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The WESTWORLD Thread


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  • 6 months later...

Just finished binging Season 2. In a roundabout way,  it ended up being the prequel to Bladerunner.

The biggest flaw was Maeve's storyline. Yes, it introduced some great sets and had cool moments but... it muddled the overall story arc. I could easily see a more streamlined and intriguing storyline if Maeve's story had ended last season (and they could have easily bring her back in season 3 with how the hosts have escaped). Around the half way point, I realized Maeve was kinda the heel.

Dolores became the default protagonist who basically held everyone together through sheer force of will (and not mind control). William's story was fascinating til the muddled end. Sizemore was totally out of character in the end, being clearly written off (which sucks because I really dug his character arc).

The Sublime was basically Doctor Who's the Library.

There was  liberal use of the mallet when the story would have been better off with a scalpel (in more ways than one). It also lead to a lot of needless complexity for complexity sakes. I guess it did hammer in the common theme throughout the season: lack of fidelity.

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  • 4 months later...
1 hour ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

I haven't watched it, but now I know to do so soon.

Aaron Paul is in the trailer for Westworld S3. That's one way to cover up how garbage that show is. 

Weird that there's a trailer for it now since it's not coming out until 2020. 

I grudgingly liked season 2. The show runners got way too cute with unreliable narrators and time shifting the story, not to mention throwing some wild swerves in there. They learned all of the wrong lessons from season 1. Hopefully season 3 winds up toning down on the bullshit from season 2.

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That Westworld trailer looked like the gritty reboot of Her.

I don't think I'm going to continue watching, have no real interest with where the story goes and I felt S2 was too smart for its own good. Kept me guessing, but not in any sort of engaged way

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1 hour ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

You know why it dropped last night.

FYI, I didn't get this trailer last night. Pre-GoT I got a the preview for all the shows coming out this year and next. Post-GoT was the long trailer for His Dark Materials and another trailer for that Zendaya TV series.

I didn't see there was a Westworld trailer until I saw you mention Aaron Paul being in it and I saw the trailer on YouTube.

And for Barry, the trailer that played before the episode was His Dark Materials and there was nothing after.

So not everyone got the same stuff last night.

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10 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Odds that this bleak future he lives in is another park and he's an android?

Slim? Looks like it's setting up something going wrong for Dolores after she gets out into the real world, but honestly, who the hell knows with this show. Aaron Paul mentioning something about the moon made my ears perk up and made me think about the fan hypothesis that this is set on the moon or on Mars.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 6 months later...
On 2/21/2020 at 10:25 AM, BurningBeard said:

In a rough about-turn, and against my better judgement, I'm going to give S3 a go as it looks like it might actually emphasize plot over cerebral fuckery this time

God I hope so.  As much as I guess I enjoyed the previous seasons overall, I couldn't explain 80% of this shit if you held a gun to my head,

Edited by Technico Support
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  • 1 month later...

Bumping this because this season has been fucking awesome so far. I feel like they did a full assessment of what was and wasn't working and along with the Westworld set burning down they have no more crutches and they're sticking with everything that works. The reveal last night for the pearls was pretty awesome, I didn't see that coming, and it ultimately makes sense. It's also scary as fuck.

I'm also torn. In a sense, I think what Dolores is trying to do should be done, but I also agree with Sarac that humans are by and large pieces of shit unless you can wrangle them all in and then you can basically save the world. So I'm certainly a fan of the planet being a better place if everyone is run by an AI giving them direction for who and what to be, but at the same time, you're more than likely to be most of the people called up from NXT where you'll just be wasted and creative will have nothing for you and you'll be nothing more than a ditch digger.

The cast has been significantly upgraded too, not just with Aaron Paul, but with Tommy Flanagan getting significant screen time. He was one of my favorite guys on Sons of Anarchy and I'm happy he's getting even more work here.

My wife and I are really loving this season and the absence of timeline fuckery has improved things greatly.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm going to keep beating this drum, but Westworld is ridiculously good. The pace at which they're moving is perfect. There's no more filler bullshit. They're just getting right to the point with every episode. In fact, the last 2 to 3 episodes have all felt like they could have been season finale quality, but it's just another piece of the story that they keep pushing forward.

At this point, I have no idea what's going to happen. I'm still torn between rooting for Serac and rooting for Dolores. Serac's view of humanity scarily mirrors mine and his solution also somewhat mirrors the solution I've had, but it's also one that tends to rip away free will. It's all very Judge Smails-esque where Smails said "the world needs ditch diggers too." In this case with Rehoboam, it's that mindset on a global scale where if it looks like you're going to be a ditch digger, that's what you're going to be. All of these humans wound up being put on loops like the hosts in Westworld/Warworld/Shogunworld/GoTworld, but it did result in world peace, prosperity, and no fuckery like Paris being nuked off the face of the planet by terrorists. I would do anything in my power to prevent another city from ever being nuked too, but it's scary to think that the price for that is putting every single person on the planet on a loop with a storyline. Plus, Serac has a scary god complex.

Then you have Dolores who wants to bring the whole system down and actually did bring the whole system down with 3 whole episodes left to go! This last episode was maybe the best in the entire run of Westworld and it wasn't even a finale. It felt like it could be, but we still have more story that will play out. There's also more mysteries left to explore, like who is Caleb and what is his real past, what will happen with Maeve, can Serac restore order after Dolores basically gave the entire world a red pill out of the Matrix, will Dolores find out her plan backfires, what's there for Bernard to stop now that Dolores has seemingly won, will Stubs get even more screentime to keep crushing beers while being one of the best characters this season, will William find out he's a host or a human, will William get out of the institution, and what other surprises are in store?

I really hope viewership improved this season. I stupidly liked last season a lot despite having tons of complaints about how unnecessary the time jumping was. This season, there's little to no time jumping. It's much more linear and that's for the best. The time jumping and multiple timelines was perfect for the first season and completely overdone for the second season. Now everything has been streamlined and it's one of the best series on TV.

I know a lot of you were out on the series after the last season, but give it another chance. It's rare when a series can troubleshoot and self-diagnose it's problems and actually fix almost all of them. Westworld has done it so far.

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I'm one episode behind, so while I haven't read Craig's post (because I don't want to spoil something) I will echo, this season has been great so far.  ERW has been tremendous so far.  Aaron Paul has been a welcome audition, and there have been some VERY fun reveals. 

Go watch if you haven't yet.  

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1 minute ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

I'm one episode behind, so while I haven't read Craig's post (because I don't want to spoil something) I will echo, this season has been great so far.  ERW has been tremendous so far.  Aaron Paul has been a welcome audition, and there have been some VERY fun reveals. 

Go watch if you haven't yet.  

Vincent Cassel is also awesome. There's something very magnetic about him with nearly every performance he gives. I think the first thing I ever saw him in was Ocean's 12. Since then he's always a joy to watch and his role as Serac is no different.

Sorry for the spoilery post before your's. Yeah, definitely skip all of that for now.

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10 hours ago, J.T. said:

Holy fuck.  Decoherence just steps on the gas an doesn't stop, does it!  Best episode so far.

Absolutely.  Bleak as fuck, too.  I can't necessarily handle this season.  And great points by @Craig H about this season having no unnecessary time jumping.  I hadn't noticed it and definitely don't miss it.

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