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Westworld: 15 big differences between the original movie and hbo's new hit.

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HBO’s Westworld is one of fall’s most buzzed about new series. Created by the esteemed Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, it reimagines Michael Crichton’s 1973 cult classic as a deeply meta exploration of what it means to be human. Like the film that preceded it, the show navigates the world of a futuristic theme park in which hyper-realistic androids serve as a hedonistic escape for vacationing guests, allowing them to enact their most visceral fantasies sans consequence.

The new iteration makes a number of playful nods to Crichton’s ill-fated adventureland: Delos, its name in the film, is imprinted across several walls, the Man In Black bears an uncanny resemblance to the movie’s Gunslinger, and creative director Dr. Robert Ford makes an explicit reference to the androids’ hands-- a telltale sign that they weren’t human in the 1973 flick. But the modernized spin uses the original film as more of a touchstone than a literal interpretation, trading shoot ‘em up action for intricate, slow build suspense, albeit with its fair share of carnage. With that in mind, here are 15 of the show’s largest departures from the original film.

15. The perspectives are broader

Save for a brief sequence of pixilated imagery meant to symbolize the android Gunslinger’s point of view, Crichton’s 1973 precursor largely unfolded through the eyes of two guests: first time visitor Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and Delos frequenter John Blane (James Brolin).

The series, however, widens the scope by shifting through viewpoints from guests, staffers, and the park’s robotic “hosts.” It also examines those categories at closer range, including everyone from high-level executives and Westworld veterans to vigilant security guards and fresh-faced families. Among the characters it explores are reluctant newcomer William (Jimmi Simpson), inquisitive programming head Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), and Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), a beautiful, blonde android designed as a young, southern ingénue.

Whereas the original plot was restricted to a trim 88-minute run time, the reboot’s television adaption allows for a slow, rich, and expansive dive into the park’s various inhabitants, opening the door to a number of important questions on artificial intelligence.

14. A robot is the protagonist

The original film focused squarely on three central characters: visiting guests Peter Martin and John Blane, and savage machine-turned-murderer the Gunslinger. The latter serves more as a violent, rudimentary shell for brute force than as a legitimate villain, letting Martin take the lead as an adept first-time visitor hell bent on survival.

In HBO’s iteration, Jonathan Nolan and Co. instead aim the spotlight at Dolores, a wide-eyed rancherette who wakes up bright and beaming every morning, kisses her father goodbye, and rides off into town to run errands and paint by the river. Though she appears young and sprightly, she’s actually the oldest android in the park, and her current stint in Westworld is only one in a string of  carefully designed narratives she’s lived out. As programming head Bernard Lowe continuously disregards a glitch in her system, she grows gradually more self-aware of her history.

This twist in perspective veers away from the original film’s combat-driven action, instead paving the way for a profound examination of what constitutes a living being.

13. The robots are more emotionally complex

The androids in Crichton’s version are presented as hollow, emotionless creatures. In one particular scene, newcomer Peter Martin expresses nerves about sleeping with a stranger—let alone a robotic prostitute—and his partner all but ignores him, rotating through her programmed actions without as much as a second glance.

In contrast, the TV series’ androids are present and engaged. They’re wired to read (and mimic) the slightest of behaviors, from the tiny curl of a smile to the furrowing of an eyebrow. Their interactions with each other are deeper, too, as evidenced by a bubbling romance between Dolores and Teddy Flood (James Marsden), her valiant, well-mannered fellow host.

Creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have said in interviews they wanted to build an emphatic relationship between the robots and their viewers. “We were just fascinated by that,” Nolan told Esquire . “The moment in which the robot's behavior becomes so close to human that it's only in the tiny subtle ways that you're exploring the question of, well, are they sentient or not? Because they certainly seem sentient.”

12. There’s only one theme park

Crichton’s story spread across three separate destinations: the Euro-centric Medieval World, the ancient, empire-driven Roman World, and the rough-and-tumble sprawl of West World. The plot largely took place within West World, which is likely why they settled on it as the film’s namesake, but there are scenes and characters derived from all three attractions.

Thus far, the TV adaption has remained staunchly in the Old American West, though producers have toyed with the idea of expanding the show’s universe in subsequent seasons. “The film’s story was virtually limitless and so is television at this moment with audiences enjoying shows that break out of their traditional story structures,” Nolan told Deadline . “We definitely look to fully exploit that aspect of storytelling.”

Only a few episodes in, it’s clear there’s a lot to digest in Westworld alone, especially with a much larger selection of perspectives to ponder. It’s likely the series won’t touch on Medieval or Roman World until a few seasons have passed.

11. The park is more family friendly

Kids had no business being in the early ‘70s stages of Delos, an adult-only amusement park that hinged upon lawless hedonism, violent bloodbaths, and R-rated romps. It seems, however, that the entertainment has evolved to include family-friendly activities in the 40-plus years since the original breakdown.

In the series premiere , "The Original," a human child and his parents are shown wandering through West World’s frontier when they come across Dolores. Their interaction is friendly and tame, but it’s clear these PG areas are limited; the mother later warns the family that they “ shouldn’t cross the river .”

The second episode, "Chestnut," uncovers a few more children, albeit the robotic kind. During a walk through the desert, creative director Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) comes across a young android boy he’s able to control with the flick of a hand. Meanwhile, the ruthless Man In Black (Ed Harris) threatens to kill a host’s daughter if she doesn’t help him with his enigmatic quest.

10. There aren’t any rules

Though the original film certainly isn’t short on barbarism, there appeared to be at least some sort of legal structure in place. When guest Peter Martin fatally shot a robot, the town sheriff promptly threw him in jail and warned him a hanging judge would arrive the following week. It’s likely Martin’s stint behind bars was simply meant as part of the fictional experience, but it brings up a clear divergence from the series.

In modern-day Westworld, shoot-outs are not only frequent but encouraged. Longtime visitor Logan stabs an old treasure hunter in the hand simply for heckling him and his friend, and the Man in Black’s burgeoning death count is far past sadistic. Those behind closed doors don’t seem fazed by their guests’ excessive violence, instead giving them free reign to attack their creations. In fact, the HBO version also frequent portrays sexual assault, while the 1973 project seemed to draw the line at prostitution.

9. There are more behind-doors details

In addition to richer character development for park employees, the modern take on Westworld also delves deeper into what goes on behind scenes. The facilities themselves are massive, running from a stunning veranda with sweeping desert views through endless levels of underground production.

Inside, we see the factory-like production of the androids’ bodies, how they’re hosed off and spruced up after a long, bloody day, and the dark, dank basement they’re stored in when they’re deemed out-of-service. Perhaps most revealing are the interviews conducted by staffers, in which they regularly quiz robots to ensure their functionality is good. Here, we see each android has various modes of consciousness, including sleep, analysis, and their regular, waking storylines.

The film also offers glimpses behind doors, but they’re kept brief and purely technical. We see workers gathering dead, discarded bodies at the end of each day, and fiddling with the robots’ wiring in a hospital-like room.

8. The “infection” is different

The downfall of ‘70s-era West World was a systemic malfunction that spread like an infection amongst the androids, beginning in the Roman and Medieval Worlds before reaching a fever pitch in the West. The bug caused the robots to act autonomously while also reversing their inability to kill guests, forcing the dueling Gunslinger into a murderous frenzy.

The TV reboot has already begun to show signs of a similar failure, but this time the glitch is far more complex. The park’s robots have been programmed to carry out various storylines since their creation. These narratives are akin to past lives that are wiped clean from the androids’ hard drives before beginning a new plot. However, creative director Dr. Ford introduces new software called “reveries,” a series of gestures meant to give the robots more hyper-realistic movement by recalling previous memories. Inadvertently, the update causes several machines to begin actually remembering. At only a few episodes in, it’s difficult to tell if the defect will advance in a similarly violent direction, or if it will simply make the robots more human.

7. The “gunslinger” isn’t a robot

For fans of the Westworld film, one of the biggest shocks of HBO’s take came in the form of the repurposed gunslinger. Portrayed by Yul Brynner in the film, he’s a duel-starting android who eventually launches into a lethal shooting spree. Ed Harris’ Man In Black is a clear nod to the original character, but with one crucial difference: he’s human.

While it’s often difficult to decipher between machine and person, the TV adaption follows the same rule as its predecessor: robots can be killed, guests cannot. And thus far, the Man In Black is bulletproof. Instead, he seems to be a seasoned visitor bored with the allure of the park’s debauchery. He arrives in search of hidden-level maze that promises the ultimate key to Westworld’s game. He’s also seemingly one of the park’s most valuable clients; despite leaving an uncharacteristically long trail of slaughtered robots in his wake, staffers repeatedly turn a blind eye.

6. The cast size is double the film’s

The Westworld of 1973 was comprised of a rather small-scale cast, including the three leading men and about a dozen additional faces. Most of the supporting parts weren’t even granted legitimate names, instead featuring placeholder-like titles. Alan Oppenheimer ( The Six Million Dollar Man ) was simply “Chief Supervisor,” Victoria Shaw ( Edge of Eternity ) was “Medieval Knight,” and Steve Franken ( Transylvania Twist ) was labeled the vague but wordy “Delos technician shot dead by the gunfighter.”

The 2016 iteration, on the other hand, boasts an ensemble roster with upwards of 30 characters. There are 16 people in the main cast alone, with assists from at least 18 announced recurring roles. It doesn’t come close to HBO’s sister hit Game of Thrones —which recorded a whopping 257 credits in its third season—but it’s still a substantial selection, and if the producers do decide to add Medieval and Roman World down the road, it’s one that will only get bigger.

5. There are women in the main cast

Men ran the show in Crichton’s Westworld. The guests appeared to be almost exclusively male, and the handful of women roaming the frontier received minimal screentime.

Forty years later, HBO has quite literally flipped the script, trading three leading men for a female protagonist. Five other women are featured prominently in the main roster, including stern operations leader Theresa Cullen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), standout programmer Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward), and strong-willed madam Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton). Elsewhere on the docket are Angela Sarafyan ( The Good Guys ), Tessa Thompson ( Creed ), and Lili Simmons ( Hawaii Five-0 ), among others. The women are also given more elaborate storylines, as well as sizable chunk of broadcast time.

To be fair, the male-to-female ratio is relatively disproportionate regardless of decade. Five women make the cut in the 1973 version’s 15-person cast, while 11 of HBO’s 33-strong lineup are women, resulting in roughly a 1:2 ratio for each.

4. The development took three times as long

After Crichton penned the screenplay in August of 1972, the Westworld film was shopped around, cast, shot, and edited in just over a year. Nonetheless, pre-production was bumpy. It was offered to all the major studios, but MGM was the only one to take the bait. After they picked up the movie, they demanded script changes up until the first day of shooting, and the leads weren’t confirmed until two days before filming began.

On the contrary, the TV adaption was tossed around for decades before finally making its way to the small screen. Warner Bros. had been considering it since the early ‘90s, and HBO finally picked up a pilot in 2013. Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, J.J. Abrams, and Bryan Burke were all attached to the show from the start. Production began in 2014 and the series premiered in October of 2016, bringing the development tally to three years in total.

3. It has an experienced production team

Crichton had been an accomplished novelist before stepping behind camera. Although best known today for Jurassic Park , his sixth novel, 1969 techno-thriller The Andromeneda Strain , was the one that solidified his status as a best-seller several years before Westworld ’s success. He first turned to film with TV movie Pursuit in 1972, but Westworld marked his feature directorial debut. His producer, Paul Lazarus III, was also relatively inexperienced, having only helmed two shorts and one full-length, Extreme Close-Up , also written by Crichton.

In contrast, HBO’s reboot is largely comprised of industry veterans. Co-creator Jonathan Nolan has collaborated with his brother Christopher on several mega-watt films— Memento (2000), The Dark Knight (2008), Interstellar (2014)—and Lisa Joy worked on both Pushing Daisies and Burn Notice. Executive producer J..J. Abrams has an extensive career, most recently tackling box office record-breaker Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). He’s often teamed with fellow executive producer Bryan Burke, who contributed to the Star Trek reboot series, Lost , and Person of Interest , among others. Jerry Weintraub, known for his work on The Karate Kid (1984) and Ocean’s Eleven franchise, rounds out the top-tier production team.

2. The original spin-off series was a flop

Few may remember Westworld’ s first transition to television. The short-lived series, titled Beyond Westworld , premiered on CBS in March of 1980. It was developed and produced by Lou Shaw, a seasoned exec whose roots traced back to Studio 57 . Though it was a direct spin-off, rather than a reboot like HBO’s, it diverged from the original movie by attributing the androids’ killing spree to deranged, power-hungry scientists controlling their switchboards behind doors.

Only five episodes were produced and only three aired before cancelation, though it did receive nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Makeup and Outstanding Art Direction for A Series.

The newly revitalized take, however, has already raked in rave reviews and major ratings. The inaugural episode delivered a strong 3.3 million viewers across its first two airings and streaming. It was HBO’s biggest premiere audience since True Detective ’s first season nearly three years ago. To date, Westworld ’s premiere episode has amassed nearly 12 million viewers, and the subsequent two episodes have remained on par with its opening viewership.

1. The budget is 80 times larger

The original film squeaked by with a tight budget of $1.25 million. MGM initially refused to make the project for over $1 million, but later tacked on $250,000. HBO’s reboot blasts that price tag out of the water, reportedly coming in at a hefty $100 million for the first 10 episodes alone. Even per-episode budgets dwarfed the original’s, landing around $8 million to $10 million each.

The reboot was an expensive gamble for HBO, whose costly Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese team-up, Vinyl , flopped earlier this year. It opened to only 764,000 viewers last February, and received mixed reviews from critics throughout its first season. HBO prematurely greenlit a second season soon after the pilot aired, but ultimately rescinded the announcement.

With their long-running smash Game of Thrones fast approaching an end, pressure is high for Westworld to be the network’s new breadwinner. Luckily, it seems their investment is on its way to a huge payoff.

Westworld  airs Sundays @9pm on HBO.

• Westworld (2016)

Literary Film Review: Michael Crichton’s Westworld

This month’s classic film review is an analysis of the 1973 film Westworld , a notable first in movie history

Michael Crichton published his most influential early novel,  The Andromeda Strain , in 1969 while he was still in his twenties. Pleasingly, when the novel was adapted into a film two years later, Crichton was given a tour of the set by a young Steven Spielberg , who was on his first day at work as a film director. (Spielberg, of course, would later direct the film adaptation of Crichton’s Jurassic Park .)

But as well as being a writer of popular novels which lent themselves readily to film adaptation, Crichton was himself a director – most famously of Westworld , the 1973 film about an amusement park that is a re-creation of the Wild West of the 1880s.

Westworld has a notable claim to fame: it was the first film to use CGI (or, more properly, digital image processing), which would become so crucial to later film adaptations of Crichton’s novels, such as Jurassic Park – another Crichton narrative about a theme park gone wrong.

Westworld , in summary, sees two male friends taking an expensive two-week ‘holiday’ in the amusement park of Westworld – i.e. Wild West or ‘Western’ world, because the park recreates the Wild West of American history (and myth).

There are two other amusement parks, Medievalworld and Romanworld, which we also see in the film, although Romanworld doesn’t figure largely in the plot. All three parks are inhabited by ‘ robots ’: androids which look exactly like real people, although their hands give them away as machines (the scientists haven’t managed to get the human hand right yet) as well as the other guests.

These two friends settle into the eerily authentic world of the Wild West, getting into bar fights and sleeping with prostitutes (also androids) in the local saloon of ill repute. One of them kills Yul Brynner in a shootout in the saloon – but Brynner is one of the androids, which is then taken away by the workers at Westworld to be reprogrammed and then put back into the park, ‘resurrected’ and ready for another gunfight.

But something’s not right, and these androids are starting to play up. The scientists who programme them don’t even fully understand their circuitry, since – as one of the boffins confides – the robotic extras were created in part by other machines, not by man himself.

You can guess how this will play out: our human holidaymakers will find they are the sworn enemies of the wayward robots, fighting for survival against seemingly indestructible machines.

But if Westworld prefigures Crichton’s 1990s novel – and Spielberg’s blockbuster adaptation – of reconstructed dinosaurs gone rogue, then it also foreshadows later films about robots, cyborgs, or androids that turn on their human creators, such as The Terminator (the subject of a literary film review a couple of months ago).

Indeed, when rumours that a remake of Westworld was in the offing, it was mooted that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be involved and that writers who worked on Terminator 3 would write the screenplay (this never happened).

It’s worth remembering that Michael Crichton lamented that the message of the film had been misinterpreted: most people saw the film as a warning against the dangers of technology, but the real warning was about the financial greed of the park’s owners: even when they suspect something is up with the androids and they may be putting their (high-paying) guests at risk, they hesitate to shut down the parks.

Nevertheless, there are clear similarities between Brynner’s Gunslinger and Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. At one point, after the robotic Yul Brynner has taken to pursuing one of the hapless guests at Westworld through the park, intent on shooting him dead, one of the panicked workers at Westworld warns the guest that if Brynner’s gunslinger character has set his heart on killing the guest, then he will do so: nothing can stop him.

This is a conversation we will see again in ‘robots gone rogue’ movies: Kyle Reese’s warning to Sarah Connor and the police in Cameron’s The Terminator springs to mind. (The final scenes of Westworld , not to give too much away, also share some similarities with Sarah Connor’s lone stand against the deadly T101 Terminator.)

Another way in which Westworld prefigures The Terminator is in its point-of-view: showing us the android’s perspective, what he (or ‘it’) sees. But rather than the red screen with coordinates we get in The Terminator , Yul Brynner’s character sees the world of Westworld in pixels.

And this is where the CGI in the film comes in. This detail made Westworld the first major motion picture film to use the then-new computer-generated imagery, although the graphics now look terribly dated, as you’d expect.

Still, it was a start – as it was also the start of the bestselling novelist Michael Crichton’s hugely successful partnership with Hollywood. Westworld is now a popular TV drama series, with better graphics although without Yul Brynner’s unsettling performance.

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3 thoughts on “Literary Film Review: Michael Crichton’s Westworld”

Crichton was an amazing thinker and author. He walked his own path, too, always necessary in these days of the various party lines which seem to rule so much of literature, and film.

Just watched the original Magnificent 7 with Bruner. Did he do West World after it or before it?

The Magnificent Seven was earlier – I think it was 1960, so over a decade before Westworld. And probably played a part in him getting cast for the latter!

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'Westworld' Review: An Exciting, Disturbing, And Thoughtful Reimagining

Michael Crichton 's Westworld is a movie packed with ideas, but it doesn't add up to much more than robots going berserk. While it's an enjoyable film with some terrific sequences, there's a goldmine of untapped ideas in it. The creators of HBO's Westworld , Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy , take real time to explore some of those ideas — and plenty more they bring to the table — in the thrilling, unsettling, and thoughtful first four episodes of season one.

Below, read our Westworld review.

For the low, low price of $40,000 a day you can become the hero or outlaw you've always dreamed of becoming. Westworld, in the eyes of its creator Dr. Robert Ford ( Sir Anthony Hopkins ), is far more than a high-tech theme park; it's a place for visitors to understand their potential. These visitors — the main two of whom are played by Jimmi Simpson and Ben Barnes — are called "newcomers" by the hosts (i.e., the artificial intelligence). The hosts provide the newcomers with whatever they desire, no matter how revolting. They're completely unaware of the roles they're playing in the narratives written for them and the new arrivals.

The sweet and wholesome lady of Westworld, Dolores Abernathy ( Evan Rachel Wood ), for example, is programmed to have no memory of her previous loops and all the horrors her synthetic eyes have seen. She begins to ask questions, though. A glitch in Ford's most recent update has caused some bugs in the hosts, but are Dolores or Maeve Millay ( Thandie Newton ) experiencing glitches or are they, in some way, evolving? Dr. Robert Ford and Westworld's head of programming, Bernard Lowe ( Jeffrey Wright ), are interested in finding out, for reasons that aren't entirely clear at first.

In the pilot, "The Original," Joy and director Jonathan Nolan spend more time introducing Westworld through action than talking heads. Rather than primarily sticking to the point-of-view of a pair of humans, like the original film, Nolan and Joy spend most of the pilot with the characters most familiar with the park. With the help of Dolores, Nolan and Joy show us a bit of Westworld through her tragic routine. She's experienced the worst of Westworld, almost on a daily basis. We see a day in the life of Dolores in the pilot, and it's genuinely unsettling and made all the more horrific by Dolores' endearing, wide-eyed innocence. Whether Dolores' pain is programmed doesn't really matter. Evan Rachel Wood always makes her host's heartbreak or fear feel real, and the same goes for Thandie Newton and other actors playing the hosts.

Plenty of hosts, including Dolores, have suffered at the hands of The Man in Black ( Ed Harris ), a mystery guest who's been coming to the park for 30 years. What makes these instances of horror, when the newcomers have their sadistic fun, truly upsetting isn't so much the realistic depiction of violence but how the newcomers often revel in it. Whenever The Man in Black or another human hurts a host in delight, their cold distance or joy, contrasted with the very human horror expressed by the hosts, is something straight out of a nightmare.

All the people see the hosts in a different light. Westworld is a large ensemble story — I haven't even mentioned James Marsden or Sidse Babett Knudsen 's pivotal roles yet — with so many different perspectives presented. Anybody watching the show   will likely find common ground with someone working at Westworld or visiting Westworld, in regards to how they view the role of the hosts. Some folks look at them as expensive toys, while others recognize the humanity in them. Every perspective or opinion you can imagine someone having about Westworld is included.

Nolan, Joy, and all involved leave no stones unturned when it comes to Westworld. The ins and outs of this seemingly endless environment are laid out with absolute clarity — and often with humor thanks to  Shannon Woodward , who plays a charming, foul-mouthed employee of Westworld. Already the scope of the show is big, partially because of how many different roles and moving pieces there are involved in bringing Dr. Robert Ford's vision to life. We see the exhaustive work it actually takes to keep this place running. Nolan and Joy establish the world and characters without any trouble, while also raising a few alluring questions. There are already a handful of mysteries are at play in Westworld . We'll have to wait and see how they're paid off, but already from the start, the show has you asking questions about motivations and the bigger picture.

What's most exciting about Westworld  isn't the questions, the surprising amount of laughs, or all the violence and sex expected from HBO. In one scene, Dr. Robert Ford explains the appeal of Westworld: people come back for the fine details, not the shock and horror. Westworld 's shock and horror are top-notch, but the subtleties are what make the first handful of episodes addictive. I'm in the midst of watching the episodes again, and on the second watch, new details flourish, especially in the pilot. The J.J. Abrams -executive-produced show has scenes, performances, and lines to be studied under a microscope. Westworld , at least at the start, is as rewarding as it is entertaining.

Westworld premieres on HBO on October 2nd at 9 p.m.

Westworld Review

01 Jan 1973

Yul Brynner is superbly cast as a malevolent android replica of his Magnificent Seven gunfighter as Michael Crichton directs his bestelling novel onto the big screen. The sight of Brynner walking indestructibly toward the camera, all in black, his eyes cold and unerring like a couple of silver bullets, is as haunting as any screen bogeyman. That his performance sometimes makes his peers pale in their haphazard panicking is one of the films very few downfalls.

This is an imaginative variation of the machines-run-amok theme, which scavenges storylines from the worlds that are connected to 'Westworld' (a mead and chicken-leg heaven that is Medieval World, and a wine and toga party that is Roman World) via a web of underground passageways and an eerily prescient CCTV system. When tomorrow's world goes tits up, these cameras give enticing snippets of the unfolding horror that help give the film a healthy edge, rather than lowering it into the zombified ranks it so easily could have steeped to.

Crichton has lived up to his literary promise, thinking us into a corner before he pulls the trigger.

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Westworld: "The Original" Review

Jonathan nolan and lisa joy deftly expand upon michael crichton's great sci-fi concept in the new hbo drama..

westworld photos

Westworld makes a big impression with its first episode. From its standout cast to its excellent visuals to one hell of a hummable score by the great Ramin Djawadi (the composer of Game of Thrones and Person of Interest), this is top-notch television in every respect. The juxtaposition of life inside Westworld and life for those who are creating Westworld allows for an excellent entry point into the show, allowing us to invest with these artificial life forms from the start, while getting to also see the motivations of those behind-the-scenes. This is obviously not the first story to explore the idea of man’s robotic creations from a thoughtful, sympathetic manner -- interestingly, Ron Moore’s wonderful Battlestar Galactica, like Westworld, also took a 1970s-originated story that was much simpler in its “evil robot”/us vs. them depiction and upended it to make the robots fully realized characters -- but it quickly establishes its own unique world and characters that let it stand on its own. This is my favorite of the many new fall TV series, and I suspect I won’t be the only one who feels that way.

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Westworld (1973).

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 1 Review
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Common Sense Media Review

Classic man-vs.-machine adventure is funny but violent.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Westworld is an early entry in what is now a popular man-vs.-the-machine franchise. Set in a modern-day, fabricated Old West resort populated by male vacationers, the film satirizes macho values when its two "tenderfoot" heroes attempt to fit in with the brawling, gun…

Why Age 13+?

Sci-fi violence as robots attack humans in many scenes, often gleefully. Charact

One of the resort's featured attractions is an old-time saloon that provides

The vacation environment includes lots of social drinking: on an airplane, in ba

"Goddammit," "hell."

An old-time Wells Fargo stagecoach rides through Westworld.

Any Positive Content?

Caution against human beings tampering with nature. As in its predecessor, Frank

Unlikely heroes begin as fun-loving, carefree vacationers and are forced to find

Violence & Scariness

Sci-fi violence as robots attack humans in many scenes, often gleefully. Characters are shot at and killed (many point-blank), with blood spurting in numerous scenes. A character catches fire and burns. Acid is thrown in a human-like face; the face burns, melts, and is badly scarred. Swordplay results in bloody deaths. Other violent scenes: a brutal bar fight; a snake bite; vanquished bodies covering the ground; blood spurting from a victim's mouth.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

One of the resort's featured attractions is an old-time saloon that provides prostitutes for the male guests. The two heroes take two women (human or robot?) upstairs and begin to undress and engage in some foreplay. There is partial nudity (naked shoulders, back) as they embrace on the bed. Implied sex happens off-camera and then is referenced: "Not bad."

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Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The vacation environment includes lots of social drinking: on an airplane, in bars, in resort rooms. Both cigars and cigarettes appear in numerous scenes.

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Positive messages.

Caution against human beings tampering with nature. As in its predecessor, Frankenstein , and many films that followed, humankind's efforts to replicate itself proves deadly.

Positive Role Models

Unlikely heroes begin as fun-loving, carefree vacationers and are forced to find inner strength, courage, and resourcefulness to survive. Female characters are scarce (no scientists) and are portrayed as mostly sexual objects. A few African-American professionals provide a bit of diversity.

Parents need to know that Westworld is an early entry in what is now a popular man-vs.-the-machine franchise. Set in a modern-day, fabricated Old West resort populated by male vacationers, the film satirizes macho values when its two "tenderfoot" heroes attempt to fit in with the brawling, gun-slinging faux cowboys of long ago. Given a PG rating when it was released in 1973 before the MPAA's PG-13 was established, Westworld includes much more graphic violence than is standard for the current PG tag. Throughout the movie, with a larger-than-life, often-comic tone, both human and robotic characters are stalked, threatened, shot, stabbed, burned, and, in one instance, melted from acid thrown in the face. Blood flows freely. Suspense is high. The only females in the cast are either prostitutes or love objects. Drinking and smoking occur in numerous scenes as part of the fantasized culture. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

For only $1,000 per day (a major investment by 1973 standards), a thrill-seeking vacationer can stay at one of three fabulous "Delos" resorts -- Medieval World, Roman World, or WESTWORLD -- and immerse him or herself in the fantasy of living in times past. Peter Martin ( Richard Benjamin ) and John Blake (James Brolin) , unattached and free-spirited friends, have chosen Westworld, where they can participate in an array of fabulous adventures, including a saloon shoot-out, a standoff with a lethal snake, and an old-time bank robbery, and they can even avail themselves of sexual favors from two pretty ladies of the evening. The fact that it's almost impossible to tell the true-life players from "so-real-looking-it's-uncanny" robotic participants at the resort makes it even more fun. The scientists and robot operators aren't having a good time, however. Unanticipated events in which robots begin to show signs of having minds of their own are unsettling. What if ... ? But nothing could have prepared them for the all-out uprising of epic proportions that soon threatens to destroy every living creature in all three of the fantasy lands. It isn't long before only Peter, an ill-prepared rookie cowboy, is left to stop the attack. With only his wits and a few remnants of scientific invention on hand, Peter must face off against the deadliest robot enemy of all: the Gunslinger ( Yul Brynner) .

Is It Any Good?

Still surprisingly effective given the primitive nature of the visual effects, Westworld is a clever hybrid of sci-fi and old-time Western. This film's impact, with its fledgling robotics and simple story, relies upon humor, surprise, and some startlingly bloody visuals of death and destruction. It's best for older kids who are familiar with exaggerated (perhaps intentionally laughable) point-blank kills by gunfire, blood-spurting swordplay, and life-and-death suspense. The movie is the offspring of Frankenstein and the forerunner of many other films that show a genius creator threatened by his creation. Notably, writer-director Michael Crichton followed this movie with Jurassic Park -- first a book, then a classic movie in which an ambitious industrialist creates another manufactured resort ... with dinosaurs. Westworld was a box office winner in 1973 and has retained a strong fan base ever since.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how special effects and robotics have changed since this movie was made. Did the outdated techniques lessen your enjoyment of the film? Given their limitations, how did the filmmakers manage to surprise you and engage you in the story?

A "cautionary tale" is a story told to warn about a possible danger. What is the danger to which Westworld is alerting the audience? How do you feel about science as a risk-taking venture?

Think about Peter as a hero in this story. What made him heroic? Did the fact that he was totally untrained and unprepared for his fight contribute to your appreciation of his actions?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 21, 1973
• On DVD or streaming : September 29, 1998
• Cast : Yul Brynner , Richard Benjamin , James Brolin
• Director : Michael Crichton
• Studio : MGM/UA
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Topics : Adventures , Robots
• Run time : 88 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• Last updated : June 2, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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• Entertainment

Why HBO’s Westworld Is Fall’s Most Promising Drama

“You know why this beats the real world?” Ed Harris asks a man he’s about to shoot. “The real world is chaos. It’s an accident. But in here, every detail adds up to something.” Playing a marauding visitor to a futuristic theme park, Harris perfectly summarizes the appeal of Westworld, a tourist attraction for wealthy folks who want to role-play the days of Wild Bill Hickok. Harris isn’t gunning down a man, really—he’s killing one of the AI “hosts” created for his pleasure. And Westworld , the new HBO series set at the park, is as beautifully built as its subject matter. Its carefully chosen details add up to a pulp spectacular that’s more thoughtful than any other of this fall’s new dramas.

Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) is Westworld’s behind-the-scenes master of ceremonies, crafting “narratives” for his hundreds of synthetic pioneers. Visitors pay tens of thousands of dollars a day to watch—or interact with, whether kissing or killing—the machines, which Hopkins has impregnated with verbal and physical tics so inconspicuous that we don’t notice until the same scenarios are reenacted with new guests. Westworld entices clients with a surreal change of scenery, but keeps them coming back with a populace that’s beautifully “human.” As Ford puts it: “The guests don’t return for the obvious things we do, the garish things. They come back because of the subtleties. The details.”

After each guest leaves, the hosts’ memories are wiped clean by programmer Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright, brilliantly conveying the moral ambiguity of the situation). It’s this detail that creates a problem when sweet-natured robot Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and brothel madam Maeve (Thandie Newton) begin to recall traumas from the past that ought to have been deleted. Harris’ “Man in Black,” who’s been visiting the park for 30 years, feels certain he’s close to cracking its code, but there’s a chance his once docile hosts may just rise up and rebel before he gets there.

Unlike Game of Thrones— the obvious point of comparison as a lavish HBO fantasy, and a series whose success the network surely wants to repeat— Westworld isn’t based on a widely known property with a rich mythology. Its first season wrings 10 episodes from a cult 1973 sci-fi flick written and directed by Michael Crichton, which didn’t crack the 90-minute mark. Show creators Jonathan and Lisa Joy Nolan freely and confidently build out a narrative that considers, from its first moments, the meaning of human consciousness. Is a mind created by humans really a mind? Can it be mistreated?

It’s the finesse with which the show handles these heavy questions that will keep me coming back, but it’s also worth noting that the garish spectacle is rendered expertly. A show depicting the creation of synthetic humans rises or falls on the quality of its bots, and to watch Dolores undergo programming is to see Wood’s virtuosity at work. She shifts between affects and accents as Lowe grills her, but never loses some fundamental sweetness. Whether it’s her coding or an inexplicable soul within her machinery is the mystery Westworld fearlessly sets out to explore.

Westworld airs Sundays at 9 p.m. E.T. on HBO

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Hbo’s ‘westworld’ season 4: tv review.

After two years away, it's back to the robotic future for Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Aaron Paul and the rest of the 'Westworld' cast.

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

Chief Television Critic

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I’m no technical expert, but did anybody ever consider unplugging Westworld for 30 seconds and then plugging it back in?

I ask because for a show in which nobody can ever really die — or, if they do die, they can be brought back as robots — and, after the third season, anybody can apparently change identities with just the flick of a switch, HBO ‘s Westworld is extremely bad at resetting itself.

Airdate: 9 p.m. Sunday, June 26 (HBO) Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Luke Hemsworth, Aaron Paul, Angela Sarafyan, James Marsden Creators: Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy

As its fourth season begins, Westworld has settled into what is now a comfortable routine: Take a couple of episodes to establish the new normal, even if that amount of exposition is either completely unnecessary or woefully insufficient. Find an interesting rhythm for a few episodes at midseason. Unravel into convoluted chaos, wherein it becomes clear either that nothing really makes enough sense to remember or it becomes even clearer that there’s no way for meaningful stakes to develop in a show in which nobody (other than possibly Anthony Hopkins) is ever permanently gone and anybody can become somebody else with a burst of techno mumbo-jumbo. Lather. Renew. Repeat.

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And here’s the fun thing: Maybe you disagree with every bit of that last paragraph. Maybe you love the show’s slow-burn world-building. Maybe you vividly remember every detail that happened in the last season because you’ve rewatched every episode two or three times, accumulating evidence and cracking codes. Maybe you think it’s a provocative meditation on free will or robotic ethics or fungible identity in an NFT world.

Then this review is not for you. I can’t tell you how good or bad the first four new Westworld episodes are if you love the show. I can only check in on behalf of viewers who are, like I am, tantalizingly intrigued by some aspects and perpetually infuriated by many others. So I’m not even sure if it’s frustrating or weirdly reassuring to note that the fourth season of Westworld is business as usual. It’s two episodes of comically elongated resetting of the pieces on this futuristic chessboard, followed by two episodes in which some of the ideas are provocative or at least amusing.

Will it all come together in a way that’s narratively sensible and emotionally satisfying? Fool me thrice, shame on me. Fool me four times, shame on Westworld .

So when creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy left things… oh, who cares. You either remember or you don’t, and if you care, there are bits and pieces of flashbacks and talky refreshers. But at the same time, it truly doesn’t matter. Why be perplexed by old business when the new business offers new things to be perplexed by?

Seven years have passed since whatever happened at the end of the third season, which aired back in May 2020. Aaron Paul ‘s Caleb is living with a wife (or girlfriend, I don’t suppose it matters much) and things are back to normal, so much so that one of his co-workers is unable to understand what the point of the revolution seven years earlier was, which is pretty much how I felt watching it unfold.

Maeve ( Thandiwe Newton ), whoever Maeve is these days, is in peaceful retreat in a remote cabin until that peace is violently shattered. Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), whoever Bernard is these days, is in whatever dusty place we saw him in after the credits from last season. Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), or whoever Charlotte is these days (Dolores, if memory serves, but it probably doesn’t), is plotting nefariously. Also plotting nefariously is William (Ed Harris), whoever William is these days, who has gone full-on Man in Black, making people offers he hopes they’ll refuse so he can kill them.

Oh, and Dolores ( Evan Rachel Wood ) isn’t Dolores anymore, because who is who they used to be? The person who looks like Dolores used to look is now called Christina and she’s a writer for a virtual reality video game, sharing a cramped apartment with Maya ( Ariana DeBose ), who mostly wants Christina to get laid.

Because so many pieces of the show’s cast are able to rotate from good guys to bad guys, depending on their programming, and because so many pieces of the show’s cast are in their hundredth or thousandth permutation of what counts as “living,” there’s very little opportunity for new faces to appear. Along with Aurora Perrineau and Daniel Wu — as figures within the human resistance that gives the season its “plot” — DeBose is the primary new figure, and it’s almost astonishing how wasted she is through these first four episodes.

Am I confident that DeBose’s character is harboring some secrets that will eventually give her at least a modicum of payoff? Sure. Do I still think it should be against the law to take a performer as versatile and instantly galvanic as Ariana DeBose and give her four solid episodes of nothing more than “Concerned roommate who wants her friend to get laid?” Yes. Illegal.

If all Maya is doing is trying to get Christina laid, instead of taking her to boring wine bars to do it, why not go to a karaoke bar or a line-dancing bar for that same purpose? Or have the two characters go to MusicalTheaterWorld, the hosts of which are just characters from classic musicals, which was basically the plot of Schmigadoon! anyway. Ariana DeBose doesn’t require singing or dancing to be charismatic, but she’s way too good for this.

Of course, not getting full value out of great actors and sometimes great ideas is what Westworld does best. I’m still angry about the season three episode in which Paul’s character took a party drug that caused him to experience the world through the filter of different movie genres, yet the show had so little fun with that seemingly juicy premise that characters had to explain what each new genre was.

Westworld boasts first-class special effects and robustly polished aesthetics and too many good conceits to count, and yet it’s a conspicuously poorly directed show, wallowing in momentum-stunting visuals and anticlimactic action set-pieces.

That’s why it’s very difficult for me to get invested even when Westworld does cool things. As the third and fourth episodes roll around, there are cool things aplenty as two characters go to a reopened theme park modeled after classic gangster movies. The park gives Westworld an opportunity to comment on the hollowness of reboot culture.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think the show was engaging in meta-commentary about how putting a handsome new skin on something that didn’t work well before and hoping nobody will notice is a recipe to repeat the same disasters, maybe even apologizing for prior narrative missteps. It’s not, any more than it’s a critique of the way nostalgia causes us to fetishize even the ugliest aspects of the past, treating even something like the massacre at Westworld as a reproducible version of The Good Ol’ Days.

Speaking of The Good Ol’ Days, what will keep me watching are the same things that have kept me sticking with Westworld for this long. Newton is a badass treasure as Maeve, though I don’t know when the writers decided to make that character so glib and jokey. Wood continues to do subtle, complex work, though if I didn’t suspect where the show was going with “Christina,” I’d think this was a boring character introduction. Wright does pensive sternness and Paul does frazzled torment better than just about anybody. Throw in the perpetually striking and perpetually underused Thompson, the eternally gruff and grizzled Harris and a bunch of amusing callbacks and I’ll presumably keep watching Westworld until its next season-opening reset.

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‘Westworld’ Season 3 Review: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

By Alan Sepinwall

Alan Sepinwall

When HBO released the full trailer for the third season of Westworld , the reaction was near-pandemonium. Oh, the trailer got people excited, because of course it did — this is what trailers are designed to do. They are sales tools, and even god-awful movies and TV shows can sell themselves effectively in that format. (I still can’t believe how giddy I was to see Cameron Crowe’s shapeless Aloha based on its trailer .) But what made the anecdotal response so fascinating is why people were excited. It wasn’t just that it promised impressive action set pieces, cool future technology, and new faces galore (Aaron Paul! Lena Waithe! Marshawn Lynch?!?!?!). It was that it seemed to promise an entirely different series from the one Westworld had given us over its first two seasons.

People weren’t thrilled to see their favorite show would be coming back exactly as they remembered it; they were looking forward to seeing its many remarkable individual pieces taken apart and reassembled in a nearly unrecognizable form, like a kid turning his Lego pirate-ship set into a moon base. Even within the broader idea of hope-watching a series that hasn’t quite lived up to its potential, this phenomenon felt new. People who stuck with Parks and Rec or Star Trek: The Next Generation through bumpy earlier seasons were rewarded with much better versions of the show they were already watching. But I’ve encountered few people who just wanted Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy to deliver an improved version of the homicidal theme park shenanigans from the first two seasons.

That’s because few series in recent memory have squandered such vast potential and resources as thoroughly as Westworld did. With an incredible cast and a seemingly limitless production budget, Nolan and Joy could have crafted virtually any story that had something even vaguely in common with the Seventies film on which the show is based. Mostly, though, they just used those amazing resources in service of puzzle-box nonsense, valuing surprise over characterization, even over Westworld ‘s larger philosophical questions about the nature of existence and free will. Season Two in particular seemed less concerned with telling a story than with outsmarting Redditors who sniffed out Season One’s big twist moments after the character in question was introduced.

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The creators seem aware that they let the spoiler tail wag the narrative dog, and over the summer promised , “This is season is a little less of a guessing game.” Pair self-reflective comments like that with a change in locale prompted by robots Dolores ( Evan Rachel Wood ) and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) leaving the park at the end of last season, then add in new faces like Paul ( fresh off El Camino ), Vincent Cassel, and Tommy Flanagan from Sons of Anarchy , and it looked like as fresh a start as a show this prominent could make several years into its run. Heck, it even suckered me back in after I’d written off the show following the Season Two finale.

Season Three does, in fact, start out feeling like a brand-new-ish show, one that incorporates the strengths of the first two seasons while mostly casting aside the more self-indulgent parts. After a prologue that shows Dolores delivering some karmic justice to one of the many powerful men who abused her during her time as a park host, we get to know Caleb (Paul), a military vet struggling to readjust to civilian life, especially in a future where everything is controlled by algorithms. It’s something of a role reversal from how Dolores and the other hosts had to submit to the cruel whims of the human guests, even as early episodes depict just how much the top one percent of the One Percent are living higher than ever on this placid dystopia their computers have built.

We know from his years as Jesse Pinkman just how effectively Paul can play angst and alienation. Caleb is almost instantly more compelling than any of the human characters from previous seasons — though as I write this sentence, it occurs to me that I’ve lost track of which humans ultimately turned out to be humans, and which of them were, like Bernard, robots whose true identities were hidden from us and/or them. And the casual world-building of this future can be jaw-droppingly beautiful. The premiere is characteristically dour — outside of scenes with Thandie Newton’s wry super-robot Maeve, it’s always startling whenever anyone on this show is funny(*) — but emotionally engaging in a way the show only tried to be in a handful of previous episodes. As Caleb’s side work as a freelance criminal on an Uber-style app intersects with Dolores’ plot to overthrow humanity, it feels as if Nolan and Joy have pulled off the impossible reinvention promised by that trailer.

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(*) Luke Hemsworth’s Stubbs, the former Westworld security chief, somewhat shockingly becomes the most consistent source of humor, given how fed up he is with everything happening. At one point, he complains that a new situation “makes me look back on my time in a murder simulation theme park with fondness.”

But staying in a bad relationship in the belief that you can fix your partner almost never works, because asking them to be only their best and none of their worst is asking them to become an entirely different person. People don’t work like that, nor do huge, premium-cable sci-fi spectacles. So, within short order, the new Westworld begins acting more and more like the same old Westworld .

The second episode brings the action back to the park, where Maeve is still trying to reconnect with the daughter who was sent into a kind of digital heaven. It’s a section we haven’t seen before — the WWII-themed War World, with Nazis and Italian partisans running and shooting all over the place — but it nonetheless plays like a retrenchment. Maeve dismisses the old movie fantasies playing out around her — “None of it matters,” she says, “because none of it is real” — in a way that could perhaps be read as a commentary on the very premise of the first two seasons. But very soon, the question of what is and isn’t actually happening becomes a core tenet of the season, with variations on “this isn’t real” replacing last season’s recurring query, “Is this now?” No one seems quite sure what’s reality and what’s a simulation, including some of the rich swells who are enjoying a world where the likes of Dolores and Caleb serve their whims.

Questioning the nature of reality itself fits with the series’ pre-established themes, but it winds up replacing one puzzle box with a much bigger one. Every scene can now be questioned as a simulation. Every character can be revealed at any point to have always been a robot, or replaced by a robot, or turned into a robot. Like Maeve says, none of it matters, because none of it feels real. Obviously, any scripted story is fundamentally not real, but most of the good ones try to offer elements that feel real enough to create an audience investment — a willing suspension of the barrier between fiction and fact. Westworld has no need for that on the way to making various philosophical points, and to set up various surprises in the plot. As a result, everything looks cool, but rings hollow.

The creators’ assertion that this season would be “a little less of a guessing game” proves accurate, at least when it comes to the “little less” part. Many important pieces of information are still held in reserve for a moment when they can perhaps provide the most shock. In the process, however, they hamstring different story and character arcs. Last season, Bernard temporarily put Dolores’ mind into a robot copy of Delos executive Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), before Dolores eventually wound up back in her own synthetic skin. The Charlotte-bot is still running around, though, and much of this season’s third episode involves the impostor cracking under the emotional burden of living someone else’s life. The problem is, the show doesn’t tell us who the new faux Charlotte really is, because it’s being saved for a later reveal. So as good as Thompson is — it’s perhaps the first time Nolan and Joy have known what to do with her — every one of those scenes is undercut by the fact that we have no idea who we’re really watching.

By the time I came to the end of the last episode HBO gave critics, I realized that the fault lay more with me than with Westworld . Needing a show to completely transform itself in order for me to enjoy it suggests I should just be watching a different show. (There’s also the matter of all the people who enjoyed the show the way it was for two seasons; I’ve already heard complaints from fans lamenting that we’ll no longer be in the park full-time.)

The new season certainly has its moments, and the idea of Maeve and Dolores working at cross-purposes is intriguing. Ultimately, though, Westworld is always gonna Westworld . As Dolores puts it to Caleb, “I thought your world would be so different from mine. There isn’t any difference at all.”

The third season of Westworld premieres March 15th on HBO. I’ve seen the first four of eight episodes.

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At the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, waits a world in which every human appetite can be indulged without consequence. At the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, waits a world in which every human appetite can be indulged without consequence. At the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, waits a world in which every human appetite can be indulged without consequence.

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• Trivia Ben Barnes (Logan) broke his foot before arriving to the first day of shooting. Being afraid of losing the job, he didn't tell anyone, and just used the limp to look like a character choice. He then had to maintain the limp throughout filming.
• Goofs During the opening credits' animation, a hand is shown firing a revolver. However, the mechanics depicted--the trigger-pull cocking the hammer--are only true of double-action revolvers. The 1873 Colt pictured would require the hammer to be cocked by the thumb before the trigger could be pulled.

William : [to Angela] Are you real?

Angela : If you can't tell, does it matter?

• Crazy credits From the second season, the Warner Bros logo has the fanfare played on a honky-tonk piano, to fit the setting of Westworld.
• Connections Featured in The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Nathan Lane/James Marsden/Nikki Glaser (2016)
• Soundtracks Main Title Theme Written by Ramin Djawadi

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Review: ‘Westworld’ Is a Provocative but Flawed Sci-Fi Shoot-’Em-Up

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By James Poniewozik

• Sept. 30, 2016

In HBO’s “Westworld,” Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) runs a theme park where wealthy “guests” live out frontier fantasies among lifelike robot “hosts.” In the fourth episode, a colleague points out to him what viewers will have already noticed: Those fantasies almost uniformly involve murder, rape or torture.

It’s true, Dr. Ford admits. In the beginning, he says, when the park’s creators wrote its first interactive narratives, “We made 100 hopeful story lines. Of course, almost no one took us up on them.”

Dr. Ford sounds like he could be a cable network head of drama development. In the Wild West of Peak TV, channels have supplied, and audiences have rewarded, gruesome serials like “Game of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead” that share a worldview that life is horrific and people are terrible.

“Westworld,” which begins on Sunday, is another animatronic body atop that bloody pile, but it’s also a self-aware one. It’s an ambitious, if not entirely coherent, sci-fi shoot-’em-up that questions nihilistic entertainment impulses while indulging them.

Life, for the park’s synthetic hosts, is brutish and long. They interact with guests, have sex with them, are murdered by them — they are equipped with realistic and copious blood — then get repaired, have their memories wiped and go back into service.

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This hit Netflix movie is Hugh Jackman’s most underrated sci-fi film

Finding something to watch has probably never been easier, but finding something great to watch is a different story. Combing through a streaming service for something worth your time and actually finding it can be almost impossible.

If you’re looking for something interesting and inventive, though, then  Reminiscence on Netflix may be the perfect watch for you. The film tells the story of Nick Bannister, a private detective living in a future Miami that has completely flooded. He then discovers an insidious conspiracy while investigating a former client. Here are four reasons you should make time for it while it’s on Netflix .

It’s an original sci-fi story

In an era when almost everything is part of some broader extended universe,  Reminiscence  is worth checking out because it’s an attempt to do something totally different. It’s an original idea set in a distinct world, and as a result, it feels like a rarity, especially at its midsized budget level.

Produced to debut in theaters, and not on streaming,  Reminiscence  has all the scale that you might expect from an interesting theatrical experience, and it feels specific and idiosyncratic in a way that very few movies that have been optimized for streaming do.

It will keep you guessing

Like any great mystery,  Reminiscence  will keep you guessing for the length of its runtime. Part of the movie’s genius is in crafting a fairly straightforward mystery and putting that mystery in a world that is very unlike the one we actually inhabit.

The result is a movie that knows exactly how many twists it has in its bag, and is careful to deploy them in ways that deepen the story, but never upend it or take you out of the world completely. Reminiscence  will keep you waiting for the next big reveal, but it knows not to overstay its welcome.

It features the always great Rebecca Ferguson

Either you’re in the cult of Rebecca Ferguson or you just haven’t seen her in anything yet. Here, she plays Mae, the mysterious client that Jackman’s Bannister is looking into when he discovers a more insidious conspiracy. As always, Ferguson is an intriguing mystery here, a modern update on the femme fatale that is granted her own inner life and agency.

Ferguson rose to prominence in part thanks to her performance in  Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation , and she’s operating in a similar mode here. The rest of the cast, including Jackman and Thandiwe Newton, are just as great, but Ferguson leaves the most lasting impression.

It’s a Blade Runner/Westworld mash-up

Director Lisa Joy is perhaps best known for being one of the creators behind  Westworld , and at its best, that show could build out a world that felt real and immersive. In taking that same sensibility and applying it to a more straightforward noir story,  Reminiscence  winds up feeling like a cross between the director’s Westworld  preoccupations and the sci-fi/noir mash-up that is Blade Runner .

That combination of genres and tones works to the movie’s advantage, creating a world that feels interesting and complicated. It the immerses you in a very specific mystery that inhabits just one small corner of a much larger universe.

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Netflix was at the forefront of the streaming boom, so it's only natural that it has become most consumers' go-to streaming service. While Netflix has built a film and TV pipeline over the years that has resulted in a near-constant stream of new originals, its brand identity has only grown increasingly diluted. Its output has become so wide-ranging and uneven that, although it may still be the most popular streaming service, whether or not it holds the title of the best is less clear. The non-curated nature of its new releases and its loss of most of the legacy titles that brought so many subscribers to its platform in the first place have made Netflix a less dependable source for your weekend entertainment than it once was.

So where should you go when you want something new to watch from the comfort of your own home on a quiet Friday or Saturday night — or even a lazy Sunday afternoon? Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and Hulu all have better libraries of classic movies and TV shows than Netflix. However, if you're looking for something new, this writer would argue that the best streaming platform for fresh and reliable weekend entertainment is none other than Shudder. What you see is what you get (and that's a good thing)

Jonathan Glazer was recently in the news for several reasons. His latest effort, the discomfortingly immersive The Zone of Interest, earned him rave reviews and a nomination for Best Director at this year's Academy Awards. When he took the stage to accept the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, his powerful speech attracted both praise and criticism, cementing his reputation as a true outlier living in an industry so notoriously averse to risk and progressive thought.

With The Zone of Interest, Glazer's art finally entered a more global stage. However, the film that should've given him this level of exposure is his 2013 sci-fi masterpiece, Under the Skin. A visceral, puzzling, and striking cinematic experience unlike any other, Under the Skin is possibly the most daring and unforgettable sci-fi movie of the 2010s, which is no small feat considering triumphs like Arrival and Interstellar also came out during this decade. This month marks the film's 10th anniversary, making it the perfect time to reminisce about this polarizing and underappreciated sci-fi gem that, much like its director, dares to say what very few others will. Under the brain

Netflix's 3 Body Problem isn't just the streaming service's long-awaited adaptation of the acclaimed Chinese science fiction novel of the same name by Liu Cixin. It's also Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' follow-up to their HBO smash hit. In many ways, the Netflix series, which Benioff and Weiss co-created with Alexander Woo, is a worthy successor to a show like Thrones. Like that game-changing HBO drama, it's an adaptation of the kind of famously complex source material that many understandably believed to be unadaptable.

To Benioff, Weiss, and Woo's credit, they prove that's not true across 3 Body Problem's debut eight-episode season. Together, the trio and their collaborators successfully streamline the science-driven narrative of Cixin's original novel, turning it into an episodic story that is both easily digestible and propulsive. While 3 Body Problem gets a lot right, though, it's missing the one thing that made Game of Thrones such a beloved show in the first place. To put it frankly, its characters just aren't all that memorable. A rich foundation 3 Body Problem | Official Trailer | Netflix

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‘mad max: fury road’ rekindled my love of physical media.

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Mad Max: Fury Road

Furiosa: A Mad Max story may have only had a mediocre box-office run, but the movie was absolutely fantastic—far, far better than its early trailers led me to expect. This is how you do a prequel movie, I thought as I watched the story unfold, and that’s exactly what I said in my review .

I went to the movie with my son, my brother and a friend and we all agreed that we wanted to go rewatch Mad Max: Fury Road afterward. A few days later, we sat down at my house and popped the 4K UHD Blu-ray disc I had laying around into my Xbox Series X. It had been years since I’d seen the film, and I’d never watched it on my 4K Blu-ray because even though I had the ability to play the disc and had a few other 4K Blu-rays on a shelf, I hadn’t watched anything via physical media in years.

Somehow, the disc had gotten some dust on it, so partway through the movie it began to glitch. In a moment of sheer laziness, I suggested we just switch over to Max where the movie was streaming. So we did. And it was nothing short of a revelation.

I have a 65” LG OLED television and (at the time) a 5.1 surround sound setup with Klipsch speakers (now a 5.2.1 setup with two Klipsch Dolby Atmos speakers for overhead sound). The TV has a great image, with true blacks and vibrant colors. The sound is phenomenal. But both the visuals and the sound looked egregiously worse when streaming despite a very fast internet connection. It was night and day. The image was muddy and the colors nowhere near as lush. The sound was more muffled, with a huge loss in crispness and fidelity. These are things I wouldn’t have even noticed if I’d started the movie on streaming instead of on a 4K Blu-ray disc.

Before long, we’d stopped the stream and I washed off the disc. It played beautifully after that, and we were all left shaking our heads at what a massive—almost tragic—difference there was between the two. I say “tragic” because this is what we’ve all grown accustomed to over the past decade. Just as we reached an era of truly high-definition media, streaming rose rapidly to dominance thanks to how convenient it was. 1080p Blu-ray was a big step forward from DVDs and VHS, but 4K takes it to another level—and now virtually nobody buys or watches movies via physical media. It’s a tragedy!

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Since then, I’ve purchased a bunch of movies in 4K as well as the new pair of speakers and a Panasonic 4K Blu-ray player with Dolby Vision , since modern consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X are only capable of HDR10. I’ve been making my way through these films (most of which I’ve already seen, though usually many years ago) including Gladiator, Time Bandits and Master & Commander, though I could only find that on regular Blu-ray. The sound on a regular Blu-ray is still far superior to streaming, and the visuals often are as well.

I’ve even purchased a number of series on 4k Blu-ray, including Andor and Westworld. The difference in visual and audio fidelity is striking. I purchased Raised By Wolves on standard Blu-ray, since Warner Bros. has sent that highly underrated sci-fi show into the netherworld where it’s no longer streamable anywhere. Even though it remains unfinished, I’d rather be able to rewatch it than to simply let it go.

That’s the other thing about physical media. It’s yours. You own it—you even get a little warning about how piracy is a crime when you fire up a movie (we joked about this when we watched 1917 in 4K the other night). Warner Bros and Disney cannot delete it entirely. As much as I hated the Willow TV series on Disney, a part of me wishes I was able to legally purchase a Blu-ray set just to own it, just because it’s so messed up that Disney could just delete something like that forever.

All of this is simply to say that my love and appreciation of physical media has been revived thanks to George Miller’s epic post-apocalyptic masterpiece. Mad Max: Fury Road in all its bombastic spectacle is the perfect reintroduction to movies the way they were meant to be seen. Give it a try sometime.

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MIT Technology Review

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This researcher wants to replace your brain, little by little

The US government just hired a researcher who thinks we can beat aging with fresh cloned bodies and brain updates.

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A US agency pursuing moonshot health breakthroughs has hired a researcher advocating an extremely radical plan for defeating death.

His idea? Replace your body parts. All of them. Even your brain. 

Jean Hébert, a new hire with the US Advanced Projects Agency for Health ( ARPA-H ), is expected to lead a major new initiative around “functional brain tissue replacement,” the idea of adding youthful tissue to people’s brains. 

President Joe Biden created ARPA-H in 2022, as an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, to pursue what he called  “bold, urgent innovation” with transformative potential. 

The brain renewal concept could have applications such as treating stroke victims, who lose areas of brain function. But Hébert, a biologist at the Albert Einstein school of medicine, has most often proposed total brain replacement, along with replacing other parts of our anatomy, as the only plausible means of avoiding death from old age.

As he described in his 2020 book, Replacing Aging, Hébert thinks that to live indefinitely people must find a way to substitute all their body parts with young ones, much like a high-mileage car is kept going with new struts and spark plugs.

The idea has a halo of plausibility since there are already liver transplants and titanium hips, artificial corneas and substitute heart valves. The trickiest part is your brain. That ages, too, shrinking dramatically in old age. But you don’t want to swap it out for another—because it is you.

And that’s where Hébert's research comes in. He’s been exploring ways to “progressively” replace a brain by adding bits of youthful tissue made in a lab. The process would have to be done slowly enough, in steps, that your brain could adapt, relocating memories and your self-identity.  

During a visit this spring to his lab at Albert Einstein, Hébert showed MIT Technology Review how he has been carrying out initial experiments with mice, removing small sections of their brains and injecting slurries of embryonic cells. It’s a step toward proving whether such youthful tissue can survive and take over important functions.

To be sure, the strategy is not widely accepted, even among researchers in the aging field. “On the surface it sounds completely insane, but I was surprised how good a case he could make for it,” says Matthew Scholz, CEO of aging research company Oisín Biotechnologies, who met with Hébert this year. 

Scholz is still skeptical though. “A new brain is not going to be a popular item,” he says. “The surgical element of it is going to be very severe, no matter how you slice it.”

Now, though, Hébert's ideas appear to have gotten a huge endorsement from the US government. Hébert told MIT Technology Review that he had proposed a $110 million project to ARPA-H to prove his ideas in monkeys and other animals, and that the government “didn’t blink” at the figure. 

ARPA-H confirmed this week that it had hired Hébert as a program manager. 

The agency, modeled on DARPA, the Department of Defense organization that developed stealth fighters, gives managers unprecedented leeway in awarding contracts to develop novel technologies. Among its first programs are efforts to develop at-home cancer tests and cure blindness with eye transplants .

“I just prefer life over this slow degradation into nonexistence that biology has planned for all of us.”

It may be several months before details of the new project are announced, and it’s possible that ARPA-H will establish more conventional goals like treating stroke victims and Alzheimer’s patients, whose brains are damaged, rather than the more radical idea of extreme life extension. 

“ If it can work, forget aging; it would be useful for all kinds of neurodegenerative disease,” says Justin Rebo, a longevity scientist and entrepreneur.

But defeating death is Hébert's stated aim. “I was a weird kid and when I found out that we all fall apart and die, I was like, ‘Why is everybody okay with this?’ And that has pretty much guided everything I do,” he says. “I just prefer life over this slow degradation into nonexistence that biology has planned for all of us.”

Hébert, now 58, also recalls when he began thinking that the human form might not be set in stone. It was upon seeing the 1973 movie Westworld , in which the gun-slinging villain, played by Yul Brynner, turns out to be an android. “That really stuck with me,” Hébert said.

Lately, Hébert has become something of a star figure among immortalists, a fringe community devoted to never dying. That’s because he’s an established scientist who is willing to propose extreme steps to avoid death. “A lot of people want radical life extension without a radical approach. People want to take a pill, and that’s not going to happen,” says Kai Micah Mills, who runs a company, Cryopets, developing ways to deep-freeze cats and dogs for future reanimation.

The reason pharmaceuticals won’t ever stop aging, Hébert says, is that time affects all of our organs and cells and even degrades substances such as elastin, one of the molecular glues that holds our bodies together. So even if, say, gene therapy could rejuvenate the DNA inside cells, a concept some companies are exploring , Hébert believes we’re still doomed as the scaffolding around them comes undone.

One organization promoting Hébert's ideas is the Longevity Biotech Fellowship (LBF), a self-described group of “hardcore” life extension enthusiasts, which this year published a technical roadmap for defeating aging altogether. In it, they used data from Hébert's ARPA-H proposal to argue in favor of extending life with gradual brain replacement for elderly subjects, as well as transplant of their heads onto the bodies of “non-sentient” human clones, raised to lack a functioning brain of their own, a procedure they referred to as “body transplant.”

Such a startling feat would involve several technologies that don’t yet exist, including a means to attach a transplanted head to a spinal cord. Even so, the group rates “replacement” as the most likely way to conquer death, claiming it would take only 10 years and $3.6 billion to demonstrate.

“It doesn’t require you to understand aging,” says Mark Hamalainen, co-founder of the research and education group. “That is why Jean’s work is interesting.”

Hébert's connections to such far-out concepts (he serves as a mentor in LBF’s training sessions) could make him an edgy choice for ARPA-H, a young agency whose budget is $1.5 billion a year.

For instance, Hebert recently said on a podcast with Hamalainen that human fetuses might be used as a potential source of life-extending parts for elderly people. That would be ethical to do, Hébert said during the program, if the fetus is young enough that there “are no neurons, no sentience, and no person.” And according to a meeting agenda viewed by MIT Technology Review , Hébert was also a featured speaker at an online pitch session held last year on full “body replacement,” which included biohackers and an expert in primate cloning.

Hébert declined to describe the session, which he said was not recorded “out of respect for those who preferred discretion.” But he’s in favor of growing non-sentient human bodies. “I am in conversation with all these groups because, you know, not only is my brain slowly deteriorating, but so is the rest of my body,” says Hébert. “I'm going to need other body parts as well.”

The focus of Hébert's own scientific work is the neocortex, the outer part of the brain that looks like a pile of extra-thick noodles and which houses most of our senses, reasoning, and memory. The neocortex is “arguably the most important part of who we are as individuals,” says Hébert, as well as “maybe the most complex structure in the world.”

There are two reasons he believes the neocortex could be replaced, albeit only slowly. The first is evidence from rare cases of benign brain tumors, like a man described in the medical literature who developed a growth the size of an orange. Yet because it grew very slowly, the man’s brain was able to adjust, shifting memories elsewhere, and his behavior and speech never seemed to change—even when the tumor was removed. 

That’s proof, Hébert thinks, that replacing the neocortex little by little could be achieved “without losing the information encoded in it” such as a person’s self-identity.

The second source of hope, he says, is experiments showing that fetal-stage cells can survive, and even function, when transplanted into the brains of adults. For instance, medical tests underway are showing that young neurons can integrate into the brains of people who have epilepsy  and stop their seizures.  

“It was these two things together—the plastic nature of brains and the ability to add new tissue—that, to me, were like, ‘Ah, now there has got to be a way,’” says Hébert.

To design the youthful bits of neocortex, Hébert has been studying brains of aborted human fetuses 5 to 8 weeks of age.

One challenge ahead is how to manufacture the replacement brain bits, or what Hebert has called “facsimiles” of neocortical tissue. During a visit to his lab at Albert Einstein, Hébert described plans to manually assemble chunks of youthful brain tissue using stem cells. These parts, he says, would not be fully developed, but instead be similar to what’s found in a still-developing fetal brain. That way, upon transplant, they’d be able to finish maturing, integrate into your brain, and be “ready to absorb and learn your information.”

To design the youthful bits of neocortex, Hébert has been studying brains of aborted human fetuses 5 to 8 weeks of age. He’s been measuring what cells are present, and in what numbers and locations, to try to guide the manufacture of similar structures in the lab.

“What we're engineering is a fetal-like neocortical tissue that has all the cell types and structure needed to develop into normal tissue on its own,” says Hébert. 

Part of the work has been carried out by a startup company, BE Therapeutics (it stands for Brain Engineering), located in a suite on Einstein’s campus and which is funded by Apollo Health Ventures, VitaDAO, and with contributions from a New York State development fund . The company had only two employees when MIT Technology Review visited this spring, and the its future is uncertain, says Hébert, now that he’s joining ARPA-H and closing his lab at Einstein.

Because it’s often challenging to manufacture even a single cell type from stem cells, making a facsimile of the neocortex involving a dozen cell types isn’t an easy project . In fact, it’s just one of several scientific problems standing between you and a younger brain, some of which might never have practical solutions. “There is a saying in engineering. You are allowed one miracle, but if you need more than one, find another plan,” says Scholz.

Maybe the crucial unknown is whether young bits of neocortex will ever correctly function inside an elderly person’s brain, for example by establishing connections or storing and sending electro-chemical information. Despite evidence the brain can incorporate individual transplanted cells, that’s never been robustly proven for larger bits of tissue, says Rusty Gage, a biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and who is considered a pioneer of neural transplants. He says researchers for years have tried to transplant larger parts of fetal animal brains into adult animals, but with inconclusive results. “If it worked, we’d all be doing more of it,” he says.

The problem, says Gage, isn’t whether the tissue can survive, but whether it can participate in the workings of an existing brain. “I am not dissing his hypothesis. But that’s all it is,” says Gage. “Yes, fetal or embryonic tissue can mature in the adult brain. But whether it replaces the function of the dysfunctional area is an experiment he needs to do, if he wants to convince the world he has actually replaced an aged section with a new section.”

Biotechnology and health

How covid conspiracy theories led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism

Widespread distrust of our public health system is reviving long-debunked ideas on HIV and AIDS—and energizing a broad movement that questions the foundations of disease prevention.

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Researchers are increasingly turning to organ-on-a-chip technology for drug testing and other applications.

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End-of-life decisions are difficult and distressing. Could AI help?

Ethicists say a “digital psychological twin” could help doctors and family members make decisions for people who can’t speak themselves.

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How AI video games can help reveal the mysteries of the human mind

The way we interact with games and invented characters can shed light on how we think. AI is poised to take things further.

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Frozen 3, Hoppers Release Dates Set for Disney Animated Movies

By Anthony Nash

Disney has officially set the release dates for some of its upcoming movies, including the highly anticipated Frozen III , and Pixar’s next animated film Hoppers.

What are the Frozen 3 and Hoppers release dates?

According to Disney’s latest calendar announcements, Frozen III will officially release on November 24, 2027, while Hoppers will release on March 6, 2026. Frozen III’s release date was recently pushed back a year, with the film originally being set for a 2026 release.

Hoppers was formally announced at this past weekend’s D23 event as Pixar’s next movie, and will star Jon Hamm, Bobby Moynihan, and Piper Curda. The movie will follow a young girl who transfers her mind into a robot beaver and is trying to infiltrate the animal kingdom.

While not too much is known about Frozen III, Frozen II saw the return of stars Kristen Bell (The Good Place), Idina Menzel, and Josh Gad (Murder on the Orient Express), as well as the additions of Sterling K. Brown (This is Us) and Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld). Directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, it was released in theaters in 2019 and grossed $1.453 billion.

In June, Pixar’s Pete Docter spoke with  Entertainment Weekly  about the future of Pixar’s plans, and revealed that they had two original films — one of which is Elio, from Coco co-director Adrian Molina — planned, followed by the release of Toy Story 5, which is currently planned for June 19, 2026. After that, Docter said that “some more original” films are planned.

Anthony Nash has been writing about games and the gaming industry for nearly a decade. When he’s not writing about games, he’s usually playing them. You can find him on Twitter talking about games or sports at @_anthonynash.

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4 arrested in killing of former ‘General Hospital’ actor Johnny Wactor

Friends and supporters of late actor Johnny Wactor, pictured left, hold a news conference to demand justice for the former “General Hospital” actor during a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall in Los Angeles Tuesday, Aug.13, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Micah Parker “Vampire Diaries,” actor, producer, and organizer of Justice for Johnny Wactor, hugs Johnny’s mother, Scarlett Wactor, during a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall demanding Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass take immediate action to find the suspects that murdered the former “General Hospital” actor, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Micah Parker, “Vampire Diaries,” actor, producer, and organizer of Justice for Johnny Wactor, speaks during a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall in Los Angeles Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024, asking citizens to help find the suspects that murdered the former “General Hospital” actor seen in pictures. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Scarlett Wactor, the mother of late actor Johnny Wactor, speaks during a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. asking citizens to help find the suspects that murdered the former “General Hospital” actor. At right, detective Moses Castillo. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Los Angeles Council member Kevin de Leon, left, talks to Scarlett Wactor, the mother of Johnny Wactor, during a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024, asking citizens to help find the suspects that murdered the former “General Hospital” actor. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Micah Parker “Vampire Diaries,” actor, producer, and organizer of Justice for Johnny Wactor, attends a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall, in Los Angeles Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024, asking citizens to help find the suspects that murdered the former “General Hospital” actor pictured. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Los Angeles Councilmember Kevin de Leon, surrounded by friends of late actor Johnny Wactor, pictured, speaks during a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall, in Los Angeles Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. asking citizens to help find the suspects that murdered the former “General Hospital” actor. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Los Angeles council member Kevin de Leon, surrounded by friends of late actor Johnny Wactor, pictured, speaks during a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall, in Los Angeles Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024, asking citizens to help find the suspects that murdered the former “General Hospital” actor. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles police arrested four people on Thursday in the fatal shooting of former “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor .

Robert Barceleau, Leonel Gutierrez, and Sergio Estrada, all 18 years old, were booked on arrest warrants for murder. Frank Olano, 22, was booked for being an alleged accessory to the crime.

They all were being held in lieu of $2 million bail, jail records showed. The Associated Press was unable to determine if they had attorneys to speak on their behalf after making calls to the county jail and Los Angeles Police Department seeking information.

Officers conducted search warrants at several locations throughout Los Angeles that led to the arrests Thursday morning, according to a news release from the LAPD. Officers also recovered additional evidence while conducting the searches, police said. No further details have been shared about the arrests or the evidence.

Wactor was shot and killed when he interrupted thieves stealing the catalytic converter from his car in the early morning of May 25. Police said the 37-year-old had left work at a rooftop bar with a coworker when he saw three men who had hoisted his car. Police said one of them fired at him without provocation and killed him.

The men fled in a car and Wactor was taken to a hospital, where he was later declared dead, police said.

Police on Aug. 5 asked for the public’s help in identifying the suspects , releasing surveillance images of them and their getaway car.

Wactor, a South Carolina native, portrayed Brando Corbin on the ABC soap opera “General Hospital” from 2020 to 2022. He also appeared in a variety of films and TV series, including “Station 19,” “NCIS” and “Westworld,” as well as in the video game “Call of Duty: Vanguard.”

His agent, David Shaul, said just after Wactor’s death that he “always kept his chin up and kept striving for the best he could be.”

At a news conference earlier in the week, his mother described the feeling of losing him.

“Grief is my constant companion,” Scarlett Wactor said. “I can’t wish him happy birthday on Aug. 31 — he would have been 38. I can’t ask if he’s coming home for Christmas. I can’t ask how his day went.”

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4 arrested in killing of former ‘general hospital’ actor johnny wactor.

Robert Barceleau, Leonel Gutierrez, and Sergio Estrada, all 18 years old, were booked on arrest warrants for murder. Frank Olano, 22, was booked for being an alleged accessory to the crime.

They all were being held in lieu of $2 million bail, jail records showed. The Associated Press was unable to determine if they had attorneys to speak on their behalf after making calls to the county jail and Los Angeles Police Department seeking information.

Officers conducted search warrants at several locations throughout Los Angeles that led to the arrests Thursday morning, according to a news release from the LAPD. Officers also recovered additional evidence while conducting the searches, police said. No further details have been shared about the arrests or the evidence.

Wactor was shot and killed when he interrupted thieves stealing the catalytic converter from his car in the early morning of May 25. Police said the 37-year-old had left work at a rooftop bar with a coworker when he saw three men who had hoisted his car. Police said one of them fired at him without provocation and killed him.

The men fled in a car and Wactor was taken to a hospital, where he was later declared dead, police said.

Police on Aug. 5 asked for the public’s help in identifying the suspects , releasing surveillance images of them and their getaway car.

Wactor, a South Carolina native, portrayed Brando Corbin on the ABC soap opera “General Hospital” from 2020 to 2022. He also appeared in a variety of films and TV series, including “Station 19,” “NCIS” and “Westworld,” as well as in the video game “Call of Duty: Vanguard.”

His agent, David Shaul, said just after Wactor’s death that he “always kept his chin up and kept striving for the best he could be.”

At a news conference earlier in the week, his mother described the feeling of losing him.

“Grief is my constant companion,” Scarlett Wactor said. “I can’t wish him happy birthday on Aug. 31 — he would have been 38. I can’t ask if he’s coming home for Christmas. I can’t ask how his day went.”

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