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On ‎4‎/‎22‎/‎2020 at 9:40 AM, Technico Support said:

Absolutely.  Bleak as fuck, too. 

The ending was heartbreaking.

This episode of Westworld was a better Terminator movie than the last three or so Terminator movies.

Edited by J.T.
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48 minutes ago, J.T. said:

The ending was heartbreaking.

This episode of Westworld was a better Terminator movie than the last three or so Terminator movies.

As soon as the car was turned over and on fire, I said "watch her walk out of it like the Terminator."  DUN DUN DUN DUNDUN

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2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

As soon as the car was turned over and on fire, I said "watch her walk out of it like the Terminator."  DUN DUN DUN DUNDUN

But she was also crying. 

I wept.... 

Her vengeance will be fucking epic.

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I have seen Thandie Newton in skin tight black leather with a katana strapped to her back.  I think I can die happy.

I also think the US Army should look into that helicopter gunship with the twin belt fed recoiless rifle platforms.

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I have no idea how this season is going to wrap up, but it has been really awesome and more of what I want from this series. Plus, they're apparently mapped out for 6 seasons total. I almost want to go back and re-watch season 2, but all of the timeline fuckery makes it hard to want to go back.

Plus, unless something happens in the finale on Sunday, the post credits scene from the season 2 finale has been basically retconned, right?

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Oh, and I'll be super pissed if Dolores gets killed off. I doubt it, but that seems like it would be an epic mistake. I still don't know how Dolores unfucks the whole planet because I ultimately don't think her goal is to overrun the human race. Yeah, she's clearly using Caleb, but she's less of a piece of shit than Serac and it would be weird to have to choose between Serac the utalitarian (I ultimately agree with his motives and his success) and Dolores the anarchist.

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Yeah, that's the thing.  Who the hell am I supposed to be rooting for here?  Serac built something that enslaved the entire planet and Maeve as his henchperson is helping him to, what, gain access to another computer program that was a false memory and is not real?  "I need to be reunited with my simulated daughter who is living in a bitcoin wallet or whatever" is wearing thin as a motivation.  Meanwhile Delores freed the world but somehow made it worse and gives zero shits about using people and throwing them away.  God damn why is it Aaron Paul charactrs' lot in life to be used up and thrown out by megalomaniacs?  I guess we root for Bernard, Fake Thor and Ed Harris?  I have no idea what their motivations are.  I mean Ed is just in "destroy all robots" mode but what about the other two?

Just a rambling data dump here of me trying to make sense of this show.  I hope you enjoyed it.

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Here comes the Man in Black...  he won't let you remember... 

Spoiler

Wasn't a real fan of Dolores' redemption/face turn, but I got it.  I'm guessing we haven't seen the end of Solomon or ERW.  

But we probably have seen the end of Marshawn Lynch's shirt. ?

MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE POST-CREDITS SCENE.  

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Yeah I don’t think I’m coming back for season 4, everyone was flip flopping alignment like it’s 2000 WCW.

Im still not sure what the point of William & Bernard arcs were this series, it contributed nothing to the main storyline.

My wife gave up 4 episodes in.  She checked in on the last ep and said “oh, are they still having a machine gun fight in Blade Runner world?”

 

 

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On ‎5‎/‎4‎/‎2020 at 2:53 PM, Ultimo Necro said:

My wife gave up 4 episodes in.  She checked in on the last ep and said “oh, are they still having a machine gun fight in Blade Runner world?”

Don't make my Engineer brother come to your house and give you and your wife a lecture on why directed energy weapons are a horrible idea.

Newton has already taught us that whether it be in normal atmo or in a vacuum, kinetic impact weapons will always be the best.

Bullets are all well and good but going back to the Blade Runner analogy, the security forces in Westworld rarely seem to have the right kind of firepower necessary to bring down an android without like twenty dudes getting killed. 

You'd have thought that in the Westwold future, advances in ballistic technology would've grown by leaps and bounds and we'd have magrail / chemrail weapons by then or at least air shock or armor piercing rounds and EMP grenades to deal with rogue androids and robots gone apeshit.

This is why Elysium is my favorite future guns movie.

Edited by J.T.
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17 hours ago, Ultimo Necro said:

Yeah I don’t think I’m coming back for season 4, everyone was flip flopping alignment like it’s 2000 WCW.

Im still not sure what the point of William & Bernard arcs were this series, it contributed nothing to the main storyline.

My wife gave up 4 episodes in.  She checked in on the last ep and said “oh, are they still having a machine gun fight in Blade Runner world?”

 

 

Same to all.  The finale really went over like a fart in church to me.  Just very, "okay, that was it?"  I mean I guess I'll watch the next season but it really fell flat after  a great buildup, for me.

One big thing that killed it for me is I just can't deal with Maeve's motivations.  For someone so cool and cynical and, most importantly, so knowledgeable about the true workings of the world behind the curtain, it's ridiculous that her motivation is reuniting with a daughter who doesn't really exist.  It would be like Judy garland giving a shit about the Tin Man after Wizard of Oz wrapped filming.

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23 hours ago, Technico Support said:

One big thing that killed it for me is I just can't deal with Maeve's motivations.  For someone so cool and cynical and, most importantly, so knowledgeable about the true workings of the world behind the curtain, it's ridiculous that her motivation is reuniting with a daughter who doesn't really exist.  It would be like Judy garland giving a shit about the Tin Man after Wizard of Oz wrapped filming.

You mean her daughter doesn't exist yet, right?

This is Westworld we're talking about, after all.  Maeve has died and been reanimated nine times by my count, so existence is a very relative term.

Maeve being knowledgeable about the workings of the world puts her in a good position of actually fulfilling her wish to be reunited with her "daughter."  All it would take is some programming and maybe a new shell if her daughter is designed to live outside of the virtual.

And yeah, I also feel that the finale was a bit anticlimactic given the terrific run of the last three or four episodes.

That post credit scene, tho..

Edited by J.T.
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I mean yeah I guess she could dump her daughter's programmomg into a new body but then what?  Is she like Caludia in Interview with a Vampire?  A little kid who never ages?  Or does she reprogram her and swap bodies every few months to simulate growing up?

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10 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I mean yeah I guess she could dump her daughter's programmomg into a new body but then what?  Is she like Caludia in Interview with a Vampire?  A little kid who never ages?  Or does she reprogram her and swap bodies every few months to simulate growing up?

"Growing up" is a human correlation between age and time. 

Androids / AI's are always the same age through their entire lifecycle so yes, it is possible Maeve's daugher could be designed to act and function as a child for her entire lifespan... if it ever ended...  and that would be perfectly fine in an AI / Android society where age is static.

Maeve has "died" nine times and she always returns in the same host at the same age (i.e. an adult), so it is highly probably her "daughter's" design would be similar aka she'd resemble and function as a child for as long as the software and frame lasted. 

Maeve may not want her "daughter" to grow up because that might entail creating an entirely new AI.  A human can age and remain the same person and that is not usually the case for software.  Software can only be upgraded but so much before a new version is required to improve and increase functionality.

Maeve's Daughter Version 9 Years Old might have to be deleted or rewritten (i.e. she'd have to die) to make way for Maeve's Daughter Version 10 Years Old and so on.  Even a simple reboot of an AI might be enough to drastically alter its personality or erase its life experiences by destroying memories.  That was a topic explored to a satisfying degree in the current season of Altered Carbon.

As you can see, I read too many Issac Asimov books as a teen.  

Edited by J.T.
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I don't know...I liked the finale, but it's hard to get behind Dolores when her intention is to have human civilization collapse as a way to save humans? Like, I WANT to live in a world with something a Rehoboam that ensures bullshit like Trump getting elected doesn't happen, that global warming is fought, that wars don't happen, etc. I suppose that makes me something of a utalitarian, which I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'm at least comfortable knowing my place in the world won't be any grander or greater than what it is. As for others who, like Caleb, will only have a life of crime or just manual labor? Like Judge Smails said, "the world needs ditch diggers too." So Dolores fucking all of that up to give humans a chance knowing full well that humans will just kill each other off doesn't really seem like she's helping humans very much, but it does sound pretty fucking ideal for humans to wipe themselves out so hosts can re-populate the world even though that's not her intent? I'm confused...So very confused by it all.

And yet I still liked it. Good sci-fi now is slim pickings and I'll take what I can get. Not everything is going to be nearly perfect like The Expanse, but I'll accept something that's good 66% of the time and clunky the other 33% of the time like Westworld.

I'm very curious to see where season 4 goes. Will it be in the far, bombed out future after Bernard wakes up? Will we see what leads up to that? Will Caleb be there? 

Some other random thoughts: This season did feel a little too inspired by the Terminator series, but slightly twisted. Caleb is obviously in the John Connor role, but again, what good is being a leader when humanity is about to kill itself off? 

My head is still spinning typing all of this out. Dolores and Caleb's whole scheme seems to be let's purposely burn down this house, which was perfectly adequate, committing both arson and insurance fraud in the process, and file an insurance claim to declare a total loss to then have a nice, more modern house re-built because you're too impatient or too poor to just make updates to the home over time AND hope you don't get busted for arson or insurance fraud.

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Thematically I have no problems with the politics of the finale.  It's very cyberpunk of the show writers to have anarchy be the only smart solution to fix a corporate run world that is beyond repair.  In a world gone mad, only people that insist on staying sane are the crazy ones, right?

I was just hoping for a conclusion that wasn't quite so bleak.  When humanity is at stake, you always hope that humans will do the right thing and pull things out of the fire, even if most of them are assholes.  As of the end of S3, things are not looking terribly optimistic for humankind.

Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon chiming in just as all hell broke loose was fucking awesome and I am all in for S4 after watching the post credit joint. 

 

Edited by J.T.
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I mostly dislike Pink Floyd (too depressingly English for my tastes) and, between strangers calling a unwitting messiah "sir" and, later,  a man and woman watching buildings blow up, I'm not sure why they didn't just use "Where is My Mind" instead.

So Delores saw Caleb was a good dude years before and made  a plan for him.  What would she have done if he'd died any time in the ensuing years?

 

Stolen from Reddit, season 3, summarized:

Serac: I finally have you now Dolores!
Dolores: Nice try, but that was all a part of my plan!
Caleb: what the fuck is going on


Bernard: Dolores is trying to take over the world and enslave the humans! She's going to replace everyone and turn humans against each other! And I know all of this because the plot needs someone to explain it to the audience!
Stubbs: fuck you bernard.


William: im gonna save the fucking world


Serac: You may have gotten me that time Dolores but NOW I have you for real!
Dolores: nah all part of my plan again
Caleb: seriously what the fuck is going on


Bernard: She's going to use Caleb as a pawn to make the humans kill each other and build her own robot world!
Stubbs: how the fuck do u know any of this weve just been randomly walking around this whole season


William: im gonna save the fucking world


Serac: Okay Dolores, you may have bested me the last two times but NOW I've got you for su-
Dolores: nope all part of my plan
Caleb: alright i give up


Bernard: Dolores was actually the good guy the whole time and sacrificed herself so that hosts can live in harmony with humans in a better world, and she put the encryption key inside of me because she knew only I could be trusted with it-
Stubbs: BERNARD WE'VE LITERALLY BEEN RANDOMLY GOING FROM MOTEL TO MOTEL BY OURSELVES THIS WHOLE SEASON HOW DO YOU KNOW ANY OF THIS!
Bernard: There's no time to explain, I must go to the sublime with the other hosts for the next 10 years!
Stubbs: cool so i guess ill just chill here in this bathtub


William: im gonna save the fucking worl-
Nega William kills William


Edited by Technico Support
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I'm still stuck on Dolores meeting/seeing Caleb years earlier when she hadn't even been on the mainland for that long. I liked the season overall, I liked the finale, but that one thing has really stuck out. I don't see how that makes any sense. At first I thought it was human Dolores and wondered if all of the hosts were based on humans, but then it becomes clear that, no, that's host Dolores with some other girls, but it all had to have happened so long ago so how does it work for her to be there when she should have still been in Westworld before Westworld went to shit?

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20 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I'm still stuck on Dolores meeting/seeing Caleb years earlier when she hadn't even been on the mainland for that long. I liked the season overall, I liked the finale, but that one thing has really stuck out. I don't see how that makes any sense. At first I thought it was human Dolores and wondered if all of the hosts were based on humans, but then it becomes clear that, no, that's host Dolores with some other girls, but it all had to have happened so long ago so how does it work for her to be there when she should have still been in Westworld before Westworld went to shit?

Yeah, with all of the time jumping going on, it's hard to pinpoint ground zero events like when did the Hosts actually become self aware.   At some points they show human levels of empathy and emotion and then at other points they are their usual difference engine emotionless selves.

I think they are still in the process of evolution and trying to figure things out.

 

Edited by J.T.
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31 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I'm still stuck on Dolores meeting/seeing Caleb years earlier when she hadn't even been on the mainland for that long. I liked the season overall, I liked the finale, but that one thing has really stuck out. I don't see how that makes any sense. At first I thought it was human Dolores and wondered if all of the hosts were based on humans, but then it becomes clear that, no, that's host Dolores with some other girls, but it all had to have happened so long ago so how does it work for her to be there when she should have still been in Westworld before Westworld went to shit?

Unless I'm missing your point, Delores saw Caleb when the military was doing testing in one of the Delos parks (Warworld?).  The military had hired Delos to run scenarios with bots vs real soldiers and gather brainwave info on the soldiers.  That's how Delores 1) met Caleb and 2) knew his mind so well eventually.  Delos had his mind in their database.

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33 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Unless I'm missing your point, Delores saw Caleb when the military was doing testing in one of the Delos parks (Warworld?).  The military had hired Delos to run scenarios with bots vs real soldiers and gather brainwave info on the soldiers.  That's how Delores 1) met Caleb and 2) knew his mind so well eventually.  Delos had his mind in their database.

Oh ok, that makes sense then. The scene made it look like a real world scenario and I didn't even think that Caleb was inside a park.

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6 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Oh ok, that makes sense then. The scene made it look like a real world scenario and I didn't even think that Caleb was inside a park.

Delores did mention it right at the start of the flashback, but I can see how both you and JT missed that.  That episode was a massive data dump with a ton of info flying at us.  But yeah, it was a government-backed Delos sim to study soldiers' reactions to combat.

Edited by Technico Support
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When you mentioned that I instantly remember Caleb removing his helmet and looking at the sensors in his helmet. I forgot about that until now.

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