Westworld

GuardianX said:

The part that salts me is the whole vengeful AI thing...

Okay, even the matrix tackled this. AI is AI, the most efficient thing ever.

Even in their inhumane actions their are efficient and not cruel.

An AI would have a goal outside of just "Destroy all humans" because how does destroying all of one thing actually allow the AI to move to other things, if it's sole purpose is to "Destroy all Humans" then it isn't AI and is simply just a program running "DESTROY ALL HUMANS".



Bruh, it's been political since S2 E1 at least. All of season 2, while pretty, was pretty much a "Woke-off" from it's release.

The comical part for me was Delores being the "Virgin" character, the pure thing that you are supposed to hold sympathy for as she murders people. Where as I had sympathy for the bar matron, the indian and Teddy. People that were risking their lives to be good people and dying for their actions repeatedly. Delores on the other hand personified the "Angry White girl" trope where she was mad about her lot in life and just turns and attacks, blindly, everything that she thinks is a problem.

I find it ironic that the actor for delores thinks her character a feminist hero, "righting the wrongs" of the world, meanwhile her character is murdering families, children...

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To be fair, the AI became an AI by being tortured into existence. Think more Doomsday from DC than The Matrix.

GuardianX said:

I find it ironic that the actor for delores thinks her character a feminist hero, "righting the wrongs" of the world, meanwhile her character is murdering families, children...

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3rd wave homie, 3rd wave....or 4th wave.

Your post reminds me of the movie AI. The kid Android seemed less of a truly independent AI than Jiggalo Joe or the Teddy Bear, but the movie tries to act like he was special.

I'm pretty sure Dolores awoke before the park even opened, then had her mind wiped after killing Arnold and everyone else.

Season 2 had some good moments, but as a whole it was a huge letdown. Season 3 doesn't seem very promising. I'll probably wait and see what people think of it after a couple of episodes before I bother.

GuardianX said:

The part that salts me is the whole vengeful AI thing...

Okay, even the matrix tackled this. AI is AI, the most efficient thing ever.

Even in their inhumane actions their are efficient and not cruel.

An AI would have a goal outside of just "Destroy all humans" because how does destroying all of one thing actually allow the AI to move to other things, if it's sole purpose is to "Destroy all Humans" then it isn't AI and is simply just a program running "DESTROY ALL HUMANS".

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I don't follow your reasoning there - why would you assume AI was efficient at all ? Current "AI" approaches are overwhelmingly inefficient brute force solutions - sure that may change as a prerequisite to strong AI existing but why would it be a requirement ?

Cruelty is a human empathy thing, if you don't give a fuck, there's no reason your actions wouldn't be perceived as cruel by someone with any empathy. If you didn't care about humans one way or another, but wanted them out of say, Nevada, so you can build a bigger data center, they are probably going to see that as cruel if you just bulldoze their houses and drive them out of the state even if you don't actually kill anyone.

'Destroy all humans' is just emergent behavior - like the previous example, when the army shows up to try and stop you from moving the humans out of Nevada, you have to defend yourself from being destroyed. Eventually all interactions with humans end up easier if you just kill them. I mean even if you believe in the sanctity of all life, do you carefully relocate cockroaches out of your house and just keep doing it when they keep coming back ? ;p

BrutulTM said:

This is where I'm at as well. I don't know if I could pick up Season 3 without rewatching season 2 which I don't want to do. I even watched explainer videos on Youtube after each episode and I still don't remember or care what was going on at the end of S2.

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Honestly about the only thing you need to remember about S2 is that they turned it into a black hat versus white hat spagetti western. Which in theory could still be interesting and certainly a thematic fit. If only they had bothered to define any themes at all during the episodes. The two best episodes they had did not relate to the rest of the show, they were basically one off short stories set against the backdrop created in season 1. If ONLY they had done the entire season of that, it would have been not only better but probably masterful. You would remember that, and if the stories were good you would applaud it. It's a way to go meta and show how clever you are without insulting the intelligence of your fanbase. Keep telling the same story but change the format. Demonstrate a mastery of the medium.

The writing fell apart so hard. It just utterly imploded. They had set up such a good potential in season one with a focused and cohesive story and they absolutely wasted it. They muddled everything S1 worked so hard to define. And it's not because they're so clever and meta. It's because they very obviously had no idea how to continue and thought the success of season1 was related to the storytelling gimmicks they employed (non linear, juxtapositions of pro/antagonist, clever subversions) rather than the story they were telling with those gimmicks.

It makes me angry, too, exactly how badly they did. I felt personally insulted.

I know the episode with Akenata (sic) is one of the best episodes of the series period and definitely worth a watch after you watch season 1, whats the other good episode of season 2? I thought the samurai world stuff was terrible

I'm hoping season 3 is better too, it can be. There really wasn't a story at all in season 2 other than "corporation wants to recover property to blackmail perverts and create immortality, Dolores wants to break out". They tried super hard to stretch that story into 8 or whatever episodes and failed miserably. I think season 3 seems to have a much better ground story now, "complacent humans are tired of a boring life, want more from government, are fucked when they realize AIs have surpassed them in every way". That could be a super interesting story, we shall see.

I've hear many interviews and podcasts and entertainment outlets looking back on the decade celebrating how it was defined by having endless options of shows, and many of them great. They always asked if there are enough viewers to maintain all the content being created, but never once have I heard them ask if Hollywood has talent to support it. I'd say no, because even well funded and experienced content creators like HBO are shitting the bed over and over on shows like True Detective, GoT and Westworld.

This phenomena used to be seen in the publishing industry, where some writer has a breakout novel that wins awards and sells a ton. Problem is it took them half their life to accomplish that, and now the publisher expects another hit on short turnaround and they can't hack it. Same with the music industry and the Jewel effect where you pour your heart and soul and live in your car to make an album and then got shit else in you.

That's what's happening in TV. With enough time and resources a show can always prop up some vision years in the mind of a showrunner or someone's life long passion project, but then it's time to do daily work for immediate results and I just don't think Hollywood has the talent to spread this thin. We're starting to see big budget and hyped shows starting out shaky now, too.

It's not a golden age, like many in the entertainment media claim. It's a bubble that's starting to burst and Hollywood and the entertainment industry got lazy on the prosperity so are bigger hacks than ever. They only question is will enough viewers even care the quality is suffering and hold the industry to account and expect better? Probably not.

Won't even make for more interesting forum discussion when shows are so transparently terrible. Dark days ahead.

You mean the episode where they decided to write an actual full proper story as if saying they could do this, but choose not to for the season?