Westworld Creator Dies

Happy Trails to Michael Crichton.  The multi-talented M.D., author, director, and screenwriter passed away last Tuesday at the age of 66.  A lot of the obits are leading with his creation of the television series ER and the novel Jurassic Park and its subsequent effects driven movies.

Jurassic Park is okay.  I read the book.  I stood in line for the movie.  But I always felt it was a revamped Westworld.  For all of the young ones in the audience, Westworld takes place on an island resort where androids are programmed to fulfill the hedonistic or antagonistic wishes of the guests.  The island is broken into three lands WesternWorld, MedievalWorld, and RomanWorld, as playgrounds for the wealthy.  Eventually, as with all artificial intelligence, things go horribly wrong and the androids rise up against their creators.  The lead android is a unrelenting black attired gunslinger played by Yul Brenner.

Other Crichton films being glossed over include The Great Train Robbery, which stars Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.  I remember the action sequences being pretty good with lots of stunt works, since it was done years before CGI technology.  Then there is Coma.  Robin Cook wrote the novel, but Crichton directed.  A bit of trivia for this one is that both Tom Selleck and Ed Harris have small parts, Michael Douglas is the headliner.

Then in the 1980s we have Looker and Runaway.  Looker is ahead of its time with the theme of micro perfect plastic surgery and then jumps the track with a corporate mind control conspiracy involving television.  Runaway would have been a really good movie, since both Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons are in the cast.  It’s a sci-fi flick that was released in 1984, the same year as The Terminator.  So the effects and the story suffer in comparison.  Not unalike watching Saturn 3 and then The Empire Strikes Back.

See the trailer for Looker here.
See the trailer for Runaway here.

(*Note- Avoid the sequel to Westworld— Futureworld at all cost.  Crichton was not involved.  Might actually be worst sequel ever. Click here to vote for the worst ever.)