of Dolores firing; a lot of reaction shots of known-Hosts watching with approval; and ONE shot, blurred, of a red dot appearing on the back of a female-appearing character—who may or may not be a living human being.
That is all.
The Internet has acres of bandwidth of discussion about Dolores having committing a mass shooting of human beings—and no evidence from the film itself that she did so.
So…there’s that.
OK, I’ll grant some of that (and it’s a hijack to my actual point), but that scene is certainly meant to imply that she did–and barring a very lame dodge, we know she killed Ford.
I think that taking it at face value until shown otherwise is the best we can do at the moment. I’d even go so far as to say that there’s more evidence in that scene that she did shoot a lot of people than that she didn’t. We saw her kill someone, then fire into a crowd with deliberation, and at least one “person” was hit. I’d argue it’s a heck of a stretch to call that “no evidence.”
I am also very much in the camp that William could become the MiB but that the show skipped showing any believable arc, made even less believable by the completely different vocal and behavioral mannerisms of the characters. As I argued earlier in this thread, it is somewhat forgivable on the grounds that the point of the plot is as it was for The Maze: it is not for him. This is the hosts’ story. The twist that mattered to the show runners was that Dolores was trapped in memories and finding her way, not out, but to the center. His twist was in service of that.
While of course we have no idea what the ongoing operating costs would be given a sunk investment, the storyline clearly implies that the the investors are seeing the losses as an R&D expense for some other intellectual property application that they consider more than big enough to justify the ongoing losses.
The nature of that application is of course one of the unanswered questions that we expect will be eventually revealed.
I would agree that “Dolores seems to have chosen mass murder …” but “seems” is clearly the operative word. We know the show runners want to misdirect and surprise us.
So taking this interview with the required grain of salt we are hearing that the plot continues to explore how the new species develops. But the key line is Nolan’s:
Specific to Dolores:
The focus is on the hosts but I suspect have some new guests as characters whose perspectives we will follow too.
Fair enough–but I wouldn’t put it past them to resort to the lame dodge you mention (it probably depends on contract negotiations with Sir Anthony).
Unless we see it happen, we shouldn’t assume it happened (I’d argue). Other possibilities exist; perhaps Ford decided that true consciousness can’t arise unless the mind in question believes it can choose to ignore rules and take forbidden action, in this case the killing of humans. ‘An obedient mind is not a sentient/sapient mind’ or some such thing.
But for that to work it wouldn’t be necessary that said mind actually engage in the killing of humans–simply that it believe it has done so (and thus the ‘people’ in the crowd could all have been robots).
I’m not saying that this is what Nolan et al will do–I’m just saying that nothing we’ve seen would preclude it.
Agreed. And I don’t think it would be “lame dodge,” necessarily - just one possible path the story might take as it leads us into the next season.
I admit the fact Jimmi Simpson and Ed Harris look nothing alike bothered me, too, and I’m not sure why they could not find an actor who looks a lot more like Ed Harris. I have nothing about Simpson personally, and he’s a good actor, but he was a poor physical fit.
As to the arc, I am okay with it so far; I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it. There’s potentially a lot of that story left to tell.
This is the way I wrote it off too, no pun intended. Man, though, this is one goddamn expensive test to run for thirty years.
I think you’re forgetting that he’s the Man in Black. He’s saying that he wants to have a good fight, but I think what he really wants is for Westworld to become real. He wants all the machines to gain sentience so that all the rape and murder is really meaningful. He wants them to go out and kill and rape everyone back as well. He wants chaos, just for the LOLz of it.
Killing dumb robots in a cage just isn’t as interesting as having people being raped and murdered by sentient beings, free form style.
I’m not sure why, but after purchasing the season on iTunes and hitting the “Yes” button when it asked, “Do you want to watch now?”, it started to play the final episode. I didn’t realize this fact. (I did think that they were really laying on the mystery, though, because they were introducing all of these things with no context and forcing you to keep swimming from there!)
About halfway through the episode, the stream glitched out so I started downloading the full episodes instead and when I went back in to watch “episode 1”, and discovered what had happened. But so, I ended up watching the whole series knowing that Bernard was robo-Arnold and the MiB was William. And I knew that the William timeline was earlier than the Ford timeline.
So, watching the season, knowing that William will become the MiB, I would say that they did enough to demonstrate that he was pretty dark and did give a number of dialogue clues that he was the same character through the whole thing. I would agree that they could have used a bit more backstory on him, but it isn’t out of whole cloth at the end.
Watched this again. It made me a little sad about the absence of Bruno Kirby.
Thread resurrected for this small hint by the makers about Season 2.
I wonder where the season will begin. And it was good to see elsewhere that Louis Herthum, who played Evan Rachel Wood’s father, has been upped to a series regular in the upcoming season.
Funny new HBO ad with some familiar faces: 'Ahhh' HBO Intro ft. Dwayne Johnson, Emilia Clarke, Maisie Williams & More | (Version 2) - YouTube
I saw that earlier today–it seemed as though Westworld cast members were being given pride of place over Game of Thrones. Of course GoT is ending and Westworld could go on and one, but my impression is that so far, WW hasn’t managed to pull in the numbers that GoT did.
(eta: watching it again, it doesn’t seem so pro-WW as I’d thought on first viewing. Not that any of this means anything in particular!)
I think you may be mistaken:
There is a series called Humans on Channel 4 (in the UK) and AMC (in the US) that covers some of the same territory as Westworld; robots/artificial humans achieving consciousness. I actually prefer Humans. Westworld seemed to spend a lot of time being mysterious.
Thanks - that does look interesting: Humans (TV series) - Wikipedia
The second season just finished a few weeks ago, but you may be able to watch it via the cable company’s On Demand service. And actually the series is based on another from Sweden.
It’s very good.
Thanks–I’m not sure why I’d thought WW was doing less well.
Humans is very well-made and entertaining. If it had nudity, it might be as successful as is Westworld.