Westworld (TV)

All non-Nolan related film, tv, and streaming discussions.
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The best one so far. Terrific all around. Hopefully the finale will be equally satisfying.

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I just wish we didn't know every single thing beforehand.

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m4st4 wrote:I just wish we didn't know every single thing beforehand.
Spoilers for Mr Robot too I guess, but a lot of Season 2 was telegraphed after the first episode by a LOT of the internet. I think that's the issue, Jonah's discussed this at length. That in the age of Reddit and huge group discussion, twist-based TV is bound to be correctly guessed by somebody. And when you use narrative language and logic that's, let's say, "medium" in its predictability, where a couple of smarter guys figure it out and post about it and the average viewer might not but may read about it, it spreads way faster than it used to before. Jonah says he actually reads Reddit a lot and said if people are guessing stuff it means, if nothing else, there's a valid internal logic to the show. For whatever that's worth.

HUGE Mr. Robot spoilers in this article, but it's very relevant: http://www.vulture.com/2016/08/mr-robot ... ymore.html

Relevant section:
The twist movies of the late 1990s occurred during the last possible cultural moment when a storyteller could do something like that and not have millions of people instantly take to the internet to figure out what was "really" going on. You might figure it out on your own and share your evidence with your friends on a chat board or in the comments section of a blog post, but the phenomenon of literally millions of viewers simultaneously joining forces to stay one step ahead of a storyteller was still about five to ten years away (depending on which social-media platform you think did more damage to a screenwriter's ability to keep a secret, Facebook or Twitter).


The funny thing is, you often find yourself appreciating the substance of a story more once you've gotten past the adrenaline rush of "What's going on?" and "What's really going on?" and are able to concentrate on the details of characterization, performance, and storytelling. As one personal example of this phenomenon, I offer The Sixth Sense: I accidentally found out the twist before I saw the film when my eye randomly fell on a particular paragraph of an Entertainment Weekly story with a spoiler warning at the top. But I still loved the movie because it painted such a haunting (in every sense) portrait of the human mind's capacity for denial and delusion. At its heart, the film is not merely about a man who had no idea he was dead, but a man who refused to accept his fate and was going through the motions of an old life that no longer existed. Most people who saw it for the first time were probably preoccupied with guessing the twist, and if they guessed it early, they might have decided the film was a waste of their time: You promised you were going to be smarter than me, movie, but it turned out I was smarter than you, so I'm disappointed.


Seventeen years on, there are Facebook and Reddit and Twitter threads, video essays and blog posts dedicated to figuring out every last twist and trick that storytellers naïvely hope they're holding in reserve. For some reason — perhaps the social-media-age rush to jump ahead to the next thing — this kind of viewing has become endemic. Whether the topic of discussion is the meaning of the ending of Inception or The Sopranos or the lineage of Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it's guaranteed that somebody (or somebodies) will eventually guess the correct answer or, worse, insist that they've "solved" a work that was meant to be ambiguous and unresolved. The end result of this kind of discussion diverts attention from the deeper values of storytelling and re-centers interest on the hook, or on what viewers mistakenly believe is the hook, of any given tale. Art becomes a math problem, or a gift-wrapped present whose identity can be deduced by shaking the box a little.
I wonder how this concept will evolve shows over time.


-Vader

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Thanks for the article Vader. Yeah, in this age it's hard not to read stuff related to your favorite shows... even if you don't read thorough analysis or two on reddit there's a tweet that could spoil it for you, or a Facebook, forum post. I honestly wish my head was buried deep in the sand when it comes to this particular show because two things happened recently: I don't feel it's 'the best thing ever' for some time (never did but you understand the hyperbole, the hype grows thinner over time), I wish it was more stylized, better directed... imagine this show with Bryan Fuller's Hannibal overtones in mind? And again, the reveals weren't really reveals due to all-knowing community and my own curiosity, clicking on those pesky black bars. And it's not like I have to repeat that same cycle over and over again with every TV series, on the contrary, I like staying in the dark... but without narrative twists and turns, puzzle pieces coming together... what is Westworld? Not much. A concept.

Right now it's like watching the Ravensburger mosaic unfolding before you, and it's pretty evident that it's Times Square, even without the final piece.
Last edited by m4st4 on November 28th, 2016, 11:57 am, edited 3 times in total.

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The only thing
that surprised me was that Dolores killed Arnold.
However, wonderful execution. I think this was the best episode yet.

Bring on the finale

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m4st4 wrote: I wish it was more stylized, better directed... imagine this show with Bryan Fuller's Hannibal overtones in mind?
This is, for me, among the greatest things holding the show back. The blocking/staging/cinematography overall tone, including at times the melodrama and soap-opera monologuing, has the stench of Network TV. That's the 'trash-art' aspect of Westworld for me. Not the violence, not the sex. It's the Imitation of Life overly grand gestures of emotion without much of it being earned. Hoping Jonah grows into something better. We may already see evidence of this next week since Jonah directed the finale, and it's epic lengthed, etc, and the pilot was probably the best directed episode this season.


-Vader

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Vader182 wrote:We may already see evidence of this next week since Jonah directed the finale, and it's epic lengthed, etc, and the pilot was probably the best directed episode this season.

-Vader
True. I've seen the preview and it looks similar to the pilot in scope. Last time I was actually wowed by the overall style of the episode was when Dolores and William entered that hedonistic town (Was it Episode 5 or 6? Can't remember now)... and that was it. Back to solid TV western roots... it's no Jesse James that's for sure. And it's not like we haven't seen some epic achievements in cinematography on TV, ever since The Sopranos. New standards have been created. Even something trashy/pulpy by default like Ash vs. Evil Dead looks pretty damn good in season 2, and that's Starz.

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When they showed the picture of Williams fiance I was shocked

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Why was Dolores back in the pants outfit and not the dress when MiB walked in? I thought the constant outfit swapping represented past/present. A little confusing.

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Yeah the outfit swapping was a bit much, added unnecessary confusion

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