Westworld is HBO’s newest show and is a remake of the 1973 movie of the same name and stars Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, James Marsden, and Evan Rachel Wood. The show revolves around the titular Westworld, which is a theme park that is inhabited by robots whose function is to fill the desires of the guests. The park is designed for the rich as it costs $40,000 a day and people can literally do whatever they want in the park’s wild west setting. Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs) plays the park’s founder, Dr. Robert Ford, who fancies himself as a god who is ushering in the next evolution. The robots that inhabit the park are primarily played by Marsden (X-Men), and Wood (The Wrestler), among others and have started to malfunction as a result of Ford’s latest software update. The park’s technical director and Ford’s protege, Bernard Lowe, played by the brilliant Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale) has been tasked by the corporation who owns Westworld to figure out what is wrong with the robots. While this is all happening, a mysterious park visitor who only goes by the Man in Black, played to perfection by Ed Harris (Apollo 13), is trying to figure out what he believes to be the “true purpose” of the park and thinks that Ford has planted an “Easter Egg,” and the Man in Black has been trying to discover this for the past 30 years.

Overall, the 75-minute pilot for this show is absolutely brilliant as it combines the classic sci-fi, horror, action, and western genres into a thrilling character study and sets up the rest of the series in a compelling way. The acting, writing, and set design are perfect for the tone and look of the show while it also balances the dark, heavy dramatic portions with a fun and whimsical underlying feel. In a weird way, there are some dark comedic aspects in the show’s writing akin to the dark comedic tone of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece Dr. Strangelove. Westworld’s pilot perfectly sets up a show that can be one of HBO’s greatest and its eventual replacement to Game of Thrones because of its wonderful storytelling and by the way it hides many of its mysteries that will be unfolded in future episodes.
Westworld: 9.5 out of 10