Westworld season 1 review

Westworld... high production values, took a few episodes to get to its story, yet ultimately... it falls flat on its face. It presents such lofty ambitions yet falls short. To break the series down to its components, here are other examples of things done better and save time:

Once Upon a Time in the West - A great western with an excellent villain, lame love interest, interesting "mystery" character, social commentary and a nice twist

Jurassic Park - When creations rise up against their masters (also by Crichton!)

Run, Lola, Run - On loops and learning

Groundhog Day - Also on loops and learning

Blade Runner - I think the second half/ending is a weak action sequence, but does a nice job of calling AI life into question

Ex Machina - AI learning

Her - AI learning

Robocop - Using memories to reclaim humanity (and be a badass revenge/Jesus movie)

ON CHARACTERS

The series has some very nice thoughts on life, emotions and consciousness (I LOVED that it called out human habits being an additional system/layer; that we don't necessarily have as much free choice as we think). However, the narrative was messy, using a gimmicked framing device with numerous flawed characters. Some issues...

Dolores - She's been doing this loop for years, hard to really get invested when she's programmed to be like this

Robert Ford - Good guy, bad guy, good guy, bad guy. His booking is messy, to say the least. Why is he doing most of the things he does? Outside of the narrative structuring, it doesn't really work

William - One brief period with Dolores and he becomes a monster? Ok.... Unbelievable romance (a recurring problem in Hollywood)

Lead writer guy - WTF is the point of you? You should have been fired long ago

Maeve - Could have been great, then twist! And more mystery box crap. Falls victim to her own programming. Pulling an Ex Machina would have been better

Felix - How were you even hired to begin with? Oh right, probably a game by Robert...

Teddy - Don't care about you. Your narrative was very messy.

Bernard - Actually, pretty well done,

Despite the character issues, the acting is generally very solid, with particular shout outs to Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Jimmi Simpson and Ed Harris.

ON THE WORLD
However, there are some other issues that are squint-worthy, particularly with the world building:

1. The safety protocols don't make sense - guns don't work on guests, then they do, then they only do when convenient; yet the hosts can punch and beat up the guests, though (but not enough to leave a mark?). Also, if the Man in Black was desperately seeking a deeper level of the game, as the majority shareholder, couldn't he have easily requested a version of the game with no safety protocols??

2. How the company is run - which is to say POORLY. There is so much incompetence. Unless, it's all part of Robert's game, which makes his arc and narrative so convoluted...

And another issue with the story - convenience! Particularly in the last episode (how convenient the two villain helpers of Maeve don't get ANY injuries and are up against some Stormtrooper-level security guards). There was also some in the second-to-last episode, but I don't remember. The sex scene with Maeve and Hector was blatantly pretentious/stupid.

Some remaining questions:

1. What happened to the security guy taken out by the native tribe?

2. Why was Elise killed? Or is she even dead?

3. Why exactly was Teresa killed (vs something else)?

4. How much of an asshole is Robert that he set himself up to die and kill so many people with him? His goal was to build murder bots?

5. Why would I care about a second season of this when they botched so many ideas in the first season? Seriously, they spent so much time on this world, which Robert was the god of, and we get a tease for other worlds at the end that had no devoted time. Again, how is the business run??

OVERALL
Westworld has the same problem as Looper to me - using a gimmick narrative device (blurred timelines vs time travel) half-assedly to tell an emotional story that falls flat when broken down. if you can't actually tell a coherent story with your devices, you're doing it wrong, in my book.

Also, why couldn't anyone explicitly tell the MIB the purpose of the maze? They kept dodging saying it's "not for you" - why not say it's a journey of personal discovery, or the maze is in the mind to try and achieve consciousness? Dumb storytelling/bad dialogue choices... Not to mention who allowed the maze references to be placed everywhere, including the inside of a scalp?

All this said, I did find the series enjoyable and compelling (binge watching parts of it), just really, really flawed. It does a number of things well and a number of things poorly. Is it interesting with fascinating ideas? Yes. Is it a bunch of narrative smoke and mirrors? Yes.

Jurassic World Review - A Successful Modernization, But Nothing New

Jurassic World was probably the biggest and best example of a "been there, done that" movie, but it was surprisingly enjoyable after going in with low expectations.

There was good humor and interesting characters, but there wasn't so much a story as things "just happened" and character arcs were ho-hum. Bryce Dallas Howard had the most interesting story (a mix of Alan Grant and Richard Hammond from the first one - genius scientist playing god/obsessed with control and not understanding kids/family, learning the value of the opposite over the course of the movie), but the film was neither built around her nor gave her the right focus or beats. As well, Chris Pratt didn't entirely work as the action expert due to his comedy getting in the way, despite some good banter/delivery of his lines with BDH (although BDH lacked chemistry with him).

Speaking of which, the meta humor was cheeky, but somewhat distracting. While it was fun seeing and hearing the references to the original Jurassic Park, some early humor about the situation took away from a later point in the movie, as well as raising overall questions on the logic and world building of Jurassic World.

Most disappointing, Michael Giacchino continued his streak of uninspired scores by creating another fairly generic big orchestra score, which may have been a commentary on the movie itself - reusing old cues and trying to be bigger, but the end result being rather generic. I hope studios take note to try and find someone else to follow in John Williams' footsteps (suggest either Thomas Newman or David Arnold).

All that said, the film earns a  RECOMMENDED for those wanting to revisit the world, but don't expect the intelligence, intrigue, excitement or awe of either of the Spielberg versions.