I started watching HBO’s Westworld a couple days ago, and it surprised me.
The big budget, gritty, award-winning actor headlined formula is tried and true at this point. Ventures into realms of fantasy serve as methods for enhanced world building and CGI wow-factor, drawing viewers into radical fan bases by creating ever-increasing breadth of characters and plotlines to root for and track. It’s a system that’s worked wonders for Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and now for Marvel’s intertwining Defenders series. But Westworld, while ostensibly subscribing to the same method feels different.
While the 1973 film the show is based on was written by Michael Crichton, it feels more like the work of Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke. That is to say, it feels like classical sci-fi, founded in philosophy and thought experiments, as opposed to the popcorn sci-fi that has become so popular in the 21st century.
Westworld is an interesting case as the heir to the Game of Thrones throne, but it’s not the first major series of late to dive into this realm of classical sci-fi. The critical and commercial success of shows like Black Mirror, Rick & Morty and The Man in the High Castle in the past couple years begin to make a trend. It turns out, people are ready for good science fiction again, and the powers that be are starting to take notice. But why does that matter past a shift in genre-of-the-week? After all, sci-fi and fantasy of various ilk have always been successful on TV.
The thing about this more traditional approach to science fiction is it plays off a different narrative structure than other styles of fantasy. If you think of Game if Thrones and other shows in its vein as a quilt, it shows how the story is written to garner a devoted following. Each plot strand, character arc, relationship, conflict, and impending confrontation is delicately weaved to create a broad narrative that hits from multiple directions at once, making every cut and end credits sequence a natural cliffhanger.
Classical sci-fi looks more like a fountain in the middle of a pond. In the instance of a property like Westworld, the same level of layered breadth can be achieved, but the source is different. Typically, there is some core philosophical question or hypothetical scenario that allows for the plot to develop, and develop in such a way as answers, or at least closely examines, that original question. This can be the nature of humanity in Westworld, the meaning or meaninglessness of life in a theoretically infinite universe in Rick & Morty, or something new every week in the case of Black Mirror.
While this latter structure can have seemingly similar results as the former, the nature of the stories, and therefore the shows as well, is very different. The more classical approach has a honed, singular focus, a super objective of sorts that drives the entire narrative. And while shows like the original Twilight Zone accomplished this decades ago, television was not where it is today in terms of narrative depth and complexity.
So what makes this so interesting I made you read a whole article about it? It’s interesting because since the “Golden Age of Television” began, greatly influenced by earlier original series from HBO, this type of goal-oriented storytelling hasn’t really been tapped into. People have been happy fawning over actually character development and continuous storylines, padded with every increasing budgets since the advent of streaming services. But now that we have achieved all that and are beginning to step into this new territory of highly focused thematic direction, the future of serialized entertainment is once again teeming with possibilities.
