Entertainment is useless unless there’s some sort of social commentary, with the best of writers being able to look past what’s presently relevant.
Right now we’re in the beginning of the virtual realty boom, which means a lot of commentary on the excitement and danger of this “reality.” But what is beyond this new tech?
The writers behind HBO’s “Westworld” have taken Michael Crichton’s 1973 classic and upgraded it to give us a look into the future of theme parks, where you can live out a fantasy. Yes, it’s in the vein of Total Recall, among other dystopian classics, but couldn’t be more socially relevant than it is now.
And the trailer, well, it’s phenomenal.
The drama, arriving Sunday, Oct. 2 at 9 p.m., is billed as a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin.
Ed Harris stars as ‘The Man in Black’ – described as the distillation of pure villainy into one man – who stars alongside Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Rodrigo Santoro, Shannon Woodward, Kyle Bornheimer and more. The Box‘s James Marsden plays Teddy Flood, a mysterious new arrival to a small frontier town. Teddy quickly proves both his charm — and his talent with a revolver — while his pursuit of a local beauty launches him on a dark odyssey (source: EW).
It hails from The Dark Knight and Interstellar co-writer Jonathan Nolan.
“People who come into this place are looking for—and this is the irony of it—the authentic experience,” Nolan explained to EW last year, before the delayed production. “They’re looking for not the virtual version, but the real version, the tactile version. Interestingly we’ve arrived at what [the original film] created—fully immersible virtual worlds. Look at Grand Theft Auto or any of these wholly imagined open-world video games. They are beautiful. They’re perfectly immersive and brilliant and filled with narrative turns … “What happens in Westworld stays in Westworld.” It’s a place where you can be whoever the f–k you want to be and there are no consequences. No rules, no limitations.”