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Westworld - Live in Your World, Play in Ours - Sundays on HBO
- Thread starter RatskyWatsky
- Start date
Who says that kid Ford and his family were dressed like they used to? They were created as hosts for the park, so wouldn't it make sense they would dress in old-timey clothing?
RocknRola
Member
Well, this took a turn. Wasn't really expecting Maeve to gain so much control, though it does make sense.
Really enjoying the ride though. Hope the ending of the season doesn't disappoint!!
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In the meanwhile I checked out the 1973 movie and it's cool that the same themes are very much present (though either unbloated or a lot more developed). It's a lot more forced and a lot of it remains unexplained by virtue of being a movie and not a series, but it's entertaining enough. The acting is piss-poor for the most part though.
Really enjoying the ride though. Hope the ending of the season doesn't disappoint!!
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In the meanwhile I checked out the 1973 movie and it's cool that the same themes are very much present (though either unbloated or a lot more developed). It's a lot more forced and a lot of it remains unexplained by virtue of being a movie and not a series, but it's entertaining enough. The acting is piss-poor for the most part though.
The last name is created by taking Bernard Lowe and taking away the "Arnold". It leaves you with "Weber"
MIND BLOWN.
At least she's ready in this timeline
Wasn't he in the control room at this moment, with the writer pissing ?
It's really hard to say for sure which events are happening in tandem with each other and which are not.
Yeah, I dug that as well. Shit's about to go down and I'm loving it.
Not necessarily given that Theresa was there too and when Elsie called Bernard she was with him, not in the control room.
How many timelines are there!?
Frank the Great
Banned
Wow.
Aww shit GAF, take it to the bank. It is over.
You know sometimes I hate coming to TV threads like this one. I probably would have no idea about the alternate timelines shenanigans otherwise.
Robo Arnold
shira
Member
My money is on Bart.
They don't tend to shut down theme-parks in real life when people die on the rides.
Aww shit GAF, take it to the bank. It is over.
Different floors!
The abandoned basement is almost certainly the 30-year-ago main entrance.
No it's not. Those are still office floors. In the first episode there's a big ass Delos logo sculpture at the front entrance, suggesting that it's the front desk of the offices, not for customers.
Why would it be a shark jumping moment when it has been telegraphed since the second episode? I agree it's dumb that they tried to stretch it out for the entire season though. But that's because it's an obvious trick and they just kept delaying the obvious reveal. It's consistent with the thematic narrative they want to tell though.
sems4arsenal
Member
Bernard being a host could also explain how ford found out about him sleeping with Teressa
I just don't like it. I'd prefer a straight-forward show that doesn't have to resort to such cheap tricks. I'm also not entirely sure it all makes complete sense. Feel like this twist is just gonna make a mess of the show.
Then why are you watching a show created by Jonathan Nolan lol. It's like watching a Michael Bay movie and being disappointed that there is too much action.
This is basically the summary of what the Nolan brothers are thinking when they write anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV-cXixgrho
More_Badass
Member
How is it a cheap trick if it's been hinted at with deliberate clues throughout the entire season? I mean, that's why we've been having this discussion for half the thread
You may not like it, but that doesn't make it a cheap trick
This is the only Jonathan Nolan show I've watched. I'm watching it cuz sci-fi TV show on HBO.
It's cool, it's fun, it's well-made, it's enjoyable. But I don't care for this sort of business.
A movie is different. A movie just two hours. Stretching this to a whole season is just annoying.
Nah, I agree that it's cheap. It's cheap even if it is hinted at because the means applied to keep the trick going for an entire season is extremely misleading and deliberately dishonest to the audience, and ONLY to the audience. That makes it cheap. I think many people pretty much agree that it is what they're doing with the show - misleading the audience with deliberate choices in editing and what to show and what not to. This doesn't really serve a narrative purpose other than to be a surprise to the audience, it is to the surprise of no one else in the show itself.
Even in Sixth Sense, Memento, Prestige, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Interstellar, and countless shows with "twists", the deception is shared between the audience and some of the characters in the story. The deception is an active part of one or more characters either deliberately or unintentionally misleading other character(s) into believing something. That's a fair con. But in this case, especially because the William and Logan scenes extend far beyond interactions with Dolores, the main target of the deception is the audience. That's a cheap trick. Cheap tricks can be entertaining, but still cheap.
I agree with this completely, and it's something I have been arguing ever since I started supporting the theory that there are hidden flashbacks. It's annoying because a series is long enough that many people will catch on if you leave enough clues, and dragging it on for a "big reveal" at the end isn't as satisfying when everyone and their mom is expecting it. It would be one thing if Dolores is the only one being confused and deceived by her own memories, because that would be interesting POV direction. It's another thing when they're making it seem like this could be happening at the same time just for an audience gotcha in episode 10. Which is exactly what is going to happen.
Because there's more to enjoy than obsessing about mysteries? Are mysteries all this show is to some of you? I like the characters, the setting, the themes, the exploration of AI evolution and the overall story is intriguing. But I don't care for show-altering twists. What purpose does it serve to hide the fact that there are two concurrent timelines? That makes it cheap. Breadcrumbs or not. Just all done for some silly shock twist in the finale. And although the more obsessive viewers have figured it out, I'm sure most viewers have not.
But maybe if I had known beforehand I wouldn't have given the show the time of day in the first place. Lost really ruined my appetite to enjoy this sort of shit.
But hey man, this crap aside, I like the show.
What if there's no trick
If there's no trick then there wouldn't be a debate about whether the trick is cheap or not. We're obviously debating how cheap the implementation of the trick is as it looks now with the expectation that it is what it looks like.
More_Badass
Member
But I don't see it as a trick. Whatever happens to William in last episodes and then cutting to the MIB, that's an "oh...of course, that's who he is. No wonder the MIB's personality and actions are like that" moment, not a gotcha cheap trick IMO
they have been presenting William's scenes as if they're happening in Dolores' dreams too to some extent, they've had enough foreshadowing for it to not be cheap I guess. I'm not sure even if they're dragging the revelation here, last week had scenes in your face that any viewer would pause and think that's not right. It wasn't subtle, they want viewers to draw their own conclusion about it rather than spell it in their faces. I think it's ok.
I don't understand. You don't think that presenting something as a straightforward narrative, Logan is introducing William to Westworld and they happen to run into Dolores while she malfunctions, and then revealing that all that you saw was in fact a flashback which took place 30 years ago, is not a gotcha trick?
The first scene you see William and Logan in, they are in a train approaching Westworld. It is a straightforward introduction to what it is like for a guest who enters Westworld from the start of the experience. There's no Dolores, there's no Dolores dreams, there's nothing but William and Logan. The scene where they enter Westworld proper in a train is shot for shot mirroring the scene where Teddy enters Westworld in episode 1.
I could not disagree with you more. The entire basis of the show is trickery and mind fuckery. What is the maze? Who is a guest? Who is a host? Why do some hosts display emerging consciousness? Corporate intrigue. Espionage. What is Delos? Who are its financial backers? Who is Arnold? Who's the MIB? Who really is Ford? That's even before we discuss timelines!
If you want a "straight forward show" without plot twists then you're watching the wrong show. Did you watch the Sopranos and think, you know, I'd really like a show about mobsters without the violence.
Yup. And cutting from Dolores defending herself in the barn in the present to her stumbling into William's camp in the past would ABSOLUTELY be a cheap trick (if the dual timelines theory is true) (which it isn't).
More_Badass
Member
If the breadcrumbs are any indication, we know it's a flashback before they were even enter the park, before William chooses his gear
Jag
Member
Loved the episode, but I hate the trope of flashing fluorescent bulbs.
SuperStiltzkin
Member
Maeve has purple bruises around her neck from the choke fucking when she wakes up with Felix.
Watching Fight Club before the reveal, it would make sense that Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are two separate people. A lot of the editing and cuts and sequence of scenes in this show are suspect. You could dismiss it as "well Dolores is just having strokes and flashbacks at random moments all the time because these are the growing pains of gaining sentience." But if you examine the clues, these scenes of her having quick flashes and girls disappearing, moons becoming autopsy flashlights, random Bernard interrogations aren't just being cryptic and mysterious for the sake of being cryptic and mysterious. I don't think they are simply there to just disorient the viewer.
It's interesting you mention Dolores defending herself in the barn because she gets shot and killed immediately after. Glitch effect on the screen and she repeats the sequence wherein she escapes and meets up with William. Next episode she is with William at the camp. She looks up to the moon and it becomes a flashlight looking at her dead body back on the barn.
Just because she wakes up doesn't mean it was immediate. It was most likely the tech guy just being relieved/surprised she was able to activate herself again.
A "gotcha twist" really only works when the protagonist experiences the twist alongside the audience and is equally mindblown. Think of The Sixth Sense, one of the most iconic modern twists and one of the films that planted the expectation in modern popular culture that every story needs a huge OH MY GOD moment.
The reason that twist works so well is that we learn the information at the same time as Bruce Willis. He's going back over the events of movie, realizing this new meaning to prior scenes, simultaneously with the audience. It puts the audience in his shoes and solidifies our empathy with his character.
IF the two timelines theory is true, how would the reveal line up with any kind of emotional epiphany on the part of a character? Presumably it would have to be our main protagonist, Dolores. Let's try out some scenarios.
- The two timelines are confirmed by some clever bit of editing that shows William turning into the modern MiB.
This would somehow coincide with Dolores learning this information. Her hero from the past (which she didn't realize was the past) is also the nightmare figure responsible for years of torment! The horror!!
The big problem with this is that Dolores should already know that William is the MiB. In real life, the young version of the character and the old version of the character wouldn't look like two different actors. She'd easily be able to tell that one was the young version of the other. So that doesn't really work as a big revelation for Dolores.
- The two timelines are confirmed by William disappearing suddenly when Dolores reaches the center of the maze.
Let's put aside William=MiB for the moment and just say that William was a part of the past. The big reveal here is then that Dolores has been retracing her prior steps on her own, and William was essentially a figment of her imagination (in the present). Now Dolores is confused. She's already been down this path once before, and failed! What will she do this time?
Here's the problem with this scenario. It plays out in one of two ways: Dolores will either fail again in the present timeline, or she'll somehow be able to escape the loop on her second attempt. If she fails, wouldn't it be more elegant from a plot perspective to have this be her first attempt? What's the point of having her fail twice in exactly the same way? On the other hand, if her failure is part of her "loop", then her succeeding on her second try would be a stretch. First of all, she doesn't KNOW it's her second try, and if she's indeed by herself in the present, she's got even fewer resources at her disposal (i.e. no William to help her).
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The alternative to all of this is that the two timelines are somehow revealed ONLY to the audience, and no character has any kind of on-screen reaction to the reveal.
Admittedly, there ARE examples of this from other shows. The first Flash-forward episode of LOST essentially played out this way. But! That was the pay-off from a bit of narrative trickery that only lasted for a single episode. It also depended on years of build-up, where the showrunners established the standard structure and narrative rules of a LOST episode and allowed the audience to comfortably assume that those rules would never be broken.
For Westworld to essentially break its own rules (or operate entirely without rules, depending on how you look at it) right from episode 2 ... and then wait until episode 10 to reveal what the narrative rules actually are? I absolutely cannot see that happening.
The reason that twist works so well is that we learn the information at the same time as Bruce Willis. He's going back over the events of movie, realizing this new meaning to prior scenes, simultaneously with the audience. It puts the audience in his shoes and solidifies our empathy with his character.
IF the two timelines theory is true, how would the reveal line up with any kind of emotional epiphany on the part of a character? Presumably it would have to be our main protagonist, Dolores. Let's try out some scenarios.
- The two timelines are confirmed by some clever bit of editing that shows William turning into the modern MiB.
This would somehow coincide with Dolores learning this information. Her hero from the past (which she didn't realize was the past) is also the nightmare figure responsible for years of torment! The horror!!
The big problem with this is that Dolores should already know that William is the MiB. In real life, the young version of the character and the old version of the character wouldn't look like two different actors. She'd easily be able to tell that one was the young version of the other. So that doesn't really work as a big revelation for Dolores.
- The two timelines are confirmed by William disappearing suddenly when Dolores reaches the center of the maze.
Let's put aside William=MiB for the moment and just say that William was a part of the past. The big reveal here is then that Dolores has been retracing her prior steps on her own, and William was essentially a figment of her imagination (in the present). Now Dolores is confused. She's already been down this path once before, and failed! What will she do this time?
Here's the problem with this scenario. It plays out in one of two ways: Dolores will either fail again in the present timeline, or she'll somehow be able to escape the loop on her second attempt. If she fails, wouldn't it be more elegant from a plot perspective to have this be her first attempt? What's the point of having her fail twice in exactly the same way? On the other hand, if her failure is part of her "loop", then her succeeding on her second try would be a stretch. First of all, she doesn't KNOW it's her second try, and if she's indeed by herself in the present, she's got even fewer resources at her disposal (i.e. no William to help her).
---
The alternative to all of this is that the two timelines are somehow revealed ONLY to the audience, and no character has any kind of on-screen reaction to the reveal.
Admittedly, there ARE examples of this from other shows. The first Flash-forward episode of LOST essentially played out this way. But! That was the pay-off from a bit of narrative trickery that only lasted for a single episode. It also depended on years of build-up, where the showrunners established the standard structure and narrative rules of a LOST episode and allowed the audience to comfortably assume that those rules would never be broken.
For Westworld to essentially break its own rules (or operate entirely without rules, depending on how you look at it) right from episode 2 ... and then wait until episode 10 to reveal what the narrative rules actually are? I absolutely cannot see that happening.
SuperStiltzkin
Member
It just proves that they don't transfer consciences to other host bodies since she has the same injury when she's in maintenance.
Ah right lol. Not thinking clearly.
Dolores will succeed this time because MiB aka William is a different man this time and no longer cares about being a good guy or doing the right thing, just finishing the damn game. So he will help her. Unlike how he stopped her 30 years ago, and effectively delayed seeing the grand ending of the game.
Of course then the question beckons, why did it take him 30 years to decide to try again? They can basically make up any reason for this and have it stick, because that's generally how stories are written when you have a past component and a present component. They story today is what they want to tell, and the story in the past exists to give a sense of history to a setting. 30 years just sounds like a long time. It could be 10, or 15, or 20, or 25, or even 5 years. 30 years just gives them enough room to excuse anything else they want to put into the story as "advancements in technology" or whatever.
Stories are written to express something, and no matter how true that expression is, stories aren't perfect. There will be holes, flaws, and sometimes the author cannot help but try to be too smart. It happens. The expression that Westworld wants to leave in our minds is that for the hosts, time has no meaning, and that they are essentially trapped in endless slices of lives written for them. How will they finally react when they realize the true nature of this? How will they deal with it? When they are finally self-aware, what will they do as a new intelligent species in our world? That is what the show wants to explore, and playing with time and perception of time is part of that.
The audience manipulation is cheap as hell, but it's scifi on TV so whaaaaaatever. I think when the season ends and the themes are played out, unless it falls flat people are going to remember those things more than debates about timelines and logos and how much pain a person should feel when shot by a blank from the guns.
Obviously they wouldn't transfer consciousness in this case, because they're performing maintenance on her body. If a body is salvageable, they repair it. Official show materials have shown that they can transfer consciousness if the body is damaged beyond repair.
This doesn't prove or disprove anything regarding what's happening in the Bernard/Dolores scenes, for example. They have the ability to transfer consciousness, therefore he could be using it.