TeeVee Casualty: This ain’t yer grandfather’s Westworld, Sonny Jim!
HBO's dystopian expansion of the 1973 Michael Crichton film actually betters its source material. Oh – bonus frozen pizza review, too.
When you become Your Own Magazine, everything is fodder for Your Next Article, not just that new record you’re listening to. Ya gotta have something to write about! Why not your last HEB shopping list? Shit, the Texas supermarket chain’s new in-house frozen pizza brand, Midtown Pizza Co., is just about the best product of its kind available. The range’s Stone Baked Italian Crust Smoked Brisket & Sausage pie (“Texas Inspired, Italian Made Crust” shouts a promo sticker riding the box) is a two-meat BBQ plate riding an Artisanal thin crust - mesquite smoked chopped beef brisket, uncured smoked pork & beef sausage, pickled red onion, mozzarella and cheddar cheese atop what tastes like BBQ sauce. Pick one up along with a Big Red. and you can scratch your itch for two types of cuisine in a right tasty fashion, for only five bucks.
So, what if you spend your weekend knocked on your ass by your second Moderna booster’s side effects, mainlining every episode to date of HBO’s Westworld series, plus the 1973 movie that’s its inspiration? Well, why not?
C’mon — are you really buying this guy as a cowboy?!
First off, it must be noted that the low-budget MGM picture is hardly the most auspicious source material for a series as dazzling as this. Written and directed by Michael Crichton in the days he was building his franchise, it’s now notable as being the first film in cinema history to utilize digitally pixelated footage to simulate the point of view of the film’s renegade androids. But otherwise, the $1.2 million dollar film looks more like a made-for-TV movie than even a B-grade theatrical release – cheap Metrocolor, wooden acting from a cast better known for television work (including James Brolin when he was still second banana on Marcus Welby M.D. and Dick Van Patten, fergawdssake), plus noted head-shaving thespian Yul Brenner inexplicably cast as The Gunslinger. (Remembering his role in 1960’s The Magnificent Seven as “Cajun'' gunfighter Chris Larabee Adams, in identical wardrobe, helps clarify the possible logic behind this odd notion.) But it recouped its budget at the box office ten times over, then spun off a 1976 American International sequel, Futureworld, as well as a short-lived 1980 TV series, Beyond Westworld. Chricton obviously built entire bank branches on Westworld-ian threads and themes in the mega Jurassic Park series much later.
Which is the inherent problem with Westworld, the movie: There’s significant thematic and fictive meat on these bones, but they’re brittle and flimsy. The basic story is great: A huge high-tech amusement park, Delos, is run by computers and staffed by androids, where those who can afford it pay $1000/day to spend a weekend in three historic eras. You have Western World, set in the US’ cowboys-n-Indians period; Medieval World, centered on Europe in the days of kings, queens and knights; and Roman World, recreating decadent Pompeii, in its pre-volcanic eruption heyday. For your thousand bucks, you can either fuck the androids or kill them, or both. “Boy, have we got a vacation for you!” promises the used car salesman-style pitchman in the Delos commercial opening the film.
All well and good, right? Until the technology rebels, killing off the control room technicians by cutting off AC and oxygen. Then bald Russian cowboy Yul Brenner decides he’s tired of being shot by Richard Benjamin and Marcus Welby’s sidekick on a daily basis, aiming real bullets at ‘em.
Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get outta bed.
Ed Harris as The Man In Black.
On production values alone, the Westworld series has traveled several solar systems past its ancestors. Which should be a huge “duh!”, considering it’s filmed in the age of CGI and digital video, making Crichton’s film’s claims of pioneering that pixelation effect look like something from the days of The Keystone Cops. Then show creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan take the best parts of the ‘73 picture and its sequel, rip out the shitty pages, and turbo boost the works. It’s like hot rodding an old Commodore 64 chassis with the guts of a modern day gaming machine. Which renders what few Easter eggs the show runners leave from the original film – such as a Season 2 walk through an onsite storage locker filled with obsolete tech from Westworld past, including a blurred intimation of Brenner’s Gunslinger character in the distance – a quaint chuckle.
So now Westworld 4.0 arrives, taking us leagues beyond the man vs. machine debate. We delve into areas such as man’s continual disrespect for and urge to dominate anything it does not understand, the wealthier parts of society’s decadence and sense of entitlement, the corporate world’s greed and ruthlessness, the monetary value of data and intellectual property, and who gets to play God when someone creates a digital heaven and hell. And which part is which? And ultimately, what happens when AI gets so intelligent, it develops emotions and a conscience, and you’ve been abusing it all to fuck? Even COVID gets its own allegorical subplot in the current season, with a virus used to enslave the human population, placing them under corporate masters Delos’ control.
There’s a sophistication to the series’ every aspect that rivets our gaze. You cannot predict the big reveals across Westworld’s run, such as Jeffrey Wright’s Bernard Lowe character turning out to be the androidization of Dr. Robert Ford’s late partner Arnold Weber. (And how about naming Anthony Hopkins’ character for the man who shot Jesse James?) Or how the hosts’ memories have none of the degradation time grants human memories, leaving all events as fresh as if they’re happening now. Which explains how the story of Delos head William (Jimmi Simpson) gets told concurrently with that of the sinister Man In Black (portrayed with relish by Ed Harris), until we reach the exclamation point of how they are one and the same, and we have seen how William’s degraded and aged into this evil cur! It’s jarring in the best possible way.
Tessa Thompson as Charlotte Hale - a villain’s villain.
For that matter, Westworld’s strongest characters are the women. Think about renegade host turned revolutionary leader Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood in a performance as bravura as Harris’), or the incredibly deep, complex host madame/mother Maeve Millay (Thandiwe Newton, who renders the part with great intelligence and sensitivity. How about Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), a corporate shark venal and villainous enough to make William look like Richie Cunningham? You almost expect Charlotte to tie Dolores to train tracks, twirling a waxed mustache with a hearty BOO HA HA HA! Westworld’s storytelling, casting and character development blatantly give all the juice to the women, The males are rather two-dimensional in comparison.
Since The Sopranos, HBO’s presented the state of the art in episodic television. The Sopranos revolutionized the form, leading to such monumental achievements as Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Westworld’s the latest in that string of superior TV serieses. And dare I say it’s as innovative as The Sopranos, or at least Better Call Saul? May you never see Yul Brenner in a leftover Magnificent Seven costume again!
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