ChrisTilford wrote:

As you know, we are fast approaching the launch of our new Westworld narrative. This creative overhaul is part of our continuing commitment to unique storytelling, as we maintain our position as the premier destination for immersive entertainment.

Ahead of our offsite event celebrating the new launch, we tasked our tried-and-true visionaries with translating this year’s theme, “Chestnut: Cultivating Seeds of Innovation”, into a grabbing and concise visual. They did not disappoint.

By now, it’s obvious that television drama, especially in the loftier prestige-driven realms, continues to have problem with the casual and reflexive overuse of violence against women. While it’s true that a number of men die in “Westworld,” using that argument to diminish the treatment of women here is to ignore the larger context in which this show operates, and the real world in which women live. Even now, when the expanding television industry offers greater opportunities to modify or reconsider clichéd modes of storytelling, drama writers continually resort to the rape, assault, and murder of women to provide inciting incidents, or to make a show seem “edgy” and to “raise the stakes.”

“Westworld” feeds into these tropes while signaling its concern about them, but that concern rings hollow the more its bloody and repetitive scenarios play out. And the drama undercuts itself through its frequent attempts to invest the architects of the show’s fictional realm with an air of tragic nobility — which often reads as defensive self-pity.
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Like the resort at its heart, “Westworld” doesn’t want to alienate any potential customers, so it draws on a grab bag of ideas and clashing tones without making its point of view clear. The more indistinct a concept, the fewer people can take issue with it, which is an approach that might work well for a vacation spot, but poses a serious problem for an ambitious television drama. Still, it’s likely that a subset of viewers who just want to see naked prostitutes and witness cool shoot-outs will be satisfied by what they find on the screen. Like most visitors to the resort, some will gladly partake in what’s being offered without thinking much about the cost.