Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'Westworld'

12/6/2016

Written by Scott Edwards

Vacations are meant to help you feel better about yourself and keep you from losing your cool, but that last part may not be for everybody. Some people live for excitement on their vacations and would rather go sky diving, speed luging or just jump off the side of a mountain. All things to make you remember that you are alive and living the life you want and while there is nothing wrong with that, the somber vacation where things are planned out and I don’t have to stress is the way to go for me. But if there was a place that I could live out my fantasies with a guarantee that nothing bad would happen, well that might make me change my mind a little bit.

The Delos Company has made great strides in making people's dreams become reality. Being able to bring some of the most popular eras in human history back to life, they offer a Medieval World filled with castles and knights, a Roman World with all of the glory of the empire and a West World that takes you back to the old west. For the small fee of a thousand dollars a day (per guest), people can be whisked away into their fantasies and not worry about a thing in the world and even have the freedom to do anything that they want. With no problems ever being reported about this grand adventure, Delos is the most trusted name in theme parks known to man.

Getting ready for his first adventure, Peter is trying to get all of his questions answered by his good friend John who has been in the park before. Not believing that any of the stories can be real, he will have to experience it for himself first hand. Seeing that the attendants on the shuttle craft in might have been robots as well, Peter does not know what to expect, but when arriving in town, he sees that anything is possible. Heading to the saloon to get a drink, Peter is tormented by the Gunslinger dressed in black that will not lay off until the out of towner is willing to do something about it. Pulling out his gun and laying the Gunslinger out, Peter may be on the greatest adventure of his life and will not look back.

Behind closed doors, everything is normal in the epicenter of the park's operations and after the night comes to a close, the supervisor takes a look at the robot casualties for the day and continues to note anything that might be out of the ordinary. Finding that he has had three bots come into the shop with central computing issues, he is forced to tell everyone in charge that the computer sickness that was experienced in Medieval World is starting to make its way into West World. With nobody believing the report, he is forced to keep his attention focused on the three worlds to make sure that nothing gets out of control because nobody may know how to stop it.

While guests continue to enjoy their vacations, the first malfunction seems to be a little odd, but not life threatening. When a sex bot refuses the advances of a customer, she is pulled from the program and checked out and the same central malfunction is found. While Pete and John are enjoying their time as outlaws, a robo-snake bites John in the arm and now slight concern is shown by the Delos high brass. Not knowing what this means, they limit customers coming in, but that proves to not be enough as the robots are starting to act on their own and being forced to watch as one kills a customer with no way to stop it, the power is cut, but the robots continue to carry on with their dirty work. Only the humans have to fear for their lives, but with so many robots running each area, there may be no way for anyone to escape .

Talk about a story that was well ahead of its time, it is amazing that we do not have robot theme parks out there yet. Maybe we do and I have not heard of them since I am not the richest man in the world, but if there is one, I would like to know more about the programming behind it. As we have learned in recent history, none of our programming is safe from hackers and just imagine what would happen if they took over all the androids in an amusement park. Although the story really revolves around Pete and John as they are on the vacation of a lifetime, I see more going on behind the scenes with the Delos brass and what they have designed, or more precisely, what they did not design. Having robots designing and building robots may be time efficient, but might not be the best idea when you do not know how the final product actually works. I am surprised that they never made a series out of this story, oh wait, yes they did. Looking at this movie, it really stands the test of time and when a crazy android world opens up, I hope they take note of this, because if they build killer robots, it will not end well for anyone involved.

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