What is Westworld?

HBO’s newest series is one of the most highly anticipated shows this fall. But what exactly is Westworld? Based off of Michael Crichton’s 1973 film of the same name, Westworld takes place in a manmade western themed town run by a very mysterious Dr. Ford, played by Anthony Hopkins. Everyday people spend big money to escape the confines of their reality to come to Westworld, a place where their darkest desires can be fully entertained.

The parallels to Crichton’s well known novel, Jurassic Park, make for an interesting analysis of why mankind’s God complex is so appealing. If you think the new series is a carbon copy of the ’73 film, you’d be wrong. According to Rolling Stone, husband and wife duo Jonathan and Lisa Nolan had one condition before signing on to adapt the show for HBO: The robots had to be the good guys. Evan Rachel Wood plays one of the lead bots that begins to develop a kind of moral awakening. On a daily basis she’s exposed to sex, money, and murder all at the hands of a paying human. It’s reasonable to assume that her character, Dolores, probably begins to wonder if humanity is inherently corrupt or good.

Fans of the genre will no doubt enjoy Westworld because the team behind it understands what makes for great television. An audience ultimately wants to see itself onstage or onscreen and that’s exactly what this new series does. We see firsthand how shady humanity can get from another perspective. Maybe by sympathizing with Dolores and other bots like her, we might just be able to see some of the flaws that are latent in all of us. This has the potential to be one of those rare shows that make you really ask yourself questions that you may not want to answer about morality, the future, and humanity.

The show is being billed as the next Game of Thrones, and with an all star cast like Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden, Ed Harris and Thandie Newton, it likely will be. HBO just dropped a new trailer that gives a pretty clear indication as to just how epic Westworld will be when it premiers October 2 at 9pm.

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