10 Problems With Westworld Nobody Wants To Admit
7. It's Actually Familiar In Regards To The Themes
Westworld may seem like it's going over things that are very thematically unique, but in fact all the ideas it goes over have been covered in too many other fictional works to count. It's merely going over its themes in a different way.
So many other stories about the dangers of technology, about AI, about the darkness within man, and about men playing God have been covered in far superior science fiction works. For example, Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror is full of painfully brilliant meditations on humanity and technology, and that show does it with developed characters and emotional story-telling, something Westworld sorely lacks.
A Clockwork Orange, Her, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and its sequel, Jurassic Park, the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy and so many other science-fiction films cover these sorts of themes. They do so just fine without all the narrative madness Westworld insists on.
Most notably of all is Alex Garland's Ex Machina. That film goes over extremely similar thematic material to Westworld and does it in a far more interesting way with a far smaller budget and only a few characters talking. Therefore, at times watching Westworld feels redundant since we can get everything it's telling us from better material.