WESTWORLD (1973) AND FUTUREWORLD (1976)
— RANKING: 92 (TIE) —
WESTWORLD (1973)
THE WORLD’S FIRST COMPUTERIZED COWBOY: Yul Brynner’s persona as a new sort of Western hero in The Magnificent Seven (1960) made him the perfect choice to play a robotized gunfighter in a Disneyland for adults only. Courtesy: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
CREDITS
MGM; Michael Crichton, dir.; Crichton, scr.; Paul Lazarus III, Michael I. Rachmil, pro.; Fred Karlin, mus.; Gene Polito, cin.; David Bretherton, ed.; Herman A. Blumenthal, art dir.; Charles Schulthies, F/X; Brent Sellstrom, John Whitney Jr., Matthew Yuricich, special visual effects; 88 min.; Color; 2.35:1.
Yul Brynner (The Robot Gunslinger); Richard Benjamin (Peter Martin); James Brolin (John Blane); Norman Bartold (Medieval Knight); Alan Oppenheimer (Chief Supervisor); Victoria Shaw (Medieval Queen); Dick Van Patten (Banker); Linda Gaye Scott (Arlette); Steve Franken (Technician); Michael T. Mikler (Black Knight); Terry Wilson (Westworld Sheriff).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
Delos is the vacation of the future—today!
THEME PARK LOGO
BACKGROUND
Harvard Medical School graduate Michael Crichton (1942–2008) had always hoped to be a writer. If he did not create the concept of “techno-thriller” (some do ascribe that to him), certainly he perfected it with novels like The Andromeda Strain (1969). Intrigued by the mathematical concept of chaos theory, Crichton began to wonder, while on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, what might happen if the audio-animatronic buccaneers were to attack the guests. Thereafter, he set to work on a story, but, concerned that Disney might sue if he called his piece “Pirate World,” Crichton changed the basic concept to cowboys.
THE PLOT
Friends Peter and John visit Delos, a state-of-the-art theme park composed, like Disneyland, of various kingdoms (Medievalworld, Romanworld, Westworld). This park, however, is for adults only, and lifelike androids portray the characters. The young men don cowboy clothes, shooting it out with a dangerous-looking man in black before heading off to a bordello. What they don’t know (yet) is that a virus has spread among the robots, causing them to fight back.
THE FILM
Westworld represents a significant moment in the history of not only science-fiction films but also Hollywood. A few years earlier, as indie filmmaking came to dominate deal making, the once-lustrous MGM sold off its old relics, including Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz; ended its long-term contracts with varied talents; and shut down most of the soundstages and backlots. Westworld was the final film shot by the old order. Intriguingly, though, it paved the way for the future as the first film to feature such digital processes as “pixelization,” in which the viewer sees the world through the eyes of a walking, talking computer.
TRIVIA
Beginning with The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), Yul Brynner reinvented the Western hero as embodied by John Wayne and other earlier icons. When Westworld was shot, Brynner, once offering a departure from the norm, now embodied the very idea of the gunslinger.
FUTUREWORLD (1976)
ADDITIONAL CREDITS
American International Pictures; Richard T. Heffron, dir.; George Schenck, Mayo Simon, scr.; Samuel Z. Arkoff, James T. Aubrey, pro.; Fred Karlin, mus.; James Mitchell, ed.; Trevor Williams, art dir.; Gene Grigg, Michael Wood, F/X; Ed Catmull, Albert Nalpas, Frederic Ira Parke, Brent Sellstrom, special visual effects; 108 min.; Color; 1.37:1.
ADDITIONAL CAST
Peter Fonda (Chuck Browning); Blythe Danner (Tracy Ballard); Arthur Hill (Dr. Duffy); John P. Ryan (Dr. Schneider); Stuart Margolin (Harry); Allen Ludden (Game Show Host); Robert Cornthwaite (Mr. Reed); Angela Greene (Mrs. Reed).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
Nothing can go wrong.
DR. SCHNEIDER TO DR. DUFFY
THE PLOT
Two years following the disaster at Westworld, Delos is ready to reopen, with Medievalworld and Romanworld improved, and Westworld abandoned in favor of Futureworld. A press junket precedes the public opening with print reporter Chuck Browning and his breezy TV celebrity counterpart Tracy Ballard among the invited. Though their guide Dr. Duffy insists that any danger has been eliminated, the journalists realize that Dr. Schneider, head of operations, plans to replace visiting journalists and politicians with their android counterparts and, through them, rule the world.
A decade earlier, any film from MGM would have been a huge undertaking, with a sequel by the exploitation company American International a small-budget follow-up. Here we find the opposite: Westworld ran for less than ninety minutes, typical of a B movie; the two-hour running time for Futureworld was more like that of an A movie. The original was shot inexpensively on sets left over from old cowboy shows. In contrast, the sequel offers a verisimilitude of sights and sounds that convincingly conveys the great theme park. Futureworld also plays down nonstop action in favor of more developed characters and offers a greater sense of a created “world.” It also presents a more complicated plot, which was influenced by the Watergate scandal, with its implication that those seemingly benign people “at the top” are not to be trusted
THEME
Both films derive from Crichton’s conservative fear of the machine: anything that can go wrong will go wrong, with robots as well as with any other computer-generated systems. That had been the theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Crichton moved the concept to the world of modern theme parks, where a vacation is at least supposed to be “perfect” owing to the downplaying of possible human error. Yet another visit to a Disney theme park, where Crichton visited the new dinosaur exhibit, led to his writing Jurassic Park.
TRIVIA
Paul Lazarus and his writers realized that there was no way to incorporate Yul Brynner’s robot gunslinger into their new scenario without resorting to contrivance. Yet, they suspected that if the movie were to succeed at the box office, he must be present. They rewrote their script to incorporate the man in black within a sexual fantasy experienced by Blythe Danner’s journalist while at the park.