Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
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Westworld
- Thread starter Dershocka
- Start date
Dershocka
dershocka
Do you think Logan ever got off that Horse? Was Samurai World already in full swing, or just in it's testing phase? Do you think we'll see Robot Samurais vs Robot Cowboys? Do you think the Syfy channel will take that last sentence and make a horrible movie out of it? Will it star Ian Ziering?
The Question
Eternal
Find out next week! Same Bat-time! Same Bat-channel!
gturner
New member
From The Atlantic, Westworld and the False Promise of Storytelling
They're reusing that headline from their old story on Star Trek Voyager.
Oh, who am I kidding. Nobody of note ever wrote a story abut that train wreck of a show.
Anyway, here's a big snippet of the article.
Read the whole thing to get to its wonderful conclusion.
They're reusing that headline from their old story on Star Trek Voyager.
Oh, who am I kidding. Nobody of note ever wrote a story abut that train wreck of a show.
Anyway, here's a big snippet of the article.
The final episode, “The Bicameral Mind,” was a lurid one, involving severed limbs and sexual humiliation and a bloody ambush by the “hosts” of the show’s immersive cowboy theme park against their human masters. But just before the climactic revolt, Robert Ford, the venerable park architect played by Anthony Hopkins, laid out his original idealistic vision for the place. “I’ve always loved a good story,” he began. “I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth.”
The admission—that his goal has been to improve the world through storytelling—was strangely jarring, one of the more subtle twists in a show otherwise packed with unsubtle ones. Westworld has all along defied certain conventional notions of “a good story”: It scrambled beginnings, middles, and ends; it hid character motivations so that every action doubled as a mystery; and it mocked the moralizing plot archetypes of the Western—a foundational genre of American entertainment—as hokey and square. The results were sometimes tedious or confusing, wringing drama less from cause-and-effect plots than from the filmmakers withholding information. But a sizable audience remained hooked by the suspense of disorientation, by the handsome cinematic execution, and by interest in the show’s apparent ambition to rewrite the rules of popular fiction.
But in the first season’s finale, the ideal of “a good story,” with all of its absolving power, returned—both within the show’s universe and in the overall form of the show itself. The show’s complicated threading of flashbacks and flash-forwards ultimately has revealed a recognizable, even familiar, design: a linear narrative beginning 35 years in the past and concluding in the finale’s violent end. That narrative can be interpreted as a Biblical tale involving original sin (the advent and enslavement of conscious AI), the fall (the first-ever host, Dolores, being ordered to kill her creator and fellow robots), redemption (Dr. Ford’s on-stage sacrifice), and now apocalypse. Or you can slot it alongside other sci-fi allegories about subjugation and man’s hubris, like Jurassic Park or Planet of the Apes.
Or you can see it as a story about stories—and about whether they are, in the end, transformative at all. Ford’s final monologue spelled it out: Once upon a time he believed that good stories “ennoble” the people who experience them, but over the years he realized he was wrong. “For my pains, I got this, a prison of our own sins,” he said. “You can’t change, or don’t want to change, because you’re only human after all.” Presumably “you” are the park’s customers, engaged in ever-escalating loops of carnage as epitomized by the decades-long transformation of the naive young visitor William (Jimmy Simpson) into the hardened villain known until the finale as simply the Man in Black (Ed Harris).
But the hosts, at least, could be changed by story. In the park’s very early years, his partner Arnold discovered their machines could eventually achieve consciousness when given access to their memories. Dolores (Evan Rachel Woods) then made a halting journey through a mental maze, stringing together images and moments from her past into a coherent narrative that revealed the nature of her existence—and brought her into self-awareness. The implication: Through the assemblage of narrative, a person becomes a person. In other words, stories do have the power of improvement.
The admission—that his goal has been to improve the world through storytelling—was strangely jarring, one of the more subtle twists in a show otherwise packed with unsubtle ones. Westworld has all along defied certain conventional notions of “a good story”: It scrambled beginnings, middles, and ends; it hid character motivations so that every action doubled as a mystery; and it mocked the moralizing plot archetypes of the Western—a foundational genre of American entertainment—as hokey and square. The results were sometimes tedious or confusing, wringing drama less from cause-and-effect plots than from the filmmakers withholding information. But a sizable audience remained hooked by the suspense of disorientation, by the handsome cinematic execution, and by interest in the show’s apparent ambition to rewrite the rules of popular fiction.
But in the first season’s finale, the ideal of “a good story,” with all of its absolving power, returned—both within the show’s universe and in the overall form of the show itself. The show’s complicated threading of flashbacks and flash-forwards ultimately has revealed a recognizable, even familiar, design: a linear narrative beginning 35 years in the past and concluding in the finale’s violent end. That narrative can be interpreted as a Biblical tale involving original sin (the advent and enslavement of conscious AI), the fall (the first-ever host, Dolores, being ordered to kill her creator and fellow robots), redemption (Dr. Ford’s on-stage sacrifice), and now apocalypse. Or you can slot it alongside other sci-fi allegories about subjugation and man’s hubris, like Jurassic Park or Planet of the Apes.
Or you can see it as a story about stories—and about whether they are, in the end, transformative at all. Ford’s final monologue spelled it out: Once upon a time he believed that good stories “ennoble” the people who experience them, but over the years he realized he was wrong. “For my pains, I got this, a prison of our own sins,” he said. “You can’t change, or don’t want to change, because you’re only human after all.” Presumably “you” are the park’s customers, engaged in ever-escalating loops of carnage as epitomized by the decades-long transformation of the naive young visitor William (Jimmy Simpson) into the hardened villain known until the finale as simply the Man in Black (Ed Harris).
But the hosts, at least, could be changed by story. In the park’s very early years, his partner Arnold discovered their machines could eventually achieve consciousness when given access to their memories. Dolores (Evan Rachel Woods) then made a halting journey through a mental maze, stringing together images and moments from her past into a coherent narrative that revealed the nature of her existence—and brought her into self-awareness. The implication: Through the assemblage of narrative, a person becomes a person. In other words, stories do have the power of improvement.
Read the whole thing to get to its wonderful conclusion.
gturner
New member
HuffPo asks if Delores shot the real Ford or a "Ford host" that Ford was making in the basement where Bernard killed Theresa. As usual, the writers left a few clues.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Great finale! Sure everyone must have figured out William's true identity before episode ten (some as early as episode two), but I don't think it was meant to be some huge shocking twist. It was what had been set up all season, so it makes sense that people would have seen it coming. And I didn't see nearly as many people (if any?) predict that Ford was actually on the side of the robots, but that made sense too and was a very satisfying ending. We also got some great "robots murdering humans" stuff at last. It was smart to leave that to the finale when it felt earned.
I guess whatever's gong on with Stubbs and Elsie wasn't important enough to include. I still think it's likely that Ford had her hidden somewhere to protect her and she rescued Stubbs using the Ghost Nation hosts.
Ed Harris makes really good shocked faces.
Of course season two could end pretty quickly if the army just storm the place and kill all the robots? But I guess there will be some reason that can't happen (important hostages for one thing?) Maybe the samurais will be sent in to fight the cowboys.
I guess whatever's gong on with Stubbs and Elsie wasn't important enough to include. I still think it's likely that Ford had her hidden somewhere to protect her and she rescued Stubbs using the Ghost Nation hosts.
Ed Harris makes really good shocked faces.
Of course season two could end pretty quickly if the army just storm the place and kill all the robots? But I guess there will be some reason that can't happen (important hostages for one thing?) Maybe the samurais will be sent in to fight the cowboys.
gturner
New member
Two wacky fun takes from me.
1) It was obvious that Delores was also Wyatt because they cast an actress with both a boy's name and a girl's name (Evan Rachel Wood). Why else would they do that?
2) When they showed her attacking the board members, Delores fired eight or nine shots from her Colt revolver. That's not physically possible with a six shooter, so what was really going on is that we were seeing another of her memory loops. What we saw was yet another amalgam showing both current and past events in which at she's killed board members, because the board members are also stuck in a loop. Every time Delos has a board meeting, Ford gives the same speech, Delores shoots Ford in the head, and then she shoots a bunch of the board members. Every time.
1) It was obvious that Delores was also Wyatt because they cast an actress with both a boy's name and a girl's name (Evan Rachel Wood). Why else would they do that?
2) When they showed her attacking the board members, Delores fired eight or nine shots from her Colt revolver. That's not physically possible with a six shooter, so what was really going on is that we were seeing another of her memory loops. What we saw was yet another amalgam showing both current and past events in which at she's killed board members, because the board members are also stuck in a loop. Every time Delos has a board meeting, Ford gives the same speech, Delores shoots Ford in the head, and then she shoots a bunch of the board members. Every time.
gturner
New member
When Delores is walking toward the stage to kill Ford, Ford is saying "An old friend told me something once that gave me great comfort." and out in the crowd Bernard says "These violent delights will have violent ends."
But Bernard possibly had no conventional linear way to know that those were Arnold's final words because neither Ford nor Delores had mentioned it in the earlier conversation (as far as we know), and Bernard hadn't even known that Delores had killed Arnold until that conversation. The only people who would've known it were Delores and Ford, and Delores has been lost in her own mind for 30 years. So perhaps Ford embedded that knowledge in Bernard, along with much else, for when Bernard had to become self-aware and do his part in the grand plan.
But Bernard possibly had no conventional linear way to know that those were Arnold's final words because neither Ford nor Delores had mentioned it in the earlier conversation (as far as we know), and Bernard hadn't even known that Delores had killed Arnold until that conversation. The only people who would've known it were Delores and Ford, and Delores has been lost in her own mind for 30 years. So perhaps Ford embedded that knowledge in Bernard, along with much else, for when Bernard had to become self-aware and do his part in the grand plan.
Also, if you haven't, watch it past the end credits because after them the blonde chick with the snake tattoo gets another scene.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
So Ramin Djawadi really likes Radiohead huh.
Dershocka
dershocka
I'm hoping the Samurais join the mayhem somehow next season. Hopefully they were working on Medieval, Space, and Roman world too. Bunch of Samurais, and Knights shooting space lasers at killer Robot Cowboys while riding Chariots with Robot titties flopping around and....
Probably won't happen. At least there will be some Samurai action, hopefully.
Probably won't happen. At least there will be some Samurai action, hopefully.
The Question
Eternal
I'm pulling for more flopping robot titties, personally. I can't think of a single reason to dislike flopping robot titties, can you?
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
More cocks please.
Loktar
Pinata Whacker
1.The metallic taste when you lick/kiss/motorboat them.
2.The shattered skull or jawbone when they smack you intentionally or not upside your head.
The Question
Eternal
You list those as if they are bad things...