Westworld



"Boy, have we got a vacation for you!"

Westworld is a 1973 film by Michael Crichton. In the near future, the Delos resort offers simulations of the Wild West, Medieval Britain, and Ancient Rome. Each park has a population of robots, with whom visitors interact however they wish. As a part of the Delos experience, one can fight with them, seduce them, and even kill them. After all, the robots are programmed not to feel pain or fight back, and the weapons provided only work on machines. They're harmless.

Two friends, John Blane (James Brolin) and Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin), arrive in Delos to get away from their busy lives. They head into Westworld, where John has been many times before, to have fun and act out various Western-themed scenarios. In particular, the mousy Peter earns his manhood by defeating the local gunslinger (Yul Brynner) in a gunfight. In the middle of the night, the robots are rounded up and sent in for repairs, ready for the next day's events.

However, the technicians running the park are having problems. The robots break down faster than expected, the memory wipes are less effective, and they begin to resist the visitor's demands. It is speculated that a computer virus has infected the machines, one that soon causes them to murder humans. Alarmed, the head engineer orders everything shut down immediately, but this only results in suffocating everyone in the control room to death (!). With the machines running amok, John and Peter discover the gunslinger has come after them, looking for revenge...

A sequel, 1976's Futureworld, removes the original's giallo influences, being more akin to a sociopolitical thriller. The Delos resort has been revamped and re-opened, and a pair of Intrepid Reporters (Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner) are invited to preview the park's attractions (including a new theme park, Futureworld), but soon learn that Delos' backers have much more sinister plans for their improved robots...

Notably, Yul Brynner's "Gunslinger" shows up in Futureworld, but only in a Dream Sequence and having absolutely no logical connection with the original character.


 * AI Is a Crapshoot: This movie was made long before the idea of a "computer virus" entered popular knowledge, yet they do refer to it as a "disease."
 * Amusement Park of Doom: Delos resort descends into one.
 * Bar Brawl: John and Peter participate in a simulated one. It involves lots of broken bottles and chairs.
 * The Cameo: Yul Brynner in Futureworld.
 * The Determinator: Years before Arnold codified it, Yul Brynner gave us the original unstoppable killing machine...
 * Diagonal Billing: Yul Brynner at lower left, Richard Benjamin at upper right.
 * Downer Ending:
 * Dream Sequence: In the sequel. Provides an excuse to revisit the Gunslinger character.
 * Drink Order: They don't serve vodka martinis in Westworld, dummy.
 * : Only
 * Girly Run: Peter. Not sure whether this is Richard Benjamin's natural gait or a deliberate way of invoking the character's effete, citified nature in contrast with the Gunslinger.
 * Hero-Tracking Failure: Happens when the Gunslinger tries to shoot Peter with a rifle.
 * Holodeck Malfunction: Of the robot rebellion variety.
 * Implacable Robot: The Gunslinger.
 * Kill It with Fire: After acid didn't work so well.
 * Last-Note Nightmare: The closing credits feature jocular western music that eventually fades into this.
 * Lost Aesop
 * Made of Iron: The robots, of course. Slightly less so in Futureworld.
 * Mind Screw
 * No Ending
 * No New Fashions in the Future: Does this take place in 1974, or what?
 * No Waterproofing in the Future: But acid? That's okay.. Note that they actually show robots drinking in the bar fight scene.
 * Oh Crap: Peter's reaction when the Gunslinger shoots John.
 * Recycled in Space: 20 years later, Michael Crichton would write his most famous story, Jurassic Park, which is also about an amusement park where the attractions go crazy and attack the guests (only this time they were cloned dinosaurs, not robots).
 * Red Right Hand: Robots can be identified by the palms of their hands.
 * Ridiculously-Human Robots
 * Robo Cam: The first use of CGI in a film is the Gunslinger's comically low-resolution POV.
 * Scary Shiny Glasses: The VTOL pilot.
 * Sex Bot: Pretty much all the female robots at Delos.
 * Shout-Out: Robot Yul Brynner wears his Western duds from The Magnificent Seven.
 * Sword Fight: One of the guests dies during one in the Medieval World.
 * Tempting Fate: "Nothing can go wrong."
 * Turned Against Their Masters
 * Unbuilt Trope
 * Uncanny Valley: In-universe, the robots' hands (their faces are actually realistic, since they're played by real actors).
 * Unusual User Interface: Shifting geometric shapes appear on at least half of the monitors in the control room. However, they are all either in empty terminals or the technicians aren't doing anything with them, so it might just be a nifty screensaver.
 * What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: The Black Knight on the throne.
 * Ye Goode Olde Days: All three Worlds. Justified since it is, quite literally, The Theme Park Version of these eras.
 * Zeerust: The control room. They had control tapes.