Author: Josh Wigler

September 25, 2016 8:30am PT by Josh Wigler

Courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

A return trip to the Michael Crichton movie reveals similarities and differences with the upcoming TV series.

“Nothing can go wrong.”

This is the guiding principle behind Delos, an amusement park where visitors pay a thousand dollars per day in order to live out their wildest fantasies, in dramatic historic backdrops, populated by robots designed to satisfy the guests’ needs. 

Of course, as it turns out, everything can and does go wrong. The final act of Michael Crichton’s 1973 directorial debut Westworld focuses on the utter collapse of the high-tech fantasy world, specifically honing in on a game of cat-and-mouse between a robot Gunslinger (Yul Brynner) and first time visitor Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin). The Gunslinger’s relentless pursuit forces the deeply outmatched (not to mention deeply hungover) Martin into exhausting action, as the bold experiment of this practical virtual reality falls apart all around them.

HBO’s upcoming TV adaptation of Westworld, debuting Sunday, Oct. 2, isn’t a sequel to the original film, but it’s certainly informed by Crichton’s work. Here are five of the most important takeaways from the movie ahead of the televised Westworld revival:

1. The Gunslinger

First and foremost, there’s the Gunslinger, the veritable pre-Terminator running amok through the final act of the Westworld film. Brynner’s killer robot is an iconic force of destruction, and one who will be represented in HBO’s series by veteran actor Ed Harris. However, Harris’ Gunslinger comes with a few important modifications, including meatier dialogue, and a fundamental change in origin and drive. The relentless pursuit of his goals, however, remain firmly intact.

2. Dead is Not Dead

How many deaths does it take to kill one Gunslinger? According to the Westworld movie, quite a few. It takes countless gunshots, acid splashes, flaming torches and one final steep fall before the Gunslinger goes down for good. The villain’s many deaths speaks to a fundamental truth at the heart of the film, as well as the upcoming television series: The robot hosts populating Westworld have died, and will continue to die, an untold amount of times. Some trauma required.

3. Worlds Apart

In the film, Delos contains three separate parks: West World, Medieval World and Roman World. The action takes places across all three locations, as the violence reaches a fever pitch. As it stands, HBO’s show focuses squarely on Westworld, with no indication that other parks exist — at least not yet.

4. Do No Harm

Early on in Crichton’s Westworld, Peter’s friend John (James Brolin) explains that their guns are designed only to harm robots, not fellow humans. Likewise, the park’s myriad mechanical entities are unable to damage the warm-bodied guests. Naturally, these rules are drastically violated as the movie heads into its final act — and an equal level of violence feels inevitable as the series moves forward.

5. The Main Attraction

While the film centers on two guests and one lethal machine, the Westworld series promises to offer a much broader view of the park’s denizens. It’s the robots who are most at the heart of HBO’s Westworld, their existence bringing up uncomfortable questions about the abuse of power and the loss of control. These themes are certainly present in the film, but they’re poised for deeper exploration in the series, with a whole lot more than three talented actors fueling the action: Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden and Anthony Hopkins, just to name a few of the women, men and machines bringing this series to life.

Westworld premieres Sunday, Oct. 2 at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Westworld

September 25, 2016 8:30am PT by Josh Wigler

Courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

A return trip to the Michael Crichton movie reveals similarities and differences with the upcoming TV series.

“Nothing can go wrong.”

This is the guiding principle behind Delos, an amusement park where visitors pay a thousand dollars per day in order to live out their wildest fantasies, in dramatic historic backdrops, populated by robots designed to satisfy the guests’ needs. 

Of course, as it turns out, everything can and does go wrong. The final act of Michael Crichton’s 1973 directorial debut Westworld focuses on the utter collapse of the high-tech fantasy world, specifically honing in on a game of cat-and-mouse between a robot Gunslinger (Yul Brynner) and first time visitor Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin). The Gunslinger’s relentless pursuit forces the deeply outmatched (not to mention deeply hungover) Martin into exhausting action, as the bold experiment of this practical virtual reality falls apart all around them.

HBO’s upcoming TV adaptation of Westworld, debuting Sunday, Oct. 2, isn’t a sequel to the original film, but it’s certainly informed by Crichton’s work. Here are five of the most important takeaways from the movie ahead of the televised Westworld revival:

1. The Gunslinger

First and foremost, there’s the Gunslinger, the veritable pre-Terminator running amok through the final act of the Westworld film. Brynner’s killer robot is an iconic force of destruction, and one who will be represented in HBO’s series by veteran actor Ed Harris. However, Harris’ Gunslinger comes with a few important modifications, including meatier dialogue, and a fundamental change in origin and drive. The relentless pursuit of his goals, however, remain firmly intact.

2. Dead is Not Dead

How many deaths does it take to kill one Gunslinger? According to the Westworld movie, quite a few. It takes countless gunshots, acid splashes, flaming torches and one final steep fall before the Gunslinger goes down for good. The villain’s many deaths speaks to a fundamental truth at the heart of the film, as well as the upcoming television series: The robot hosts populating Westworld have died, and will continue to die, an untold amount of times. Some trauma required.

3. Worlds Apart

In the film, Delos contains three separate parks: West World, Medieval World and Roman World. The action takes places across all three locations, as the violence reaches a fever pitch. As it stands, HBO’s show focuses squarely on Westworld, with no indication that other parks exist — at least not yet.

4. Do No Harm

Early on in Crichton’s Westworld, Peter’s friend John (James Brolin) explains that their guns are designed only to harm robots, not fellow humans. Likewise, the park’s myriad mechanical entities are unable to damage the warm-bodied guests. Naturally, these rules are drastically violated as the movie heads into its final act — and an equal level of violence feels inevitable as the series moves forward.

5. The Main Attraction

While the film centers on two guests and one lethal machine, the Westworld series promises to offer a much broader view of the park’s denizens. It’s the robots who are most at the heart of HBO’s Westworld, their existence bringing up uncomfortable questions about the abuse of power and the loss of control. These themes are certainly present in the film, but they’re poised for deeper exploration in the series, with a whole lot more than three talented actors fueling the action: Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden and Anthony Hopkins, just to name a few of the women, men and machines bringing this series to life.

Westworld premieres Sunday, Oct. 2 at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Westworld

September 24, 2016 9:43am PT by Josh Wigler

Courtesy Everett Collection

‘Lost’

Behind-the-scenes secrets about the stories and music from ‘Lost’ were shared at the special two-night event.

It wasn’t quite as traumatic as Oceanic Flight 815 ripping apart in the blue skies over the Pacific Ocean, but executive producer Carlton Cuse recalls a difficult landing process for the final stretch of Lost all the same.

Speaking in front of a packed crowd at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood, Cuse reflected on the ending of Lost — a process that included a whole lot of writing, a whole lot of tears, and an impressive amount of tequila. 

“We cried, and it was cathartic,” Cuse said, repeating the line throughout his recollection, a mantra of sorts. 

That mantra came to define the ensuing evening. Lost fans had gathered from all across the world (as far away as Hong Kong, according to one audience member) at the Ford, a concrete fortress that almost looks like it could have served as the DHARMA Initiative’s rudimentary concert hall, in order to reflect upon the show’s beating heart: the soaring score written by Oscar, Emmy and Grammy award-winning composer Michael Giacchino. (As one fan from the crowd shouted out, Giacchino is this close to becoming an EGOT.) It was night two of “We Have to Go Back: The Lost Concert,” a limited two-night concert featuring Giacchino conducting the same group of musicians who scored Lost while it was on the air.

Before the music commenced, Cuse and Giacchino fielded questions from the audience, although they made it clear that none of the show’s lingering mysteries would receive closure here — effectively saying, “No outrigger questions, please.” Instead, they focused on the formative years that brought them both not just to the improbably successful Lost, but also their careers at large. For Giacchino, he was inspired as a child by the music and majesty of Star Wars. For Cuse, it was a special college screening of Airplane! that opened up the world of screenwriting. Ironically enough, both men would later go on to score music for Star Wars, and create an elaborate narrative centering on an airplane crash, respectively. As a wise man once said: “Do not mistake coincidence for fate.”

While he wouldn’t speak to the questions the series left unanswered, Cuse did address whether or not he would change anything about Lost, which came under fire for its divisive ending. His honest answer should come as no shock to fans of the series: Nikki and Paolo, the season three additions played by Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro. Cuse explained that he and co-showrunner Damon Lindelof (who was unable to attend the concert due to filming the series finale of HBO’s The Leftovers in Australia) wanted to bring background figures from the Oceanic crash into the foreground.

“We realized right away that we failed,” said Cuse. “We didn’t like it.” 

Their feelings toward the characters were loudly echoed by the show’s fan base, but Cuse and Lindelof were well ahead of them, already planning Nikki and Paolo’s demise in “Exposé,” the controversial episode that buried the two jewel thieves alive. In subsequent years, “Exposé” has become something of a cult favorite among die-hard Lost fans, including Giacchino, who praised the way the show removed the problematic pair. Cuse used that as an example of why he doesn’t even regret Nikki and Paolo’s existence in the grand scheme of things.

“Damon and I accept that the show is what it is, warts and all,” he said. “Everything is a part of it. So ultimately, is there anything I would change? The answer is no.”

Following the Q&A, Giacchino and the Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra launched into the music of Lost, performing live to video of the show’s very first and last scenes, as well as the iconic raft launch from “Exodus,” the first season finale. Curated art pieces and newly edited footage from the series played on the walls of the Ford as Giacchino’s score oscillated between mournful emotional impact and the screeching and booming chaos that frequently reverberated throughout Lost‘s many cliffhangers.

“We’re going to end them all just like that,” Giacchino joked at one point, after concluding an otherwise hopeful melody with unsettling horns.

To that end, Giacchino pulled the curtain back on how so many of the iconic sounds of Lost were created. One by one, Giacchino led the various parts of the orchestra — the strings sections, the trombones, harpist Gayle Levant and pianist Mark Gasbarro, as examples — in demonstrating the ways they used their instruments in unorthodox ways, to produce unorthodox sounds. He revealed that parts of the percussion sections of the Lost score were created using actual wreckage from the Oceanic airplane, salvaged after filming the pilot. Those pieces were in full effect during the concert.

“There’s so much fun you can have with your instruments that no one ever taught you,” Giacchino said.

In between music pieces, Cuse came out on stage to relay stories from his time shooting Lost, calling attention to the show’s various veterans sitting in the crowd, including producer Bryan Burk and writer Brian K. Vaughan. On two occasions, he called up former cast members for special readings. Kevin Durand, who played the fierce freighter mercenary Keamy during the show’s fourth season and currently stars on Cuse’s FX series The Strain, read an excerpt from the season three finale Through the Looking Glass in order to emphasize the informal way in which the show’s scripts were written. (Who knew there were so many “F-bombs,” as Cuse described, laced throughout the writing of Charlie’s iconic death scene?) Mira Furlan, best known as the mysterious French woman Danielle Rousseau, read a message in a bottle that was originally written and recited at a previous Lost concert — a moving piece from the perspective of one of the background Oceanic crash survivors, revealed at the end of the reading to be none other than the previously maligned Nikki. Big laughs ensued.

Indeed, laughter sounded throughout the night, but not as palpably as the deep silences during performances of “Locke’d Out Again,” “Live Together Die Alone,” “Oceans Apart,” and more. By the time the concert drew to a close, following a live performance of the final scene of Lost and an encore performance of season six’s sideways universe anthem “LA X,” Cuse was ultimately proven right: in the end, we cried, and it was cathartic.