Westworld reviews round-up: 'Will hit the spot as hard as Game of Thrones ever did'
The series takes its basis from Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton's 1973 film of the same name
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.In the lengthy search for something to fill those cold, Game of Thrones-less nights, HBO may finally have come up with your newest addiction.
The first reviews for its latest drama series, Westworld, are flooding in and all signs point to it being a worthy successor to the network's highest-rated show of all time. Created by J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher), the show takes its basis from Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton's 1973 film of the same name, which imagines a futuristic theme park littered with lifelike androids.
Starring the likes of Ed Harris, Thandie Newton, James Marsden and Anthony Hopkins; the series has been billed as "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin."
With the network now making the first three episodes available to critics, reactions have been unanimously positive; a fantastic sign of what could, potentially, prove a major television hit in the coming months. It's fantastic news for HBO, certainly, considering the network's already mapped out the next five seasons of the show.
We've rounded up some of the first reviews below.
The Independent - Christopher Hooton
Sinister, unscripted deviations start creeping into the Westworld A.I. experience, but here’s where the show avoids tropes and gets interesting - it focuses less on the threat to human life posed by misbehaving A.I. but rather on the psychological, if indeed we can talk about robots experiencing what we know as ‘consciousness’ (something I’m sure the show will go on to explore), impact on the A.I. themselves. It asks, “How does it feel to be a sophisticated, emotional machine built solely for the purpose of being used for others’ enjoyment and to indulge their bloodlust?”
We’re overdue for a series that explores the idea of reality and what constitutes something as “real” in this way: the labyrinthine nature of desire and excess and creation and morality, when thrown into the frontier (both literally and metaphorically) challenges the audience to see themselves—and the human race—for what we maybe are or could be. (We’d LOVE to sit in a room and watch this one with Werner Herzog and Elon Musk, for example.)
The realities of our consequences as we continue to mine the land of our own want in the face of increasingly volatile technical world is heady shit to put it mildly, but Westworld does not feel patronizing or tedious—its scares come from how close to reality this all could be. Co-creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy Nolan have created something riveting, evocative, thrilling, and effective in furthering the social morality conversation currently playing out so beautifully on TV. Get ready for your next great HBO obsession.
For those of us who just like story – lots and lots of story! – Westworld will hit the spot as hard as GoT ever did. Gosh, there’s a lot going on. There’s the real world full of robot-wranglers, some of whom are jostling for position inside whatever just-possibly-malevolent company owns the park, others of whom are busy tinkering with their charges’ software and trying to decide whether to make the skinjobs more realistic or quit while they’re ahead. “Y’know, before everything goes a bit, like, Skynet on us” nobody ever quite says, but clearly should.
Like Game of Thrones, Westworld is a sprawling story, but it’s never as disparate as the world of Westeros and what lies beyond the Narrow Sea. What matters here is the notion that everything is contained, intimate, and carefully crafted, and fans of Crichton will immediately feel the familiarity with his most famous stories’ themes: where what we overly-confident Homo sapiens create and try and control quickly spirals out beyond our abilities.
We are not gods, only tinkerers, and the characters of Westworld are starting to learn that trying to control what we don’t understand can lead to catastrophic effects. Thus, a rebellion must now be faced. “These violent delights have violent ends.”
Despite drawing on familiar themes of violence, western grit and AI meddling, these have rarely been assembled into one piece – even since the 1973 film. And, thanks to a deft script from showrunners Jonathan Nolan (who’s the brother of Batman rebooter Christopher) and Lisa Joy, any possible cliched pitfall is sidestepped. Instead we’re thrust into a complex, visionary world that is pleasingly in no rush to rapidly churn out its storyline. Like the on-screen robots, its pieces are meticulously put together, its capacity to unleash hell brimming beneath the surface. And it’s beautiful to watch.
At its heart, Westworld is a very Crichton-esque look at unchecked technology and the hubris of mankind. Given the option to indulge their every whim, the human characters behave as you would expect them to - some wary, some horrifically, and many in obvious joy at this adult’s playground. It’s really the world that’s the biggest star of all - it asks questions of us viewers: how would I behave? When is a robot a person? What hat would I choose? Ultimately it makes us willing voyeurs, taking us along for a challenging ride that feels all the better for its depth. If the first episode is anything to go on, you need to watch this show - it’s the next big thing.
Westworld makes a big impression with its first episode. From its standout cast to its excellent visuals to one hell of a hummable score by the great Ramin Djawadi (the composer of Game of Thrones and Person of Interest), this is top-notch television in every respect. The juxtaposition of life inside Westworld and life for those who are creating Westworld allows for an excellent entry point into the show, allowing us to invest with these artificial life forms from the start, while getting to also see the motivations of those behind-the-scenes.
This is obviously not the first story to explore the idea of man’s robotic creations from a thoughtful, sympathetic manner -- interestingly, Ron Moore’s wonderful Battlestar Galactica, like Westworld, also took a 1970s-originated story that was much simpler in its “evil robot”/us vs. them depiction and upended it to make the robots fully realized characters -- but it quickly establishes its own unique world and characters that let it stand on its own. This is my favorite of the many new fall TV series, and I suspect I won’t be the only one who feels that way.
The Atlantic - Christopher Orr
Though it builds on such predecessors, Westworld represents a fascinating refinement of the genre. This is a show about innocent androids—innocent by definition, given their programming and frequent memory wipes—who are terrorized by wealthy tourists curious to discover what it feels like to commit senseless murder or indulge their most noxious sexual urges. As a programmer explains to one of his android creations, “You and everyone you know were built to gratify the desires of the people who pay to visit your world.”
The Globe and Mail - John Doyle
The most lavish and anticipated HBO series in years is loosely based on the 1973 movie of the same name, which was a Michael Crichton creation. In that, things went awry at a futuristic Wild West theme park. Visitors got to experience the fantasy of old west tales involving varmints, gunfights and kicking back in a saloon. The western characters were played by robots. Here, it’s the same gist, but the point of view is, essentially, that of the robots.
They are, it is clear, becoming cognizant of their status and beginning to rebel. Meanwhile, there’s one visitor to the park – played by Ed Harris with ferocious menace – who knows there’s something evil going on and wants to take advantage. In the background is the creator of everything, a deeply melancholy genius, played by Anthony Hopkins. In fact, for all its brutal violence and sex – some of the visitors merely want to kill, rape and pillage – the series is a gorgeous exercise in profound melancholy.
What horrors has humankind wreaked with a mass devotion to perfection, personal satisfaction and entertainment? At times terrifying bleak and cynical, Westworld is lugubrious. It can have characters announcing, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” and set out to illustrate that.
Westworld debuts on HBO on 2 October, with Sky Atlantic airing the series in the UK.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments