Was the 1973 Michael Crichton movie “Westworld” ever a story that cried out for adaptation as an ongoing cable series?
The story of a futuristic amusement park for tourists — and the robots who turn on their human counterparts — was a hit in its day, but didn’t have the universal elements that lent itself to another go-round 43 years later. Yet, after much controversy — and a production shutdown — here comes “Westworld,” the kind of big-canvas narrative HBO was hoping could be its next “Game of Thrones.” What’s lacking from this series, developed by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, is the passion and focus “Game of Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss brought to their adaptation of the George R.R. Martin novels.
In this series, Monument Valley and its sienna-colored vistas substitute for Westeros. The robots of the movie are, in HBO’s “Westworld,” human beings who’ve been lobotomized into androids known as “hosts,” who enact Wild West scenarios — shoot-’em-ups, robberies, amorous pleasures with saloon-based hookers — for the entertainment of Westworld tourists purchasing “narratives” developed in the park’s writers’ room.
We meet “host” Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), the dutiful daughter of Peter Abernathy (Louis Herthum), who gets up every morning and greets her daddy before riding to the town of Sweetwater, where she meets Teddy Lloyd (James Marsden), a handsome gunslinger just back in town.
The park is the brainchild of Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins, intoning like King Lear on Thorazine), a demonic puppeteer who has trained his huge staff to believe the hosts are not conscious and cannot feel or remember anything unless programmed to. Host wear and tear can be fixed by technicians in Ford’s elaborate underground factory. Aberrant emotions can be adjusted to avoid a recall — a fate worse than death. When it becomes clear in Episode 1 that the hosts feel and remember the horrible ways they came to be brought to Westworld, Ford’s team, headed by Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), goes into overdrive. But Bernard is intrigued that Dolores is not as dumb as she looks and asks her to keep their conversations a secret.
Wood, last seen on HBO as the daughter of Mildred Pierce in the turgid adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel of the same name, delivers the show’s best performance as Dolores: vulnerable and subtle with tiny slivers of pain. Thandie Newton is almost as good as a feisty, wayward madam plagued by flashbacks that Westworld technicians can’t quite erase.
Ed Harris, picking up where Yul Brynner left off in the film, cuts a menacing figure as the Man in Black, a killing machine determined to find a maze that may lead him out of the park.
In between these golden nuggets are meandering scenes that take a long time to acclimate park visitors (Jimmi Simpson, Ben Barnes) to the repertoire of narratives on display. Subplots involving the frustration of writers to have Ford sign off on their “backstories” could have easily been scrapped. Three hours in, we wonder: What are we supposed to be feeling here? How can Dolores be saved if she’s already had a lobotomy? The end of that story seems predictable.
Even harder to imagine is how “Westworld” can go on for 10 episodes, or even a second season. Knowing HBO, it’s likely to renew the series before the closing credits of the pilot.
Maybe a two-hour movie made in 1973 really said all there was to say.