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Westworld - Live in Your World, Play in Ours - Sundays on HBO

They've explicitly said in pre premiere talk that Harris's character is a human, basically their reverse analogue to the man in black from the original film.

Without derailing the thread too much, I'll just say that J. J. Abrams' projects have been known to play fast and loose with the truth in interviews in the past, so you may want to take them with a grain of salt.
 
Loved every second of the episode. You can tell how every character is building their own agenda. So much fucking potential. Can't wait for next week.
 

pj

Banned
Very interesting show, but it is shot more simply than I was expecting. It is dull looking, even.
 
I wonder what the actual downtime is between instances. Cleanup would suggest days, but I don't think there are that many visitors on each train, and I don't think that many of the hosts are involved in hostile storylines. Disney manages to get up and running every day with full staff and parades and performances after all.

The man in Black's kidnapping shenanigans suggest each instance is actually longer than 24 hours, as he was able to torture his captive well into the following morning.

Best part of the pilot is easily the meet your maker scene. An android wanting nothing more than to go biblical on "God" for cursing him into an endless torture loop...legit chills with his transitions between stilted and genuine emoting.
 

Epcott

Member
Wow, loving this. It's Deadwood meets Michael Crichton (I miss him)... what else is there to say?

I need to see the original film. I love the acting how when they glitch there's an uncanny valley look to their gestures and expressions. I can't wait for more.
 

zeemumu

Member
Watching the show now.


How long until James Marsden loses everything he ever loved to the actual main character?


Edit: oh my god that was awful. James Marsden can't catch a break in anything he's in. It's like Sean Bean and dying.
 

byropoint

Member
Very interesting show, but it is shot more simply than I was expecting. It is dull looking, even.

Yeah I noticed this too, I thought the show will be eyecandy considering there was some really cool imagery in the trailers, feels like a missed opportunity, otherwise I'm liking it.
 
absolutely loved everything about this

didn't realize they were shooting on the old Deadwood sets. recognized a few of the buildings right away
 

shanafan

Member
They've explicitly said in pre premiere talk that Harris's character is a human, basically their reverse analogue to the man in black from the original film.

If that's the case,
why do bullets have no effect on him?
 

Speely

Banned
Who is the dude that played the Guest that shot the bandit leader in the head before his big speech? Seems soooo familiar!

I think that's Currie Graham from NYPD Blue and The Mentalist, if we are thinking of the same person.

LOVED it, btw. A great setup that took its time to establish the feel of the show. Ed Harris is going to be an interesting one, I think. I think he might be a normal human, not a host... but I think he knows Hopkins' character. We'll see.
 
I think that's Currie Graham from NYPD Blue and The Mentalist, if we are thinking of the same person.

LOVED it, btw. A great setup that took its time to establish the feel of the show. Ed Harris is going to be an interesting one, I think. I think he's normal human, not a host... but I think he knows Hopkins' character. We'll see.
Another possibility could be him being someone doing corporate espionage for a rival or some ex-employee/ex-founder or something. He is pretty old, much like Hopkin's character

The hosts can't hurt the guests. They said that in the show.
They also said hosts couldn't hurt a fly.
 

Speely

Banned
Another possibility could be him being someone doing corporate espionage for a rival or some ex-employee/ex-founder or something. He is pretty old, much like Hopkin's character

Oooh, that would actually be pretty interesting, and could play out over a pretty long period of time. I like it.
 
Another possibility could be him being someone doing corporate espionage for a rival or some ex-employee/ex-founder or something. He is pretty old, much like Hopkin's character


They also said hosts couldn't hurt a fly.

The last moment of the show says otherwise

Yes I meant to quote about people asking if the Man in Black was human.
 
I think that's Currie Graham from NYPD Blue and The Mentalist, if we are thinking of the same person.

LOVED it, btw. A great setup that took its time to establish the feel of the show. Ed Harris is going to be an interesting one, I think. I think he might be a normal human, not a host... but I think he knows Hopkins' character. We'll see.

Bingo! That's him, thanks! Was killing me trying to figure it out, I thought it was the dude who played the Governor in Walking Dead or the "false" Doctor on Doctor Who, but it wasn't.
 
Oooh, that would actually be pretty interesting, and could play out over a pretty long period of time. I like it.
Him being related to the corporation would explain how he could seem to stay out in the park and take hosts to torture them without being noticed by the engineers/watchers.
 

Mashing

Member
Yeah, I think the Man in Black is related to the company or knows Ford specifically. It seems he used the father as a message to Ford.
 
Westworld? More like Bestworld... or Breastworld.

Loved it and some great set-ups for things to come. Cool that they can have routines for the hosts that could play out slightly differently on a different day, or re-program them with completely different story lines to keep the show fresh.
 

Speely

Banned
Him being related to the corporation would explain how he could seem to stay out in the park and take hosts to torture them without being noticed.

True. It's interesting that the character went from Gunslinger (old movie) to Man in Black here, both decidedly bits of Dark Tower imagery. Wonder if that dynamic will play into the character at all, even if just as loose inspiration?
 
Yeah, I think the Man in Black is related to the company or knows Ford specifically. It seems he used the father as a message to Ford.
Would explain how and why the picture was there. Deliberately placed to mess with the host's programming

Possible speculation could be that the woman was someone who died in the last "critical failure", and Harris' character has been trying to exploit/undermine/manipulate Westworld as revenge for the last 30 years. Would also explain his implied history with Dolores
 
As an aside, how is the Dark Tower series? Read the first book and loved it way back 25 or so years ago but there wasn't a second book at that time and... life intervened and I never made it back to the series once it was released.
 

Vyer

Member
well that was excellent.


over/under on how many shows before
those bots in storage are unleashed?
 
Just want to point this out...

We don't KNOW that the Man in Black raped Delores. Nothing is shown, her memory is wiped.

He may have very well just been doing this to trigger her father's breakdown. He could have easily taken her in there, talked to her, or shot her. And while shooting sounds horrible, it's morally grey if you know they are going to resurrect.
 

teiresias

Member
I absolutely loved this!!

The mood is incredible, and the play with the androids' possible sentience was interesting.

One of the best moments was:

when the guest killed Esteban/Paulo and there were a couple of contrasting moments between the guests acting like kids in a candy store and Dolores with Teddy


Harris character is interesting because I'm going to assume
he's actually human, but almost seems like they may not even realize he's in the park
though admittedly we never really get a good look at admittance procedure for me to make that assumption, it was just something that seemed to make sense to me.
 
Was reading on Wikipedia about the original movie and it's pretty funny how the budget of this episode alone is about what the movie made at the box office ($10 million)

The movie's budget was only $1,250,000
 

sans_pants

avec_pénis
I thought it was great. So happy to get HBO scifi.

Some of the acting and dialogue were a little clunky but it's a pilot and they gotta dump a lot of info. I expect great things from this show
 

Dany

Banned
A lot of exposition; some hokey dialuage in the real world. I can understand the hokeyness among the hosts. Feel like the dialuage should be different between the real world and the western.

But I like the premise and execution a lot so far. Will watch for sure
 
Honestly, I liked this pilot way more than the Game of Thrones pilot. Probably because I really like sci-fi and westerns. But I also think they structured the episode smartly, first with the Teddy fake-out and then the use of repetition. Plus the show already has such an unnerving eerie atmosphere to it

Just want to point this out...

We don't KNOW that the Man in Black raped Delores. Nothing is shown, her memory is wiped.

He may have very well just been doing this to trigger her father's breakdown. He could have easily taken her in there, talked to her, or shot her. And while shooting sounds horrible, it's morally grey if you know they are going to resurrect.
He doesn't seem like the kind of character that would rape. His actions seem to have purpose besides violence and debauchery for the sake of it. Going by the later actions, he probably talked with her or studied her behavior or something along those lines
 

teiresias

Member
Bingo! That's him, thanks! Was killing me trying to figure it out, I thought it was the dude who played the Governor in Walking Dead or the "false" Doctor on Doctor Who, but it wasn't.

Took me a minute for me to realize I recognized him from an episode of Fringe. I literally paused the stream of the show because it was bothering me too much until I figured it out, lol.

That scene up on the "control center" balcony also completely opened up the universe from the movie with the talk of the management and ulterior motives deeper into the company - which Harris's character seems to be aware of to some degree. It immediately gives them places to go away from the original movie, which was basically just Crichton beta-testing the Jurassic Park plot in all honesty.
 
Little confused here. Is Teddy Real? Why'd he get shot in the beginning? Who is that evil guy who goes around killing people (A.I?) Is he a rogue A.I? Why doesnt the company know about him?
 
Little confused here. Is Teddy Real? Why'd he get shot in the beginning? Who is that evil guy who goes around killing people (A.I?) Is he a rogue A.I? Why doesnt the company know about him?
Teddy's a robot. Ed Harris is (or seems to be) a regular person. Hence Teddy's loop on the train, and him being able to hurt Harris
 

Pocks

Member
Little confused here. Is Teddy Real? Why'd he get shot in the beginning? Who is that evil guy who goes around killing people (A.I?) Is he a rogue A.I? Why doesnt the company know about him?

Teddy is a host, or android. He got shot by a character who is guest, and guests can do whatever they want to hosts. We don't really have many details on the "evil guy" other than what he has said about himself, e.g. that he's a longtime guest of over 30 years. It is unknown why the company doesn't know or isn't concerned about his actions.
 

teiresias

Member
Little confused here. Is Teddy Real? Why'd he get shot in the beginning? Who is that evil guy who goes around killing people (A.I?) Is he a rogue A.I? Why doesnt the company know about him?

Teddy can get shot and injured/killed because he isn't real, he's a robot/host. By "evil guy" I'm presuming you mean Ed Harris' character. He gets shot but not hurt, which according to currently presented lore in the pilot means he's real and not a host/robot, of course, things are subject to change based on plot developments and twists.
 

jett

D-Member
That was really fucking good. HBO's production values are still second to none. Only thing I didn't like was the Paint it Black arrangement, it sounded off. And I totally knew the episode would end with Dolores squashing a bug. :p

Ed Harris took me by surprise, I thought he was going to play the same Terminator role from the original movie, I guess this was just the ol' switcheroo. I'm glad they've only taken the basic premise from the source material. I imagine he's one of the company owners, he seems to have leverage to do whatever the hell he wants. Clearly he has some ulterior motive beyond just being a psychopath. What a fucked up world.
 

Zalasta

Member
Why was the sheriff all cut up and bloodied after he was retrieved for malfunctioning? Are we suppose to infer that Ed Harris's character scalped him as well?
 

ctothej

Member
Loved this. Wondering why it only got a 72 on metacritic... Could there be a dip in quality as the season goes on?
 
Why was the sheriff all cut up and bloodied after he was retrieved for malfunctioning? Are we suppose to infer that Ed Harris's character scalped him as well?
I assumed the engineers needed to examine the machine's brain

But now I'm thinking it could also mean that too
 
I really dug the modern songs tossed in. Black Hole Sun worked in particular as it seemed to be diegetic, and probably placed there so guests could get a taste of their modern world inside Westworld. Paint it Black was used in a similar way for us, the audience. A lot of neat thematic things like that going on here.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Stellar premiere. They really know how to build tension in this show.
 
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