A friend of mine back in junior high school days, Greg Ford, once asked me if I'd like to go see a new science fiction movie with him. We met up outside of the Gadsden Cinema that used to be located at the foot of Noccalula Mountain on 12th Street. Greg kept talking about this movie with Yul Brynner called Westworld. I had no idea as to how a Western could also be a science fiction movie.The F/X of Westworld don't really hold up today. It's not as intense to watch it today as it was back in 1973. Everything seems on the campy side - dated. I do remember how that movie made me feel as a kid when I saw it the first time - and the second time. It had me on the edge of my seat. I saw the movie a few years ago and thought the movie was still interesting to watch. Hollywood has been revisiting, rehashing, and remaking a lot of old movies as of late. Westworld might be an interesting project to do. A robots wearing black hats in the west.
If I were to cast such a picture. Wouldn't it be interesting if the likes of Clint Eastwood were hired on? Is he too old to play a robot gunslinger? Ever since I saw Hugh Jackman play Wolverine in Xmen - I've thought he resembled Clint Eastwood back in his Spaghetti Western days. Clint though - would make a great killer robot cowboy. Any ideas how you would cast a Westworld 2009 Remake?
I guess if I had the chance to write the screenplay - I'd alter the original story a bit - make it a little more interesting. You've got your two thirty something Westworld guests arrive and decide to play the roll of outlaws. After all in Westworld you can be anybody that you want to be. They take take to living the roll of carefree Butch & Sundance types - playing pranks, shooting up the town, robbing banks, and getting pursued by rather large posse. Their fun ends when a bounty hunter character crosses their path. Somewhere along the way, the malfunction takes place within the Delos Amusement Corp. The young cowboys have no idea of their fantasy gone wrong - with an android with no name in hot pursuit. I think a nice touch would be that the bounty hunter android not realise that he (it) is really the bad guy - that he is programed to believe that he is human. He is merely living out the roll of bounty hunter - not truly aware of his non-self. He is going about doing his job - hunting down outlaws.
I know - I have a very active little mind.
6 comments:
Clint would be the perfect Cowbot.
I think it would probably involve a "Virtual" westworld though. Maybe hackers infiltrate the system during its operation and people are stuck in the program and can't get out. the longer you stay in the virtual state, the more real it becomes as the computer "learns" from its mistakes.
mb
Westron
Here's a thought. What if Virtual Reality technology weren't about generating semi-real looking animation for the player but rather tapped into a person's actual dream state. Most of the time we dream, we accept what we see no matter how unreal or fantastic the experience.
Do ever remember hearing someone say "if you die in your dream - you die?" Freddy Kruger in the Nightmare franchise killed people in dreams.
So you Delos Entertainment Corporation doesn't have to nail a set together - not have to develope that much real estate - build all those robots. The action is to take place in the head. The guest instead are ushered into a plush hotel room, where they are tuned in while they enter REM sleep.
The idea takes a different shape and not a rehash - but an interesting retelling.
I like the dreamstate idea. You could get into a "what's really real"--like, say, Usual Suspects kind of thing--existentialism. The cowbot (great word, MB!) thinks he's real (shades of Blade Runner) and he's just doing his job, but for some reason this one hits him like a crusade. The main characters are real, but, wait, this is a dream. How real is a dream? But anything that can kill you has got to be real. Oh, yeah! This has got possibilities!
Delos Corp objective is to give the most real experience - the most entertaining experience a customer has ever had or ever will have in his or her life. Delos Imagineers (sorry Mickey) somehow figure out a technology that will invade and run a person's dream. Where do dreams take place? The malfunction could be that the program works too good. The REM software is plugged into the dream - meaning that it is plugged into the brain / central nervous system. For one to really die in Westworld - the software merely shuts off the dream - shuts off the brain.
The malfunction could be triggered by a virus that erases the markers of cowboys and the cowbots - meaning open season on anything or anyone blinking or breathing.
The Delos technicians don't have to die in this telling. They merely watch helplessly as guest after guest are dieing in their sleep. The virus is captured but the damage is done. They never catch on that the program itself is the primary culprit. They can not run the risk of shutting down the system - because so many people are plugged into it. They cannot run the risk of stopping it and left with the only horrific option of letting the game play out.
So these two guys - living out their silly - sick fantasies in a world that is Eastwood's character real world. The bounty hunter sees how callous and cool the young outlaws act when making their get away from the bank job They trample a little old lady (or a maybe a child) who was crossing the street. They stop for a moment, look at each other and then break out laughing. Maybe the old dead woman ended up in a funny position or had a funny look frozen on her face in death. The two laughed as they sped out of town. After all, it's just a pretend world of no consequence to them.
One of them starts singing the theme of a cop show - Bad Boys.
Eastwood looked in disbelief at the whole incident. He watched as the two thieves rode out of town laughing. He wore a hard and twisted look on his face - spat on the ground as they disappeard on the horizon. He never forgot the laughter. Nothing was going to be right in his world until those two men were no longer in it.
Maybe a moment like that - where the aging bounty hunter is sickened by these seeming low lifes. Maybe a moment like that would trigger such a crusade.
Bad boys bad boys - what cha gonna do when they come for you bad boys.
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