Doh, that's stupid. Let's hope it does better than the 1980 reboot that was done as a very short-lived TV series...
Quick! Opportunity to bitch about J.J. Abrams! DON'T BE LATE!!!! ALL THE LITTLE WHINERS WILL BEAT YOU TO IT!!!!!
Well, for the record, Jonathan Nolan who has written some pretty good screenplays is developing the series with Abrams. Lets wait to see it before we judge it shall we? I admit that Beyond Westworld was a pretty awful and deservedly flopped but there is the possibility this could be pretty good.
Beyond Westworld was 33 years ago! TV (especially cable TV) is a very different creative environment now than it was in 1980. Let's give them a chance.
Isn't Jonathan Nolan the same person who co-wrote the scene in The Dark Knight Rises where a gunman shoes up with three guys in hoods and they all wait until they get them 3000 feet in the air before taking the hoods off?
I don't know if that was Jonathan's idea, Goyer's or Chris Nolan but he also wrote the story that was the basis for "Momento", "The Prestige", "The Dark Knight". ...and Ernest Lehman wrote a scene where a crop duster pilot tries to kill Cary Grant in a cornfield by shooting him from a plane. Illogical stuff happens in films all the time I clouding some that are co spidered classics.
He also created and wrote "Person of Interest" which I slowly learned to really like. I'll give it a shot. Seems more promising than "Alcatraz" to me.
He didn't "ruin Star Trek". The series and films are still there for you to enjoy as if his reboots never happened. This looks interesting, as a premise if not necessarily as a JJ Abrams show. I read a lot of Crichton growing up but somehow missed Westworld. I've been looking for a beach book for a trip next week, this will do nicely!
I'd much rather J.J. Abrams create an entirely new show from scratch, rather than trying to revive an old concept that's been done (badly) several times before. I don't dispute that Jonathan Nolan is a very fine writer.
Unfortunately, it was only published as a screenplay and doesn't differ much from the finished film. Crichton never adapted it to a novel.
Then pick up a copy of Jurassic Park, also by Crichton. Both always seemed very similar to me: People go to supposedly safe theme park, things go awry, attractions kill people. I'm a big fan of both movies. Anyone notice how Abrams' production company is called Bad Robot and the main antagonist of Westworld is a... bad robot? A coincidence, I'm sure.
I just watched Westworld for the first time since my pre-teen years, still holds up nicely but I can easily see how it could be updated and expanded. The story is simple enough in scope that you could logically take it in a variety of different directions to make it a series. I had forgotten how closely the story paralleled Jurassic Park.
Crichton said in interviews in the early 1990s that he was at first very reluctant to write Jurassic Park, because the only excuse he could see for financing a research operation to clone 100-million-year-old dinosaurs was a theme park, and he had already done theme parks in Westworld. He finally threw in the towel, wrote the novel anyway, showed it to Spielberg, and the rest is history. Interestingly, Crichton's novel, Crichton's original script, and the finished film are all very different -- different characters die in different ways, and in the movie, the billionaire financier who owns the part (Richard Attenborough) survives! He was a vastly different character in the novel. One theory is that the "bad robot" line came from a joke from Brad Bird's classic 1999 animated film Iron Giant, but Abrams himself says he just thought it up years ago (and used his childrens' voices for the logo). It's interesting that Lost was not a "Bad Robot" production, but instead was an ABC Studios production. Most of Abrams' other shows do have that logo at the end. More on Westworld here: http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/hbo...ke-from-jonathan-nolan-j-j-abrams-1200593476/
Abrams has idle hands at this point . He's like hyperactive a child at times. I can make it, better look at me. While having Rod Serling on his shoulder as his influence ego.
I'm confused, I'm pretty sure the Bad Robot logo showed up at the end of every single episode of LOST?
Idle hands? He's got at least 8 projects going at the moment with 2 new TV series debuting this fall/winter.