I recently just finished the first (and only) season of a movie-based HBO show titled “West World” and honestly I suggest you do too before you go back to school. Here are some reasons why...
Besides the killer actors and actresses, storylines by the creators, and beautiful scenery, there’s a deeper meaning behind this show. Let me begin to explain what West World is; it’s about A.I. robots that are set in an American Western themed park out in the landscapes of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah (that seem endless) and were created with the purpose of giving humans an escape into a false reality to find who they truly are. For $40,000 a day you can finally see what personalities lurk deep within you by saving the damsel in distress or killing the town villain.
Once the guests arrive at West World they go by train into the town Sweet Water, home-base essentially, where they have the option to stay there or venture off into more vigorous adventures. The farther you get from home base though the harder the adventures seem to get. The hardest game the park has to offer is “the maze” but you slowly find out that that game is not meant for the guests to play. I won’t tell you who it’s actually meant for because you should really find out on your own, but I will tell you what it promises. The prize of “the maze” is the idea that it will set you free, but clearly that in itself is a challenge to even understand.
The guests unfairly have the advantage over these life-like robots and they can kill or rape any of them. The only guns in the park that the guests and robots can have are meant only to kill the robots. The guests can’t get hurt, and the robots are programmed not to hurt them.
If the guests can do anything to the robots, why don’t they just run away? The park resets the robots memories daily so that they don’t remember anything happening to them the day before from both robot and man. They live the same day over and over again without realizing. These loops the robots fall into of everyday routine sounds like the familiar schedules we run our lives on as well. We fall into these routines and avoid change as much as possible in fear that it might bring danger, and it usually does. Anytime a loop is broken in West World there’s usually a reason behind it, and it’s never a good one. Something has disrupted their pattern, and it doesn’t take much as we can see from our lives as well. Our patterns and “loops” are more complex than theirs, seeing that theirs are already preset, but still it can be compared.
This show challenges the popular questions of A.I and answers some tough questions about it too. Alright so maybe it doesn’t verbatim tell you the real reasons why A.I. would be a problem in our world, but the proof is in the acting and storyline. The entire journey for some of the robots is finding out “how” and then finding out “why.” The robots start to develop consciousness with the new update they’ve been given. Usually every day, after they’ve been killed or raped, they’re reset so they don’t remember and can live the same day, or “loop,” again for decades. With this update though, they begin to remember events that have happened in past lives, or past assigned roles they’ve played in the park. With those memories they can dream, they can hold grudges, they can start to develop true feelings such as guilt and remorse. The person who created them plays God as he watches his creations mentally destroy themselves throughout their lifetimes there in West World at the dispense of the guests that come and do as they please. However season one seems to promise the answer to why he lets them develop these memoires and true human feelings. The quote “this world does not belong to you, it belongs to something that has yet to come” seems to throw it away as well. I’ll let you watch it though, and infer for yourself.
The only bad part about this show is that it’s on HBO, but you can get a free trial of HBO for a month and finish the season in a week. The other downside is that the second season comes out in 2018. The writers want to make sure they get the story line just right, and with the ending of the first season, I could see why. Again, you need to see it for yourself; this is NOT a spoiler article, just an introduction. Get watching!
