From a certain point of view, racist eastworld would be more realistic than not-racist Eastworld. If a bunch of white dudes made eastworld, I wouldn’t you expect it to be racist?
Except it’s implied that the island is actually in Asia, somewhere near China and possibly financed in part or whole by China. I know that China’s not Japan but still, an openly racist portrayal seems unlikely.
Which does make it a bid odd that we’re getting Shogun World instead of say Song World, but I’m not complaining. I wonder what the other 4 parks are like. There’s no particular reason all of them would be a nominally historic recreations. One of them could just be a contemporary (for the show’s time period) luxury resort staffed by Hosts with no conceit that Guests are traveling to another world or time (which sounds lazy, but would probably have lower operating costs).
She is. But she’s also torturing people she (probably) doesn’t know.
Speaking of which…this episode addresses my greatest fear about this season. That they would repeat the problem I had with Maeve last season.
Intelligence without experience= arrogance. Maeve’s plan was dumb. And it only worked cause that’s how it was written. So I was afraid we’d see much the same this season but from Dolores.
BUT…as we see this episode. Dolores has experience, and due to a lot of being in the right place at the right time…she has a lot of insight.
Assuming all that convienent experience wasn’t actually just programmed into her.
That would also require less land. During the first season, I assumed that the park was set in the American Southwest. But this season, we’ve been explicitly told that the park is on an island, and it’s implied that it’s very near China. It seems hard to imagine that they would have landscaped the park to look like the American Southwest, and introduced animals like bison. And the park has vast open lands.
A luxury resort could be built in a much smaller space.
Well so much for only having 2 timelines to deal with this season. Granted it was nice to get some more background on Delos and the early days. It’s all market research in the end. Maeve & Dolores meeting up was a little underwhelming, but at the same time it makes sense it’d go that way. They each have their own agendas that don’t intersect or conflict. It’s interesting to see what happens when Hosts who haven’t woken up yet act when they finish their narratives and don’t get reset. So any thoughts on what’s in the red package William pulled out of the wall?
They showed what was in the package. It was a futuristic first-aid kit that contained one of the magic robot repair wands, which the techs have been using throughout the series to repair injuries to the robots. Apparently it works on human injuries as well, as William treated his own gunshot wounds after picking out bullet fragments with his knife.
Yes, the tech guy whose throat Maeve cut also was healed using the same kind of first aid kit.
Very interesting to see Dolores in her early days, with Arnold in a modern city and innocently amazed by what she saw. I think Arnold’s house was the Ennis House in LA (it appeared in Blade Runner, too): Ennis House - Wikipedia
I understand Dolores’s rage against oppressive, negligently cruel humans, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be rootin’ for her.
The scene in which all the mooks in the Day of the Dead city simultaneously shot themselves, denying William/TMIB a small army, was startling - makes me suspect that Dr. Ford may still be alive somewhere, pulling strings.
Glad to see young William again, now married, with a daughter, and climbing the corporate ladder. Wonder if we’ll see that daughter again (now grown)?
It seems entirely plausible that these androids would be banned in most countries for all sorts of reasons. Maybe part of the deal is that having hosts like this is only legal in certain areas cordoned off from the rest of the world built for that purpose.
In which case a generic luxury resort would become the world’s best Whore Island. You couldn’t get your own personal android sex slave at home, but you can come to this resort and have one customized for you, do whatever weird rich guy shit you want to do to a human analogue, and even have an army of servants that want nothing to do except make you happy 24/7.
Generic Luxury Resort + Androids could potentially be their most profitable park.
I love this show. But really. I am still waiting for the whole “Jimmie Simpson does not look remotely like Ed Harris or a younger version of Ed Harris or anything relating to Ed Harris” thing to be resolved. Obviously in this future, many things are possible, so I’d like to see a scene where he gets plastic surgery. “Hey, Doctor…make me look like this guy”, and then pulls out a picture of…let’s say it’s an actor from Westerns that he grew up with and always admired, portrayed by Ed Harris.
Was anyone else reminded of Robert Patrick (the T-1000 guy) by that Army officer who was “killed” and then re-animated?
I liked how William convinced the elder Delos to invest in the park - the best form of marketing research you could ever get. And then it was the younger Delos who seemed to be the only one who realized that they had just screwed the human race (wonder if that’s related to the rumored Delos deciding to replace bigwig humans with hosts in the real world).
Limiting robots’ presence on Earth to particular areas due to widespread public prejudice/fear was a recurring theme in Asimov’s stories. Of course, the slavery/segregation concepts are certainly interlinked.
And kudos for the Archer reference!
“When virtual reality allows Joe Sixpack to make love to Claudia Schiffer in his rumpus room for hours on end, it’s gonna make crack look like Sanka.” - Dennis Miller
So, so far I think I’m the only one not really loving this season. I was hands-over-feet gripped by Westworld from the pilot episode and never looked back. Every episode was must-watch for me and kicked into ulta-high gear once the Bernard = host revelation happened.
This season hasn’t done that for me. I find myself only vagely interested in what happens to Dolores who is much less interesting as “generic killing machine”. I don’t care about Meave’s storyline because I don’t understand why she isn’t smart enough to realize her daughter isn’t her actual daughter and probably won’t feel the same about Meave that she does for her. I also don’t know what her endgame is.
I’m most interested in Ed Harris’s journey, but I feel that that’s going to be the most underplayed storyline in the series. And I have no idea what’s up with Bernard that I’ve lost interest.
I think what’s missing for me is two-fold: Great acting and an intriguing mystery. The first season had phenomenal acting. Antony Hopkins being himself, Bernard’s quiet curiosity over Dolores’s changing and ERW’s subtle ways of showing her change were so gripping. This season just lacks any of that. Dolores is a generic killing machine and acts like it, Thandie Newton is no longer the smartest person in the room and lacks believable motivation. Ed Harris is the best of the bunch again.
And speaking of, his is the only storyline with real mystery. The “what’s the weapon” and whatever is happening with Dolores seems like a made-for-TV mystery. I had no idea what was going to happen and to whom last year because the story could have gone in a million different directions. This season everyone has made their motivations so clear that I feel I already know where the ending will happen. The only truly curious thing to me is Ed Harris.
TL/DR: It’s early in the season, so I’m not judging too hard just yet, I’m just not really feeling it so far.
That’s not actually what the article says, but in any case, the author lost me when he says shit like "the bulk of Westworld’s core characters " are white. I mean, the *big *3 viewpoint characters are Dolores, Maeve and Bernard - *two *of those are PoC. And that’s without delving into the rest of the cast.
I will admit there’s dissapointment that the two Williams may as well be two seperate characters. I want to see SOME frigging connection. They’re interesting. I want to root for the MiB.
If it was just sex, a highly-realistic form of simulated sex that was still ultimately masturbation, people would get tired of it eventually because there’s more to life then sex. But when that same virtual reality allows you to go fishing anywhere in the world, drive a Ferrari through the Italian coastline, eat at the best restaurant you could possibly imagine, whenever you want - and even have a family and kids and friends and people who love you - yes, it’ll do more than make crack look like Sanka. It will make REALITY look like HELL.
That article totally misses one extremely pertinent point:
Does the author have any idea how many of the world’s wealthiest and most avid travelers, tourists, gamblers, and thrill seekers, are Asian?
If the show portrays Eastworld as some kind of place just for rich white people to go for a taste of “exotica” and “danger”, then yeah, that would be bullshit. But it would also be unrealistic to do so, because if an “Eastworld” park existed anywhere in the reality that we live in, I guarantee that a huge chunk of its visitors would themselves be from East Asia. And they’d be rich enough to have a considerable say in the creation of the content of “Eastworld” and how historically accurate it was.
More racist than the Superfly Jive Sucka’land park set in 1970s Harlem?
It would give new meaning to the lyrics of Isaac Hayes most famous theme:
Who’s the black private dick
That’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
{chorus} Shaft!
You’re damn right!
Stranger