Westworld premiered on HBO last night (at the time of writing this), bringing us the next visionary original series from the acclaimed network. And, like so many HBO show’s, Westworld blended the epic with the titillating with the high artistic, and the results were… confusing for some people watching.
One part western, one part sci-fi, one part philosophical and moral quandary (sprung from the mind of the late Michael Crichton), Westworld is indeed a strange, if not beautiful, beast. So to help fans acclimate, showrunners Jonathan Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy sat down for a clarification session with EW. Along the way, they touched on who the characters are, what the setup is, and the storyline and thematic arc for season 1.
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Westworld of course began as a 1973 movie written and directed by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park). The story involved a futuristic theme park where rich people could live out their fantasies using robots. However, after a malfunction, one of the robots in an old west fantasy scenario starts hunting the vacationers.
Clearly the HBO series is remixing the elements of Crichton’s film into something new – but that doesn’t just mean a new storyline and characters (albeit set within the same premise); it also means a entirely new approach to the story, as “The Hosts” (i.e., the artificially intelligence robots used in the theme park) are now the heroes instead of the villains:
Yeah, it was about subverting that [tradition],” said Lisa Joy. “It was important for us to establish that connection with the hosts from the beginning. We’ve been trained to have a distance from those characters in other movies and TV depictions of artificial intelligence. To look at them as the Other … We started from the point of view because for us it was the most tenuous emphatic connection and if you didn’t nail it right on you might not ever get it. If you started from the guests, we already have that kind of human-centric bias. We had to shake that system. And then after that in future episodes you could expand the guest point of view a little bit more and the technician’s point of view…I think the interplay between them and when different groups feel more human is part of the fun of writing this show and experiencing the show.“
HBO premieres are known for leaving viewers discussing some impactful (read: shocking) moments the next day (see: Game of Thrones), and Westworld definitely had one such moments, as wide-eyed frontier girl/host, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), was violently attacked by The Man in Black, who is a twist on the robot gunslinger villain played by Yul Brynner in the original film.
While that scene is sparking a lot of discussion and debate, Joy notes that it was a crucial piece of violence that actually forms the major arc for season 1: For me, it was important to do that respectfully and to get from it the essential question: “This a terrible, terrible thing that is happening. If Dolores is a person, it’s unforgivable.” Then if you take a step back – and for a minute, you do really have to take a step back to get into the analytical, less visceral place – it’s like: “If it’s just a robot, does it matter?” That’s a question we continue to ask throughout the series.“
That’s not an altogether new theme in sci-fi, but it definitely is a new approach to the Westworld story, as the original film was quite clear about how it viewed the threat of technology. During the TV series’ premiere, there was a reference to the park’s history, which some took to be an Easter egg reference that makes the original film’s events part of this show’s canon. Jonathan Nolan doesn’t want fans to work too much about that, noting, “It’s playful but not meant to be literal. We wanted to connect to the ideas in the original film, but also take a look at this place as a cultural institution that is not new – because these ideas aren’t new.”
However, Nolan was a bit dodgier when asked if another element of the original film is part of the TV version: the idea that the Delos company has more theme parks than Westworld. Nolan’s coy answer to that was, “I would assume nothing. We’ve got an awful lot of material to cover just with Westworld, but you want to stay tuned.“
Westworld is currently airing Sunday nights @9/8c on HBO.
