Westworld 2016

This season (season THREE ) was a definite slow burn and I fear it may be the last. Why did it take so long to reach it's conclusion, not to mention the amount of time it took to explain the plot thricely (episodes 1-4 bizarrely cryptic 4-6 disorganized flashbacks and finally in an almost palpable desperation of the writer's room - we were illuminated about the plot via long monologues from each character.]

The action scenes and automated vehicles sometimes had more character than actual actors on screen. As a Westworld fan, I come for the creepy and sneaky yet I understand that in order for movies to survive studios need to appeal to adolescent boys who really, really get off on explosives this season had an entire episode dedicated to a car chase, so my loyalty to the show was tested slightly!

Fortunately Delores and Mauve carry us through each episode with their typical badass aplomb. The addition of Aaron Paul seemed to replicate the audience's comprehension of what the hell was happening. His character arc allows him to shines in amazing action scenes but his origins and purpose remain stubbornly hidden when it no longer benefits the plot.

Westworld's hidden humanity and underdogs made watching the first 2 seasons rise to it's anarchic conclusion - pure addictive TV pleasure. The downside with blowing up the badass world - is knowing that for many excellent stories, the unique character of the stories setting also is a major loss

If anyone else call the first episode a pilot, I swear I´ll cut his tongue. The budget for its Premiere was in the neighborhood USD 25 million that its what many others get for a whole fall season (12 episode); which means that we aren't watching a pilot but a Full Fledge International Premiere.

It has all the ingredients, including a very large budget to succeed. My concern is if Sci-fi as a subject in itself could lack enough mass appeal, the way that firefly did, to support the costly special effects, outdoor filming and cast. Most, if not all, Sci-fi productions happen inside a space ship in the middle of blackness. But this series is here to break molds, and being Sci-fi, it's staged at some Westen Village and natural surroundings, so many scenes include a lot of exteriors, blended with special effects.

Very few TV Series that are longer than "A Band of Brothers" have been able to support these kind expenses, right know only one comes to mind, Game of Thrones, I hope it becomes its successor audience because in every other aspect it surpasses the latter by far. I'm sorry Game of Thrones fans but that's the way it's.

I guess we are lucky that HBO is behind it and it has a tradition of being kind of stubborn on Quality and not so much on audiences (at least for two seasons). Hope they have not changed lately.

I've liked this series from the beginning and it just got better with each episode. The 1st season finale was spectacular! Well worth watching, maybe best as a binge watch (I found it difficult to wait a week between episodes, and the story was so complex/original/unique it may be best to have no memory lag from one episode to another. I'm glad they have renewed it for another season. I give it a 10 (outstanding) out of 10.

Thoughts at the end of Season Two - The series has not deviated from it's quality, but this season was even more complex, and I reiterate that binging may be the best way to watch (if you can handle waiting until all 10 episodes of the season air before digging in). Three helpful hints in watching the series (I'll hide them as spoilers in case you'd rather figure it out for yourself. If you get lost come back here and this may help): there are two interweaving post massacre timelines that involve Bernard which are separated by two weeks, the second begins with Bernard found on the beach, try to separate them from each other. The other characters back stories are pre massacre. And finally, like Marvel, there is a post credit scene at the end of episode 10 which is set in the distant future. . The second season never missed a beat and I maintain it's 10 (outstanding) out of 10 rating. Unsurprisingly, it has been renewed for a third season. [Futuristic Drama]

Although "Westworld" still deserves some praise for always trying to reinvent itself and get bigger and more ambitious in scale each time, they completely missed the point after the end of the first season. I wonder if they actually had more than ten episodes in mind when laying down the foundations.

Now that the show got canceled, I would highly recommend watching the first season only and forgetting about the rest. Despite the open ending, all questions find an answer, and most arcs get perfectly closed. As with all big productions, it had to make more than one compromise to please everybody, but it still retained the potential to become one of the decade's most balanced and intriguing mainstream shows. It was eye-candy enough for popcorn entertainment, yet thought-provoking enough for those who want something more engaging. The dark, gritty tone mixed with extreme violence and sex continued the HBO trend set by Game of Thrones but still pulled it off quite elegantly. I didn't like how they had to throw in a random shoot-out in every single episode, but I guess you can't keep people interested if a gun doesn't fire every 30 minutes.

Artificial intelligence has been an abused theme in sci-fi entertainment, and Westworld limits itself to making the same textbook philosophical considerations on free will and identity without adding much new. However, I thought the writing shined when exploring the darkest sides of its human characters. Ford, William, and (implicitly) Arnold are the three primary forces around which the whole season and its mysteries revolve. On the other hand, I found it pretty hard to empathize with most of the hosts, as they were programmed to stick to the clichés of their narrative. It's more than understandable, but as the writers insist on getting them killed or raped to make us humans feel sorry, I ended up caring very little about them.

After the second half of the second season, it just became a mixed bag of generic sci-fi/action tropes to stretch the plot for as long as possible. The writing started to take a completely different approach, and the original team became less involved with each new season. Characters became inconsistent and, at times, unrecognizable, continuously going from one extreme to another. Some would even keep changing their goals and motives depending on the writer they got for the episode. It all becomes about making the plot as convoluted as possible for its own sake and resorting to cheap tricks to surprise the audience or distract them from the gaps in logic.

Maeve's storyline was the one that required the most significant amount of patience and suspension of disbelief. She hardly had a purpose to stick around for longer than a few episodes if not because the actor's contract needed to get renewed. Her story arc is the second season's most significant issue, but it only got worse in the third and fourth. Not to mention that she died and came back to life at least a dozen times.

The third season is probably the most ambitious, as it finally took us outside the park and showed a whole new world, but the transition could have been handled better. None of the old characters make sense in this new storyline, and the new screenwriters are obviously not as competent as the previous ones. It just became a generic dystopian sci-fi show with questionable fan-service moments with the old cast. Surprisingly enough, Hale suddenly became the most compelling character, even considering the sudden change of heart in the last few episodes. Dolores played more with ambiguity, but her ending made everything up to that point kind of pointless and illogical.

The fourth season acknowledged the fans' complaints and attempted a return to form. Whatever happened in the third season gets labeled as a little more than a diversion, and many situations and plot points from the second season are brought back again. The problem is that we still miss the most important thing that made the first season unique: the writing. This fourth season is even more contrived and utterly pretentious than the previous one. It eventually just limits itself to resetting the status quo and bringing characters back alive for the umpteenth time so that they can wrestle some more. The only moment it felt like being back to the original mood of the show was with the twist and change of perspective in the middle of the season…. which didn't lead to anything anyway. The ending has to be one of the most ridiculous things ever, as if nothing up to this point meant anything.

As of season 3's completion, the show is in an overall good spot. It seems to be increasingly common that HBO shows have an incredible start and then soil the bed in writing quality (Game of Thrones) as the show goes on. Westworld is one of those shows that you really have to pay close attention to, and might be best enjoyed checking out some analyses and reviews on YouTube or Reddit.

Season 1 was top tier. Some people might argue it's boring, but I'd say it has an incredibly good script and production quality. There's no BS, everything seems well planned out and there's plenty of foreshadowing and hinting very early on about the direction the show is going in.

Season 2 was too convoluted for me. I struggled to follow along and by the end I was expecting some massive reveals and things to come together the way they did in season 1. Instead, I was left confused and disappointed, really having no clue what happened. The only thing that had me come back to season 3 is sunk cost fallacy. Maybe this season was just too smart for me, but I figure that it's probably too smart for most viewers. I would guess a large part of it comes down to the messing around with multiple concurrent timelines and spaces for seemingly no meaningful reason other than to make things appear more mystical. It could be that I just don't remember the season well enough at this point.

Season 3, while not as good as season 1, definitely redeemed the show for me and after the mess of season 2. I'm back to being interested and excited for season 4. The universe expands in this season and touches on some real concerns relating to futurism like superintelligent AI, determinism, data privacy, etc. It had a bit of a silly start, particularly with the cameo of Drogon and the idiot D&D twins Benioff and Weiss immediately followed by Stubbs chasing down a small troop of armed guards with a rubber axe. I took this as a sign that Season 3 was going down the toilet, but luckily I was wrong. The writing doesn't mess much with timelines, but does include some scenes within simulations which are given away by their letterboxing. It's not as confusing as season 2 but is still dense with hinting information. The production quality is amazing if that's something you care about, probably one of the best portrayals of futuristic tech I've seen. The action scenes are cool, but I think sacrifice believability for suspense. There are many scenes I was left wondering "Why didn't you just shoot him/her, what are you waiting for?!", "Why did you just do that?!", but it's a small part and doesn't ruin the show.

I survived through 8 episodes. The show is beautiful, the acting is great, and I just love seeing fellow Brazilians working in cool shows like this (go, Santoro!). I got to enjoy most of the characters too, I thought they were well built, and I got to see a lot of development during these 8 episodes. I specially appreciated Jimmi Simpson as William, as I think heroic characters of this particular type are a very rare find nowadays.
However, episode after episode, I found myself less and less interested in the plots. Some scenes caught my attention here and there (Dolores's, and Maeve's scenes really stand out!), but I was most of the time pretty indifferent to what I was seeing. It came to the point when I began dreading whenever my randomized media list would fall on an episode, and I kept skipping it several times before I could convince myself to watch it. Finally, I just decided to give up entirely.
I was severely disappointed with the themes the series chose to explore, as they were not what I thought they would be from the pilot. The development outside the park was also extremely slow, with most things left obvious but unsaid through several episodes, until they were finally "revealed" making it all just very anti-climatic. I really cannot make myself go through it.

The movie hypnotized me in my late teens... thought it was the best film ever made. I rewatched it just before the HBO series started and wondered just how many bong hits I'd taken before watching it the first time around.

The HBO version is great, but very slow moving. Events from the season finale should've unfolded by at least the 3rd episode. During the final 2 episodes there was a lot of explaining going on, and some good action sequences -- but I wish the explaining had taken place much sooner -- characters engaged in lengthy talking-head explanatory scenes seemed forced, more like a recital than watching a story. I was never a fan of the series "Lost", but I think this method of storytelling should appeal to those that were.

In the movie, the android's eyes lit up indicating a malfunction, then the amusement park went crazy. With the series, no eyes light up and instead there's a gradual buildup as to what was happening behind-the-eyes. It's so gradual though that I would've enjoyed the series more if I'd binged it -- a week at a time of snail-paced plotting can be frustrating. It's good, but lacks the pacing that made the original movie so engaging.

Medieval World and Roman World -- with 'spy' androids to integrate the subplots would've been great -- but those worlds have disappeared from the story -- likely it might have been too expensive to produce. Unfortunate, as it would've helped with pacing. As it's been renewed for a 2nd season, I'm wondering if those worlds might be worked in. Slow pacing or not, I'll be watching as many seasons as they put out... ;-)