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Year: 1973 Production: MGM Director: Michael Crichton Starring: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin Screenwriter: Michael Crichton Novelization (1976) by Michael Crichton 88 minutes; Color
Westworld is in a future theme park, Delos, that contains also Roman and Medieval "worlds"; its permanent occupants - even the horses - are robot simulacra, controlled by human technicians in an underground laboratory. Two male visitors on holiday enjoy our-drawing the local robot gunman (Brynner) and sleeping with the acquiescent robot saloon girls, and it seems that the film will be a comedy about the tawdriness of men's machismo fantasies, safely acted out in a purely Hollywood "Wild West". Next day, however, Brynner robot shoots one of th men dead, the beginning of a revolt by the machines with the implacable gunman as its focus. The puncturing of the fantasy forces us to question our reliance on machinery rather than on ourselves (Crichton's theme for several films to come). With a subtext about our exploitation of slaves and coolies, Crichton's first theatrical feature - he had directed the made-for-tv Pursuit (1972) - is wittily macabre, and makes its debating points with clarity if not with subtlely. Westworld's inferior sequel was Futureworld (1976), not by Crichton. A tv series, Beyond the Westworld (1980), ran for only 3 episodes, with 2 further episodes made but unaired. Producted and mainly written by Lou Shaw for MGM TV, this told of a Westworld scientist who steals androids for sinister purposes. |
| The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |