Westworld review: A futuristic fantasy world of mad men, angry androids and manic algorithms

The HBO hit is back for a third series 
Katie Law @jkatielaw23 March 2020

The story started simply enough. Paying guests could visit a cowboys-and-injuns theme park and do whatever they wanted, indulge in their most violent fantasies, abuse the locals, beat, rape and even kill them, because the locals were in fact tame android “hosts” with implanted behaviours and scripts.

No matter how much damage was done to them, at the end of each day they could be taken back to the lab, their bodies repaired and their short term memory banks wiped.

When the next guests arrived, the action could start all over again — until one day, when one of the hosts, Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), a sweet farmer’s daughter, suddenly swatted and killed a fly. It was completely off script and the start of her journey to becoming sentient.

Based on Michael Crichton’s original 1974 film, the first HBO series of Westworld, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy in 2016, was rightly acclaimed for its slick production, engaging story-line and stellar performances.

HBO

A second series followed in 2018, with the same characters but a darker, more existential narrative that became so convoluted that even its most dedicated fans began to lose the plot. Hosts started taking their revenge on humans, killing guests and theme park staff, some of whom were later revived as androids, just to add to the confusion. The hosts wanted to escape to the “real” world but where was that exactly? Suddenly there was a profusion of AI-created simulated worlds, and simulated worlds within those simulated worlds.

Baffled? Think Matrix with sprinkles of Inception and Blade Runner 2049, and you’ll get the general idea. Mindful of this, the producers are back with a much more tightly plotted, easy-to-follow third series, judging from the first two episodes, and, so far, barely a cowboy in sight. This is pure sci-fi fantasy now, luscious to look at and set in a series of futuristic cityscapes where humans, along with everything else, are controlled by algorithms.

Dolores has escaped from Westworld, which was burned down three months earlier after a massacre that wiped out dozens of humans and hosts, and she has morphed into a seductive killing machine, hellbent on destroying mankind, clad in little black dresses, high heels and red lipstick, able to transform herself, like an advanced Terminator, into more or less whatever she pleases.

Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) is working incognito in an abattoir somewhere rural, while former madam Maeve (Thandie Newton) is stuck in a loop, trying to escape from a theme park set in Nazi-occupied Italy, to look for her daughter. Notable newcomers include Vincent Cassell as mastermind Engerraund Serac and Aaron Paul as ex-army veteran Caleb, suffering from PTSD, working on a building site and earning extra cash as a petty criminal.

Everyone has an agenda, but who, or rather what, is really running the show, and who or what will destroy it? Those are the big questions now.

Westworld airs on Sky Atlantic on Mondays at 9pm. Episodes are available to watch on Sky Go and Now TV.

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