Those of you who are long-time fans of the Marathon, or more likely are one of the millions who have HBO, might recall a little gem known as Westworld. Written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton, it covers a subject that Crichton knew all too well: Weird amusement parks where something goes wrong and the attractions end up killing people, only instead of dinosaurs made with frog DNA it’s Yul Brynner in a cowboy hat. Although incredibly slow to get interesting like a lot of early 70s genre movies are, Westworld was a fun concept and they managed to pull it off fairly well. Not great, but definitely worth a watch at some point. Which apparently was enough for American International to sign on for a sequel three years later, because as we all know, you have to wait for the iron to get nice and lukewarm before you strike. Obviously.
Released in 1976, not directed or written by Michael Crichton, Futureworld appropriately enough takes place some time after the events of the previous film. Peter Fonda plays Chuck Browning, the newspaper reporter (androids exist but print still isn’t dead) who first broke the Westworld story and whose latest story just so happens to involve the company behind Westworld. Yes, you’d think a little thing like ‘androids murdering a hundred people’ would be enough to drive a company like Delos (Telos? Talos?) out of business, but they’re still plugging away. In fact they’ve even got a couple new attractions up, like the titular Futureworld, and they’re inviting the cream of the crop to try and drum up some good PR, including Chuck and this evening’s female lead/romantic interest Tracy. Chuck has been suspicious ever since he met a whistleblower who died with Delos’ name on his lips, so he’s less interested in public relations and more into investigative journalism. Of course Delos has some plans of their own, and who knows what a massive corporation with access to the power players of the world and androids who can perfectly mimic humans in every way has planned?
I’m not going to say that Westworld shouldn’t have had a sequel, because there was still a story you could get out of that universe, even if that story was predictable. Rather than expand upon what we saw in the original however, Futureworld feels like a dull retread of what we’ve had before. Not even in the best ways either. Both films take way too damn long to get to the action, both love their cts to the control and they both build their climax on the back of an overly long chase scene, but at least in the original they time they spent was in the park, playing up the hedonism of the visitors and building up the suspense when things went wrong. Futureworld by contrast apparently consists of a vault with a fake rocket in it and a bar that looks like a bargain bin Epcot, or at least that’s all we get to see of it because the protagonists spend more time in fucking Westworld than they do in the park the movie the named after. Well Westworld and what looks like the basement of a water treatment plant, so I hope you like looking at rooms filled with pipes because you’re gonna be doing it a lot. Now I know it makes sense in story, they’re digging into the inner workings of the facility, but as I’ve implied the story isn’t exactly a mind-bender. By the 15 minute mark you’ve likely got an idea of exactly where the story is headed, twists included, and that leaves about a hour of Peter Fonda walking around the same locations discovering stuff you already figured out a while back, and it ends up feeling a chore. Ultimately you end up pining for the days when Yul Brynner was the proto-Terminator gunning down yuppies, and then Yul Brynner has his cameo and you just end up pissed off.
Of all the sequels I’ve done for the Marathon (and there’s more to come in this one), Futureworld is the one that has felt the least necessary. As I said there was still a story that could be told in that universe, but actually seeing it be told has left me apathetic, and that’s the most damning judgement. Not bad enough to hate, not good enough to love, just...there. Less of a movie and more of a trivia tidbit that one weird person you know trots out whenever you bring up science fiction movies from the 70s. Silver lining though, the time you might have spent watching this movie could be used to catch up on the Westworld series instead. All the murderous cowboy androids you can eat.
I promise we’ll get to a movie I actually liked one of these days.
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