Westworld: A Cinematic Stepping Stone

There is, within each of us, a deeply held desire to step outside of our own world from time to time.  To escape. We read books filled with goblins and elves and sword fights. We travel to experience cultures not our own.  We take Friday off and spend it at the beach, or in the mountains, or anywhere in between that isn’t a part of the everyday.  Our days are spent dreaming about what it might be like if we were to fall through the wardrobe and end up on the other side. 

In 1973, Westworld introduced a new concept to fuel this flame: what if there was someplace you could go where you could do anything?  Kill people, seduce people, join people on their great and gallant journeys. No consequences, no danger. Just the promise to live out your wildest dreams, free of judgement, before you eventually return to the comforts of your home.  After all, adventures are only appealing to those who rarely have to have them.

It’s the sci-fi twist on a concept that the fantasy genre has long thrived on—the escapism, the promise of more—and it’s laid out beautifully in the film’s plot. Westworld draws the audience in with a desirable catharsis, enticing us with the endlessness of the story’s possibilities and encouraging us to give all of ourselves over.  We hope beyond hope, wish beyond wish, that these parks existed, and we’re willing to throw ourselves into the protagonists for even the slightest taste of what their reality might be.

Which makes it all the more terrifying when, suddenly, there are consequences.

It’s a classic tale of hubris, harkening back to the great Greek playwrights, mixed with the never-quite-cliche trope of The Robots Are Taking Over.  Man created these androids to manipulate them as Gods, but in their own shortcomings have met their possible demise. When a virus takes hold, perfection rapidly declines in a way that is uncontrollable and terrifying.  What once seemed like a utopia in which the audience desperately wanted to live, now becomes a nightmare.

The bulk of the movie is spent desperately trying to escape the feeling of immersion, but it’s too late.  Viewers are already too invested, hooked early by the worm of hope.

It truly is a well crafted design, manipulating empathy in a way that’s hard to duplicate, even as the field of cinema continues to grow so rapidly.  The closest comparison to modern day films might be A Quiet Place, in that distinct way that the silence pulls you in and forces participation.  Although Westworld isn’t quite on that same level, it may have well been one of the stepping stones along the path to get there.  Westworld walked so that A Quiet Place and movies like it could run.

In a modern day viewing of the film, it’s nearly impossible not to compare it to its HBO counterpart.  The effects are solid for their time, even adopting new techniques in film editing and cinematography that would, again, establish certain facets of the genre.  It can’t possibly live up to the production levels of the HBO television show, but it was never trying. And while the television show does have deeper writing and a stronger theme, there’s something refreshing in the simplicity of the film compared to the convoluted, twisting nature of the HBO plot.  

Westworld is good.  Really and truly.  And because it was good, everything that came after it was better.