WestWorld (2016) -- 9

WestWorld (WW) is the show that is like so many other shows and movies that viewers get caught in its maze as emotionally as do its creatures. As you watch WW, if you have been consuming motion picture culture for the last two decades, you will not only have your mind fucked properly by the actual plot, but also by trying to name to yourself all the things it is sampling – Firefly, Memento, Inception, Dollhouse, Ex Machina, Groundhog Day, actual old west standards from The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Unforgiven to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Of course it's own actual movie West World. 

No breaks to catch!

You’ll feel bad for the Teddy character, because just as Teddy is the persistently caring and screwed over pretty boy in WW, so too is James Marsden in Enchanted and XMen.

It’s par for the course for executive producer, JJ Abrams, to pull all the things you love into one place and mangle them up together into a new form of nostalgia. A drinking game for references. It has sets from the Death Star for The Hunger Games with Truman Show boundaries and rules. There’s even lessons in story telling on how to make the perfect tragic love story taken from Charlie Kauffman’s genius mind fucks Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Eat your heart out Charlie Kauffman.

Not to mention the exquisite soundtrack that winds its way through the Best Standards of Radiohead and The Rolling Stones.

Which is to say, I loved it. Every minute, even when there are some weird holes (where is the dude who went to look for Elsie? Why does Charlotte not look more into Teresa’s death, when she clearly knows it’s fishy?) you want more it to wash over you.

Abrams’ true genius is making deliciously slick morsels of stuff you already love. Like gourmet mac

Nom. In classic cowboy cast iron -- nom...

n chz. Very few ppl will argue that the gourmet version is not delicious, but most will also be satisfied with Kraft or Velveeta. I haven’t researched this, but surely I’m not the first to point this out, that Abram’s real vision is a sieve through which nerd pop culture drains revealing new form of nostalgia.

Maybe I’m too harsh on Abrams, maybe I’m just getting old enough that I catch the references. The tug of reality that keeps me from this is the fact that I’ve watched all the things that led to the writers and directors and visionaries who made these referenced pieces. Everyone knows Avatar came from Fern Gully which came from Captain Planet and the world first discovering deforestation. But most things come from straining the thoughts of a more diaphanous culture than the blue/silver screen. Like all the Brat Pack movies. They weren’t referencing Rat Pack movies, they were scrutinizing teens under the thrall of Reganomics.

Maybe I’m giving Abrams too much credit – there’s a fleet of minds making this series. Abrams is lending his company Bad Robot and his own name. I assume most things in the series are not actually his idea, but that he shows up once or twice a week to review and give his god-like input on whichever part in the cinematic process they are in.

Regardless, it’s gorgeous, gortesque, and thrilling. Its obvious strengths of detail, easter eggs, subtle express

from every single actor, are only matched by its more subdued strengths: spot-on corporate structure/struggle, using tried and true suspense building camera techniques to mislead the viewer. Like when William and Dolores are by the river saving some dude’s life and the viewer expects this to be the moment William takes his first step down the dark side path by killing the stranger. The viewer is primed for this, the thrill of pacing and tight camera movement on Dolores walking away confirms William’s imminent action. Instead, Dolores has one of her schizophrenic flashes of death and destruction, leaving the viewer just as relieved to get back to William’s side as Dolores herself is.

And the whole 10 hour spree is like that. And the pay-off isn’t lame (*cough* Lost. Abrams. *cough*). It’s as intricate as the WW itself, and more rewarding than The Man in Black (Reference: MIB, The Black Tower series, Lost, Johnny Cash….ANY “Stranger Comes to Town” story line) could have conceived his own maze being.

NOTE: there’s even a damn Minotaur, just as we’re all getting to the center of the maze, as though to acknowledge the viewer’s dedication to winding and riding along. Then it’s killed and the beat goes on. 

Literally & figuratively. A freaking Minotaur.