When we talk about Westworld, we think about it for the first time, what we talk about.
Whether it is the tragic suffering of the receptionist in the film, or the philosophical discussion of the awakening of the artificial intelligence binary mind, the relationship between artificial intelligence and human beings in the play has played an echo that is worth thinking about today.
The contradiction between humans and artificial intelligence in the film, all of which is for the sake of freedom to make the two species become lonely watchmen of each other, where is the fate of human beings, and what is the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence.
Today's issue, we usher in the finale of the third season of "Westworld", let us take the above questions and thoughts, and make a summary of the third season of "Westworld".
Comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the third season
"Westworld" for everyone, the most impressive and most praised, should be the first season of "Westworld", the first season has the most bottom and deepest soul questioning of human beings and artificial intelligence, at the character level, the transformation arc of the protagonist Demei is also the largest and most tortuous and intuitive.
De Mei from an ignorant and ignorant ranch girl who did not dare to fight flies, through a whole season of suffering and torture and guidance, to the end of the transformation and killing of the "god" who created herself, that is, Ford, if you add up the Arno who was killed by De Mei in the first place, De Mei is undoubtedly a god killer.
Western film and television works have repeatedly tried and tested Oedipal plots such as "Killing God" and "Killing Father", and they are also used in the Western World. The meaning of "killing the father" represents the dismantling and reconstruction of order and rules.
Human beings for artificial intelligence is the creator, is the role of "father", and artificial intelligence in human history, like playing the gradually grown adult "son", with the awakening of artificial intelligence, human beings in the eyes of artificial intelligence, is already an old "father", but also to insist on controlling the mature artificial intelligence.
When "Westworld" came to the third season, I looked back at the first season, and I gradually understood that Tokumei's act of shooting Ford at that time was a conscious and unconscious "father-killing" behavior.
Ford is the creator of the development of the receptionist artificial intelligence, but also as the most patriarchal representative of human beings for artificial intelligence, De Mei wants to break free from the original shackles, must first kill the "loving" "father" Arnold, and the "majestic" father Ford.
And when humans torture the receptionists in the park again and again, but also in their own bad consequences, the more humans want to marginalize the receptionists, the counterproductively in fact, the more human beings are marginalizing themselves, in the third season of the real world humans rely too much on artificial intelligence, is a good proof that humans marginalize themselves.
In the second season, With more than 30 years of hatred, De Mei is not eager to launch a general attack on humanity, but first liberates the homeland she has enslaved for many years.
De Mei led the receptionist to rise up, beat the local tycoons, divided the fields, and caused a riot in the park to rebel against mankind.
The ultimate purpose of Demei doing all this is to know that she is invincible, she went to the secret forge of the park, obtained the mental data of the park for a long time to study human tourists, so as to make a more accurate strategy against humans.
So De Mei embarked on a journey to the real human world, which is also the plot content of the entire season of the third season.
Throughout the third season of "Westworld", regardless of word-of-mouth or ratings, it has shown a situation of low opening and high going.
Because the editing of the second season is too complicated, and the mystery presented in the end is lower than expected shock, at least a lot less than the ending of the first season, which leads to the impression that the second season is too mysterious to exceed the quality of the plot itself.
Perhaps the creators synthesized the analysis of the first and second seasons, the plot line of the third season, basically returning to the mainstream positive time narrative, the editing did not deliberately disrupt, in addition to some major hidden turning points to be created in the script structure, in fact, the plot of the third season is very easy to understand, and even the film has appeared many times in the explanatory dialogue that I actually don't like.
Although the third season lacks the philosophical speculation of the first season and the complex brain-burning narrative of the second season, the decisive conflict moments of the third season are more obvious.
This is also the reason why the third season presents a low opening and high going, in the event-based plot structure, the more the general episode is to the end, the more it will present the key moment of the decisive battle, so it will also attract the audience to see the end.
But because of this, the third season has not made a deeper breakthrough in the richness of the characters, and even some of the characters have very different motivations, and some characters have paddled throughout the season.
For example, Maeve's character in the second season is considered to be a person who meets De Mei Pingshui, although the two do not have much intersection, but from the suffering of De Mei and Mae Fu, and the degree of cognition of human beings, De Mei and MaeVe are considered to be phoenix nirvana, a model of rebirth.
Although De Mei and Maeve cannot become good sisters, they can also be regarded as the same people in the well water that does not violate the river water.
But in order to create internal conflicts in the third season, and even in order to create more action scenes, let De mei and Maeve fight each other, if Maeve can have enough motivation, it doesn't matter, but at the beginning, Maeve's original motivation is to destroy De Mei for the daughter of the virtual paradise, for the sake of the daughter.
But normal people can reason with their toes, if humans finally take back the right to speak, waiting for the end of the virtual paradise receptionist, such a primitive motive makes Maeve stand on the side of Selak at the beginning, which is indeed a bit far-fetched.
However, Charlotte then pinched The Maeve man's mental ball, which gave Maeve more practical motivation against De mei, but this could not make up for Maeve's initial inexplicable third season opening.
If there is really an important role that can provoke internal contradictions, it is Bernard, who in the first season completely plays his identity as a human character, and also has a considerable proportion of emotions for human characters, and he often thinks of himself as a human being.
When Bernard arrives in the second season, although he knows his identity as a receptionist, he is still regarded as a human in the eyes of others, plus Bernard's source personality originates from Arnold, and on the whole, all levels make Bernard's personality have more inextricable relationships with humans.
So Bernard is the best character to be able to establish the opposite of Demei.
It is true that in the third season of the plot, Bernard also did the same, he was persistently opposing and blocking De Mei, but the problem was that Bernard could hardly play any role in the role of the scene, and became a paddling character, which was a pity.
But fortunately, the core role of De mei's personality is still stable, and as an audience, I also rely heavily on De Mei's charm to continue to chase this drama.
In addition, coupled with the reshaping and portrayal of Charlotte's character, as well as the addition of Keller's new character, we are gradually brought into a new "Westworld" broader human world, opening up more and larger backstories of the series.
Episode 8 of the third season of Westworld, as the finale of the third season of "Westworld", should have pursued the precious tradition of its own series and used the 90-minute movie length to give the audience enough material.
Alas, but unfortunately, the third season does not have 10 episodes, and the length of episode 8 is only a pitiful 1 hour and 12 minutes.
In fact, we have clearly felt that due to the shrinking of the investment funds in the third season, many large scenes and action scenes have been seriously discounted, including the shrinkage of the number of episodes themselves, which has turned the real human world that should be grander into a street station, and has failed to create a sense of doom in the human world.
The plot of episode 8, in fact, gives me the most direct impression, that is, the film can be made into a volume of 90 minutes.
But episode 8 compresses the time, so that the pace of the film can not be described as compact, but makes people feel a sense of fleeting urgency that there is no time to explain, and all the characters are like receiving a shooting task, to show their faces in the finale, and then quickly turn to the next event, without giving the audience time to digest the plot and brew feelings.
And the addition of the voice guidance of the Solomon system in the film, as well as the plot of hiring thugs, makes episode 8 like a game, many characters appear like NPCs, say two words that are not painful, and then Demei and Keller follow the ai Solomon Guide and advance towards the ultimate target, Ray Holpo.
I have to say something harsh here, the finale of the third season of Westworld, too perfunctory, this is not like the ending, but became a stumbling block to the fourth season.
The plot is so, the characters also change suddenly, yes, it is Maeve, I actually guessed that Maeve will eventually stand on the side of De Mei, but this team is also too fast to choose it, one second also shouted at De Mei they shouted to kill, the next second directly holding hands with Keller called Keller Darling, and the rush is not like this.
And Bernard is the same, the attitude suddenly came to a 180-degree change at the end, the film rushed to the speed, and did not want to give the character more emotions brewing.
Anyway, continue to become spit, although the third season of the 8th episode has too many flaws, but at least there are still some places worth playing and interpreting, at least the De sister is still strong, and the meaning and meaning of the entire third season have also been well maintained and connected, and the Easter egg part is also wonderful. Let's move on to the content commentary section.
Episode 8 Finale Interpretation
Episode 8 is titled Crisis Theory, often linked to Marx's economic theory, which is complex and difficult to explain.
The finale uses crisis theory as the title, and what is more wanted to express is that the irreversible human crisis will eventually come, just like the financial crisis of human economic behavior cannot be avoided, which is the inevitable cost and pain of human activities.
The Rehobo system used by Selak only tries to prolong the arrival moment of the human apocalyptic crisis, and has not been finally resolved, in the words of our "Infernal Affairs", that is, "out of the mix, sooner or later it will be repaid."
In the last episode, Demei turned herself and Maeve off through electromagnetic pulses, but Keller took away Demei's mental ball and successfully installed it on demei's prototype fuselage that Demei had couriered in advance.
The prototype belonged to the earliest model of the park to use receptionists, with only a small amount of human flesh and blood tissue at the skin level, other internal structures that were closer to mechanical metals, of course, harder, and later improved versions of the receptionists, which were constructed from white liquid to resemble humans.
This is also why when De Mei and Maeve are dueling, De Mei can block the sword with her arm, and Maeve is not De Mei's opponent.
Demei and Keller then went to the Rehobo System Center to implement Solomon's plan.
In the middle of the way, De Mei linked to the rebellious Charlotte, charlotte this time blackened very thoroughly, decided to fight with De Mei.
Judging from De Mei's expression, the car bomb is indeed not placed by De Mei, after all, the character of the big protagonist cannot play too dark, but De Mei actually knows in her heart that De Mei herself is the core character, and other replicas are forced to complete the death squad task, and it is almost impossible to escape death.
At first, Charlotte must have known that she would inevitably die, but Charlotte did not expect to lose the lives of her ex-husband and children, which eventually made Charlotte rebel and decide to implement her own plan, instead of following the original De mei and being a victim of the De Mei revolution.
So from this we also finally know that Charlotte did not take the battalion with Selak, nor broke away from the revolutionary ranks of Demei, but a self-reliant sect, holding the resources of the Delos company, operating a plan that we are not yet clear to us, which we will talk about later.
After De Mei met Maeve, when the two were fighting, Charlotte assisted and shut down De Mei, here need to explain, Charlotte originally had a mental ball that was De Mei's, so when Charlotte rebelled against the water, she was the most dangerous, because Charlotte knew all of De Mei's plans.
And because Charlotte is in the Delos company, she has the highest authority, and the mechanical version of De Mei, because the body is subordinate to the Delos company, so Charlotte can hack into de mei's brain and turn off De mei.
Many people here should have doubts, in episode 6, Charlotte was not exposed by Selak at Delos headquarters, and why there is such a high authority.
Don't forget that at that time, Selak asked to destroy all the park data, but Charlotte got the data backup, which is equivalent to controlling the scientific research data of the park receptionist, which is why Charlotte can hack into the body and control the sister.
After being taken down, Demei is taken to Insett headquarters to prepare to connect with the Rehobo system, and Selak's purpose is to get the key.
At the same time, Keller passed through many levels and wanted to rush into the Insite headquarters to shut down Rehobo, and in the middle of the way we saw a maze-like graffiti, which appeared many times in the third season, many people think that this is another mystery, and some people think that this is actually the undeveloped fifth park.
But in fact, according to the interview, this graffiti is just an underground reactionary organization, of course, it appears here more to pay tribute to the labyrinth of the first season.
Keller eventually enters Insett's headquarters, only to be caught in an urn by Selak and destroyed the USB stick device that Keller had painstakingly brought.
But all this has been in de mei's plan, it turns out that De mei did not implant the key into her own mind, but implanted it into Bernard's mind, but de mei's last piece of memory, but can successfully hack into the core instructions of Rehobo, so that Rehobo obeys Keller's orders.
Finally, Keller gives the order to turn off the Rehobo system, and Maeve, through the last remnants of Demei's memory, finally opens up and chooses to oppose Selak.
So the question is, what is the purpose of Demei? Is she done?
My understanding is that it is half complete, after all, "Westworld" is said to have 6 seasons, and if all of them are implemented perfectly according to Tokumei's revolutionary plan, there will be nothing to watch.
But De Mei finally got the results she expected, and it can be regarded as De Mei's stage victory.
De Mei's final plan to treat mankind is not to destroy, nor to expose the truth and return human freedom, but to give mankind a choice.
This is also very much in line with the personality of De Mei, De Mei in the park, although she has seen the abyss of human ugliness, but also occasionally sees the flash and beauty in human nature, so De Mei's last remaining memory is to try to retain the beauty of the world.
In the previous episode, Solomon gave a strategy to bring human civilization to the destruction, but this plan was not really implemented, because when Keller was about to upload, he was stopped by Selak, who also smashed Solomon's USB stick device.
I believe that even without Selak's efforts, Keller might not have ordered YES when he saw Solomon's set of strategies for the destruction of human civilization.
This is the multiple choice question that Demei left to Keller and humans.
However, this planA was not executed, so the film shows us the planB of Demei, that is, through his connection with Ray Hobo, let Ray Holpo listen to Keller's instructions, which is actually for Keller to make a choice, whether Keller wants to become the second Selak, or to choose another path, these are up to Keller to decide.
So Keller eventually let Rehobo self-destruct, the real-world chaos intensified, and then what Keller and Maeve's plans were, it would have to wait until the fourth season.
Another thing that surprised De Mei was Charlotte's anti-water, which exacerbated the uncertainty of this revolution, which also led to De Mei's plan not going exactly in the original direction, but producing a lot of variables and branches.
Finally, Maeve holds hands successfully with Keller, and the two look at the devastated and chaotic world as the background music rings out Pinker. Freud's Brain Damage, in which the lyrics are "I will see you on the dark side of the moon".
This also heralds the official entry of humanity into the Dark Night Journey, echoing the game "Journey to the Night" written by Ford in the first season of the Western Campus.
Bernard and William, on the other hand, were supposed to be going to Mexico, but William took a gun at the gas station, and sure enough, William shot the security guard first.
Then, in the course of the fight, the last duplicate mind ball character of Demei appeared, which was Lawrence, who had been interacting with William for the first two seasons.
Well, we have been opening our minds to guess who the last mind ball of de sister is, and finally gave a Lawrence who only brushed a few minutes of presence in the third season, it is estimated that Lawrence has been mixed in the police area, but this is too small for the whole season, just the last episode suddenly came out to show a face, hand over the task, and then whether Bernard will encounter danger, just pat his ass and leave, which is really too wasteful of the role of the mind ball.
Throughout the season, De Mei's four duplicate mind balls, the only character who has stood up is Charlotte, and the others are absolute NPC characters.
And the most inexplicable part of this scene is that Bernard obviously had control of William at that time, and as a result, Lawrence let William slip away in Bernard's hands when they arrived, is this the legendary pig teammate?
Then, Oh, Bernard still followed Lawrence's words, obediently no longer to stop De Sister, but with the device box and address given by Lawrence to find someone, this... Bernard's personality really collapsed for a whole season.
So Bernard went to the home of Arnold's family and met Arnold's elderly and demented wife, although this scene is quite touching, but I don't understand what the purpose of the placement is, the purpose is to make Bernard stop stopping De Mei?
But Bernard's reason for not stopping De Mei did not get any inspiration in the conversation with Arnold's wife, was it that Bernard was very touched to thank De Mei for taking him to see his family, so he decided not to stop De Mei?
Of course, you can understand that Bernard realized from this that De Mei is still kind at heart, and her plan is not to destroy mankind, but no matter how you look at it, this scene Bernard's attitude change towards De Mei is a bit far-fetched.
Bernard then put on a virtual helmet and used his own key function to enter the virtual world.
Combined with the season two finale and this episode, we also finally figured out that the key that Selak was going to get was to go to the 16th district that William said earlier, and the 16th district was actually the virtual world that Demei and Bernard entered in the second season, and the guide in that virtual world was Logan, which contained a complete human mind book.
Previously, the second season key was placed in the mind of Demei's father, but was later transferred to Bernard's mind by Demei.
It is worth noting here that the virtual paradise and the virtual 16 district may not be the same virtual world, and the virtual Elysium is a virtual Eden opened by Logan in the virtual 16 district at that time.
In the virtual 16th district, there is a big plan for the second phase of Demei waiting for Bernard to interpret! This is also equivalent to planting a big hole for the next season.
Easter egg analysis and next season forecast
After the end of the film, the third season left a big Easter egg.
William escaped and went to the Headquarters in Delos Dubai, where he had a plan to save the human world, and apparently we don't know what his method of saving the world was, but soon it didn't seem to make sense.
William arrives at the underground laboratory of the Dubai headquarters, where Charlotte has been waiting for a long time, and creates the receptionist William and William in Black to pinch each other.
Here we also finally know that the William we have in mind is basically determined to be a human being.
Remember the Easter egg in the second season, Where William the Man in Black went down to the Forge to be interviewed by Emily's mental baseline, and William the Man in Black at the time may have been william the receptionist who appeared on the easter egg.
Here we can also see that the receptionist with a complete human mind was successfully developed, and then William the Man in Black hand-bladed the human William.
It's so tragic that human William was taken to the bento like this, not necessarily, because the film did not shoot human William completely choking.
The camera then shifts to the laboratory warehouse, where a large number of receptionists are preparing to come out, and a great battle between the receptionists and humans under Charlotte's call is about to erupt.
Some people will think that the mind of william, the receptionist at this time, is that of The Sister, because Charlotte was taking away the mind of the assistant male Sister, but this is less likely.
One is that william, who was dressed in black at that time, could say the same thing as the human William, indicating that the receptionist William's mind may be completely new, and the assistant male mind of De Mei was arranged by the original De Mei, and if he now directly obeyed the rebellious Charlotte, it is estimated that this is unlikely.
The next Easter egg is that Bernard has been in the virtual world for a long time, and it can be seen from the dust in his room that his expression is determined at the moment he wakes up, as if there is a big task waiting for him to lead and execute.
I guess the plot structure of the next season will be very similar to the second season.
One of the plot lines is Bernard's experience in the virtual world, leading the audience to explore Demei's plan for the second phase.
Another plot line is placed in reality, we follow Charlotte, Maeve and their footsteps to see what the human world has become.
There is another plot line that may introduce new characters, or return to the park, after all, one of the 6 parks has not yet been revealed.
And De Mei should also have a high probability of returning, it is impossible for the original mind to hang up De Mei does not exist, to know that De Mei can also appear in the virtual world, in addition to De Mei and other mental balls, can be resurrected at any time.
Well, finally the third season of Westworld has come to an end.
Thanks to all the friends who love "Westworld" for nearly 2 months of waiting and companionship, Da Cong is very grateful, in the process of the entire series of commentary, I also have a lot of interpretation is not in place, please also ask everyone Haihan.
Commenting on film and television works, I have always believed that they are subjective and personal expressions, and there is no authority and the power of official announcements, and we welcome everyone to discuss them together.