Felt a little too piloty but very much liked the last 15 minutes. I don't (yet) mind the mishmash of well trodden sci-fi tropes, but I am concerned that JJ Abrams is connected to this. There is potential for greatness here but with a higher than average likelihood of turning into garbage.

My main hope is that they continue to depict what their future society is like, even if it tends to be indirect like through the types of guests that come.

Abrams' influence on the creative of the show is likely very low overall. This is the same partnership he and Nolan had for Person of Interest, and that show was excellent start to finish over 5 22 and sometimes more episode seasons (final season was short). Based on what Nolan's good at, long term should be the least of your worries, and this is the kind of property where he should be amazing.

The fly was huge. It showed that a) she could kill, and b) she could lie. One of the huge safeguards is that the machines can't lie, it's one of the way they double check that the hosts' programming is functioning correctly. If they can lie, a lot of wonky behaviors could be overlooked.

Anthony Hopkins character is going to be a major catalyst for all the eventually drama. He's obviously way more concerned with building "better" robots than he is safety or protocols.

It's pretty brilliant that they remade it with the cyborgs being the good guys and the humans the bad guys, which as far as I recall is the opposite of the film. We sympathize with the girl and her father and her "boyfriend" as they have no apparent evil in them, by design, and are trapped in a prison that we can really relate to. Meanwhile the humans are almost all unlikable in their own way, from the disgusting entitled guests acting like big game hunters at a reserve, to the arrogant bitch who corrects people's English (played brilliantly IMO) and others at the complex, to the man in black. Jeffrey Wright's character is the only human we really think of as a good guy so far and he seems like the protagonist I guess.

This is made obvious by the face-melter to start the show when we are led to believe our hero (Marsden) is human and the villain (Harris) is a bot, until they pull their guns and we don't get it, until we do. It's the other way around.

Really liked it. Thought there was some great acting and music.

My take on Ed Harris is that he's a visitor that has obviously been to Westworld many times over the years and is trying to push the boundaries. Maybe because he's got bored of always knowing he can't be hurt and it's no longer giving him a buzz, maybe he's been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wants to go out in a blaze of glory or maybe his business is failing and he's racked up so much debt but I definitely think he wants to create a situation where the machines are able to kill him.

Seemed like he'd been researching the machines as he knew how much blood to leave in so as not to kill it while he wanted to question it and seemed like he knew there was a map or something on the inner skull.

Probably not important since it has nothing to do with the show's major themes but they didn't go much into what the robots are actually made of.

They seem to be sorta Terminator'eque style androids, mostly synthetic and robotic but with a wrapper of living tissue and blood.

I got the impression that they were fully mechanical. The tissue and blood is just for theatrics when they "die", for the benefit of the guests.

maybe ed harris has been in the world non stop for 30yrs?
maybe somehow without the managers knowing?

I need to see the original movie. Is this going to pretty much follow that or different?

I'm hoping the show doesn't follow the movie. I haven't seen it, but I'd rather not come across unintentional spoilers from a 40 year old film.

Maybe I missed the posts but the music is interesting

They showed them being 3D-printed.

I'd expect the only similarity to be the basic premise, but I haven't seen the movie since the mid eighties and remember nothing about it besides Yul Brynner wearing a cowboy hat.

yes they can. they can even die

Judge,

In the things I've read, it seems like they are being purposefully vague about the relationship between this version and the movie.

Edit: and I'm digging the music

? No spoilers itt please. Nothing we've seen so far suggests this unless I missed something.

Do you really think no real people will die on a HBO show?

I think he's just making the point that there is nothing that stops guests from receiving any and all injury/death. All we know is that the guns are programmed to not shoot at guests and that the hosts are programmed not to hurt any living animal (including guests).

There is likely nothing that prevents guests from hurting other guests (so long as they don't use a gun) or other random injuries (such as falling off a horse).

I guess if they fall off a cliff or something but they mentioned the bullets won't harm the guests.

well it is a real place not VR so if they jump off a cliff or drown in a river then i don't think they magically come back. Its why the father was worried about trying to take his son across the river

I also thought that. That he somehow managed to get "off the grid."

Liked it but hard right now to see how this turns into multi season show.

Pretty sure he took that Indian host off the grid. He kidnapped him at closing and then had him on the cliff the next day

To give an idea how long this show's been in production, the guy who played Kissy died in December, 2014.