Summary:
Two wealthy friends take a vacation at Westworld, an adult theme park where visitors can live out their fantasies by interacting with robots. Once there, the machines begin to malfunction, and the friends struggle to stay alive.
My Thoughts:
We all have our own personal preferences and distastes- for me, the westerns that I like have always been few and far between. It’s not a bad genre, there are certainly entries in it that I love, but for the most part, if I want a story with themes revolving around rivals and outlaws, chivalry and honor, and exploration and adventure, I’ll watch something set in medieval times- the time period just interests me more. Westerns tend to focus on the same things: sheriff and his deputy, the brothel owner with a heart of gold, the train robbers hiding out beyond the hills, the occasional prospector striking it rich… To me, it gets a little repetitive (though you could say that about any kind of story, I suppose). However, after viewing the Coen Brother’s latest, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”, I found myself in a rare mood were I thirsted for another western, and so I scoured the wastes of internet streaming services until I found this. I’ve watched the first two seasons of HBO’s Westworld (loved the first season, thought the second season lacked direction, still debating if I’ll watch the third season when it comes out), but I hadn’t gotten around to watching what I assumed would be a middling sci fi thriller with a western twist. Instead of a middling movie, I found this movie to be quite enjoyable; so much so that I’m beginning to rethink my stance on westerns.
“Boy, have we got a vacation for you!”
Peter (Richard Benjamin, “Catch-22”) and John (James Brolin, “Traffic”) are two young friends on a vacation in Westworld, a new theme adult park that allows the visitors to interact with robots as if they were real people from the Wild West (there are also Roman world and Medieval world attacked to this park, but for the most part our heroes reside inside West World). The technology is state of the art, the facilities are top of the line, and nothing could ever go wrong, until, predictably, things start to go awry.
Twenty years before dinos stomped through the theaters with "Jurassic Park”, Yul Brynner (“The Magnificent Seven”) stormed through the cinemas as a deranged gunslinging robot. Why do I mention this? They’re both from the mind of Michael Crichton, and both revolve around theme park attractions going haywire. Not to speculate too heavily, but if we hadn’t have had this movie, I can guarantee we would’ve never gotten a Westworld TV show, and it’s possible that the Jurassic Park franchise might’ve gotten off the ground. The films influences don’t end there. The final third of this film, when our heroes Peter and John are mercilessly hunted by an unnamed gunslinger, feels remarkably similar to “The Terminator”, which came out more than a decade after this film’s premier. Who really knows how many movies this film inspired? I’d guess it was more than just the few I’ve mentioned too. That’s what happens when you have an original concept that has a lot of meat to the implications of what happens, it inspires others to take that idea and run with it, and make something new. This film might be a little unpolished and outdated as far as some effects go, but the story is everything one might hope for from a sci-fi action thriller.
There are a lot of scenes that have somewhat meta-humor- guests groaning because they have to fight someone off again, bar brawls that stretch on for inordinate amounts of time- and that keeps the tone of the film light. But there are also plenty of great scenes that develop this world and really show how much thought went into it. Aside from Peter and John, many of the scenes were shown are just vignettes showing the park’s gradual degradation and the park operator’s attempts to stop the park from sinking into disarray. Those vignettes paint a much bigger portrait of the world. I will admit that some of the sequences were a touch duller than others, but those scenes move quickly, and as the film itself is under an hour and a half, I can’t really complain about the pacing.
Verdict:
This is a fun little flick, and it’s much better than I had anticipated it would be. I actually found myself enjoying scenes and sections of this film more than the TV show. The show is fine, but at this point I’m wondering if the Theme-Park-Attraction-Gone-Awry storyline has already ran it’s course. The most exciting bit in this film and was in the TV is watching the park go to hell. Dealing with the fallout just doesn’t seem as interesting, as the second season of the show has illustrated.
If I had to pick between one or the other- the HBO show or this movie- I’d probably, honestly, go with this movie. While the HBO show is slicker and certainly has entertaining moments, this movie has a far more succinct plot and the story just feels juicier. Both are worth checking out (at least the first season of Westworld), but don’t let the TV show steer you away from this movie; it’s a classic worth seeing.
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