Westworld

Boy, have we got a vacation for you!

Westworld is a 1973 film by Michael Crichton. In the near future, the Delos resort offers simulations of the Wild West, Medieval Britain, and Ancient Rome. Each park has a population of robots, with whom visitors interact however they wish. As a part of the Delos experience, one can fight with them, seduce them, and even kill them. After all, the robots are programmed not to feel pain or fight back, and the weapons provided only work on machines. They're harmless.

Two friends, John Blane (James Brolin) and Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin), arrive in Delos to get away from their busy lives. They head into Westworld, where John has been many times before, to have fun and act out various Western-themed scenarios. In particular, the mousy Peter earns his manhood by defeating the local gunslinger (Yul Brynner) in a gunfight. In the middle of the night, the robots are rounded up and sent in for repairs, ready for the next day's events.

However, the technicians running the park are having problems. The robots break down faster than expected, the memory wipes are less effective, and they begin to resist the visitor's demands. It is speculated that a computer virus has infected the machines, one that soon causes them to murder humans. Alarmed, the head engineer orders everything shut down immediately, but this only results in suffocating everyone in the control room to death (!). With the machines running amok, John and Peter discover the gunslinger has come after them, looking for revenge...

A sequel, 1976's Futureworld, removes the original's giallo influences, being more akin to a sociopolitical thriller. The Delos resort has been revamped and re-opened, and a pair of Intrepid Reporters (Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner) are invited to preview the park's attractions (including a new theme park, Futureworld), but soon learn that Delos' backers have much more sinister plans for their improved robots...

Notably, Yul Brynner's "Gunslinger" shows up in Futureworld, but only in a Dream Sequence and having absolutely no logical connection with the original character.


Tropes used in Westworld include:
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