Empire_Australasia_-_February_2017

ILLUSTRATIONSDAVID MAHONEY

Is Westworld too

artificial, or does it

have heart?

IS WESTWORLD

THE NEW GAME

OF THRONES?

THE DEBATE

With ratings sky-high and a new season commissioned,

Westworld is officially a hit. But does the sci-fi Western

match HBO’s other blockbuster show for quality?

YES

JAMES WHITE,

CONTRIBUTOR

LEAVING ASIDE THE obvious

similarities for a moment — the outbreaks of

bloody violence, the clothing-optional scenes

— Westworld is a more than worthy successor to

the triumphs and tragedies of Westeros. In just

one season, the show has developed into a

complex, compelling and vibrant series, full of

scenes and ideas that stick in your brain long

after the credits have rolled.

The show has been accused of being overly

concerned with impenetrable mysteries and

lacking characters you can truly connect with in

the manner of an Arya Stark or Tyrion

Lannister. Which is abject rubbish: the

fascinating storylines, played out through clever

writing and careful drip-feeding of information,

kept you thinking. Some fans igured out a few

of the bigger reveals earlier than the creators

might have wished, but that didn’t remove the

power of the irst season inale, which had plenty

more on its mind.

And as for connecting to characters? If

you don’t feel for the ‘hosts’ — the human-like

AIs populating the titular park, including

Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve

(Thandie Newton) — as they struggle with the

hellish nightmare that is their reality, you must

surely have a heart made of pure, chilly

titanium. Have you checked for the quiet whirr

of cogs and gears?

Death is a constant on Game Of Thrones,

and while Westworld’s hosts don’t necessarily

have to worry about that (James Marsden’s

unfortunate cowboy Teddy isn’t the only one to

die regularly during the show), that makes it no

less impactful. Our heroes (and they are the

heroes of the show, make no mistake) suffer

through looping, traumatic lives, die horribly and

are then brought back, a situation that only

worsens as they start to wake up to what’s going

on. And peppered through the irst season, we’ve

seen the human characters fall to conspiracies

and the inal masterplan, orchestrated by

Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Robert Ford. The

co-creator of the park helps the hosts start the

robot revolution, one sparked by a bullet straight

to his brilliant, calculating brain.

The cast is uniformly excellent; the production

design and visuals are jaw-dropping, with nods

to both classic Westerns and science-iction

stories, and the show has proved it has plots to

spin for years to come. If that’s not the platonic

ideal of the zeitgeist-prickling show, and a worthy

replacement for Thrones, then what is?

SPOILER

WARNING