Commentary: ‘Westworld’ Entertained While It Also Confused Audience

A lot of times, developing a story will start with the concept. This may seem obvious, but a single concept can rank as high concept or a low concept, and this will often dictate the trajectory the story will take. A low concept story is very simple and typically meant for fun. But a high concept story seeks to challenge its audience and make them think. Sometimes the concept becomes so high that it loses itself in its attempt to be groundbreaking, cerebral, and profound. When this happens, there’s a chance that the story being told might lose its audience. This is what is beginning to happen with Westworld, but despite a concept is so high it can become confusing, it isn’t any less entertaining.

The general idea of this season: the robots were seeking to usurp humans as the dominant force on the planet. In order to accomplish this, they developed a technology that can infect the human brain and essentially turn them into robots that can be controlled. This was a great thematic flip of the script from the way the show first started, which saw the robots trying to break free from their masters’ control. But there are other plot lines buried within the season that made it very confusing.

The show just had so many players and so many different plates spinning at once that it was hard to keep track in how they all weaved together. While the audience may not have had a full grasp as to what was going on, the show was still immensely entertaining. There was danger, great acting, and tons of different sci-fi elements to enjoy. Sometimes, if a story is just high concept and does not throw in enough engaging or entertaining factors to keep its audience’s attention, the audience can get bored very easily. However, if you keep the audience entertained and engaged then it’s possible to lose them in the story and yet still retain their attention. This appears to have happened with Westworld, and it will be interesting to see how next season either tries to recover from its confusing plot or moves ahead while keeping itself interesting.

Westworld is now streaming on HBO Max.