# Anyone else checked out Westworld New HBO



## brutalwizard (Oct 6, 2016)

The premise is sick. Already found the characters to be pretty engaging.


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## mongey (Oct 6, 2016)

I liked it. I haven't seen the original for maybe 30 years. Need to watch it again for perspective


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## HeavyMetal4Ever (Oct 6, 2016)

Yeah, saw the first episode and it was pretty interesting. I'm keen for the rest of the season.


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## Steinmetzify (Oct 6, 2016)

Dig it. I'm in, if they pace this right it could turn out incredible.


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## takotakumi (Oct 6, 2016)

I think this might become my new favorite series haha really enjoyed the first ep.
Heck, even his OST was epic as fax near the beginning


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## KnightBrolaire (Oct 6, 2016)

It was pretty cool. I love scifi and westerns so this was a nice mix imo. I liked the anachronistic music like when they used black hole sun and paint it black for the saloon music.


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## fps (Oct 15, 2016)

Its approach to ethical issues around technology is sooooo dated.


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## wankerness (Oct 23, 2016)

It's a bit too dour and ponderous (largely due to the lousy two themes that get repeated over and over), but overall I like it quite a bit. Evan Rachel Wood is tearing it up, or at least the writing for her character is. It seems VERY much to be moving in the vein of Ex Machina so far. They seem to have split the Caleb character into the main scientist guy, and probably McPoyle, who seems to now be set up to fall for her hard and probably help to enable her. 

I love the actor who's playing the main scientist guy (I recognize him, but can't recall his characters from either thing I've seen him in - the Hunger Games movies and Source Code). I still can't take McPoyle seriously, because McPoyle. He hasn't been on screen enough to make much of an impression beyond "nerdy well-meaning guy."

I don't really get what the point is of Ed Harris's character yet, and I hate watching him. The show is REALLY making you hate the humans immediately, while the movie obviously just had the robots as menaces. And casting Evan Rachel Wood as the lead robot obviously sets just about everyone up to side with and even love her, though that is probably part of the show's point. Ex Machina syndrome?  

Anthony Hopkins so far seems as inconsistent as that parallel terrible, terrible character in Jurassic World - the one played by the guy who played Pi. I don't care enough to look him up. Point is, that guy was also kind of the park "designer," and he had this bizarre split between having some childlike sense of wanting to bring dreams to people, and then some kind of ruthless mercenary businessman, and then some kind of heroic helicopter pilot. Anthony Hopkins seems to be similarly split with no explanation, but I have more faith in this show than that awful movie, and there are plenty of episodes left to make him make sense.

I get a kick out of the piano rolls, it's much more fun to listen to that than the crappy score which frequently seems to be threatening to go into the Rains of Castemere. I noticed No Surprises and Black Hole Sun so far, and I guess Paint it Black, though that turned into non-diegetic music pretty quick.


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## fps (Oct 25, 2016)

wankerness said:


> I get a kick out of the piano rolls, it's much more fun to listen to that than the crappy score which frequently seems to be threatening to go into the Rains of Castemere. I noticed No Surprises and Black Hole Sun so far, and I guess Paint it Black, though that turned into non-diegetic music pretty quick.



The re-imagined soundtrack is a pleasure, for sure! Plus reflects the kinda people who might design this place and what they might listen to, so, double win!


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## FILTHnFEAR (Oct 28, 2016)

Have never even heard of this show. Just watched a trailer. Wow, looks pretty cool, definitely gotta check this out.


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## wankerness (Nov 5, 2016)

An orgy scored by a string arrangement of "Something I Can Never Have" was not a musical choice I could have predicted!


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## Steinmetzify (Nov 14, 2016)

Just finished epi 7. This is nuts and the implications are staggering. 

How many people has he replaced with Hosts? Who is paying for this and what's the agenda? Ostensibly this is a amusement park but cmon. The costs of running this thing aren't being handled by guests paying $40k per day. Operations costs for this place have to run into the billions per year. Who's got that money? Governments, military and foreign powers, that's who. 

I'm interested in what this thing exactly IS, because in spite of what we've been shown it's simply got to be something else entirely. 

How much do you think a government would pay for a population they can control? I mean of course they couldn't get everyone, but even 10-20% of the richest people in a country can have serious policy implications.


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## big_aug (Nov 15, 2016)

Man I didn't see it coming and loved it. I like this show a lot. Anthony Hopkins is turning into a fantastic villain type character and he plays it soooooo well. His facial expressions during the demonstration wheb Bernard got fired were chilling. Him knowing Bernards reality during the while thing. Man. Good stuff


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## thraxil (Nov 16, 2016)

It's a really well done show, but I'm having a hard time suspending disbelief and buying in to the whole concept of the world. With the advanced AI, robotics, and bioengineering technology that they have, I just can't see how a wild west theme park would be a remotely plausible use of that technology.

Also, as a software developer, it's hard to watch them bumbling about and wonder how development veered so far off the path of version control, code review, reproducible builds, audit trails, and automated testing.


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## mongey (Nov 23, 2016)

still liking it allot

gotta say not really sure where its going to go in ep's 9 and 10 ,which is a good thing


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## big_aug (Nov 28, 2016)

Well that was a really great episode


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## wankerness (Nov 28, 2016)

I'm REALLY praying we don't get 4-5 seasons of this. I just don't get how they can stretch this past two seasons. It's starting to feel like a chore to watch, and knowing that any big robo-revolution that happens is going to be either so delayed or inconsequential that we have 3-4 more seasons of it is just tiring to think about. Gah.

The way the show confirmed that


Spoiler



this is a two-timeline show and it looks like it's almost definite that William (McPoyle) is the Man in Black (Ed Harris) last night is also sort of tiring to think about. I'm still trying to piece together some aspects of it, like how Ford looks the same constantly besides in a couple short flashbacks.


 I don't know if I enjoy the show enough to rewatch this season, but it looks like that is going to be necessary to sort all that out since I wasn't looking for it AT ALL until this episode, and now I need to confirm what is happening where.


Spoiler



I believe that Dolores freaking out caused the first revolution and that Maeve is currently working on the second?


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## extendedsolo (Nov 28, 2016)

While I haven't watched the latest episode, I will say I've enjoyed the escapism of this show. It's a fun show that allows me to completely turn my brain off. I'm all in on this one and am not looking for deeper meanings or trying to figure out "OH HERE'S MY INTERESTING FAN THEORY" 

I don't care about anyone's theory of what's going to happen. It's a TV show.

A fun show that I would compare to baked potato chips. It's passed off as high brow, but in reality it's just the same junk we've always seen. That's completely fine since I'm enjoying myself.


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## wankerness (Nov 28, 2016)

I'm not sure what you're referring to with "fan theories," this is all blatant on the surface, it just took several weeks to cement itself (ex, the picture which was given emphasis in both the first episode and this last episode).


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## extendedsolo (Nov 28, 2016)

wankerness said:


> I'm not sure what you're referring to with "fan theories," this is all blatant on the surface, it just took several weeks to cement itself (ex, the picture which was given emphasis in both the first episode and this last episode).



Not things like the picture more like " I THINK IT"S ON MARS!" and "ALL THE ROBOTS ARE HUMANS AND ALL THE HUMANS ARE ROBOTS" Just things that are kind of out of left field and seem to pop up in facebook comments section. I mean any reading about the show right now always has fan theories in the comments. Reddit (yeah yeah I know) had an entire thread of them. Even our friends that watch it say "you want to know what I think is going to happen?"

I'm just trying to enjoy the show, yes I do care about what happens, but I'm not trying to be Sherlock Holmes over here.


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## wankerness (Nov 28, 2016)

Oh, yeah. I didn't read ANY of that stuff, until this week when I actually read a comment thread on AV club. Lots of people were like "this all proves our theory!!!!" But, their theory was a lot less ridiculous than those. I'm not surprised people were thinking of idiotic Lost-style twists. This show, though, dropped clues on purpose and then confirmed them, as opposed to Lost, where they dropped clues and then intentionally did something completely different to be WILD and UNPREDICTABLE!


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## extendedsolo (Nov 28, 2016)

wankerness said:


> Oh, yeah. I didn't read ANY of that stuff, until this week when I actually read a comment thread on AV club. Lots of people were like "this all proves our theory!!!!" But, their theory was a lot less ridiculous than those. I'm not surprised people were thinking of idiotic Lost-style twists. This show, though, dropped clues on purpose and then confirmed them, as opposed to Lost, where they dropped clues and then intentionally did something completely different to be WILD and UNPREDICTABLE!



yeah I never watched Lost, but I know the general idea. How it was great and then just went in the crapper. There were some theories that this is how Westworld will turn out, but whatever.

Also I agree with whoever said that they don't see how this can go 5 or 6 seasons. I really think this is 3 seasons of 10 episodes MAX, otherwise it's into Walking Dead territory of like "oh bad guy, oh they beat him, oh NEW bad guy." 

Season1: Establish characters, conflict
Season 2: explore conflict and certain characters
Season 3: Resolve conflict complete arc of characters. 

Even then it might be too many episodes. The thing is, they can keep introducing new characters via outside world or robots.


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## wankerness (Nov 29, 2016)

The only way they can keep introducing characters is if they keep delaying and delaying actually showing the two rebellions (Maeve and Dolores). And once those happen, then where do they have to go? 4-5 seasons of blue balls would be ridiculous.



Spoiler



Considering we already know the rough outcome of Dolores's (she massacred tons of bots and killed the real Arnold, who we've seen plenty of times talking to her, he was clearly interested in how she was becoming "sentient", but then was put back into circulation; and Billy apparently became resentful of how he fell so hard for her and has been trying to figure out her inner workings ever since, while also turning into Mr. Psycho), there's not much suspense there, either!


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## mongey (Dec 8, 2016)

I don't have time to go into all the things about the finale

in short

I liked it .liked what they did and how it ended


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## crankyrayhanky (Dec 8, 2016)

slow at times, but it had enough great and compelling moments. The finale worked well IMO


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## fps (Dec 10, 2016)

This show was very stupid, while pretending to be very clever and important. Shows that pompous always annoy me. As does replacing storytelling with simply not giving you enough information to enjoy and engage with what is happening.


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## wankerness (Dec 10, 2016)

fps said:


> This show was very stupid, while pretending to be very clever and important. Shows that pompous always annoy me. As does replacing storytelling with simply not giving you enough information to enjoy and engage with what is happening.



How was it stupid?


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## fps (Dec 17, 2016)

wankerness said:


> How was it stupid?



Just watch it and ask yourself "does this make sense" every time a character does anything. Even ask it about the set-up itself. Worth asking if any people ever talk or behave anything like any of the people in the show too. It is a seriously, stupendously dumb show.


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## wankerness (Dec 18, 2016)

That dodged the question. I can't think of any "stupendously dumb" or "idiotic" behavior, so obviously I don't think LITERALLY EVERY THING ANYONE DOES ON THE ENTIRE SHOW is idiotic.

The one thing I see people complain about is the tech who helps Maeve, but I think that's easily explained away by "maybe this guy actually sides with the bots" like other characters do.


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## narad (Dec 19, 2016)

fps said:


> Worth asking if any people ever talk or behave anything like any of the people in the show too. It is a seriously, stupendously dumb show.



You mean next time I'm at the robot wild west simulation park I should see if real people there act the way they do in the show? Not that I think anyone has to appeal to the outrageously unusual circumstances of the show's future lifestyle to justify the behavior or dialogue -- it's big-budget HBO -- there's no guarantee of success but it's a given that it has good actors and good dialogue. I can't really think of any instance from the show that fits what you're saying. 

It was the maze subplot that kind of threw me with it's "LOST" heavy mystery to substance ratio though.


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## lewis (Dec 21, 2016)

the irony of people saying its stupid, is probably because its actually so cleverly done and most definitely not stupid, that some dont understand the show therefore just put it down.


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## CapnForsaggio (Dec 21, 2016)

I like it, but how does "food" work?

Presumeably, some robot person/hunter/cook is going out and killing/butchering some other ?robot animal?

Then making "food", and serving it to "guests?"

Basically, someone explain to me how "real food" might make it's way into WestWorld....


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## wankerness (Dec 21, 2016)

CapnForsaggio said:


> I like it, but how does "food" work?
> 
> Presumeably, some robot person/hunter/cook is going out and killing/butchering some other ?robot animal?
> 
> ...


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## fps (Dec 27, 2016)

narad said:


> You mean next time I'm at the robot wild west simulation park I should see if real people there act the way they do in the show? Not that I think anyone has to appeal to the outrageously unusual circumstances of the show's future lifestyle to justify the behavior or dialogue -- it's big-budget HBO -- there's no guarantee of success but it's a given that it has good actors and good dialogue. I can't really think of any instance from the show that fits what you're saying.
> 
> It was the maze subplot that kind of threw me with it's "LOST" heavy mystery to substance ratio though.



The guy who was walking through all-glass rooms, and still didn't see the horrendous murder happening in the room he was going into until he walked through the glass door. One example among many.

And the show needs some level of reality to bounce off and relate to. If you're going to have actors playing humans in your show, you're going to need to give them some human-like patterns of behaviour, or speech, or communication, anything... I understand that removing those elements can be the point, but in this case the show didn't earn the right to do that for me.


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## narad (Dec 27, 2016)

C'mon man, that was 3 weeks ago now. Half the show takes place in all-glass rooms. I can't follow that.

But yea, regarding actors having human-like patterns of behaviour, speech, etc., pretty sure everyone had that. I honestly can't even imagine what you mean without turning it into a joke, and I've not read a single criticism of the show that shared your opinion.


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