HBO's "Westworld", starring Anthony Hopkins/produced by J.J. Abrams

[wayoung]

OMG the producers of a longform art piece LIED about where it was going to preserve the audiences emotional reactions (and financial viability of the product) when the reveal was finally made?! Shocked, I'm shocked I tells you!!!! No one could ever have predicted this!

 

[DigificWriter]

They didn't lie, they were just telling the truth from a certain point of view.

No.

Christina isn't a human; telling us that she was is a flat-out lie.

OMG the producers of a longform art piece LIED about where it was going to preserve the audiences emotional reactions (and financial viability of the product) when the reveal was finally made?! Shocked, I'm shocked I tells you!!!! No one could ever have predicted this!

Lying to your audience is a sign of weak storytelling, and the Nolans have heretofore demonstrated that they're not weak storytellers.

 

[wayoung]

Or it's a sign that in today's world of hyper attentive fans obsessing over every syllable uttered by writers and every frame of a show presented on TV being analyzed to death on message forums creative people are forced between a rock and a hard place:. Confirming fan theories worked out by the obsessive which will leak to the general audience weeks (months, years) ahead of the planned reveal, spoiling the journey, or lying which will keep the statements within the realm of the obsessives, most of which will know they're lying, and not filter out and ruin the journey for the general audience.

Even without the issues of modern day telecoms, artists have lied as long as there has been art, often just for the glee of seeing the results of it.

If producers lying bothers you, stop reading interviews with them and enjoy the shows as they air like 95% of the audience.

Or stop watching and boycott them. They won't care either way.

 

[wayoung]

In related news, YouTube seems to have rejected the recent copyright claim by HBO over this 9 second clip from season 2 that I uploaded 4 years ago as a joke about me playing video games instead of going to bed.

(My name is William)

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[JirinPanthosa]

You all can see the space needle too right? Just checking.

INVISIBLE SPACE NEEDLE OF DEATH!

I’m wondering now how this Teddy joined the real world. Did Bernard do it or did he choose to earlier?

Did you really want Christina not to be a robot? And instead to be a human who coincidentally looked exactly like Dolores for no in world reason and for no other real world reason than reusing the actress?

Would that not totally undercut the suspension of disbelief and immersion?

Star Trek only gets to do that because it’s sci-fi on a low-medium level of seriousness. Higher seriousness level sci-fi needs actual story reasons to reuse actors.

 

[DigificWriter]

Did you really want Christina not to be a robot? And instead to be a human who coincidentally looked exactly like Dolores for no in world reason and for no other real world reason than reusing the actress?

Yes, because that's the expectation Evan and the Nolans cultivated with their comments.

Would that not totally undercut the suspension of disbelief and immersion?

No.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Yes, because that's the expectation Evan and the Nolans cultivated with their comments.



No.

Then it seems like you'd rather Westworld be pulpy light scifi, and we're watching two completely different shows.

If characters look exactly the same for no reason in the story, the story has completely abandoned all seriousness. And Westworld isn't fun enough not to have seriousness and still to be watchable.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

That kind of thing breaks the 4th wall, plain and simple.

Breaking the 4th wall is okay for comedy shows, and okay in small doses in more pulpy shows like Star Trek. But more serious scifi dramas need to keep the 4th wall completely intact.

 

[wayoung]

There are serious shows that have successfully recast major actors into different roles (see Dillahunt in Deadwood) but everything about him was radically changed to the point he was practically unrecognizable, which is the opposite of what happened here. Every scene with Christina was purposely evocative of her past as Dolores, from her very introduction, waking up the same as Dolores did. Painting like Dolores, writing stories similar to Dolores' loops, using similar phrasing as Dolores' programmed speech, Teddy...

Vs, again, Dillahunt, who as Wollcott was purposely presented as far from Jack McCall in camera framing, wardrobe, speech, and general appearance as possible without surgery.

 

[crookeddy]

There are serious shows that have successfully recast major actors into different roles (see Dillahunt in Deadwood) but everything about him was radically changed to the point he was practically unrecognizable, which is the opposite of what happened here. Every scene with Christina was purposely evocative of her past as Dolores, from her very introduction, waking up the same as Dolores did. Painting like Dolores, writing stories similar to Dolores' loops, using similar phrasing as Dolores' programmed speech, Teddy...

Vs, again, Dillahunt, who as Wollcott was purposely presented as far from Jack McCall in camera framing, wardrobe, speech, and general appearance as possible without surgery.

Digificwriter has very serious issues about trusting "reliable source". He keeps citing them as absolute unbreakable fact, and always has his heart broken when it turns out to be misdirection/deception/misinformation. Keeps happening over and over.

 

[crookeddy]

There are serious shows that have successfully recast major actors into different roles (see Dillahunt in Deadwood) but everything about him was radically changed to the point he was practically unrecognizable, which is the opposite of what happened here. Every scene with Christina was purposely evocative of her past as Dolores, from her very introduction, waking up the same as Dolores did. Painting like Dolores, writing stories similar to Dolores' loops, using similar phrasing as Dolores' programmed speech, Teddy...

Vs, again, Dillahunt, who as Wollcott was purposely presented as far from Jack McCall in camera framing, wardrobe, speech, and general appearance as possible without surgery.

Real world things happen, and sometimes you need to recast to keep your story alive. That's different from reusing actors for no reason at all though.

 

[wayoung]

Real world things happen, and sometimes you need to recast to keep your story alive. That's different from reusing actors for no reason at all though.

They re-used Dillahunt because they liked him, no other reason. I was using him as an example of successfully re-using the same actor in a serious show without breaking the fourth wall, and illustrating the difference between his being cast in two seperate roles with the show going to lengths to make him unrecognizable for each part, and Westworld, where the show went to lengths to show the similarity between each part

 

[crookeddy]

They re-used Dillahunt because they liked him, no other reason. I was using him as an example of successfully re-using the same actor in a serious show without breaking the fourth wall, and illustrating the difference between his being cast in two seperate roles with the show going to lengths to make him unrecognizable for each part, and Westworld, where the show went to lengths to show the similarity between each part

'
Oh ok, so I missed your point. My bad.

 

[DigificWriter]

I wanted Christina to be a human character who just happened to look like Dolores only because that's the expectation that Evan and the Nolans cultivated.

It's not unreasonable for me to not be okay with the three of them lying about the character, nor should I have been expected to automatically assume that their insistence that Christina was a human was in fact a lie.

 

[crookeddy]

I wanted Christina to be a human character who just happened to look like Dolores only because that's the expectation that Evan and the Nolans cultivated.

It's not unreasonable for me to not be okay with the three of them lying about the character, nor should I have been expected to automatically assume that their insistence that Christina was a human was in fact a lie.

This is Westworld after all, so there can be other twists and U-Turns that change her nature somehow. Or they can go and say something like "oh we meant human-like in that she is in the same prison as the humans"

But really this is just another example of how modern fandom basically ruins the experience of just letting the show unfold as the writers intended. The endless questions and interviews make them have to choose between preserving their story's secrets or lying to people.

 

[DigificWriter]

This is Westworld after all, so there can be other twists and U-Turns that change her nature somehow. Or they can go and say something like "oh we meant human-like in that she is in the same prison as the humans"

But really this is just another example of how modern fandom basically ruins the experience of just letting the show unfold as the writers intended. The endless questions and interviews make them have to choose between preserving their story's secrets or lying to people.

Nobody was asking the Nolans or Evan about the nature of Christina's character, so this idea that they had to lie about her being a human 'to preserve a twist' is a bunch of BS.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I'm curious what those actual quotes are because the ones I've seen are cagey at best.

Either way though as far as the character is concerned she is human though. If they were to ask Christina who she is I would think she would say she is a human once she even understood you were questioning her actual makeup like that. She'd probably say, I'm a writer, and if pressed further who she is something like, I'm a woman, and then pressed further, I'm a person, a human being. Are they purposely being a bit obtuse about the character, probably, but I've heard a lot worse.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm curious what those actual quotes are because the ones I've seen are cagey at best.

I'm curious, too. I mean "cultivated" sounds multiple times.

 

[DigificWriter]

In the Creating Westworld's Reality featurette for 'The Augeries', Evan straight-up describes Christina as human, and Lisa and Jonah do as well.

There's also the pre-premiere interviews from Lisa and Evan that also refer to Christina being human, albeit in a more roundabout manner than in the featurette.

 

[Nerys Myk]

In the Creating Westworld's Reality featurette for 'The Augeries', Evan straight-up describes Christina as human, and Lisa and Jonah do as well.

There's also the pre-premiere interviews from Lisa and Evan that also refer to Christina being human, albeit in a more roundabout manner than in the featurette.

Yeah, I'm gonna need exact quotes.