HBO Cancels Westworld

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/hbo-cancels-westworld-before-what-was-to-be-its-final-season/

by mikkom • 4 years ago

77 61 4 years ago

boc• 4 years ago

The first season was so fun. Loved peeling back layers of the onion and discovering what was really going on. Season 2 had a few bright spots, but after that it was clear the story had hit a dead end.

Waterluvian• 4 years ago

The two “Paint it Black” scenes made me giddy. It was such a great reveal.

bergenty• 4 years ago

Season 2 was bad 5 minutes into the first episode when the woman was now a gunslinger.

ghaff2• 4 years ago

Westworld was one of those shows that, back when you had to record things to timeshift, I'd have been enthusiastically watching S1 when it dropped, watching S2 with a bit less urgency, let S3 accumulate for a while, and maybe never get around to S4.

commandlinefan• 4 years ago

the story had hit a dead end

I can't believe anybody thought that a two-hour movie could be stretched into multiple seasons.

LarsDu88• 4 years ago

The last season had some really great moments (especially with Aaron Paul clones), but went too far off the rails.

Joy and Nolan are pretty awesome. Hope Fallout turns out great!

zxcvbn4038• 4 years ago

No surprise, quality of the writing has been declining steadily since the first season. The original source material was only a hundred pages, the original ninety minute movie captured it. Drawing things out to ten, twenty, thirty, etc hours requires a lot of creativity but they mostly just rolled well worn tropes and hoped the visuals would make up the rest. In the end I was mostly watching for the theme song. I thought the last season was the final season since they managed to write in killing off all of humanity. I’m not sure how they would have come back from that but they probably would have ripped off either Dallas or Dr Who - maybe a dash of Wayward Pines sprinkled in.

zmix• 4 years ago

[...] since they managed to write in killing off all of humanity.

Thanks for the spoiler! Now I don't need to watch it. Bah!

Nicksil• 4 years ago

You've amplified it by quoting that specific statement; it's a lot easier to pick out from your comment than if it had remained buried in text.

ianai2• 4 years ago

Thought the show was great. Didn’t have any difficulty following season 4. Was hoping they were finally headed to space in season 5.

Tried to cancel my HBO subscription after this announcement. Only way to show disapproval. But it’s bundled with my internet service if I want the tier I’m in currently.

eurasiantiger• 4 years ago

I agree. The show was particularly well written, especially regarding world-building and character development. Shame there won’t be a conclusion to Ford’s narrative, I feel like we would have seen him again in season 5.

Perhaps it was a bit too well-written; there were certainly times where it felt like the writers were entertaining their peers.

Melting_Harps2• 4 years ago

Was hoping they were finally headed to space in season 5

That would have been an interesting setting for sure.

But, I just did a re-watch of it these last couple of months and I finished season 4 this weekend; Doloris clearly states it was going back to West World (wild West) in the last episodes. And the whole World was being re-built (from memory?) in order to play one last game [0].

To think this launched at the same time as Game of Thrones, which I never bothered with as it's just a mangled recount of the sordid dynasties and ruling classes of of former empires, but Game of Thrones was asking some much needed questions in regards to the implications of a Society more heavily reliant on technology. And while AGI will likely never come to fruition in my lifetime, 90s kid, it's still a rather good juxtaposition if it will just accelerate our demise and lead to our hasten extinction in this headlong pursuit and seemingly more dystopic existence.

Sidenote: The Cyberpunk theme of season 3 was visually interesting, with some solid premise (the importance of free will rather than a dictatorship via technocracy) but woefully bad as a whole in it's execution. Zero HP Lovecraft's gig economy app was heavily influencing the RICO app plotline for sure.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QFTwl7OE90

ShamelessC4• 4 years ago

Yeah I mean I felt like it was clear-ish that Dolores was going to channel a Ford persona inside a big virtual simulation of the Wild West, probably eventually “remembering” him enough that he is technically reborn as immortal.

Slow_Hand2• 4 years ago

The moment I realized that that was going to be the pretense for the final season (a simulation) I groaned out loud.

That idea sounds exhausting to experience after seeing how the writers have handled things lately. I love dialogue-heavy shows, but the last two seasons of Westworld were needlessly ponderous and often melodramatic without a density of stimulating ideas to sustain interest.

More often than not later episodes felt like never-ending exposition. You're just sitting there being told what IS or how the character feels without experiencing anything for yourself.

Seemingly this final scenario (a simulation) would be super-fluid and un-moored from the internal consistency of a real-world setting, and that makes it hard for the viewer to give a damn about anything because the rules are so far beyond anything they can predict. So I was gearing up a full season of characters talking in a lofty manner with a diminished amount of substance at the core.

gamblor956• 4 years ago

To think this launched at the same time as Game of Thrones

GOT launched in 2011, 5 years before Westworld.

ShamelessC4• 4 years ago

Tried to cancel my HBO subscription after this announcement

Fair enough, but while you still have it check out Succession and Barry. Not at all similar to Westworld, but both great shows.

ianai2• 4 years ago

Barry’s good but i have a strong preference for sci-fi or at least fantasy.

bsdnoob• 4 years ago

Good riddance

kappuchino• 4 years ago

Interesting: Saw the last episode of season 4 and seriously thought it was the conclusion. Yes, there was the flash forward of season one ... but didn't think about that in the moment. And as others said: When you become aware while viewing that the show is stalling, its done. Had a number of these moments in seasons two and three. Now: Can I have Severance season two, please?

aaron695• 4 years ago

I assume everyone is watching William Gibson's The Peripheral which Amazon is billing as from the creators of Westworld.

So far it's like the good parts of Westworld in case the latter seasons of Westworld worries you.

anotherman554• 4 years ago

I read the book, haven't seen the show.

Since the book doesn't really have any A.I. characters I don't think it's much like West World unless they changed a lot in the adaptation.

Emigre_• 4 years ago

It’s similar to some extent in its look and its general mood. It has a couple of robots here and there, but they are not central to the plot.

ShamelessC4• 4 years ago

That show appeared to be like a meta verse thing, more so than a philosophical discussion of AI.

boppo12• 4 years ago

The Peripheral feels a little low-rent, as if it's halfway between a CW show and netflix. Hard to put my finger on why.

gary_0• 4 years ago

- Uninspired cinematography (some shows nowadays really spoil us)

- Future London relies on too much flashy CGI instead of building the setting more subtly

- Flamboyant villain with stock henchman character

- Relationship complications that weren't in the book (although the book characters were a little flat)

- The near-future South is too Hollywood with very clean-cut characters and silly things like hover-Roombas (in the book the near-future parts struck me as far more grungy)

- The show relies on cheesy exposition whereas the book made you fill in the blanks yourself

balsam• 4 years ago

This is my first experience with Amazon Video; I went in with the expectation that the producers would cut corners somewhere. I am glad they did it with the CGI and sets. The costumes (good guys at least) seem acceptably Gibson. Thought the Fishers were impeccably casted.. Although diverging from Gibsons original take. Indeed the onscreen personalities look like they came out of Neal Stephenson instead. Gibson’s protagonists can be a bit flat as pointed out elsewhere here. I thought Aelita comes closest to the Gibson type of character. (She was killed off early in the book) I would say so far this looks like one of the better adaptations of Gibsons works, but I can see that just transcribing the books wouldnt work.

smabie• 4 years ago

Yep, feel exactly the same way. Acting is bad and the entire thing just feels cheesy.

parkingrift• 4 years ago

The only shocking thing here is that they had actually planned a fifth season.

SPOILERS!

They killed every every. single. human. Total extinction. How is that not the end of the show? Everyone is dead. All these great characters with multi season arcs just lying around in random ditches. Everyone is dead. It felt like a conclusion to the show.

ShamelessC4• 4 years ago

I mean they had clearly telegraphed what the next season was going to be about (she’s going to bring everyone back, duh).

Not that the writing needs defending, got pretty bad after season 1.

Terretta2• 4 years ago

they had clearly telegraphed what the next season was going to be about (she’s going to bring everyone back, duh)

And that the brought-back people who (thanks to her learning/evolution into the Maker) are no longer forced on rails, are us, collective memory and all, squandering our apprehension of the gift of free will.

somewhat_drunk• 4 years ago

I enjoyed it all the way to the end.

MerelyMortal• 4 years ago

I like the show, because I like Sci-fi.

I think the show gets a lot of flack because people were expecting a modern Western, and then it morphed into just modern Sci-Fi.

PyWoody• 4 years ago

Me, too. It's basically East of Eden meets scifi-dystopian future and I love it. I jumped out of my seat when Ford said "timshel."

While there were certainly parts where the writing lacked, the acting never did.

triceratops• 4 years ago

I'm only just finishing up season 2 now. Should I keep going?

bananabiscuit• 4 years ago

No. The writing gets worse and worse. Things just sort of happen for no good reason and the narrative gets so confusing I’m pretty sure that the writers themselves don’t understand what to do with it.

b112• 4 years ago

Maybe they're "Lost".

Sorry, I'll go away.

boppo12• 4 years ago

If you like the visual aesthetics, sure. Otherwise absolutely not, it's one of the most poorly written shows I can think of.

Actually, season 2 Episode 8 is pretty damn excellent, maybe watch that one. It's mostly removed from the rest of the plot iirc and follows a 'native american' robot's story.

apocalyptic0n3• 4 years ago

S2E8 is arguably the best episode in the series, so at least get through that.

S3 is rough. You can see what they were trying to do, but they failed in the end. I wouldn't say it isn't worth watching, just know it's a steep decline in quality.

I quite enjoyed S4 and thought it was a return to form. It wasn't quite S1 levels of good, but it was a marked improvement over both S2 and especially S3. The finale was a little disappointing, but they clearly knew cancellation was a possibility and wrote it in a way that the story could be considered complete after S4 while also leaving it open for a final S5. So no real cliffhanger, at least.

stuckinhell• 4 years ago

Not really, the quality drop is severe. There's also a shift in the story, that's honestly poor or poorly implemented.

profmonocle• 4 years ago

The ratings drop-off is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(TV_series)#Ratings

Seasons 3 and 4 had basically steady viewership through their whole runs, but each had way fewer viewers than the preceding season. So a lot of people who watched S2 until the end didn't even start S3, and many who finished S3 didn't bother with S4.

I wonder why this is? If viewership dropped through the season it'd be more obvious - people just didn't like the season. But to me this indicates that it lost mindshare between seasons. Was it interesting enough to watch as it was going, but not interesting enough to wonder what would happen next? I've definitely had that happen, where I binge watched a season of a show, but didn't bother (or dropped off quickly) when a new season started, just because I had sort of lost interest during the break and didn't get pulled back in the same way.

Justin_K• 4 years ago

To me, it means viewers disliked the last season they watched but hung in through to end, in hopes for something good. It didn't deliver, so they didn't bother with the next season.

This is based on my opinion of the above said show.

saghm• 4 years ago

This is exactly what happened with me, my roommate at the time, and my girlfriend. Season 1 was an excellent arc and was super well done from start to finish. However, because sometimes having satisfying twists requires dropping some hints here and there, and because the internet hive mind is incredibly good at predicting twists based off of hints, essentially the entire plot of the first season was successfully predicting through reddit collaboration and consensus after like the second episode, which then got distributed as usual through articles, social media, etc. I think the people who made the show were disappointed in this, and from what I can tell, the solution they seemed to have come up with was to make the plot of the second season so convoluted and the final "twists" so ridiculous that no one would predtict them. This worked, but it also ended up making it very dissatisfying overall, and with the clear implication that the show would be taking place in the "real word" instead of in the mostly closed off sandbox of the theme park, it didn't seem super likely that the writers would be able to improve on the previous season given the new setting, so I just didn't bother watching after that.

logical_proof• 4 years ago

Totally anecdotal but I am thinking that this is due to the long delay between seasons. I think this is happening with many shows that have these multi year hiatus style productions. There is so much great media out there that trying to get back in to something that is almost two years old takes a lot of effort.

ghaff2• 4 years ago

And with complex highly serialized shows that you maybe didn’t follow fanatically, you’ve sort of forgotten what was going on 18 months previously.

jdhn• 4 years ago

It's because there was a huge drop in quality between the seasons. I believe I made it to Season 3 (spoiler: the one with the supercomputer) and the story just got too ridiculous to me. Didn't even watch Season 4 which was disappointing because Season 1 was some amazing TV.

weard_beard• 4 years ago

My wife and I LOVED season 1 and season 2. Our opinion is basically the "park" premise was run through by the end of season 2. Season 3 went from an interesting existential commentary on society and our dystopian future with a gorgeous backdrop and compelling characters to... a lot of exposition and kind of predictable schlocky cyberpunk, "keanu reeves starts the revolution with the help of an AI" storyline... without much in the way of real interesting ideas or commentary that brought something new, and without the beautiful and interesting backdrop of, "the park".

yashg• 4 years ago

I have only watched S1. Never bothered with S2 even though I was mildly curious about what would happen next.

bumbledraven• 4 years ago

S2E8 ("Kiksyua") is superb. That episode alone makes a great epilogue to S1.

watwut• 4 years ago

You finish the season you don't like much, because you want to know how it ends. Then you don't start a new season.

I stopped when Dolores ceased to be the best female psychopath on television, but they instead tried to reframe her as someone good. That serie just did not had that something special first one had, so I lost interest.

listenallyall• 4 years ago

HBO's worst flagship show by far, not even close. Zero humor, emphasizing (even amplifying) the worst instincts of humanity (i.e. just to buy into the show's early premise you have to believe every male secretly wants to violently rape a random farm girl), multiple plot points hinging on the "shitty security" trope, new worlds and features and powers constantly introduced (surely due to writer's block -- hey look this "old west" park actually has a gorgeous beachfront that nobody ever developed). Just a dark, depressing, make-shit-up-on-the-fly, illogical mess.

WorldMaker4• 4 years ago

Not every male, just a large enough sample size of rich males given enough "freedom". (It's implied that the park is super-expensive to visit, even after nearly a hundred years of existence. [The exact number is something like 70 years.] That's maybe the most implausible part to me that it was never quite commoditized on such a long scale. Though they did put a lot of money into upgrades over nearly a hundred years, though. Also, that's one of the answers for why you thought they were just pulling new features/powers out of a hat, they had a 70+ year timescale to play with and different pieces happened at different times. They just made it super confusing to figure when on the timeline most individual episodes and even scenes occur.)

codemonkey-zeta• 4 years ago

Yeah I saw it as an allegory to liberte hedonism and in particular Le Marquis de Sade [1], from whom we derive the word "sadistic".

Sadism is a common enough fetish, and given the extent to which other "extreme" sexual fetishes are catered to today with technology it's absolutely plausible that a "sadism simulator" would be popular in a high-tech future society.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade

polyterative• 4 years ago

im sad

Slow_Hand2• 4 years ago

Spoilers

I often feel like the show couldn't keep up with the implications of it's premise. For a show that deals heavily in artificial intelligence(s) it feels constrained by it's need to present it's concepts in a way that human viewers can understand. In particular once it expands outside the park.

The show revolves around entities that have the potential to interface with other devices, multiply and expand their personalities seemingly without limit, and commit themselves to solving problems far beyond the scope of human consideration.

Unfortunately there's just not a good way to represent a lot of this for a human viewership on TV, as it would very quickly be overwhelming or hard to interpret when pushed to a logical extreme.

They represent the plasticity of these AI's somewhat by having them jump to new bodies and replicate themselves, but then put a limit on how far these concepts are pushed, and it's understandable, because it would alienate the audience and be hard to convey. So they end up contriving some limiting factors or simply disregarding these possibilities entirely.

It's hard to have consistent characters with consistent motivations when their core personality is forked across half-a-dozen other hosts. It requires a different kind of relating to entities. Something that hasn't yet made it's way into common storytelling conventions. Even traditional motivating plot devices like death become far less weighty or significant when your characters can be easily resurrected without consequence. It becomes hard to care about your characters because they're rarely in danger, and yet their deaths are often depicted with the heavy melodrama of a story about mortals.

Havoc• 4 years ago

The last season had some interesting architecture & visuals but overall was just fading

HBO Cancels Westworld

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