I'm glad that the new Jurrasic Park series, by which I mean Westworld, jumped right in with Galactica Season 5 levels of dumb to save us all a lot of wasted time.Here are my predictions:
Rapey Ed Harris discovers the corporate or military conspiracy to replace people with robots, a la Dollhouse.
Enigmatic Hannibal Lecter has secretly given the robots souls. Oh noes.
Tubby Comic Relief Guy learns to be a Real Hero while rescuing his family, because It's All About Family.™
Halfway through, cue the ham-handed softball religious mysticism. There's going to be more God-bothering than nano in this so-called "science fiction."
At least one scientist is actually a velociraptor robot.
Some of the robots are wait for it... more human than the humans. VAT A TVIST!
It's almost a certainty that, just like in Humans, the robots will be easily partitioned into either "toaster" or "completely human slave", and reviewers will scratch their chins and echo a press release that this "an exploration on what it means to be human", when actually, no, it's anything but that. Like Peter Watts said about Humans, which I strongly suspect will apply here as well: "What a pleasant 101-level introduction to AI for anyone who's never thought about AI before, who's unlikely to think about AI again, and who doesn't like thinking very hard about much of anything."
For a science fiction writer, Michael Crichton seems to really hate scientists. And science. And science fiction.
Yeah, at some point when I was reading Crichton's books I sort of realized he's kind of a luddite under a thin science-y veneer. Most (if not all) of his novels boil down to "new discovery threatens to end humanity: film at 11!"
Don't forget his blatant climate change denialism. I think one of the pro-climate-change characters literally got eaten by cannibals.
As I always put it, "the part of Technology in this Michael Crichton novel will be played today by The Sad Trombone Sound."
I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but I still enjoyed it. But I'm dumb and easily tricked. I can be distracted by just the right set design and cinematography.
The original movie is somewhat of a classic as far as I'm concerned. Classic of what, I don't know, but it's a fun movie.
My thought was that Enigmatic Hannibal Lecter had already replaced himself with a robot.
You can hardly blame him for this - he is dead.
Or is he?
Or IS he?
OR is HE?
etc.
Oops, I didn't know that. Well, the opening credits list him as third writer, so the rest of them think he deserves part of the blame.
Crichton is more famous for denying climate science than dying, but don't worry, labor is preparing sternly worded letters.
I'm still gonna watch it, but now for hilarity instead of hopeful anticipation of Good.
Damn, it wasn't even funny. Just dull.
It's Jonathan (Person of Interest, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Memento, telegrapher of forthcoming plot twists) Nolan and Lisa (Burn Notice) Joy Nolan doing the show-running -- but crediting Crichton with the setting.
It's for HBO, so wants to court the Game of Throning and Boning crowd without asking them to do much thinking, pat the viewers on the head if they go a bit beyond the sex and violence.
K3n.
"Rapey Ed Harris discovers the corporate or military conspiracy to replace people with robots, a la Dollhouse."
Ahem, you mean a la Futureworld: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futureworld
On the plus side...we're just a few months away from the second season of The Expanse?
Considering he was an M.D. as well as a creative writer, Crichton probably had a fierce disdain for the scientific process.
His writing still is fun enough to read. For example, Eaters of the Dead has an amazing first three chapters!
I remember really liking eaters of the dead as a young person. I read jurassic park when I was so young that I think it literally introduced me to the word 'iteration', and it was okay. I read the sex scene (or something, I can't remember the details) in abyss more than a few times, but the rest of it just didn't grab me. On the whole, Eaters of the Dead was the sole crichton book that really impressed my teenage self, and I think I will admire him for it until either I die or I reread it and change my mind.
Abyss? That's an original, not a Crichton novel. Cameron wrote a story basically as an excuse to shoot all that underwater footage on someone else's dime.
Abyss was later turned into a novel based on the movie.
The author behind that was Orson Scott Card, not Crichton.
The book is called Sphere. It's like The Abyss in that there's an alien spaceship at the bottom of the ocean.
Weeeeeell, teeeeechnically.......
Ohhh, yeah, that explains a lot, thanks!
Eaters of the Dead has a dumb fun movie, as well.
Finally watched it... Yeah, boring and, as you say, eye-rollingly predictable. Virtually nothing was revealed in the first episode, and yet anyone who has ever watched TV could probably guess all the storylines of the next 2 seasons with 93% accuracy, Total yawner.
And, like Battlestar Horribulus, omg, wtf with the cutesy pop/rock songs snuck in there for literally no reason.
I'm punching myself in the face for falling for the misplaced excitement being jizzed all over this show.
" like Battlestar Horribulus, omg, wtf with the cutesy pop/rock songs snuck in there for literally no reason."
With BSG, the pop music was due to the producers liking the temp music so much they just licensed that instead of getting some less jarring music to replace it.
I kept having a weird mental block while watching it - I kept thinking "simulation" and not "real life, with androids". Again and again I'd think "they could just stop the program and exit". No idea why; maybe I should cut down on the computer time.
The season's not over yet, and it still could be stupid, but now that we're halfway through, it's definitely not what I predicted from the first episode.
Follow up: nine episodes in and it is crazy good.