What Does The Original Westworld Portend for HBO's Series Adaptation?

[Primetimer]

Which elements of the 43-year-old inspiration for HBO's upcoming series are worth revisiting?

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[withanaich]

So of course the original movie is bad (I just insisted that my husband watch it in preparation for the show, so he'd at least have something to compare it with), but I think it set the stage for a lot of "this is what happens when you mess with things you don't understand, stupid short-sighted humans" sci-fi that came after it. And Jurassic Park is just one example of that. Also, I would watch this or re-watch this over 2001 any day of the week. Because while Westworld is objectively awful, at least it's entertaining. "Grandeur" certainly is a word I would use to describe 2001. "Good" or "entertaining" ... no. My lord, do I wish for the time I spent watching that movie back. Sorry not sorry, film buffs.

[Kromm]

Oh, Mark Blankenship. Why have you, as happens so often when JJ Abrams is involved, given all of the credit (or to be fair blame) to Abrams, when the actual showrunner is Jonathan Nolan (it's not like there's nothing to say about Nolan, since he's pretty well known too...)

The original is indeed fairly bad, but fascinating because it was such a high-concept in a time when high-concept films were pretty rare. I have literally read essays (well, posts the length of essays) on the Internet in the past few years with the following logic "how dare they remake this masterpiece!" I am serious. And I rolled my eyes too. I have a small fondness for the original based on being fond of genre-mixing, and Yul Bryner, and that super-cheesy but inconic shot of Yul with his face off, but there are limits.

To me it seems like this version is keeping the bones of the original but populating a whole mythology around the edges. As you say, the original just seemed a murderfest for the heck of it (at least the Terminator had a reason! All Westworld had was it's own version of a computer virus before such really were known to exist--another reason people credit the film).

Lets be super-brutally honest. While it had a few elements people rightfully loved, was the 1970s Battlestar Galactica really anything to write home about? It was far better than the original Westworld, but its a pretty good precedent for a remake being FAR more worthy. I am very negative on a lot of remakes, but I do feel there are certain properties where the ideas trump the execution, and like Battlestar Galactica... Westworld is one of those.

[azaleagirl]

This is the movie that I always reference when describing life before cable, let alone streaming. "Do you think I wanted to watch a movie about killer cowboy robots? That was the only thing on when I wanted to avoid homework on a Sunday afternoon!" But, I do appreciate how well rounded my film knowledge is.

[Latverian Diplomat]

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Why does the Yul Brynner robot kill instead of, say, plant flowers? Can we get even one little clue?

It's been a while, but IIRC he seems to be a little pissed about getting shot all the time. (Even though he doesn't really "die", doesn't feel pain (?), wouldn't seem to have been programmed for actually winning a gunfight, etc. In that sense, his motivations are completely unimaginative, and makes the robots a pretty shallow metaphor for slavery, I suppose.

The source of the self-awareness is completely unexplained, as is why it arises spontaneously in multiple robots at the same time (they don't seem to be "networked" in the way we understand now, because that was something that barely existed in research labs at the time the movie was made).

Given that this was Michael Crichton writing and directing, you can also view Jurassic Park as his attempt to do a better job with some of the same basic ideas.

[spottedreptile]

On 24/09/2016 at 8:04 AM, Kromm said:

Lets be super-brutally honest. While it had a few elements people rightfully loved, was the 1970s Battlestar Galactica really anything to write home about? It was far better than the original Westworld, but its a pretty good precedent for a remake being FAR more worthy. I am very negative on a lot of remakes, but I do feel there are certain properties where the ideas trump the execution, and like Battlestar Galactica... Westworld is one of those.

I'm glad you brought BSG up, because I can see a lot of influence from the remake in the new Westworld. Even Caprica, the pilot, not the mess that followed it. Nolan usually has a good handle on story development, so I'm very willing to follow where he has taken this so far, and trust in him to deliver something of way more depth and interest than just poor robots going on a rampage.

[ennui]

On 9/23/2016 at 9:46 AM, withanaich said:

So of course the original movie is bad 

I liked the original film.  It was entertaining, and that's all I ask. 

The biggest difference I'm seeing between the two is that in the original, we sympathized with the humans. In this new version, humans are evil and stupid and we sympathize with the androids.