Westworld (1973)

Westworld (1973)

7/10

Starring

Yul Brynner

Richard Benjamin

James Brolin

Directed by Michael Crichton

With HBO announcing the release of Westworld series based on the 1973 film set to premiere this fall of 2016, I just had to see the film to know what to expect.

Westworld as a film packs a punch with wonderful directing by Crichton and the actors were on point especially Yul Brynner portrayal of a robot gone rogue. The settings are also something to admire and it is so set that you can picture such a thing happening for real. The movie is also a thriller as we are taken on a ride of man versus machine.

HBO’s attempt to make a series of this movie will be the second, as CBS tried to do so in 1980 but cancelled the show after airing 2 episodes.

For me the movie is well structured from start to finish and not needing any form of elongation, but we have to wait and see what HBO has installed.

This film is more than just fun to see it is enticing the way the movie is written. Michael Crichton who wrote and also directed this film, went on to also write another book based on a failed theme park, the name of the 1990 classic and later over a billion dollars’ film franchise is Jurassic Park.

This sci-fi film is set in the near future and Crichton was able to capture the idea of what people would love to see in the near future, these things are very much available now.  Today there are numerous parks where you can go to see the reenactment of events that happened in the past.

Not aware if such existed during the time of writing this book, but what I do know is that this was the first movie to introduce the concept of computer virus corrupting a program or machines in a movie theme.

The movie starts with the introduction of the park called Delos, which has three segments. West World, which is a reenactment of the old American west. Medieval World which is a reenactment of medieval Europe and Roman World. Although the movie concentrates more on what happened in West World, we get to see what is going on in other worlds too.

A newcomer to this park Peter (Richard Benjamin) meets an old timer John (James Brolin) on their way to Delos. John explains to Peter that everything in Delos appears to be real, you get to live and experience how life was in the world of your choice. In the West World where they were going, you can kill people and decide to either be good or bad.

The whole west is composed of both humans and androids and you can only tell them apart from their hands. They are also given real guns which is managed by the computer program which runs Delos not to shoot a real human.

The manager of Delos notices that the machines were breaking down more often than they should and witnessed from a monitor the machines breaking protocol. These led to them closing down Delos from new guest, but decided to allow the guest already in Delos to enjoy what they paid for.

Before long the theme park went rogue and machine and human turned on each other.

Westworld is a fun movie one I’m glad I saw.