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

[JirinPanthosa]

It doesn't make all humans look like dicks, just the ones that are running the park. Yes, I think it's totally fair to portray people making billions of dollars by creating sentient rape puppets to invent human immortality as dicks. Also the people who would go to that kind of park.

Also Felix, Elise, William's daughter and the writer who sacrificed his life to help a rape puppet's daughter escape are not portrayed as dicks, so what the hell are you talking about?

You know when I decided I didn't like Avenue 5 and stopped watching it, I stopped posting in the thread, because the fans of the show don't want to hear me trash the show every week. You should extend us the same courtesy.

 

[Anwar]

Marvel superhero movies are based entirely on characters with no more nuance than, well, cartoon characters

DC ones, maybe. They've always been more archetype than real character. Marvel ones , no.

"Cheap writing tactics" nearly define the franchise.

Nah, that's just Nolan's way more than anything else. But then again he's only good at writing archetypes and One-Note Fanatics.

It doesn't make all humans look like dicks, just the ones that are running the park. Yes, I think it's totally fair to portray people making billions of dollars by creating sentient rape puppets to invent human immortality as dicks. Also the people who would go to that kind of park.

Awfully convenient for the plot of the show that they don't have to portray the antagonists as anything but 1-D.

Also Felix, Elise, William's daughter and the writer who sacrificed his life to help a rape puppet's daughter escape are not portrayed as dicks, so what the hell are you talking about?

The writer was portrayed as one of the biggest dicks of the show, Elise had her thing where she kissed the off-line Clementine and Felix is portrayed by the show as a fool.

You should extend us the same courtesy.

Fair enough.

 

[JD]

The other thing you need to keep in mind when analyzing the behavior of the humans in Westworld is that as far as they are concerned the Hosts are not humans, they are just programed things with no thoughts or feeling beyond what they program into them. The reason we have a problem with their behavior is that we are seeing things from the perspective of the Hosts.

 

[DigificWriter]

We're supposed to see Humanity as the bad guys in Westworld, so I honestly don't get why this would be seen as a criticism.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The writer was a dick and he sacrificed his life for Maeve. He was redeemed.

Not sure how you make the jump from having profit incentive to being one dimensional.

You remind me of this board while Voyager was airing.

I hate Voyager! Voyager is terrible! And I will cite this specific line of last week’s episode to prove it! I religiously watch every week and have studied every scene so I can tell you exactly why it’s terrible!

I bet you can’t wait for season 3. It will surely give you much more hate material.

 

[theenglish]

Not all humans, though. Unlike Westworld where they're all dicks.

Not all humans--the people in charge of the park. The people with the wealth who can pay for this type of entertainment. The show is a commentary on the privileged. The people with power in the world who believe it is perfectly fine to take advantage of others for their own pleasure and entertainment--and we see this type of person on the news every single day.

 

[theenglish]

The other thing you need to keep in mind when analyzing the behavior of the humans in Westworld is that as far as they are concerned the Hosts are not humans, they are just programed things with no thoughts or feeling beyond what they program into them. The reason we have a problem with their behavior is that we are seeing things from the perspective of the Hosts.

Exactly, think of all the things people do when playing video games for example.

 

[Mudd]

A friend of mine who worked as a game developer for some years keeps saying that it's pretty obvious the writers are really familiar with that environment, right down to poaching real incidents and anecdotes from various game studios. Much laughter in the community about Sizemore taking a piss all over the operations control room.

 

[JD]

Exactly, think of all the things people do when playing video games for example.

That's pretty much what it is to the people making and visiting the park, a real life video game. The stuff we see happening is a lot of the same kind of stuff people joke about doing in games like Grand Theft Auto, just taken to an extreme.

 

[theenglish]

That's pretty much what it is to the people making and visiting the park, a real life video game. The stuff we see happening is a lot of the same kind of stuff people joke about doing in games like Grand Theft Auto, just taken to an extreme.

It is more than jokes actually.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The difference between video games and the park though is that in the game, nobody ever stops trying to kill you and runs and cowers in the corner begging for their life. Even if you start shooting a random civilian in broad daylight, they tend to respond by grabbing their own weapon and shooting back.

There's very specific body language that triggers empathy in non-sociopaths that most people would not be able to turn off even if they know it's not real.

 

[Alan Roi]

DC ones, maybe. They've always been more archetype than real character. Marvel ones , no.

Have you read any comics since the 60s?

 

[Anwar]

Have you read any comics since the 60s?

Yes, and DC has had limited success with breaking free of its characters archetypal starts.

 

[Mudd]

The difference between video games and the park though is that in the game, nobody ever stops trying to kill you and runs and cowers in the corner begging for their life. Even if you start shooting a random civilian in broad daylight, they tend to respond by grabbing their own weapon and shooting back.

There's very specific body language that triggers empathy in non-sociopaths that most people would not be able to turn off even if they know it's not real.

When we see more of the world outside the park this year I expect we'll get a somewhat clearer idea of who these Guests are and what kind of world they're part of. The most notable thing that the parks have in common is that they're fantasy recreations of times and places where a powerful group of people more or less had license to do as they liked with the powerless.

 

[Alan Roi]

Yes, and DC has had limited success with breaking free of its characters archetypal starts.

They've been the most popular any meaningful not playing to the comics code stereotypes. Pity that's what the general fanboy population appears to want from them, demanding that DC adhere to what they think the characters were when they were all 8 years old, ignoring the fact that they've been moving away from those stereotypes for decades. That, however, is what fanboys want, comics like they seemed when they were jocks in gradeschool, while some of us actually looked for more compelling storytelling like Kamandi, The Warlord and Camelot 3000 (or different analogs depending on what decade you were introduced to comics).

 

[Mudd]

 

[JD]

Very cool.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

It’s Terminatorish.

 

[Mudd]

I was reading the other day where the producers have said that the modern Hosts are essentially biological machines with the exception of the "pearl."

Well, they're better designed - stronger, more durable, less easily incapacitated by pain - and it's hard to imagine how complex the interface between their nerves and the pearl must be.

Plus, we've seen that whatever constitutes "biology" is constructed in a kind of high-tech small manufacturing process involving something like 3D printers, etc rather than grown from cells.

 

[Anwar]

I was reading the other day where the producers have said that the modern Hosts are essentially biological machines with the exception of the "pearl."

Well, they're better designed - stronger, more durable, less easily incapacitated by pain - and it's hard to imagine how complex the interface between their nerves and the pearl must be.

Plus, we've seen that whatever constitutes "biology" is constructed in a kind of high-tech small manufacturing process involving something like 3D printers, etc rather than grown from cells.

IE, they're never going to really explain how they're made and why the humans of the future never bothered applying these biological enhancements to themselves. They single-mindedly only cared about the immortality aspect and nothing else like the enhanced strength speed and endurance. Despite all these ability enhancements being available to them if they're available to the Hosts.