This is a movie I have always seen somewhere around the middle but never from the beginning. I scored a cheap DVD of it in the last year in anticipation of HBO’s overdue, behind-schedule show which will lengthen the story about the Delos amusement park. JJ Abrams’ involvement doesn’t fill me with as much doubt because the story does need some modernizing (see below) and I think he does better with series than movies, Star Wars being an exception for me.
Westworld is what became the usual story from Michael Crichton…advanced-tech going out of control alongside somebody’s hubris over how nothing can go wrong. You could say this flick was his rough draft for Jurassic Park. To me, it also dovetails into Disclosure, Timeline and State of Fear. Stories in which his ignorance about genetics, computers, history and climate change are on display as “entertainment” when he really just had an axe to grind. He should’ve stuck with medical stories with his MD thanks to the humongous plot holes disguised as McGuffins to make the plot happen.
Overall though, I still like Westworld. It’s very Seventies. People going to an R-rated park to have sex with robots and audiences weren’t very sophisticated when the topic of computers was brought up then. Yul Brynner reprising his role from The Magnificent Seven is one bright spot. Majel Barrett of Star Trek appeared as the local madam. Dick Van Patten is the comic-relief guest yet you never see his fate like the guests in Roman World or Medieval World.
Here’s what I’m hoping the series will fix which were eye rolling in this 1973 version.
- The guns using real ammunition. Robots are expensive, you don’t want them being shot up by the guests even if they’re paying $1000/day in 1973 dollars; that would be $5400 today. I think now the guns could just use infra-red beams to trigger squibs on the robots. Thus, weapons won’t work on the guests.
- The control room lacking auxiliary power and a manual override to open the doors was implausible. How the techs suffocated was incredibly contrived.
- There isn’t much to do in Westworld other than shoot people, drink, gamble and hang with prostitutes. It wouldn’t appeal to heterosexual female guests and before you go with the lazy comparison, Las Vegas has shopping and better food. Maybe the miniseries will expand the park’s scope.
Despite how much I grew to dislike the author Crichton’s Right-Wing views, he did make a couple core, important films in the Sci-Fi canon in the Seventies. Westworld wasn’t as strong as The Andromeda Strain but it had more potential for being a series or miniseries.