‘Westworld’ Wows with Killer Concept

Do moral boundaries collapse when there are no consequences?

The series premiere of “Westworld” poses this discomforting question as it sets the stage for a Western-themed amusement park of the same name, in which its guests can live without facing repercussions for their actions, however egregious they may be. Their hosts, eerily human androids, are programmed to follow a script with slight alterations based on interactions with “newcomers,” namely the actual people, and are the targets for inconsequential sex and murder. These hosts live the same routine every day and are thus subject to the greed and violence of their guests, who can harm but not be harmed.

The programmers of Westworld attempt to make the hosts seem even more human (even despite one curious British employee who objects, “Do you want to think that your husband is really fucking that beautiful girl, or that you really just shot someone?”). They realize, however, that the most recent update has caused a widespread glitch: From strained facial expressions to stroke-like outbursts, the androids are not staying within their scripts. Some even start to gain consciousness, threatening to thwart the complete control the programmers have over their world. The chaos that ensues thereafter—more robo-bloodshed than the calculated amount, a bank robbery, and the cessation of an entire scene when one robot goes rogue—sets the stage for a promising season of moral dilemmas, rich and borderline immoral patrons, and lots of robot versus human action.

This thriller, based on the 1973 Michael Crichton movie of the same name, is more than the typical sci-fi dystopia: It taps into computer cognizance and human morality while exploring human desires unbound by moral constraints (Does sex with robots count as necrophilia? Apparently in Westworld, it doesn’t matter.) Gone is the pointless and cliché post-apocalyptic dystopia; “Westworld” demands not only to be seen but scrutinized.

Thanks to an acclaimed cast of actors and an innovative set of producers and designers, “Westworld” is gorgeous. The landscape is almost too beautiful to be true (but is perfectly fitting for an amusement park), the actors are able to switch from playing emotionless robots to portraying robots doing near-flawless imitations of humans in milliseconds, and the high-tech machinery realistically captures a futuristic world. Moreover, Crichton’s original decision to pair several seemingly discordant elements works in the show’s favor to create an unsettling and surprise-filled multi-layered plot. The juxtaposition of robots in the Wild West, gunshots but no actual death, and unfiltered nudity amongst violence creates a fine line between reality and fantasy: fantasies that are too good to be real, and realities that have no place in a land of fantasy.