“Westworld” Remake

The Saloon Western board
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12:00 AM, 07-JUNE-07
Ray Talks Westworld Remake
Writer/director Billy Ray told SCI FI Wire that he’s currently writing the script for a new version of the SF film Westworld for Warner Brothers, but added that he may not direct it. “There is no director attached,” Ray (Shattered Glass) said in an e-mail interview to promote the DVD of his film Breach. “I would resist the idea of directing it myself, not that they’ve offered it to me, because I don’t want the pressure of that kind of a budget sitting on my shoulders.”

Michael Crichton wrote and directed the original film, which was released in 1973 and starred Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin and James Brolin. The futuristic drama cast Benjamin and Brolin as visitors to an amusement park where visitors can play out entertainment fantasies with the help of virtual reality and robots. The trouble starts when the robots begin to fight back.

“I love the basic idea of the movie, which is that our amusements can kill us,” Ray said. “I also think the movie provides a great platform for exploring how sometimes machines can behave like humans while humans can sometimes behave like machines.”

Ray said he’d love to speak with Crichton at some point. “My understanding is that he was offered the chance to do the first draft of this remake a few years ago, and his response was, ‘I already remade that movie; the remake was called Jurassic Park,’” Ray said. “In many ways, he was right.” —

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wonder who will star in it?

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Brynner was perfect for that role. He was probably casted based on The Magnificent Seven, because he acted like a robot there as well. So I think they should get an actor who plays wooden. A guy like that could pull it off better than most good actors, because that’s exactly what the part requires.

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Based on that reasoning there is only one man for the job. Keannu Reeves! (with a shaved head)

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Haha, brilliant ;D

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True, but it’s been 30-something years since the original movie appeared and the expectations to a sophisticated robot may be a bit more, ah well, sophisticated than back in the early seventies… Instead of a robotic performance like the one Yul Brynner did think of a robot-gunslinger going around acting more or less like a ‘normal’ person and then shooting you down with a smile on his face :slight_smile:

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Exactly, couldn’t agree more this guy is the most overrated wooden actor ever

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keannu reeves,has the honor of being in 2 of my least favorite movies of all time-jonny mnemonic and speed…but he seems like an alright guy .

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New trailer looks interesting

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So I watched HBO’S ‘Westworld’ first episode (Pilot) the other night, and all i can say is that it was hmmm very interesting. Some things i liked… some i didn’t but, i’m definitely into it.

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Yeah, I watched it, thought it was okayish, then watched it again and liked it quite a bit more. There’s a lot going on, a lot to think about. HBO have certainly thrown a lot of weight behind it, anyway.

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Yeah for sure, it got confusing at times as to who was a robot and who wasn’t. Hopefully in coming episodes it will be better explained, we’ll see.

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My “passive” entertainment time is very limited (someday I’ll get it back!), so it’s easy for me to skip over things based on a few snobbish criteria I set.

That being said, I did peek at the trailer a few weeks back, and had a friend (who is overly familiar with my “reboot” abhorrence) insist on describing the first episode to me.

In all honesty, it seems like an interesting twist on an old concept and a competent execution… of an original program.

I am left thinking this often when faced with the endless waves of franchise exploitation.

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I daresay that blurring will lead to issues further down the line, such as humans being raped/murdered by accident, or even “by accident”…

What’s Ed Harris’ deal? He appears to have been placed in the “Yul Brynner” role but he’s human (or he certainly appears so at tis stage); is he a scary badass or a pathetic old gamer? The humans are very much the bad guys at this point, it doesn’t appear as though the Westworld resort exists for any other reason than for exceedingly rich folk to f*ck, rape and/or kill with utter impunity. All that technology, and that’s all there is? The thing is, I know that if I was in Westworld, first thing I’d do is enjoy one of the madames before trying to get myself into a shootout.

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Just watched the first episode, and - with only a very faint memory of the original movie - I can say I am highly intrigued. The combination of high technology with the western setting still works very well as a stylistic device, and of course the moral and techno-philosophical questions raised are as relevant as ever. I am curious to see how the show plays out. Interesting also the soundtrack with some neat adaptations of popular music, and then the Johnny Cash track in the end that was used in Django Unchained also…

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I hope though that they’ve at least got the broad strokes of an ending in place (ie Breaking Bad) because imo this could easily go all Lost and wind up hopelessly… um, lost.

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Yeah, it can be a bastard when we’re informed from every available outlet that “It’s a golden age of drama we’re living in, Earthlets! New series every day, every one’s a winner! Don’t miss any of them, you’ll be ostracized as a bumfingering weirdo if you do!”, yet one glance at Netflix sees us swamped in movie-shows. Bates Motel, Hannibal, Teen Wolf, Wolf Creek, The Exorcist, From Dusk Till Dawn… throw in the reboots (Hawaii Five-0, MacGyver) and the many Marvel/DC TV tie-ins and your faith in finding anything remotely f*cking new is left so shattered, you flee to the multiplex, diligently swerve all the sequels, and what do you get? Show-movies! Miami Vice, 21 Jump Street, Starsky & Hutch, The A-Team, Dad’s Army, The Equalizer, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.… sh!tting crikey!

The thing is though Brahm, repetition on this scale is of course depressing but it needn’t always be a guarantee of twatspasmery. It’s just another genre or subgenre wherein you can find yourself richly rewarded if you dig deep enough. Look at spags! Let’s be honest, most of them are dire. Even a good portion of our favourites have only become so as we’ve adjusted to the general shabbiness and begun to see past it, like seeing the Matrix. But our rewards are big, when they appear: The Great Silence, The Big Gundown, A Bullet For the General, Cemetery Without Crosses… I’ll sit through five hundred more White Comanche if there’s the slightest chance of feeling that way again upon finding Requiescant or Death Sentence or El Puro, or even just a scene as cool as Johnny Garko’s entrance in If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death. I cheered, involuntarily! I hadn’t done that since the first time the wife sucked me off all the way to the finish.

Same goes for adapted material. Dig past Tremors and Minority Report and you might find Fargo or Ash vs Evil Dead. Ignore the Charlie’s Angels and Ironside reboots, feast upon the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Gotham and DCs Legends of Tomorrow are superhero supersh!t, yes, but the Netflix MCU shows (DareDevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage) have been a superhero superHIT so far, popular even with those usually repulsed by men in tights and capes. At the cinema, dodge Absolutely Fabulous and Fant4stic Four; but be sure to give the rebooted Star Trek a go .

There’s good stuff out there, if you look. And you’ll have to look eventually, you know. There’s f*ck-all else on! :slight_smile:

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Well I have no problem with repetition of a genre, to a reasonable limit, and I LOVE homages. It’s the recycling of far more specific things, and total lack of original IP, that I disdain. Reading your list of movie-show-show-movies just made me puke a little bit in my mouth. (Incredible quick compilation there though, nice). I am however glad you left out the TETRIS movie. Wait not movie… trilogy. Yep, I said it. Now the less attention we bring to it the better. (Ugh, where’s my Pepto-Bismol?)

Now the Spags you mentioned weren’t remakes or adapted material, especially in the sense we’re discussing. So I am not really getting the correlation. My contempt is with remakes,reboots and ridiculous franchise greenlights (Battleship? FML) although I will derail into overall quality a bit since you’ve nudged. :slight_smile:

Moments like Sartana stepping onto a blowing desert stage, turning slowly, eyes peering through the shadow of his brim, delivering a helluva line, unleashing a bevvy of insane weaponry and skill with those surreal gunshots distorting your speakers, etc, etc… these sorts of moments are never cultivated in these tired franchise bloodlettings. Instead we seem to get rushed productions, slap a dude on a green screen, read the dialog from the screenplay written by the same “it” guy who wrote the last 20 screenplays of the same genre and perform the same action that got the other show-movie in the sound-stage next door an Emmy/Oscar. Rinse repeat. I can just smell the profiteering emanating and see the quality and attention to detail dissipating. Its sort of a gloomy new world in general for entertainment, but piggybacking off existing IP just takes it down a whole 'nother peg for me.

If you change everything, repackage it for a modern audience, swap genders and races of iconic characters, slam it in different settings and on and on and on then why not just reflect this complete departure in the nomenclature as well? I would. I mean you’ve already done so much work to make sure there is no trace of the heart and soul of the original, why not? Unless of course… the obvious, blech.

I think the Marvel stuff is working for two reasons. One, the freedoms of the Netflix production schedule/executives allows them to write and shoot with meticulous care and value. Secondly, it is not cannibalizing an old film or TV program (or title), quite to the contrary it’s realizing existing material into the moving picture medium for the first time… and actually respecting the source material. This is an important distinction, and at the very least should be judged a such.

As far as organizing search parties for expeditions into TV land in quest of the holy grail… well I just don’t have that kind of time, can’t afford to gamble that much. The ROI is negligible as you’ve described. Now if something jumps across my screen that was directly born of a writer/director/creators personal thoughts and dreams then I kill myself to make the time, this really excites me, inspires me. I can watch a trailer and smell crap within the first 30 seconds, weirdly Rotten Tomatoes typically concurs. I’m big on first impressions and have a full plate when it comes to my downtime, so I have to be super selective, and it’s almost always a return to yesteryear for me. Notably more so in the last decade. How much of this is age and nostalgia vs. bonafide quality of and pride in one’s work? Well… I know which way I lean. There are a couple here and there, I agree, but man that ROI. This, among more obvious reasons, is why I turn to independent film so much, it’s the last vestige of auteurism and new concepts. I truly believe/experience that.

I try to never sell that old adage “They don’t make 'em like they used to” short, or whisk it away under a rug of things old curmudgeons say… because if I do that then I feel I am taking away from the real blood sweat and tears that these creative giants and master craftsmen poured into those works of art.

p.s.

Aren’t we way over do for another WIZARD OF OZ adaptation? I mean come on it’s been like a few months already right? facepalm

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Are we all still watching this? I think it looked in danger of becoming too diffuse four episode or so in but it’s come together masterfully. I’m far more into this right now than The Walking Dead, with which I’m losing faith fast.

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LOL, I guess not! :smile:

That’s a shame, because the (now completed) first season has been the best thing on the telly in the last couple of months. For me, Game of Thrones is the only still-active show which surpasses it.