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The Lawless Playground for the Rich That Westworld (1973) Predicted

Golden Flicker

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Before Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton built a different kind of monster. This is the story of Westworld (1973), the "cursed" production that predicted the dark side of AI and the playgrounds of the elite.

In this episode, we open the gates to the chaotic production of Westworld. Discover how a "cheap" B-movie shot in just 30 days predicted the rise of Artificial Intelligence, the first computer virus, and the terrifying reality of what the wealthy do when they think no one is watching.

Michael Crichton's directorial debut was a disaster waiting to happen. With a starving budget, a lead actor in financial ruin, and a studio that wanted to bury the film, Westworld (1973) should have failed. Instead, it invented digital special effects (CGI) and inspired The Terminator, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. But beyond the robot cowboys, the film hid a darker message about corporate greed and elite morality that took 50 years to come true.

Timestamps
00:00 The Face That Inspired The Terminator
01:18 NASA vs. Disney: The Terrifying Idea
02:56 30 Days of Chaos: Production Hell
05:10 Blood & Venom: The On-Set Accidents
07:07 Inventing The Pixel (The First CGI)
08:42 How Editing Saved The Movie
10:05 The Deleted Medieval Torture Scene
11:17 The "Blitzkrieg" Release Strategy
13:55 The Grandfather of Sci-Fi Horror
15:56 The Franchise That Malfunctioned
17:35 A Warning for 2026: The Lawless Playground
19:19 A Complex Machine

Hashtags:
#Westworld #MichaelCrichton #YulBrynner #CinemaHistory #SciFiHorror #GoldenFlicker #ArtificialIntelligence #FilmTheory

20 Comments

@Renoroc 7 months ago

"the terrifying reality of what the wealthy do when they think no one is watching"...we're living it today

@ozgurozel9574 7 months ago

Just in case, i clicked both LIKE and HYPE buttons, to prevent robot uprising

@paulconnell22 7 months ago

Great show, as usual! It is scary how a film over 50 years old sends us a warning of where we are heading towards today. The corporate greed angle has never been more true!

@lifesacardgame6454 7 months ago

30 day shoot. That shocked me. $1m for the whole thing. Flawless. And decades later we get Billion $ repetitive trash like Avatar

@x15galmichelleevans 7 months ago

Westworld was such a great movie. Loved it since it was first released. It would be great to also do a segment on the sequel, even though it isn't nearly as great as the original.

@dutybod1 7 months ago

$7,000 a day, sounds like Disney.

@bryanpalmer9660 7 months ago

What I like about Michael Chricton movies, Westworld a good example,is that they have a genuinely suspenseful tension about them 💎

@shannonbloom4133 7 months ago

I saw Westworld in a double feature with Soylent Green in early 1974. I was 13. Shown together made a very clear point that the greed of corporations over and above the value of life, human or otherwise was a major theme and a burgeoning problem and the future might be quite grim.

@maxheadrom3088 7 months ago

They did not close the beaches ... once again!

@morlockmeat 7 months ago

When I first saw The Terminator, I went in on it blindly, not knowing anything about the movie. But, after watching it, it immediately sent me back to Westworld. Most definitely, one gave birth to the other. Westworld was brilliant sci-fi, and without a bunch of special effects. That's true filmmaking at it's best.

@Mrdecker1982 7 months ago (edited)

This film is dystopian and first film to show about the dangers of computers going rogue.....AI rogue behaviour....

@ajh6354 3 months ago

I saw it in the theater as a twelve year old. Excellent.

@123zxcasdable 7 months ago

Another informative episode, and great final point about how prescient this story was about the ultra-wealthy buying impunity for their perverse behavior. "Violent delights have violent ends", indeed.

@Zorbatrog 6 months ago

I saw this film in the cinema when I was just a young lad. It was absolutely terrifying! Great memories.

@mariahamilton5305 7 months ago

See, "Italy investigates claims of tourists paying to shoot civilians in Bosnia in 1990s" on the BBC news website

@Qenton 7 months ago

I think this was the first science fiction film I saw in the theater. I was 7 at the time. I remember it all. It was fascinating and even though I knew it was not real, I so wanted to go, despite the horror that happened. But I never thought it was a horror film. It always seem to me was a thriller, but I was also pretty young.

"In some cases they were designed by other computers we don't know exactly how they work." LLMs are described the exact same way. Wonder when someone will make the park for real now. 20 years? The UAE could be a great place for western town setting.

@AllThingsFilm1 7 months ago (edited)

Fantastic doc on the making of Westworld. A fascinating production story in itself. And knowing that Westworld and Yul Brynner were the inspiration for several other great films was especially eye opening. Thank you.

@SheldonHarold 7 months ago

I think The Lawless Playground for the Rich That Westworld Predicted was a better title.

@tecpaocelotl 7 months ago

Hooray!

@Roboto8088 7 months ago

Westworld and its "sequel" Futureworld are what I call Proto-cyberpunk media, pre-1980 cyberpunk before the word was ever created. You can see some of the key tropes in here like technology gone bad, corporate control over society, and what it means to be human around advanced AIs. Things that would be elaborated on through the 80s and even today.

Since you mentioned Futureworld you should do a video on that as well.