Westworld Season 1 Review - Part II (Binge in the time of Corona)

I was recently persuaded by several reviewers to give the first season of Westworld a shot. I was not expecting to be so thoroughly disappointed by each and every aspect of the show. I wasted my time so you don’t have to. These are the reasons why Westworld Season 1 is not worth your time:

Anthony Hopkins

Name one movie in which Anthony Hopkins was great without being named Hannibal. Can’t? Me neither. All other Anthony Hopkins performances are different shades of Odin in the Thor movies, The Mask of Zorro, Beowulf, Meet Joe Black. He is paternal, powerful, in charge, and brief, in and out, instant gravitas, just add screen time. He has presence but h does not give any extra dimensions to his characters. I double-checked his IMDB page thinking, “he must have done something memorable” but no, he is Hannibal and that’s it. He just looks like he is supposed to be memorable. Like Bruce Willis over the last 20 years, he mostly plays himself and we just accepted that as background noise that’s easy to ignore. And while I’d like to ignore him here as well, he is the big name the show is trying to coattail on, forcing me to focus on him, which does the show no favors, as his name is DEFINITELY NOT HANNIBAL.

Big-name coattail is a common strategy, like with Charles Dance and Sean Bean in Game of Thrones. They brought legitimacy, an audience, and multidimensionality to their characters which elevated the show for a while. Hopkins brings the first two and defiles the third. Everything coming out of his mouth is pseudo-intellectual pretentious bullshit meant to mask empty mystery boxes as some grand hidden scheme. I thought the plot was a convoluted mess, and whenever he opened his mouth, I was certain. Vision hints at possibilities, bullshit hides ineptitude. If a soap opera had Hopkins’ dialogue your eyes would roll out of your skull. He says nothing of substance, he is just there to sounds smart and mysterious to weaponize your curiosity against you, so you become addicted to the search for answers that are either not coming or are terrible. But at the end of the day, he is forgettable, pretentious, and empty. If you’re longing for good Hopkins, he comes with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti.

The Man in Black

A ruthless, sadistic villain played by a great actor. The Man in Black piles the bodies and crimes against humanity in his pursuit of the Maze, the last narrative, the one to end them all. A psychopathic MacGyver with the resolve and adaptability to overcome every challenge. And how did they fuck it up? By opening the mystery box of his past and motivations and revealing a creatively bankrupt dead horse. He was sent to evaluate the park and advice the company he works for on whether to buy it. He was a good man fell in love with Dolores, became convinced she was more than a host, saved her once, she was rebooted and she doesn‘t remember him. What does a good man do? Advise his company to buy the park, become in charge of it and decommission Dolores to break her out of this nightmare of endless torture and horror. Simple and easy solution. But that would be boring because we want a sympathetic villain with a complex backstory who is also a remorseless psychopath, consistency be damned. So the Man in Black instead sees Dolores does not remember him and loses his moral compass, proceeding to rape and murder his way through Westworld for another 50 years convinced that the stories of the park have a greater meaning and wanting to go through all of them. He is a 100% completion nutter and a moron. Wow. Just wow. He couldn’t just be a bad man, he couldn’t see the hosts as the playthings that they are, it had to be some complex bullshit about how everybody has a monster waiting for a bad day to release it, congratulation, he is the joker. So never say never, if someone managed to make Ed Harris coming at you with a knife a boring disappointment, everything is possible.

Oh, and in the second season ***SPOILERS***, he murders his daughter on Father’s Day. This is not a joke, I had to check myself, but it’s true. In the episode Vanishing Point, episode 9 of season 2, aired on June 17, 2018, Father’s Day of 2018, the Man in Black guns down his own daughter. Subtle.

Tessa Thompson

This actress is very good at her job, unfortunately, her job is to act as a one-dimensional smug asshole. In Thor Ragnarok she was tolerable, in MIB International she was cringy and unlikable, and in Westworld, her character is screen cancer.

She starts out a condescending shrew that’s better and more powerful than everyone and keeps digging new subbasements to lower the bar into. Forcing a female subordinate to a have a business meeting, with the host you were mid-humping tied to the visible bed is bad enough. Doing that in a short robe is Harvey Weinstein's level of creepy sexual harassment, the parts with the flashing and masturbating into a potted plant. This behavior is not presented as revolting, but as empowering.

Queen Cersei Lannister was fun to hate in a human and relatable way, Angelina Jolie Eartha Kitt, and Glenn Close were over the top delicious as Maleficent, Yzma, and Cruella Devil respectively, Queen Latifa as Mama Morton, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, there are so many good role models for how to do this right. Tessa Thompson is just a one-dimensional sneering bitch who sneers and is bitchy. If the rest of the show was good I would fast forward through her parts, as it is, it’s a tumor on a dumpster fire that makes unbearable into unwatchable.