In 1863, the English satirist Samuel Butler pseudonymously published an article
called "Darwin among the Machines," in which he theorizes that machines could
evolve by natural selection. Machines, he wrote, are gaining ground on humanity and
will inevitably overthrow their masters. "War to the death should be instantly
proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the
well-wisher of his species." A little over a century later, this idea was only
slowly taking hold in science-fiction, and there were surprisingly few films
from the Golden Age of science-fiction cinema to portray the kind of machine
uprising that Butler imagined and which is now something of a sci-fi cliché.
It took a popular new writer with dreams of making movies to really bring the idea
to life on the silver screen, to show the world what it would be like
if our own creations turned against us.
It is the future year of 1983, and the Delos Corporation has broken new ground
in the field of theme park entertainment. Using state-of-the-art robotic technology,
they have built three worlds where adults can play out their wildest fantasies:
Roman World, Medieval World, and West World. However, a virus is
rapidly spreading through the robotic population of Delos' fantasy lands, and
unwitting vacationers are about to discover that the robots are capable of murder.
Before we go any further, if you could please hit that like button, it
would help me escape the rampaging YouTube algorithm a little while longer,
If you really do like what I'm doing, be sure to subscribe to get more content.
Thank you in advance. With that out of the way, let's get back to the subject at hand.
In 1969, a Harvard medical student by the name of Michael Crichton
published a science-fiction novel about an alien virus called The Andromeda Strain,
which proved to be such a huge hit that it launched him into stardom,
practically overnight. He largely left the medical field after earning his MD,
and in addition to becoming a prolific sci-fi writer,
he had aspirations to direct motion pictures for Hollywood.
After Robert Wise turned The Andromeda Strain into a successful film in 1971,
Crichton was given the chance to direct Pursuit, a television movie based on his
novel, Binary. Pursuit was a critical and ratings success, and Crichton was able to
parlay that success into a chance to make a real feature film to be shown in
theaters. After an inspirational visit to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at
Disneyland, he wrote the screenplay for Westworld, and with the support of
producer Paul N. Lazarus III, he shopped the script around to all of the
major studios. It was MGM that agreed to make the movie and let Crichton direct.
Crichton was a little worried because MGM had a bad reputation for being
overly meddlesome, but MGM's head of production, Dan Melnick, gave him
assurances that the studio wouldn't interfere too much in the process.
During pre-production, though, MGM insisted on script rewrites
and didn't give Crichton any control over casting.
The lead actors weren't even signed until two days before shooting began.
The famed Russian-American actor Yul Brynner, famous for
his leading role in both the Broadway and film versions of The King and I,
as well as having major roles in big productions like The Ten Commandments
and Anastasia, took the role of the robot gunslinger that serves as the primary
antagonist in the film's final act. The role was tailored to Brynner, with the
gunslinger given a near identical costume to Brynner's character from
The Magnificent Seven, along with many of the same mannerisms. Brynner had just
finished work on a failed television show based on The King and I, called Anna
Anna and the King, and he was reportedly hard up for cash, so he agreed to do the film
for only $75,000, which was far less than the actor was worth. Still, he gave it his
all, and Brynner's performance as the gunslinger is singularly iconic, later
inspiring John Carpenter to create the relentless Michael Myers and serving as
a template for Arnold Schwarzenegger's performances as The Terminator.
After Brynner was cast, many big names were considered for the two main
protagonists, Peter and John. The studio considered James Caan, Peter Graves,
Lee Majors, Jon Voight, William Shatner, and Leslie Nielsen, among others, but
ultimately decided to go with relative unknowns so that Brynner would shine as
the primary star. For Peter, the newcomer to Westworld who--spoiler alert--winds up
being the sole human survivor of the story, they cast Richard Benjamin, known
for his performances in Goodbye, Columbus and Catch-22. Benjamin reportedly loved
working on the film, as it was the closest he could get to being in an old-fashioned Western.
"This place is really fun!"
To play his friend and companion, John, they hired James Brolin,
who was at the time a hard-working but lesser-known character actor who'd
done a lot of guest starring roles in television, as well as appearing
as ancillary characters in films like Von Ryan's Express and Fantastic Voyage.
Other notable stars in Westworld include the prolific voice actor Alan Oppenheimer
as the chief supervisor, Majel Barrett as the brothel madam, Miss Carrie,
and Dick Van Patten as the vacationing banker who becomes the new sheriff.
On a budget of 1 million dollars--later expanded to one and a quarter--principal
photography was done in old MGM backlots, the gardens of the Harold Lloyd estate,
and the Mojave Desert. Crichton tried to be as efficient as possible by filming
only what he felt was necessary, and the entire shoot was completed in 30 days.
Crichton did edit out a lot of scenes he felt dragged down the pace, and he was
forced to change his original ending, which involved the gunslinger getting
torn apart by a medieval rack, which apparently looked terrible.
According to Yul Brynner, about 10 minutes of more adult material was also
cut out of the film in order to satisfy the requirements of a PG rating. To make
up for these cuts, MGM did approve some additional shooting, which included a new
opening. Unfortunately, Crichton couldn't write it due to the 1973 writer's
strike, and so the new intro was penned by an ad executive. It is worth noting
that this was the first film to use digital image processing, which was used
to achieve the gunslinger's pixelated point of view shots late in the film.
It was a painstaking, expensive process involving the color separation of each
frame and the compositing of a "coarse pixel matrix" that I honestly haven't been
able to wrap my brain around. Of course, now, the same effect can be achieved with
the click of a mouse button, like this. [click]
Another fun fact is that this outdoor set that was built for the movie
was reused a year later in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles.
Westworld released in August of 1973 and made over two million dollars in its
opening week. It was generally well- received by critics, who felt Crichton's
script had plenty of interesting depth and that Crichton had proven himself to
be a competent director who could toy with genre clichés. A few criticisms were
leveled against the story's lack of explanation for the robotic uprising, as
well as the surprisingly dull chase sequence that serves as the entirety of
the film's third act. By the end of the year, Westworld proved to be MGM's
biggest earner, and after a successful re-release in 1976, it racked up a total
of 10 million dollars at the domestic box office. This film and the subject of
my last review, Rollerball, managed to buck the trend of pre-Star Wars
science-fiction films of the time being commercial failures, no doubt because the
science-fiction elements of these films were mixed with other genres: sports in
the case of Rollerball and westerns in the case of Westworld. Make no mistakes;
the early and mid 70's were pretty unforgiving for science-fiction cinema
at the box office, and any sci-fi flick that managed to wind up in the black
deserve some appreciation. Westworld is a pretty entertaining film that holds up
relatively well as a product of its time. Crichton was obviously having fun
playing around with the western genre, and the film does a good job balancing
its giddy humor with the underlying dread that it's all falling apart behind
the scenes or that there's some unsavory psychology underlying everything.
However, Westworld does feel extremely unfocused, often meandering through
unrelated subplots that never seem to go anywhere and then having to
unceremoniously drop everything to achieve the final chase between Peter
and the gunslinger, which I have to agree is a pretty boring and uneventful climax.
It's easy to look at this movie as a technology run amok morality play--
because it is--but Crichton claims he was trying to paint a damning portrait of
corporate greed, of business-obsessed theme park operators ignoring the
warnings of scientists and inviting inevitable disaster.
"If we can't ensure the safety of the guests, we're gonna be in desperate trouble."
"But we can ensure their safety. Everything's fine."
This idea is certainly present in the film, but Crichton would make his point far more
clearly a decade and a half later when he wrote Jurassic Park,
a story that shares more than a passing resemblance to Westworld.
Crichton complained that the making of Westworld had been extremely exhausting,
requiring him to take a year-long break from pretty much everything, but he did
go on to direct a few more times, such as on adaptations of his novel
The Great Train Robbery and Robin Cook's Coma.
He would also continue to be an incredibly successful
novelist and film producer until his death in 2008, and today he is considered
one of the giants of popular science- fiction. While Westworld is far from a
perfect film, it was certainly an original idea in its day, popularizing
Samuel Butler's 19th century prediction about automatons making war against
mankind, as well as introducing a few novel concepts such as the computer virus.
When one of the characters talks about robots building robots so that
nobody really understands the science underlying them anymore,
it even hints at what would later be called "the Singularity." There was a
moderately successful sequel, 1976's Futureworld, also starring Yul Brynner,
as well as a television series in 1980 called Beyond Westworld that only lasted
for five episodes. Of course, its most lasting legacy is the currently running
HBO television show that takes a lot of Michael Crichton's ideas and runs with
them. I don't mind admitting that I am a superfan of that show, and that, compared
to it, the 1973 film version is just a quaint little prototype.
And that's all for today, my fellow Earthlings. Would you visit something like
Westworld if it really existed? Let me know in the comments. While you're there, don't
forget to like and subscribe if you haven't already, and maybe consider joining my
Patreon, where you'll get access to bonus videos, vote on future topics, and more.
You can also check out my website at emagill.com, where you'll find written
reviews of plenty of other science- fiction classics in both film and
literature. Until next time, when we'll be looking at a deadly pathogen because my
patrons aren't getting enough of that from the real world, this is
The Unapologetic Geek, telling you to never be ashamed of what you love...
...as long as you're not hurting anybody.
"Sir, we have no control over the ro-buts at all."