Westworld (1973)

Westworld tells the story of a theme park where the rides are individual worlds representing different periods of time where androids are programmed to become characters in the different time periods the different sections of the park include Romeworld, Medieval world and of course Westworld. The main plot follows two friends going to the westworld section of the park, exploring the amusement park as they and the audience discover more and more of the park's world, design, characters and how you live in the world and how you can live out all the dark desires you have and more. The film also follows behind the scenes of the park revealing that the makers and managers of the park have discovered that the slave like androids are becoming self aware. The film was written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton (writer of Jurassic Park), it was his debut in film making and showed that his talents were not only in writing. The film is astonishing it sucks you into the world through dialogue and visuals distinguishing between the different worlds, he shows the differences between the different parks by having Medieval World seeped in duels and banquets. In Rome World it shows beautiful landscapes and the fashion of the period. Westworld we spend the most time with and stands out the most, the characters, landscape, again duels and a dirty and grungy environment. Michael Crichton did a marvellous job in writing and again creates two entirely different characters who have great on screen chemistry, throw back great and funny dialogue and as they ride their way through Westworld. The film is great but not perfect, as we become invested in the two best friends it immediately cuts to the management team behind the park discussing androids becoming self aware this completely ruins the pace of the movie and the previous scene and bogs down the interesting androids and the world we are slowly but surely discovering more and more of. The cast is great and very small only including the two best friends, reoccurring characters who are enjoying the park along with the two best friends, the scientists who made the park, and of course the androids roaming the park in a slave like existence. Ones that need to be mentioned are the two best friends who share great chemistry like I said earlier and Yul Brynner does a great and immortalised performance as the android that will not go down easily. He is easily one of the best parts who will kill anything in his path just to succeed one goal. My favourite part of the movie is how the androids and humans completely switch parts, at the start of the movie the androids are hunted and programmed to serve the humans like slaves and are very robotic and efficient. By the end of the movie the androids get a disease like an organism, start hunting the humans and killing them like how they were treated, humans working on computers look almost like they're plugged into them with plain faces sitting in seats. Through the movie the humans who created life become less human and the androids become more human than actual humans in the movie. The movie is great with textbook procedure to world building inside fiction stories, it has two great main characters, great science fiction visuals inside a very science fiction world and great story of how humans become more robotic than the actual robots which ties to fear of technology and computers. It has a few pacing problems but it is definitely worth a watch.