Spoiler: show
The whole Maeve thing could've been shutdown so easily anytime she was in the park but the tech dudes never did. That shit was a walking, talking plothole.
Well I was half right.
Also, the greatest trick this show has pulled on us is that Anthony Hopkins was in fact not the bad guy after all.
Spoiler: show
I found the Maeve storyline really underwhelming. It is really unbelievable but it was hard to tell at what point in the story it was actually happening in if it was the past or present or maybe somewhere in between who knows. I think that's what kept it as ok maybe this could happen and is believable for me. But when they would walk around the building? How were they not caught right away? Was really the only meh point in the show for me.
After watching the first episode I found the whole part of Delores' original dad very interesting. He finds Williams wife's picture. It somehow effects and harms him even though it's not supposed to. And he whispers that quote,these violent delights have violent ends to Delores.
Plucked this from Reddit, I thought it was hilarious.
Basically Nolan must be a fan of DBZ cause:
Hector = Android 17
Armistice = Android 18
Felix = Android 16 because he liked birds
Teddy = Krilin cause he's always dying
alrlight this is gonna be a jambly mess because i have a baby in one arm and just marathoned this bitch so also have a different viewing experience than you weekly waiter types-
show was p good p good all in all. i agree with most of what praise has been given (especially the acting and aesthetic) ergo will focus more on the issues i have with it so before the hivenerd gets too incensed recall 'p good p good'. biggest failing had to be the artificial intelligence theme. season finale's big reveal is Ford encouraged sentience all along, but needed the hosts to be raped and murdered for 30 years because suffering breeds consciousness. like are you kidding me fam. it's what a freshman who read their first Dostoevsky story without understanding it would write on their facebook page. and look if the show just wanted to be entertainment it doesn't need depth in its themes but this bitch was clearly aiming for loftier territory in the vein of 2001 or Solaris or Blade Runner. and it failed badly. so bad. very bad. google's only problem with developing A.I. is it isn't raping and murdering its code often enough. (bad)
also the narrative structure of mystery / Shyamalan reveal is wearing on me. yes absolutely the first BERNARD!!! reveal hit it home. but at least for season 1 these characters primarily exist so their backstories can be revealed in gotchas, almost every major narrative point was a twisty twist. it's an addictive kind of engagement but a shallow kind of satisfaction. climaxes in Tony Soprano's world did not rely on him being revealed to be Irish. Walter White and Gus Fring orbiting each other in a waxing death spiral was built on characterization and arc movement in the characterization, not on Bruce Willis is dead the whole time.
all in all on a scale from attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion to John Connor's first orgasm i hereby give Westworld three sentient roombas. here's to hoping season 2 can add a few roombas
I had to reread Aristotle's Poetics a couple of months ago for a class, and thought a lot about how much he would hate television writers. He was definitely a pretentious hipster (basically calls people stupid for liking epics, and goes on and on about how much better Sophocles' early stuff was), but one point that I think he got right was about how the mark of a good story is one that builds intrigue and suspense while telling the events in a logical and chronological way.
Your Breaking Bad example is perfect to illustrate this. By and large, the story was told in order, and the characters acted as you would expect them to act due to their well-established personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. The story was all the more compelling as a result, because the twists were shocking while also making you think "oh, of course! Why didn't I see that coming?!" A lot of writing today just aims for "I didn't see that coming" by purposefully obfuscating important plot points, or telling events out of order to create a sense of suspense in an otherwise pedestrian story. I agree that this style creates some great reveals, but they also often feel empty after the initial surprise wears off.
All that said, I don't think Westworld is a great offender in this regard. I thought the William/MiB timelines were both fairly engaging in their own way while also building up to a reveal, albeit one that could be seen a mile away. The Arnold/Ford arc also benefited a bit from the disjointed storytelling, because the audience needed some familiarity with the hosts in order for Arnold's actions and Ford's turn to have much impact. Plus, we got Bernarnold, which was tight.
Aaaaand in an attempt to procrastinate on a paper that I have to write, I wrote a wall of text. fuck me
he prob built in a trigger to make them free to kill when he died.
so is there gonna be samurai world?
maeve got off the train because it was coded for her to do so, remember what bernard said.
her escape got all the guards to the compound so the hosts could kill everyone
i still say he has a backup of his mind somewhere, inside a host or out hidden somewhere
I liked Nolan reusing Exit Music again after using it in Person of Interest. Such a good tune.
I thought the whole point wasn't that they "hadn't suffered enough", but that Dolores didn't run through her maze often enough to reach the end. After so many tries she finally reached it, and Ford let his creations go. It took her this long to reach true consciousness, and it's convenient timing that it happened just in time for Ford to get sacked by the board.
And Logan was left to die at the end of the park wasn't he?
i think he was meant to be found naked going crazy on a horseback, so william could take over the company or something.
The way I see it she was coded to escape, but she made the choice to go back for her "daughter". That's what the maze is: a series of choices that go outside their programing. Some choices they make lead them back to tbe outside of the maze back into their pre-programed loop. Other choices lead them inward allowing them to awaken.
First I want to clarify that I don't necessarily believe the point I'm going to raise here and in fact think it's probably giving the show too much credit, but I want to play devil's advocate for a minute.
Isn't it possible that Ford's conclusion that suffering leads to consciousness is actually just a rationalization on his part to assuage his guilt over letting sentient being get raped and killed for 30 years? After all, remember that he says to Bernard that there is essentially no difference between a human and a host. If he truly believed that he'd have to see himself as basically the devil to this new race.
People assume that you can backup your mind too easily and throw that around all the time
jeffrey wright was awesome, agree with AG in regards to the shamalayan-esque TWEESTS. switching between being a passive observer to just randomly experiencing everything in dolores's robohead is pretty lame imo, but whatever the show was entertaining enough and the acting was great, except the techs