TV HBO's Westworld (1 Viewer)

[Dave]

As part of the "Westerns: Then and Now" panel at the ATX TV festival in Austin this weekend - which included participants from Justified and Hell on Wheels - Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight, Person of Interest) and Lisa Joy (Pushing Daisies, Burn Notice) debuted a new sizzle reel for their upcoming HBO series Westworld, based on the Michael Crichton movie about a theme park where guests interact with lifelike robots, inside a detailed recreation of the wild west.

The footage was great and clearly went over big with the ATX audience, who gave it an enthusiastic response. While it was only screened for those in attendance, and is not being released publicly right now, a description follows:

The sizzle reel opens with very picturesque landscape shots of what appears to be the Old West. Evan Rachel Wood's Dolores lives a romantic frontier life, riding horses and watching sunsets. "I choose to see the beauty, to believe that there's an order to the chaos, a purpose," she says, never questioning the nature of her existence - until we see a little boy tell her she's not real.

We then hear her say, "This world... I think there may be something wrong with it. Something hiding underneath."

From there, "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones plays, as we start shifting back and forth between the Western setting and the subterranean laboratory that runs the robotic works of the fake community, including Anthony Hopkins' Dr. Ford and Jeffrey Wright's Bernard Lowe, the head programmer of the unaware AIs that populate Westworld.

Violence is commonplace, as people are frequently shot (sometimes in the back) and Ed Harris' Man in Black kills a character played by Clifton Collins Jr. by slicing his throat from behind - much of this footage was quite visceral. The Man in Black also looks to stab and kill Thandie Newton's madame Maeve Millay, though several other images seem to suggest she may live beyond that point, making us question what constitutes a real death in Westworld, considering most of the inhabitants are sentient robots. Lowe informs Dr. Ford that there's a mistake in the current code for the robots, as Ford watches a gut-shot "cowboy" drinking milk, ignoring his injuries, and we see the milk pour out of the bloody, open stomach wound.

Dolores and Dr. Ford speak. She asks if they are very old friends. "No, I wouldn't say friends, Dolores," he says. "I wouldn't say that at all."

Impressive New Westworld Footage Debuts at ATX Television Festival - IGN

 

[staphory]

Yep, they are clearly out of ideas.
I remember the original.

 

[Madhattr]

Yep, they are clearly out of ideas.
I remember the original.

I own it and Logans Run.

 

[Deacon Blues]

Yep, they are clearly out of ideas.
I remember the original.

Yeah, I was pretty small, and I remember how strange it seemed for a western gunfighter to have a thick Eastern European accent.

 

[Tapxe]

https://www.discoverwestworld.com/#

Haven't signed up and checked it out, but the intro looks pretty slick.

Edit...seems broken.

 

[Twenty]

Dis gun b gud

 

[El Caliente]

Not Westworld related but, if you like well done series' about the old west, check out James Gunn's Centennial. It is the story of the settling of the west from the 1700s-the mid 1970s. Amazing show.

 

[crosswatt]

Not Westworld related but, if you like well done series' about the old west, check out James Gunn's Centennial. It is the story of the settling of the west from the 1700s-the mid 1970s. Amazing show.

Wait, wasn't that a circa 1970's era miniseries?

 

[El Caliente]

Wait, wasn't that a circa 1970's era miniseries?

Indeed it was.

 

[Semper]

I'll be watching. Looks pretty interesting.

 

[LOONEY]

I own it and Logans Run.

Logans Run one of the best, Farrah Fawcett And Jenny Agutter

Have they tried a remake on it? Hope not.

 

[not2rich]

I'm actually pretty excited for and have high hopes for this show. Just caught this review on Newsweek:

This new version on cable—written by Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote Memento, The Dark Knight and Interstellar with his director brother, Christopher — is almost embarrassingly better than Crichton’s film, unfurling a beautifully detailed and inviting world from a simple inversion: It doesn’t even try to make the humans sympathetic. Led by a craggy Ed Harris, a guest whose lust for sadism has pushed him ever deeper into the park (and who wears the same black Stetson sported by Brynner in the film), the humans, with a few exceptions, are hyuk-hyukking thrill-seekers who find pleasure in rape and murder. Instead, it is the robots—doomed to die a thousand deaths, their memory wiped clean every day—that inspire all the show’s pathos and poetry. They’re like a cross between the replicants in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and the hero of Memento, whose world works perfectly well as long as he doesn’t remember a single thing that has happened to him.

Doomed Robots of 'Westworld' Make New HBO Show Come Alive

 

[not2rich]

This link contains a round-up of several reviews, all positive:

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/16/

 

[Madhattr]

Logans Run one of the best, Farrah Fawcett And Jenny Agutter

Have they tried a remake on it? Hope not.

Love Jenny!

 

[not2rich]

When can we watch it?

Subscribe to HBO or HBO Now (streaming).