Westworld

[Cyrrex]

I LOVED season 1, but season 2 was resoundly "meh" in comparison.  I just assumed this was done.

[Threash]

Considering how shit season 2 was I hope they do go a completely different direction and do something interesting.

It certainly looks like they are going in a completely different direction, so much so that I had no idea it even was a WW teaser. Not that I agree the second season was bad.

[Ironwood]

Considering how shit season 2 was I hope they do go a completely different direction and do something interesting.

That's, like, your opinion man.

[Morat20]

I LOVED season 1, but season 2 was resoundly "meh" in comparison.  I just assumed this was done.

Season 2 put a lot on the viewer, without any real rails to help them get what the fuck was going on.

I mean in theory it was a cool idea ("let's play with fragmented memory and an uncertain timeline") but in practice they needed to give viewers something to latch on to so they could put it together themselves. Not just whatever die-hard fans caught all the clues hidden in one frame buried in corners or whatever.

There's ways to do mixed up chronologies, plenty of them, and they don't have to be that "WTF". It just seemed like they took a decent idea and turned it up to 11 to make it the "mystery" instead of using it as a storytelling device.

They could have used it to showcase motivations, highlight plots and character development, and still left viewers with a coherent idea of what the hell was going on. Let the disjointed time-flow illustrate the seeds of later decisions, why they chose to do what they did, why certain events came to pass the way they did, etc.

[Cyrrex]

My main reason for liking season 1 more is probably because I prefer the "spoiled rich assholes having fun in a themepark at the expense of synths who are not yet quite aware of what is happening to them" part of the show.  I really like where S1 went at the end, but for S2 I was hoping more for a bit of damage control and a reset.  Instead we got synth apocalypse, and the evil corporation trying to fight it off.  I want more robot themepark, where we don't really know who is who or what is what. 

Still one of my favorite series.  I just think they are going for the money shot a bit too quickly.

[Abagadro]

It's all production design and some solid actors given dog shit to work with but managing to be engaging.  There was about 90 minutes of interesting plotting in S2 and a whole lot of flack obscuring it.  I really hope they get their shit together in S3 and have an actual fucking point.

[Teleku]

That's, like, your opinion man.

[Velorath]

New Season 3 trailer

[lamaros]

It looks a bit terrible, but I loved the song and will watch it.

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, I don't get it.  One of the reasons Season 1 was so great was because of the Themepark aspect of it.  You know, WESTworld.  The place people would go and fulfill their fantasies, plus also raping and murdering possible sentient machines.  Season 2 still had some of it, but the themepark was increasingly shoved to the side.  Season 3 could just be called Regularrobotworld.  I will watch it, but I have no doubt I will like it even less.

[Khaldun]

The original flicks were about robot rebellion, with the sense that if the robots *could* get out, they would. I think it's a fairly proper evolution of the series so far--the sense that self-aware machines created to just be hurt and raped for human entertainment (and possibly as testbeds for human immortality) have every justification for vengeance and revolution, so let's see that play out. Kind of Planet of the Apes only robots v humans. It's an old story, sure, but there's room to tell it in fresh ways. Staying inside the theme park means conceding from the outset that the robots are gonna lose, because so what if they gain control of the theme park? Turn it off, nuke it from orbit, close all the doors. Human beings don't learn anything except, "Don't make potentially self-aware robots in a theme park".

[Samwise]

Finding excuses to keep it inside the theme park would have doomed it to a slow death by stupidity.  I would've been fine with them dragging out the Season 1 story, personally, but once that was done they kinda had to move it along.

[Rasix]

This season has Marshawn Lynch. Be there.

[Cyrrex]

Finding excuses to keep it inside the theme park would have doomed it to a slow death by stupidity.  I would've been fine with them dragging out the Season 1 story, personally, but once that was done they kinda had to move it along.

Probably.  I would have liked them to stretch out season 1, because that was the best material by far.  I wouldn’t have been hard to do.

[SurfD]

The original flicks were about robot rebellion, with the sense that if the robots *could* get out, they would. I think it's a fairly proper evolution of the series so far--the sense that self-aware machines created to just be hurt and raped for human entertainment (and possibly as testbeds for human immortality) have every justification for vengeance and revolution, so let's see that play out. Kind of Planet of the Apes only robots v humans. It's an old story, sure, but there's room to tell it in fresh ways. Staying inside the theme park means conceding from the outset that the robots are gonna lose, because so what if they gain control of the theme park? Turn it off, nuke it from orbit, close all the doors. Human beings don't learn anything except, "Don't make potentially self-aware robots in a theme park".

Nah, the original flick wasn't about "rebellion", but rather just "what happens when you lose control".   The robots weren't actively rebelling in the first movie, they just slipped their programming constraints and started killing people because the fail safe mechanisms designed to prevent them from harming a guest stopped working.  There was no deliberate or organized malicious intent on the part of the robots.   It was purely "theme park ride kills people", and the robots had about as much actual agency as a runaway roller coaster would.  I am not even sure the "personal vendetta" the badguy robot in the movie seems to have for the Protagonist is even really proper "agency" on the robot's part, and not just a stuck loop in it's programming when you really think about it. 

Futureworld was even farther off, in that it wasn't actually about the robots, so much as it was about the Delos corporation and what they were doing with robots that they had created that could effectively mimic a human being close enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.   In that movie, Delos was a sinister organization that was luring important people into their themepark, then abducting them, killing them, and replacing them with robot doppelgangers.   The robots themselves however were pretty much entirely secondary to what was going on in the movie itself.

Neither of the two movies really even scratched the surface of the whole idea of looking at things from the point of view of the robots themselves.

[Typhon]

What I find boring about it is that the humans are so fucking stupid.  They make the robots.  They understand the maximum mental and physical abilities of the bots.  ... and yet they continuously seem unprepared for what a bot with a gun can do, to typically lethal (for the human) results.  Humans seriously wouldn't have military bots (or even just really really tough trash collector/processor bots) to handle an outbreak?  Not buying it.

They should have tried to find some divergent behavior that the bots were capable of that the humans hadn't thought of (hive mind?) that gave the bots an advantage.  Instead, they make only a modest attempt at introducing divergent behavior that would not normally be expected (bot's ability to dominate other bots), but that also is cliched to death.  (oh, so there are no security protocols to prevent one bot from /sudo'ng another bot... really?)

It's not new, it's not ground breaking.  The sex is all it really had going for it.  Well, and the actors, who I think are really good.  And the cinematography.  Ok, ok, really, if they just had a decent plot with some decent twists it would be fantastic.  I'm really hard on stories being derivative/already done to death/not clever.  It's getting worse as I get older.

Yes, I will let myself out.

[SurfD]

I am not entirely certain it was stupidity, and not Arrogance.    Despite everything we know, looking in from the outside as viewers watching the show, it is entirely possible the people running the Delos Park simply were so arrogant in their belief that the machines were JUST machines that it never actually occurred to them that the bots could or would slip their controls.   Remember, from what we know in season 1 and 2, pretty much the ENTIRE situation arises from the deliberate meddling of a few individuals who were running their own agenda that basically everyone else was almost completely unaware of.

Unfortunately, we don't have enough of a grasp of what things are like OUTSIDE the park, in their "real world" to understand if the activities of the people in the park really are stupidity or arrogance.

[Khaldun]

Well, we also have some reason to think that Robert Ford has systematically deceived Delos and others about the capabilities of the hosts on multiple levels. Also there may be Delos executives who have always intended for the hosts to escape--it's a bit hard to say for sure whether there aren't other forces at work here. But it's also clearly arrogance on the part of the response teams--they didn't think all of this was possible and they didn't really take any risks seriously until they were getting slaughtered.

[Cyrrex]

I mean, those Boston Dynamics guys aren't making those kinds of contingency plans. "But they don't need to" you say.  Right.  Until they do and it's too late.

And while I am being smarmy, I am actually not.  Companies don't do that kind of planning until they are absolutely forced to and they have run out of other priorities.  And even then, they do it terribly and with the minimum possible effort. 

[Typhon]

Agree that humans being caught flat-footed is fine for S1.  Definitely the humans at ground zero of the uprising can be caught with their pants down.   (although ... you can make robot bodies, yet you have an entirely human security force?  That just doesn't make economic sense - why pay humans?)

Maybe you could say the same for S2 if the secret of robot sentience was contained, but shouldn't there at least be some sort of a different containment strategy other than, "throw more human bodies at it"?  Also, there is no emergency shut-off signal?  You hire a security force, but never implement a shut off?  At least throw me the bone of a human attempting to trigger a shut off, and hand wave how the bot sentience makes the override useless.

For S3, I'm just not buying it.  ANY sort of scanner should pick a bot up right away.  Where are the aerial drones?

Agree Cyrrex, companies fuck up all the time.  Ego, arrogance, not thinking things through, peter principle.  But mostly they fuck up because their rushing to market and cutting costs... and we're back to a robot security force with programming that isn't weighted down with simulating human emotion in bodies that are beefed up/military grade instead of soft-as-human-as-possible on networks that the pleasure bots are not on.

My brain simply refuses to not think these things and it fucks up this show for me.   :( and now I realize that I'm trying to infect all of you with the same thinking.  :headslap:  sorry.

[Khaldun]

I don't think we know yet what kind of bodies Delores et al have built for themselves out in the real world.

There's also the possibility that the "real world" is yet another layer of simulation--or another location in the theme park, and this is part of Ford (or Delos') testing program. (Can a self-aware AI or bot learn not to kill after it has learned to kill?)

[luckton]

Users have found a hidden trailer on HBO's fake promo site for the new season.

https://youtu.be/6Uo1t-Exjes

Edit: Another one! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN5h_JW0mEU

[Abagadro]

Aaron Paul. Tommy Flanagan. Common People.  Good.

Withholding judgment but these fuckers have at least hooked me in.

[Samwise]

Aaron Paul. Tommy Flanagan. Common People.  Good.

Withholding judgment but these fuckers have at least hooked me in.

Agree.

[Abagadro]

Cautiously optimistic after Ep.2 as I thought it was back on its bullshit at the park, but not so much.

[calapine]

I don't think we know yet what kind of bodies Delores et al have built for themselves out in the real world.

There's also the possibility that the "real world" is yet another layer of simulation--or another location in the theme park, and this is part of Ford (or Delos') testing program. (Can a self-aware AI or bot learn not to kill after it has learned to kill?)

That's too clever. I think one of the constants in this show is Humans = Dumb.

[Abagadro]

So this show is now, uh, really good. Also ERW is hot as the sun.

[Samwise]

So this show is now, uh, really good. Also ERW is hot as the sun.

Agreed on both counts.  So far I'd say season 3 is significantly better than season 2, although season 1 remains very hard to top.

[calapine]

So this show is now, uh, really good. Also ERW is hot as the sun.

You'r thinking with your dick.

[Surlyboi]

[Bunk]

Have they actually clarified who Tessa's host is?

[Surlyboi]

[Velorath]

[Abagadro]

Nah. Probably Angela.

[Threash]

I figured clementine.