Westworld (HBO/Sky Atlantic) [** Spoilers **]

Talisman

Harambe wrote: »

I read this a lot in this thread. This show is at least 5 seasons long and they were all written before it even started. So this 'trying to drag out the story' line is bull****.

BS - they only started working on the outline for season 2 after the first season was completed.

If Joy & Nolan have the story already written you would expect them to be filming the new season now - filming season 2 began in June 2017 and finished in January 2018. Ed Harris has said the season 3 is scheduled to begin filming in June 2019, in which case it won't be ready to air until 2020.

‘Westworld’ Creators on Why HBO Drama Won’t Return Before 2018 (Variety, December 2016)

Where are you at in terms of work on the second season?
Joy: We’ve started working on scripts and outlines. It’s looking good. It’s looking very ambitious. There’s some surprises and bits of it that you won’t see coming. I’m having fun.

Nolan: It’s an ambitious project, and HBO has encouraged us to take the time and resources that we need to work on each stage of that. I love television. One of the fun things about television is that sometimes you find yourself in this place where you have to wear all these hats at once. You have to write, shoot, and cut simultaneously. We wanted to in the second season spend some more time writing, then switch gears into production, then cut. So we’re not going to follow the annual year-on-year tradition of television. Television’s changing. And the ambition of the project is such that we’re going to take our time to get the second season right.

So a longer gap than viewers might be expecting between seasons.
Nolan: We won’t be on the air until 2018. We started that conversation with the network when were shooting Episode 2 and we realized the complexity of trying to write and produce the show at the same time. We both work in the movie business as well, and in the movie business the best that you can possibly hope for with a film franchise is to turn around another installment in two or three years. So really on that schedule, we’re doing great.

Sad Professor

Ratings aren't the whole story. Every year more viewers are watching shows via VOD etc and only HBO have those figures. What the ratings do tell us is that the show doesn't seem to be growing its audience, which means its not another GOT. But I don't think it's in danger of being cancelled. It's probably guaranteed at least 5 seasons. Even it continues to lose viewers I think HBO will just cut the number of episodes per season and keep going.

The big wait between seasons is a problem though. If every season has a 2 year gap then season 5 won't air until 2024. That will be 10 years since the pilot was shot.

Talisman

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

Lots of people in here seem to not like the show but somehow still watch it. The show is for viewers who want to be challenged and not spoon fed every detail. They can’t stand the fact that they feel confused so blame the show for being too pretentious. I was confused as fcuk by that last episode but it was absolutely stunning television. I can’t wait to watch the whole season again and wait for everything to click.

I don't think that's right - the show is formulaic and spoon feeds the viewer almost everything. The only twist in the second season that wasn't obvious before its reveal scene was that

Bernard had scrambled his own memory core

.

jpm4

What have I just watched? The finale - and the whole season too - felt like I was reading a massively complicated IKEA assembly manual for a widget with no picture supplied. Insert character A into plot point D, tease plot point B via expository monologue 1,257, for explanation of valley of beyond turn to page 119, insert fire fight fight 3 from useless security.

And so on. Hardly surprising with Nolan on board though.

Is Bernard the most depressing character on TV? Every scene has him either looking confused, forgetful, in pain, controlled by someone else, or all the above. It must have been tough for the actor to even crack a smile post shooting.

alchemist33

jpm4 wrote: »

Is Bernard the most depressing character on TV? Every scene has him either looking confused, forgetful, in pain, controlled by someone else, or all the above. It must have been tough for the actor to even crack a smile post shooting.

Oh God, yes. I came to detest every scene he was in as it was painful to watch.

Tipsy McSwagger

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

Lots of people in here seem to not like the show but somehow still watch it. The show is for viewers who want to be challenged and not spoon fed every detail. They can’t stand the fact that they feel confused so blame the show for being too pretentious. I was confused as fcuk by that last episode but it was absolutely stunning television. I can’t wait to watch the whole season again and wait for everything to click.

I watched season 1 but not 2 as I chose to wait to see if it improved and that's why I read the overall tone here to see what was the view. actually the main reason I didn't like it was that some of the characters and their dialogue were just so boring and spent long periods going nowhere - primarily Delores and Bernard. that doesn't seem to have gotten any better on that score either.

I'm convinced that the writers are writing for the reddit "superfans" / nerds cohort and to "surprise" / mindfcuk them as opposed to being focused on what potentially could have been a good show. pity. Nolan trying to outdo his more celebrated brother also maybe a bit - "look how out-there I am with this Chris".

Wheety

glasso wrote: »

Nolan trying to outdo his more celebrated brother also maybe a bit - "look how out-there I am with this Chris".

Inception wasn't as clever as Christopher (and a lot of fanboys) would believe. Jonathan is trying the whole "Oh, aren't I so smart? You won't know what is real and what isn't" trick too.

Mitch Connor

Talisman wrote: »

I don't think that's right - the show is formulaic and spoon feeds the viewer almost everything. The only twist in the second season that wasn't obvious before its reveal scene was that

Bernard had scrambled his own memory core

.

Hale being Delores/A Host for all of that timeline was a twist and not super obvious to me

Sad Professor

Considering Jonathan Nolan was a (sometimes uncredited) writer on nearly on all of Chris's films, I suspect a lot of what we consider to be Chris's thing is actually his younger brother, though I'm sure they've both influenced each other. Inception was mostly building on stuff they had already done together on Memento and The Prestige. Going by Chris's re-write of Interstellar, I think the main difference between them is that Chris is more conscious of the need for a story based in a character's emotional journey. I think Joy picked up the slack in this regard in Westworld's first season, but she was pregnant or had just given birth during most of season 2 so she may not have been as actively involved.

Wheety

Wheety wrote: »

Inception wasn't as clever as Christopher (and a lot of fanboys) would believe. Jonathan is trying the whole "Oh, aren't I so smart? You won't know what is real and what isn't" trick too.

I thought that inception was good and reasonably well executed (certainly not brilliant). Westworld is neither.

expectationlost

nc6000 wrote: »

Will we be seeing PamplonaWorld next season?

even the people that do the pamplona run know a machine gun woulnd't help

Beric Dondarrion

With regard to the post credits scene

set in the supposedly far flung future - The MIB looks to be in pretty bad shape when he enters the dilapidated Forge (busted hand, GSWs etc). My interpretation of this was that he has gone through the same loop again and made the exact same choices (killing his daughter, attempting to shot Delores with the dodgy round etc). I am taking this to be the case from the Control Unit/Logan Delos conversation with Bernard and Delores about James Delos and the same choices he repeatedly made which resulted in him having the same final conversation with his son. Does this not imply that the park would need to be inhabited with all the same hosts to ensure the MIB made all of the exact same choices each time he started his journey in the Westworld Park?

This seems a bit of a stretch and I don't know whether I have it wrong or it's the writers trying to be just a bit too clever.

Talisman

Mitch Connor wrote: »

Hale being Delores/A Host for all of that timeline was a twist and not super obvious to me

I twigged it with the lack of reaction to the techie saying that the encrypted file wasn't the guests data but that of the hosts and immediately afterwards Bernard said "I killed you" - he told us (the audience) what he did before we were shown the scene.

A proper WTF twist wouldn't have fed the audience the reveal before the room was cleared of hostiles. Would people have considered The Usual Suspects to be a good movie if the Keyser Soze reveal was handled in the same way? Not likely.

I'm not saying it wasn't a clever twist, but I think the delivery was over thought or perhaps it was deliberately done so that it would be a talking point for the fans. Some people would have noticed subtle hints that others did not, I don't think it means they are smarter than others it's just the contrived formula used to deliver the show. It will give the fans something to talk about until the hype machine gets underway for the next season.

Stubbs conversation with Hale before she boarded the boat strongly implied that he is in fact a Host that had been built by Ford. A few people I have spoken to about the finale didn't pick up on that. I have come to believe that the cutting between multiple time periods in the show is a deliberate ploy to cause confusion so that people tune out and miss some of the little details. This in turn means they will later need to rewatch the show to see what they had previously missed.

Penn

Beric Dondarrion wrote: »

With regard to the post credits scene

set in the supposedly far flung future - The MIB looks to be in pretty bad shape when he enters the dilapidated Forge (busted hand, GSWs etc). My interpretation of this was that he has gone through the same loop again and made the exact same choices (killing his daughter, attempting to shot Delores with the dodgy round etc). I am taking this to be the case from the Control Unit/Logan Delos conversation with Bernard and Delores about James Delos and the same choices he repeatedly made which resulted in him having the same final conversation with his son. Does this not imply that the park would need to be inhabited with all the same hosts to ensure the MIB made all of the exact same choices each time he started his journey in the Westworld Park?

This seems a bit of a stretch and I don't know whether I have it wrong or it's the writers trying to be just a bit too clever.

No, it's the same as Dolores in Season 1. She went with William on her story a few years after the park opened, but she didn't find the town at the end of the journey. So over the next 30 or so years, she occasionally re-lived the same loop even though William and the same hosts weren't there (for instance we saw a shot of her in the train alone whereas the first time she was there she was with Lawrence and William). It was just her programming and memories leading her through it. Probably the same with Host-William in the future. He'll make the same journey over and over again, but it'll be based more on memories and programming to determine his choices rather than what's actually happening.

Talisman

Beric Dondarrion wrote: »

This seems a bit of a stretch and I don't know whether I have it wrong or it's the writers trying to be just a bit too clever.

The thing is that they don't need to physically rebuild and populate the hosts and park.

The Forge was purely software based so they could possibly recover the data or there may have been another backup facility which we weren't privy to (e.g. it was never revealed how Ford put William's profile on the key card). They could easily run through many iterations of the fidelity test in a Forge like environment.

Maybe and this is just me saying something completely stupid but the creators might think it clever if the end of season 3 revealed that the Hosts now lived in the real world and the Guests lived in a virtual world. It seems too obvious to me.

ixoy

Enjoyed it but there was too much exposition and a tendency then to belabour the explanations.
It would have been better if they had done the Forge explanation in the previous episode - it after all was a fairly obvious concept so best to have gotten it out of the way, especially given how talky it was. Then they could have ended the ninth episode on everyone reading towards the gateway to the Sublime with Bernard or Delores saying something like, "They've been given something we never had before - a choice."

Then the last episode could have focused more on the massacre at the gartway, Bernard's own memory scramble, Delore's "resurrection", etc.

I'd also have cut down on the post-Westworld scenes with Delores and New Bernard. It was too long to me, losing some of the energy built up. Not a fan of the Radiohead song in it either, from a show that's primarily been score driven up to this point. Felt out of place.

Sad Professor

That final scene is probably my favourite scene of the whole series and almost redeemed the second season for me, in large part because of the use of Codex. I love the way it transitions from the Westworld instrumental version into the real song as Bernard walks up the stairs into the real world - very powerful.

Penn

Sad Professor wrote: »

That final scene is probably my favourite scene of the whole series and almost redeemed the second season for me, in large part because of the use of Codex. I love the way it transitions from the Westworld instrumental version into the real song as Bernard walks up the stairs into the real world - very powerful.

I thought it was a great scene too. I like how it properly signifies that Dolores isn't the hero of the story just because she's (arguably) the main character. I wouldn't go so far as to label her the villain either though.

How did Hale pass the host scanner at the end?

ixoy

Deleted User wrote: »

How did Hale pass the host scanner at the end?

She didn't. Stubbs just let her pass through.

brevity

Frank O. Pinion wrote: »

Why would any human in their right mind do what the humans on this show do? Why would you help a piece of code like they do? You're possibly bringing on the downfall of humanity, idiot. A human "hurting", "killing", or "raping" a piece of tech should not be viewed the same as doing it to an actual human, even if the robot looks like a pretty woman, and she's spouting psychobabble. AI don't have rights. Skynet, people.

I suppose that's one of the biggest questions, at what point do the hosts stop being hosts?

I mean we're all programmed to some degree. To have sex, look after our kids and the people we love.

Surely raping and murdering is bad if it's towards something sentient. I mean, to do the things that the MIB did and not consider them to be abhorrent says more about you than anything else.

Sad Professor

ixoy wrote: »

She didn't. Stubbs just let her pass through.

Also she wouldn’t have had an explosive in her spine which I assume is what the scanner was checking for.

Tipsy McSwagger

brevity wrote: »

I suppose that's one of the biggest questions, at what point do the hosts stop being hosts?

I mean we're all programmed to some degree. To have sex, look after our kids and the people we love.

Surely raping and murdering is bad if it's towards something sentient. I mean, to do the things that the MIB did and not consider them to be abhorrent says more about you than anything else.

And that’s the whole reason Arnold didn’t want to open the park and eventually committed suicide.

ixoy

ixoy wrote: »

She didn't. Stubbs just let her pass through.

Fair enough, I thought she was scanned just before that interaction

Sad Professor

Deleted User wrote: »

Fair enough, I thought she was scanned just before that interaction

She was scanned but we didn't see the result.

Frank O. Pinion

brevity wrote: »

Surely raping and murdering is bad if it's towards something sentient. I mean, to do the things that the MIB did and not consider them to be abhorrent says more about you than anything else.

Raping and murdering humans is bad, acting out fantasies on a piece of tech, not so much. All these sci-fi stories based on "don't hurt the robots, they have feelings, they should have rights, too" are nonsense. If it were to happen in real life, it brings on the downfall of humans, more than any war between humans.

ScrubsfanChris

Sad Professor wrote: »

That final scene is probably my favourite scene of the whole series and almost redeemed the second season for me, in large part because of the use of Codex. I love the way it transitions from the Westworld instrumental version into the real song as Bernard walks up the stairs into the real world - very powerful.

Hope you didn't think it was THE final scene and switched off? :pac:


Agree with you though, the music in the show is always great.

Sad Professor

ScrubsfanChris wrote: »

Hope you didn't think it was THE final scene and switched off? :pac:


Agree with you though, the music in the show is always great.

No, though I was so happy with that (first) final scene I almost did.

Hopefully they'll keep up the tradition of ending each season with a Radiohead song.

Sad Professor

Penn wrote: »

I thought it was a great scene too. I like how it properly signifies that Dolores isn't the hero of the story just because she's (arguably) the main character. I wouldn't go so far as to label her the villain either though.

She's an anti-hero, I guess. But yeah, while I thought the dialogue was too on the nose, I liked the kind of dialectical relationship they were setting up between Dolores and Bernard. They are opposed but working toward the same thing.

PetKing

But they're alive. It said so on that TV I just warched for 2 seasons.

Nonsense you say... With zero vested interest in any hosts wellbeing, what drives your motivation to watch Westworld?