The music wowed me, especially the translation of modern songs into Western instrumental scores. I found myself humming along to "Paint It Black"; it took the first verse and refrain to figure out it was a song I knew, and then another round through to make the leap to the Rolling Stones. What a great sequence. I was thrilled to learn that Ramin Djawadi is the composer on this. I loved his work on Nolan's previous series "Person of Interest" and he's already at home with HBO since he does "Game of Thrones".
I'm expecting him to be someone very powerful, either a titan of industry on the Delos board or a senator or even the president. Someone who can afford to basically live in Westworld for long enough to dig past the surface.
The reason I don't think he's a host is because Teddy wasn't able to shoot him down. The show can certainly find ways around that, but there'd have to be a degree of programming to make him identify to the other hosts as a human. The fact that the park managers were aware of Teddy's situation and unconcerned leads me to believe he's just a VIP.
Agreed.
The exciting thing for me is that it feels in many ways like a thematic sequel to "Person of Interest": That show ended with the first sentient artificial intelligence, albeit in a drastically different form. This show begins with the first sentient artificial intelligence, and asks what comes next once they're here.
I kind of hope that we never get more than hints about the "real" world outside the park. Whether it's a near future that's virtually indistinguishable from now or a conceived vision of the future that ventures into the fantastic, it'll date the show as a product of 2016. If we only see the workshop and Westworld, with the outside world a mystery, it could hold up as well decades from now as it does now, since there's no contemporary reference point.
What I was getting at is that they're not trying to replicate the look of old Westerns. From what I've read, they shot a good portion of the pilot on Kodak 5245, which is a sharp, fine-grained high-contrast film stock.
You're closer to what I was trying to express than I was able to get; it's a palette of "warm" colors -- reds and oranges and yellows and browns and analog lighting -- but it's sharp and clear and high contrast. Even though, as you pointed out, the behind-the-scenes settings have a completely different palette -- of grays and blues contrasted with the occasional blood red, under fluorescent lighting -- they're also sharp and clear and high contrast. So that it felt to me of one piece in a way that frustrates any inclination I might have to buy into the reality of Westworld.
that it takes place in a 'real' physical setting that they own and operate. The entire valley and closeups that we see the production team hovering around are a virtualization of the real world enabling the WestWorld production team to monitor in real time the status of the amusement park. At least that seems logical to me. Of course we don't know how, or if, The Man In Black is evading detection of stepping outside the bounds of the game.
I found it to be extremely boring, and Ed Harris is one of my favorite actors. I'll try a few more episodes, but it better improve fast or the DVR opens up some free space for something else.
