With the third park revealed, my three other parks I would include.

1) MedievalWorld.

A difference from the film is that, I wouldn't have it happen in "Europe". Instead I would go with CrusadersWorld setting to have two cultures to crash and explore.

2) AncientWorld.

As the above, I would add another culture to RomanWorld from the film and instead have it as PharaonsWorld in Egypt when Rome had it conquered. Alternatively, Alexander's time in Persia would work pretty well to.

3) FantasyWorld.

Not necessary GoT, as tempting as it probably is for people at HBO. Rather closer to LotR and D&D. Magic would be tricky to include and it's a necessary aspect if this kind of world were to be popular with guests.

Other fantasy world could be a SuperheroWorld. Like with magic, superpowers would be hard to do.

In both cases it would be quite a challenge to make these worlds fit tonally with the rest of the series. Which, I suppose, could be fun for the writers if they wanted to do them.

 

The contrast between Rajworld and Westworld was quite amazing, though. I felt vaguely uneasy upon seeing Rajworld. The servile nature of the hosts, the colonial grandeur... It's almost comforting to be back in Westworld (mentally, that is) because the hosts aren't programmed to be servile. They're human. They're like NPCs. The hosts in Rajworld seemed to blend into the background. All they exist to do is to serve.

As it is, all Delos seems to be serving up are different power fantasies couched in racism and oppression. The contrast between savage and genteel is brought out pretty well by looking at Westworld and Rajworld, and the show, for some odd reason, really hammered it home.

Also, dammit, my OTP is changing to Maeve/Lee. Their story is probably the most interesting right now. Lee’s character seemed like an afterthought in the first season. He’s brilliant in the second one.

 

That was Lisa Joy's directional debut? They definitely should give her more episodes in the next season. If there is one. The rating are about the same as the last season and even a little lower. The lack of additional viewers between season suggest it's not another GoT and the show's budged it too big to keep it as a prestige series.

I'm not entirely convinced about this humans as hosts direction. It's done a lot better than I would expect and I'm not even going to question the specifics of how it's achieved, but just like with a full cloning of a person, it's not the sort of immortality I would expect egocentric billionaire to invest in.

 

Yeah. I was quite pleasantly surprised. Vanity fair has a nice piece on the references to TV shows and movies in this episode.

I got the impression that Jim Delos wasn't exactly expecting himself to be cloned. And that Bill was looking at him like a mere object, in a way. William's apathy towards his father-in-law has been demonstrated quite aptly in the second episode. I saw it as a continuation of the same. He doesn't really care much about his father-in-law, he's just curious about how far the tech can be taken. Maybe in the beginning he did care, but as the various meetings keep coming, he seems to become more and more, well, clinical is the best way I can describe it. It was happenstance that Jim Delos was the subject at the end. Or so I felt.

On that tone, though. who do you think Bernard's holding in that red ball of his? My money's on Arnold himself. And Elsie's back! Damn, I was really sad to see her go in season one. Glad to see her again. William's progression seemed to reach a peak, in a way. When Lawrence's daughter said that William had to look back to reach his objective, it seemed as if the character might end up taking a turn. I suppose we're going to see him gradually regain his humanity, possibly hastened by the entry of his daughter.

In addition, is it just me, or is this entire series predicated on a series of parent-daughter relationships now? Dolores is a daughter, Maeve has a daughter, William has a daughter, Lawrence has a daughter, and these relationships are crucial to the plot. Turning to show from a many-layered mystery (in season one) to a reflection on relationships in season two was a good decision, imo. Allows for better character buildup.

 

GOT was based on an established, already hugely popular IP and has this novel shtick, "we kill characters you love and you won't be warned". Now people are looking out for this, it's not a surprise.

Secondly, people guessed half the twists in Westworld before the season even hinted at them. I mean, the first page of this thread has people saying that one of the humans will turn out to be a host. GoT was also unique in that it focused on so many characters and political storylines and WW is really, just a polished take on an old trope. So, no real surprises within its genre and while it's technically based on another IP, I don't think anyone was clamoring for a series adaptation of an obscure 70s sci-fi flick.

I can't bring myself to watch the last two episodes. I dunno, I just don't feel drawn to WW. I don't care about it. The only character I care about is William (past William, not even the MiB). Everyone else is just meh.

Another thing is that I think WW is taking its sweet ass time to the point where it feels like a chore to watch it. Episodes are 55mins. I couldn't fucking tell you what happened in 2x02. Like, I think Dolores and Meave met for a minute...

And also, character motivations are vague to the point of nonexistence. I know fuck all about what nebulous "game" the MiB plays. His maze in S1 was a disappointment: his whole journey was vague monologues about "we must go deeper" interwoven with scenes of him shooting hosts from the hip.

WW bores me, is what I'm saying. I don't see why each episode couldn't be 15 minutes shorter and tighter. At some point I really don't need another scene of Jeffrey Wright's Kristen Stewart impression as he says something philosophically profound to Dolores. What is real? Matrix took 2 hours to give its take on that. WW is 14 hours in and still undecided.

Like, what is Dolores doing? Where is MiB going this time? Why does he need Lawrence again? Is Ford alive or dead? What secret does Peter Abernathy hold? They're stretching what they have so much that it becomes paper thin.

Or maybe I'm just not mature enough for this.

 

Bernard is already sort of Arnold and giving him host-Arnold to interact wouldn't add much to his journey in my opinion.

My guess, it's Billy. Having him interact with his older self would give William quite a mirror and a look in the past that Ford hints his adventure is all about. And I would like to have Jimmi Simpson be on the screen with Ed Harris. He really does an excellent job at playing his younger version.

 

Well, the easiest guess was correct this time and it was Ford's red ball. Which is good because having Anthony Hopkins back for few episodes makes this season much better than it was without him, but even he can't make it as good as the first one.

That said, I'm curious what are the producers' plans for the future because the robots' rebellion is already getting overdone and there are suppose to be as much as five more seasons.

 

Okay, I don't know what this is, but the season has the same problem [with keeping me engaged] as S1. A lot of fuck-all-happens filler. Slooooooooooow. Maybe it needs all the build up, but I still feel like every episode is 15 minutes too long. Episode 4 was kinda fun, then episode 5 was an hour of filler sidetrack fanservice to fulfill the samurai tease from S1 finale and Meave discovering she has god powers, which gee, I think we've known since S1. Did they really need a whole hour to tell us "Mave is host-god"? I don't think so.

Wtf are you doing HBO. It's not as "deep" as you think, so stop pretending to be so intellectual or whatever. "Humans are like hosts, just going in their own loops", yeah, we've never heard it said this way before...

Jonathan made some good stuff on cable, then he got signed to do an HBO show with a huge budget and went full Nolan. Figures.

 

I liked the last episode. It was surprisingly touching and answered plenty of questions, even some that I assumed will be ignored like from where all these images of the maze in the first season came.

 

Kiksuya was probably my favourite hour of television in a very long time. Akecheta’s backstory was so enthralling, and I’m glad that I stuck with this show until that episode.

 

Westworld III - HBO 2020.

Two possibilities. Either it's a human version of Dolores being in his "life loop" or he's a host in the Futureworld, or rather the Modernworld of this series.

 

I really hope it's the human version of Dolores. The third season looks really different from the first two in terms of both tone and style. To be honest, I wish I was watching it already. With the demise of GOT in the flames of its own mediocrity, Westworld has become the one true series for me.

 

Mostly agreed, but go watch The Expanse if you haven't already.

 

It's been on my list for a while. I'm going to finish up The Orville and then go straight for it. Cheers, Revan.

 

0/10 trailer, he didn't call anyone a bitch

 

Westworld Season 3 - San Diego Comic-Con Trailer.

The WarWorld about WWII is a pretty good concept to explore, but can quickly get rather heavy handed. All you need is to focus too much on the guests who will prefer to play Nazis and abuse hosts instead of playing as the Resistance or the Allies.

Other world hinted in one scene is MedievalWorld leaving one more spot. Aside my earlier guesses, the PirateWorld would be pretty unique and fun to explore as a guest.

 

Anyone following the new season? Four episodes have aired, I've seen three.

Spoiler

Someone who's also seen Person of Interest can correct me, but I'm getting a strong vibe of POI in S3 of WW. Rehoboam is what Samaritan wanted to become, basically a machine god AI controlling everyone everywhere, dictating a life path for humans based on its own observations.

Previous two seasons have had multiple timelines, my guess is that S3 has multiple realities--some of what is shown is not the real world but a predictive simulation that Rehoboam is running.

Caleb doesn't grab me. Woe is me ex-soldier with PTSD who couldn't get a good job after leaving the service and ended up in construction and/or crime. Yawn. Again, I'm reminded on POI only Reese was a badass. Caleb, so far at least, hasn't been shown to be one.

I have no idea what Serac's deal is. What does he want? Why does he want it? Tbh I'm not too hot on the idea of the show keeping everything mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. Nolan said he was hoping for 5 seasons with WW. By that timeline the show is approaching the midpoint, I should know what the goals of the main characters are by now. WW runs the risk of becoming a show about the twists rather than an actual story. It all looks sleek as hell, of course, but I'm getting the feeling that I'm just watching characters do things that look sleek but don't seem like they're building towards some coherent end point. S1 was good, S2 was weird and I don't know what the point of half of it was, so far S3 looks more like S2 than S1.

Or maybe I'm just too dumb for shows that try be philosophical about exploring the nature of consciousness instead of telling a story.

 

>Or maybe I'm just too dumb for shows that try be philosophical about exploring the nature of consciousness instead of telling a story

Westworld stopped doing that once the first season ended.

 

Westworld Season 3: An utter pile of garbage if you ask me. TL;DR: It feels as if Jon Nolan and Lisa Joy ended up making a fanfic of the previous seasons.

Spoiler

I'm one of those people who actually enjoyed Season 2. It wasn't the work of art Season 1 was, but it wasn't shit. And then comes along S03 and everything I'd liked about this show went to crap. And not in a small, low-key way either. It's as if someone took the very essence of the show and decided to eviscerate it. The story is uninspired. I saw no character growth anywhere. I saw no good writing (apart from "Fucking Ford!" if that counts) and no great screenplay. It's as if the show had been given the foundation for the Pyramids and they decided to build a fucking slum on top.

First off, the story is uninspired. It's such a standard factional story I pretty much yawned throughout it all. The painstaking creation of Dolores's character in the first 2 seasons was all thrown to shit. The character we knew is gone, replaced by a simulacrum bearing the same likeness and name. She creates various copies of herself: homunculii if you will. And the entire show is supposed to be about her destroying the Ford of the human world, Rehoboam, and its mouthpiece Serrac. She does this through infiltration and sabotage: except the way it's shown is so comically evil that you have to wonder what the writers were smoking when they dreamed it up. She comes across Caleb (Aaron Paul) whose purpose in the show seemed to have been shoehorned in. His story is fairly drab and uninteresting. It really makes you wonder what happened this season because WW has been very good in getting you to like bad characters (see MiB and Ford) in previous seasons.

Maeve and Bernard... exist. I never really understood having them there for this season. The Man in Black exists. Except he's now forcefully put in white. The symbolism ought to be obvious, and it is, but it's also obnoxious, being shoved in your face. They picked up Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad, why couldn't they have picked up on conveying nuances through the use of clothes? Why bludgeon the audience with everything? Why use Bernard to explain to the audience what they already know instead of giving him an actual, substantial role to play? Why use Maeve at all, given her motivations made absolutely zero sense here?

Second, while the usual cast were fairly good, Evan Rachel Wood's wooden character meant she barely got to use any of her considerable acting skill. She's never looked hotter in WW than this season, I'll give you that, but that's pretty much all she did. She had a monotonic expression throughout the show. Thandie Newton overacted a bit, as is her wont, but she was all right. The big surprise for me was Tessa Thompson, who proved she could act out a character who's not a total bitch all the time. Of course they had to ruin it by putting her back into bitch mode soon after, but I could see a glimmer of potential.

On the other hand Aaron Paul's acting paled in comparison to ERW, opposite whom he got the most screen time. I don't understand why people gave him rave reviews for his role here: he was fairly shit. I'll be honest, he does a fairly convincing dumbarse, but I think he's pretty much going to rehash Jesse Pinkman in all his future roles. I felt that's what he did here. Except even that was done poorly. Ed Harris ought not to have been called back for this season at all: the character was a waste of his time. The only bit which was entertaining was the multiple William scene with James Delos. And that's it.

Finally, the cinematography seemed to lack the oomph it had during S01 and S02. There was nothing comparable to the charging bull scene or that epic shot framing Anthony Hopkins against a red wall from S02, and there was no dialogue that even came close to the gems which Ford randomly dropped out in S01. "These violent delights have violent ends" remains the clinching dialogue of the series. I can barely remember any scene from this season and frankly, I don't want to. There's nothing worth remembering. I wish I could forget it ever aired.

Anthony Hopkins was the lynchpin of this show. The character of Robert Ford was the glue that held everyone together. His masterplan, his elegance, and mystical omnipresence kept the characters on their tiptoes. It didn't hurt at all that Hopkins could channel his inner Hannibal Lector for this role so perfectly. Unfortunately, the complete absence of Hopkins and his character from this season caused it to break down completely.

The comparisons to POI are spot-on. I haven't watched it myself, but the general feeling I got is that the AI wanting to control humanity and humans breaking out of it is Nolan's usual go-to when he's out of ideas. I get that the role reversal in S03 as compared to previous seasons is meant to be poetic, but it doesn't come across as such. It comes across as lazy writing. The show went from a 5/5 for the first season to a 4/5 for the second season to a 2/5 for the third season. It would have been a 1/5 had Evan Rachel Wood not been there.

 

I couldn't even be bothered to watch the last two episodes because the first 6 have left me even more bored than S2. S2 was already a dumbass meandering mess where Delos, a trillion dollar company, hired incompetent, ineffective private security to line up neatly before Dolores' goons and fail at their job. S1 was great and it has a satisfying ending, it can serve as its own miniseries.

S3 has been like three seasons of POI smashed into 8 hours and it doesn't work at all. POI has some badass action scenes and captivating dialogue. S3 had none of either.

I agree with everything @Genghiz Khan said.