hey

I enjoyed that. The majority of the series was atmospheric nonsense, and the final two episodes brought it all together quite neatly. I worried that the wrap-up would be unsatisfying, but it actually worked. Well played, Mr Nolan and pals.

Some of it felt a bit patronising (have you understood this important point about the nature of consciousness yet? I’ll repeat it just in case. And again. And hey, here it is AGAIN for thickos) but I can live with that.

Lovely performances from Harris, Wright, Hopkins and the snake girl.

Some nice loose ends dangled for season two. SURPRISE! There are multiple parks. TEASER! One of them is Samuraiworld. MYSTERY! Thandie Newton is looking for park one … bets on that not being Westworld? TENSION! Is William gonna die? He was only winged by that first shot …

Sadly, I reckon we’ll see more of the same in season two, rather than a dramatic expansion in scale. HBO paid for all those wild west park sets to be built. They’re still standing. They’ll be using them again.

legaldinho wrote:

The big twist is that park one is just the regular world.

And she fucked it by not staying on the train. D’OH.

Eastworld.

Blocks100 wrote:

Nipworld

That's where Reg's avatar was shot

Nolan and Wood were mega-pleased with their postproduction effects that sped up or slowed down facial tics, blinking, etc. Supposed to be subtle cues that reveal/reinforce that the hosts are not human. They spent a fortune on it and, directorially, obsessed over the use of the effect (to the point where the FX teams hated them for it).

I reckon it was a total waste of time. Barely noticed it and when I did it felt forced. Added nothing.

Except when really overemphasised, when a host went off the rails and glitched. Then it worked.

That was the highlight of the whole season, dare I say series, ep101, scene 1 IIRC

Think ep102 was a Rolling Stones number

Fake Plastic Trees & Exit Music for a film

Paint it Black by the Stones in there too.

Also Motion Picture Soundtrack

I've just finished watching this and reading some of the thread. Seems I agree with most of it ie good start, good end, load of shite in between. 6 hours would have done, comfortably.

The dual timeline thing was unnecessary and wasted hours over a character transformation that wasn't convincing (and also isn't believable as the actors look too different and the age gap is too big). Could easily have done that whole story in a few flashbacks if not trying for a 'twist'.

Thandie's story also made no sense. The reason for those lab guys to keep helping her was far too slight for one.

And generally a lot of the interesting themes hinted at in the early stages just weren't developed well or were hammered in far too hard. Perhaps there's a meta thing going on - we convince ourselves we're there for something meaningful, but really all we want is the drama, violence and sex - but I think it just missed a trick there.

Still, the final 20 minutes delivered a good resolution, and the whole thing about the maze leading them to self-consciousness, and self-consciousness immediately/necessarily leading to violence was well done. It could easily just stop there - no need for a second season.

SO THEN. Season two. Just watched episode three last night.

Lovely to start seeing the different parks and to see them start overspilling into each other. The tiger felt like a proper ‘oh shit’ moment.

And I was wrong about the glitching Bernard. I thought he had a different host’s ‘brain core’ in his head. Turns out he’s still himself, but his memory has been overfilled with a copy of Delos’s dump of the whole park(s) user data.

Anyone else starting to think that the inevitable result of self-awareness amongst the hosts is going to be war between host factions? Dolores and Maeve as leaders of the rival factions, by the end of s3?

Yeah, I thought he'd copied the data.

Didn't like it much this week myself. The faction thing is a bit vague. Are the Confederates still playing their roles and if they are, why?

How are the guns working again?

Really didn't like that big action scene, all that money and it's like a bad A-Team episode. Could anyone shoot.

The Indian stuff was a nice diversion, but that's a weird holiday. It's not exactly the stuff of pulp adventure.

I_R wrote:

The Indian stuff was a nice diversion, but that's a weird holiday. It's not exactly the stuff of pulp adventure.

Never underestimate Americans’ desire to go big game hunting. Or to enjoy a bit of casual slave/servant owning.

To be fair, we don’t know how many parks there are. They could be scraping the barrel for settings by park 28, y’know?

They’d never get the hosts to understand the accent.