What Do The Reviews Have To Say About 'Westworld'?
HBO is sti​ll searching for its next massive hit to follow up on Game of Thrones, and Westworld — which is produced by JJ Abrams and is based on the 1973 film written by Michael Crichton about a futuristic theme park inhabited by androids — is the network's next big bet.
Westworld premieres tonight at 9 pm ET — here's what the reviews have to say:
Tonight's Premiere Is 😗 👌
The premiere… is fantastic — introducing us to the core characters of the piece while also starting to unravel thematic connections that feel like they will carry the show.
[S]weepingly seductive.
[Collider]
[H]igh expectations were met with a terrific, gripping premiere episode that quickly draws you in.
[IGN]
*Fair Warning, It's Also Super Violent
[The show serves] up no end of distressing moments in which characters are terrorized, assaulted or murdered. A screaming woman is dragged off to be violated within the show's first 15 minutes. There are multiple mass murders (one scene features actual buckets of blood), and the Man in Black (Ed Harris) is a guest who operates like a standard-issue serial killer within the park.
[Variety]
But It Struggles To Sustain That Strong Start
With every new episode (of which I've seen four), Westworld loses a little bit more steam. There are still plenty of interesting things going on around the edges of the frame, but the series slowly but surely develops a severe identity crisis.
[Vox]
Westworld's first episode is very strong, and its second nearly as good. It swiftly builds a world built on a deeply disturbing power dynamic that could make a decent metaphor for just about anything you choose. And then it backs away. Starting in the third episode, it's as if Westworld's writers lost faith that a theme park run by ethically twisted tech visionaries and full of A.I. with PTSD and humans who checked their morality at home is enough to power a TV show. Having achieved nuclear fusion, they abandon it for a backup generator, focusing on a needless mythology and quest narratives swiped from Lost's discarded ideas board.
[Slate]
'Westworld' Is Ambitious Enough To Ask Big Philosophical Questions…
What keeps Westworld interesting in its early going, despite its flat patches and flights of pretentiousness, is its willingness to think big. Is there a difference between simulated and actual consciousness? Are we pushing our entertainments to be brutal, or are those entertainments pushing us to be?
The scripts draw on theories of simulacra, spectatorship, life-as-performance, and the late-capitalist consumer as both royal and serf; leaven them with an almost spiritual yearning for redemption (expressed by robot and human alike); and fold it all into a series of recursive situations, like loops in a computer program or levels in a video game.
[Vulture]
…But It Can't Always Pull Off The Answers
In the four episodes given to critics to preview, these various plots meander to varying degrees of interest, at each turn raising more questions and, often frustratingly, answering little of them.
Westworld is a muddle: stunning to look at, but overloaded with incident, characters, and themes the show doesn't quite know what to do with.
[HitFix]
So, Uh, Is It The New 'Game Of Thrones' Or Not?
Guess we'll have to wait and see ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
TL;DR
Reviewers had only four episodes from HBO to work with, so the jury is ultimately still out, but the outlook is positive — even if there are areas of concern:
To endure as a TV series, Westworld will need to bridge the gap between its fascinating ideas and the blank canvases they're projected upon. Fortunately, it's not so lost in its thoughts to forget that a robot-cowboy show ought to have the occasional shootout, heist, or daring escape.
[AV Club]
At any rate, if the premise has you intrigued, it's definitely worth checking out.
Watch The Trailer
