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Despera posted:I think most people on the outside world were sure that dolores didnt blow herself up. 
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May 29, 2018 09:34
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:56 |
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I miss the hosts failing to understand something and just saying things like "doesn't look like anything to me". Now it feels like several characters happen to be called hosts, but they essentially behave exactly as slightly autistic humans do. I suppose this is explained as them having awakened now, but it's a nuance that feels like its been lost somewhere. I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't feel like there is any real delineation between hosts and humans now, other than the hosts (or most of them anyway) being suddenly psychopaths.
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May 29, 2018 11:37
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Probably been posted before, but it deserves reposting, all of Hopkins's scenes in season 1: Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV2Q41o-rwE Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRqJ-hGKpcc Over 2 hours of pure class.
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May 30, 2018 15:12
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The new Teddy is awesome, and his withering passive aggressive comments towards Dolores are icing on the cake. He's my new favourite character. But yeah, this show is on a WB show trajectory. Feels like the writers spent their year off reading the Westworld Reddit or some poo poo and came out the other side pondering "what if timelines, but too much". The PMCs are completely ineffectual, they obviously can't "win" but it is not impossible to write scenes in such a way that their tactical advantage or numbers are used against them. Instead, they are a shambles. It kills all tension when you end up knowing that everyone with a name has plot armour. The first season didn't need this. Shogun World was established and then went absolutely nowhere and affected no one. And last season it was ~*The Maze*~ and this season it's The Valley. Guaranteed The Valley is going to turn out to be a waypoint for another quest. I was reasonably invested in the idea that the show runners had a trajectory for the show that would be intriguing, but now I'm starting to think they're spinning their wheels.
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Jun 6, 2018 11:47
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esperterra posted:I don't think so. Her failing to play Ford doesn't matter much because it would have ended his way, anyway. Like I've said a bunch of times it's less failings of the character itself, for me, and Thompson's performance just not selling her to me. Esp up against all these much bigger and better actors.
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Jun 7, 2018 11:54
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The PMCs wouldn't be so egregious were it not for the fact that the show makes a point showing how they're taking charge and that moustache man is here and he's the ultimate badass only for him to get murked by the first host he comes across (fair enough it was Teddy, but it didn't have to be). It's possible he's survived, but if not then as far as I tell he was completely ineffectual. I know PMCs turning up and talking smack to the incumbent security is a trope, but it really shows through on this show. They're faceless goons who it's impossible to believe are actually trained or have any hope of prevailing. They're basically those Phantom Menace poo poo-tier droids in every way. Durzel fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jun 7, 2018 20:00
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What a quality episode. Zahn McClarnon is poo poo hot. The only negative is that every time there's a scene in the Mesa I'm completely taken out of the show. Two techs wander off after starting a 4 hour (!) patch, and I guess they corralled everyone else in the building too. Must've been someone's birthday and they were all watching him/her blow out the candles? I get that Ake having to dodge techs slows things down, but having him walk about like its a deserted building is just surreal. This company has some insanely coveted IP and they have literally zero cameras or security guards anywhere. Durzel fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 11:42
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lol I was hoping someone would post this. This was like one of those one frame subliminal messages, it knocked me into a trance for a moment.
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Jun 20, 2018 09:40
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:They blew up the data backups for the hosts two episodes ago. I expected them to wait until at least season 3 to introduce another McGuffin. I guess this is the curse of pretty much any seasonal show without real book-like ambition (e.g. The Wire), you end up writing stuff thinking in season long arc terms rather than too far beyond. I don't really get, for instance, why Maeve is suddenly the apple of Ford's eye. I preferred it when she was a host who was starting to escape her programming, as that's a more interesting conceit, rather than retconning her into a female Neo. Regardless it's still some decently entertaining TV and I'd watch Hopkins read the phone book.
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Jun 21, 2018 11:08
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My memory is hazy but didn't Dolores start the awakening of Maeve by whispering the whole "these violent delights have violent ends" trigger sentence to her outside the Pasadena? Also in suffering terms Maeve was the madam at the point at which she became woke, was she really suffering at that point? Her character seemed to relish the position. I can't remember if it was stated how long she had been doing that but I got the sense that her past life with her fake child was a long time ago. Other characters by contrast seemingly had endless suffering since they were "born" (e.g. Teddy). *shrug* it's not a huge deal, but I just thought it was more interesting when she appeared to be figuring all this stuff out for herself, much like the Ghost Nation were. When it appear to become more preordained, and reduces her agency, I dunno it just becomes less resonant for me. I must admit though I find the whole idea of AI learning that it's AI more interesting than the entertainment. Durzel fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jun 21, 2018 |
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Jun 21, 2018 13:01
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Season 1 felt sharp, self-assured, measured. Season 2? You could pretty much watch any episode in any order and skip some ones entirely and be no more or less informed as to the trajectory it was on. If ever there was any doubt that the Nolans have no idea where the show is going that finale sealed the deal. Not even Hopkins could save that incoherent mess.
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Jun 26, 2018 07:22
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Is the audience supposed to be intimidated by the thought of Dolores in the real world? What threat does a host, or even a group of hosts, pose to humanity? The running conceit seemed to be that Dolores wanted to get into our world to kill us (pretty sure that's what Bernard said at any rate), but that is such an unrealistic non-threat that it's tough to take seriously. I don't even buy the premise that a host existing in the real world is at risk? They are almost perfect facsimiles of humans, Dolores would be best described as "a little autistic" (forgetting the psychopathy) as a human by someone who didn't even know hosts existed. She'd pass easily in the real world. 99.9% of the people in the real world have no experience of hosts. I suppose it will be vaguely interesting to see what all new Dolores and TeddyHale or whatever do in environments that aren't the prairie or backstage at Themepark for the 1%, but since the show has stopped even humanising the humans, why should we care about anyone involved? There is barely any sense that the hosts are actually artificial anymore. Cradle, Forge, Door.. the first season didn't need any of that poo poo. Whilst the Maze was MacGuffin, it almost didn't matter because the show as a whole felt assured, characters had arcs, reveals were resonant and not contrived. This season (with the exception of a couple of standout episodes) felt like it was written for CW Television Network and got picked up by HBO at the last minute.
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Jun 26, 2018 11:08
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Pirate Radar posted:And since they have the equipment to make more hosts, Dolores gets to print more of herself with a succession of new bodies—since she, uh, can’t exactly go out and walk around in her original body now. So we get to see a bunch of different actresses (and actors?) do ERW impressions next season, which will be kind of cool. It's a bit nit-picky, but we were originally shown pretty massive machines making the skeletal & musculature parts of hosts, and the rest was left mostly up to the audience to assume were done in other rooms (e.g. like that scene where an iris was being made). Certainly the show made it feel like this was industrial tech that needed assembly lines, tooling, staff, etc. Then we have a machine in a study in some domestic property which apparently does the whole thing including blood, hair, eyes, etc perfectly. Meh I guess like the whole "where's the power source" thing, it's suspension of disbelief, but the show had a believable infrastructure before, I could believe that the hosts manufacturing process was extensive and industrial. A portable host spawn point diminishes that.
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Jun 26, 2018 12:13
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emanresu tnuocca posted:Oh seriously, Charlotte riding in the buggy column that slowly trudges along after horse-mounted Clementine telling the driver to step on it was very much:
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Jun 26, 2018 14:25
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Madurai posted:What would shooting her in the face have done? We've already established hosts are effectively bulletproof once they turn off their "fall down when shot" programming. The real question is: how did Teddy kill himself? (until Bernard shot her of course)
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Jun 26, 2018 17:40
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Just a reminder that the same show brought us scenes like this: https://youtu.be/F7TR50Mnwpw
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Jun 26, 2018 22:13
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feedmyleg posted:Remember when we spent multiple episodes watching Dolores gather a Confederalo army for no goddamn reason that went nowhere Turns out, luckily for her, when she got there she only needed MIB, and didn't actually need him either since she was bulletproof.
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Jun 27, 2018 12:37
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Chalks posted:It wasn't even clear how Stubbs knew that Hale was a host, unless hosts can identify each other, in which case he didn't need to nudge nudge wink wink to let her know. If Hale had just got onto the boat without that interaction nothing would have changed. I think it would've been far more interesting had Stubbs been human and empathised with the hosts (ala Felix), but yes it didn't need him looking directly in the camera and saying "you could say it is... my core drive". Ok he didn't look down the camera but he might as well have. Hemsworth, having no idea that he was going to be a host given it was only decided upon the night before, reacted as you'd expect. Perhaps it would've been helpful for him to an actor, and to the other writers, to have known this information so they could work that ambiguity into the performance. It's been said earlier but if you start reading Reddit etc when you're writing your show, it's the kiss of death. The Stubbs reveal basically felt like it was tailormade to blow the minds of that audience rather than it being in service of the story.
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Jun 27, 2018 12:51
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davidspackage posted:Almost nothing that was built up actually makes sense in hindsight, and the twist of Hale being Dolores seems as made up at the 11th hour as Stubbs's weird little final dialogue. Writing this season seems like it was that party game where you draw part of a creature and then fold the paper over it and make another person draw the next part. 
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Jun 27, 2018 12:54
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Entropic posted:Better Call Saul turned out to be a way better show than Breaking Bad. Also I can't understand the mindset of people who "loved the Stubbs reveal". There was nothing that built up to it, it just happened. And don't tell me how it was subtle and "there if you were looking for it" because no one involved in the show including the actor playing him knew it was happening until the night before. Any nuance that is claimed in retrospect is in the viewer's head. Contrast that with the Bernard reveal, you know one where they actually planned for it to happen and where the show left subtle breadcrumbs for you to pick up on and have a greater appreciation of in retrospect (e.g. Ford telling Bernard that "I know how that head of yours works" - a brilliant bit of double-meaning dialogue). The Stubbs reveal was 100% "we've got 5 minutes runtime left and are 1 reveal short of our quota". I know it's a curse of many television shows that the first season or two are sharp because there is a trajectory that has been sold to a TV channel and a certainty in that you have at least a season's worth of breathing space before you have to start justifying being picked up for another season. I don't know the answer to that really.. save for having the integrity not to undermine the quality of your past work by churning out a load of freewheeling poo poo because you literally have no idea yourself where you're going, who your characters are or what you want them to become. Other shows have managed it - so there's no excuse. The fact that the Nolans have pretty much said "wait and see" in response to whose brain balls ended up in Hale's handbag says everything really. They don't know themselves and will probably cruise /r/westworld when the time comes to start writing and see if there is a poll about who should be in there, and use that as the basis of weaving Season 3's ~story~. Elsie will probably be in there, because - psyche - didn't you know she was one too?? Westworld season 2 really is disappointing when you compare it to the first season. Very little of it stands up to basic scrutiny before the fundamental logic of it collapses. If you have to paper over the architecture of it all just to make it even approach coherence that is not a deep cerebral show, it's a pile of poorly written poo poo. EDIT: Also while I'm ranting I can't believe "hats are the mechanism for scanning humans" got out of the writers room. That said, it amuses me greatly that guests would be constantly reminded to put their hats back on when they're out and about, and wear them in ShogunWorld even though it's not apropos. Durzel fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jun 28, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 12:02
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esperterra posted:They did that with ERW specifically last season too, iirc, to keep her as in the dark as Dolores would be during her weird trips down memory lane. I'm not entirely sure why they would do the same for a scene as simple as 'MiB and Dolores/Wyatt meet up at some point and ride somewhere' when it isn't being employed to conceal any real twist or reveal. I don't understand why they think it's so important to have ~twists~. Reveals aren't even really that interesting, as they're kindof like a party popper - you can't be surprised twice. I was far more interested in the philosophical discussions that followed that reveal. That said, the Bernard reveal was built up and it made previous dialogue take on a greater resonance, without hitting you over the head with it.
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Jul 2, 2018 14:41
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Hat tech could've easily been substituted with some kind of implant that gets inserted behind each guest's ear, beneath the skin, whose purpose is to "track and monitor guests for their safety for the duration of their stay at the park". Said implants are then removed by Delos at departure and it becomes clear at that point that they have a secondary purpose of scanning brains. I mean gently caress that whole thing could be explained in one scene showing a guest going through the park induction, being told what it is and what it's for, and seeing it being inserted. It would also have the benefit of not undermining everything that happened previously (since these implants would've been invisible) Instead we have hat tech in a world where we've already seen people without hats, and entire worlds where hats aren't thematically appropriate, even before you consider the logic of people naturally taking their hats off, losing or damaging them, swapping them with friends, etc.
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Jul 2, 2018 20:36
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:56 |
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Whilst that's definitely true, it is incredible considering how much of a time gap there was between the two seasons. It's not like they were caught on the hop with the show being picked up for a second season, having to finish their homework the night before its due in. poo poo like deciding to make Stubbs a host the night before doesn't gel with the whole "we've got a 5 season arc mapped out".
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Jul 3, 2018 10:01
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