Review: Westworld — The Original
It’s the dawn of AI and we’re all along for the somehwat confusing ride
Westworld touts itself as an exploration of the “dawn of artificial consciousness,” and The Original, the pilot episode, was a mix of some truly exciting narrative and character potential marred by confusing setups and too many characters.
To begin with, the show suffers from similar symptoms to Game of Thrones in its early years: too many cooks in the kitchen. The cast is rather big and the episode — even at 75 minutes — still struggles to balance its character focus. There’s less cutting between 14 different areas, but there are still quite a few seemingly critical characters to the big picture and it’s almost dizzying when the show is trying to tell the story of reality and construct while also introducing us to the pieces on the board.
Weirdly, though, I’m not particularly frustrated by all these characters, because there’s a sense that a few people are expendable when the inevitable AI collapse occurs.
The first 15 minutes of the episode where the show establishes its world is where its the weakest and that’s attributed mainly to the overall establishment of the world being extremely convoluted. For example, James Marsden’s character, Teddy, is initially sold as a “newcomer” (a paying guest that enters Westworld) to the construct, while Ed Harris as the Man in Black is sold as an AI within Westworld.
It could have been a cunning misdirection about who to trust and how the rogue AI operates IF resolved over the course of the episode, but it’s not. Instead, it’s used to impart the “rules” of the Westworld construct as the Man in Black murders Teddy. It’s an odd choice to make from creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy that had me shaking my head in a bid to try and lock onto what exactly was happening.
On the positive side of things, the character of The Man in Black is an interesting one, portrayed with precision by the great Ed Harris. His story flows in and out of Westworld and his overall intentions seem mysterious enough for me to warrant the stamp of “yes, this is intriguing.”
And it’s nice that we get to settle in to such wonderful performances from the immense cast too. Rachel Evan Wood as Delores does a marvelous job of becoming sentient by episode’s end. Jeffrey Wright (Bernard) and Ed Hall (The Man in Black) both add nice bits of spice while Anthony Hopkins (Ford) monsters his five minutes of screen time. Their characters are drawn well enough from the get go and Delores looks set to turn into a force to be reckoned with; her journey both in reality and within the construct are nice enough of a hook for us to come back next week.
Pilots are notoriously hard episodes to crack and talk about in-depth other than say, “Look, it’s got potential,” and Westworld, at this point, is the king of potential. The subject matter has the potential to spark some debates over the water-cooler, and, despite the somewhat confusing start, seeing the AI citizens of Westworld slowly waking up one by one is a proposition that is going to be rather enjoyable to watch.
