HBO Cancels Westworld - Good or Bad Decision?

I'm a little sad that HBO has decided to cancel Westworld, as I thought it was one of the better sci-fi shows on television right now. While I understand that ratings and viewership had dropped by 75% since it's first season, it still racked up over 50 Emmy nominations and deserved a full six-season run.

#westworld #hbomax #hbo

[remyd]

I didn't see season 4. But the show was best when it was about the park and the twists were killer in it first season. When the plot moves away from it, it becomes another generic sci Fi thing

[AJMarraffa]

I still love Westworld, and I'm crushed we won't get a wrap up with season 5. I was disappointed that season 3 & 4 really dropped the "West" part of "Westworld." I believe that was their biggest mistake. Even though I was personally still invested in seeing what happened to the characters, lots of people jumped ship after season 3. The show's main appeal was the anarchy of the wild west mixed with witty sci-fi. I was beyond excited that season 5 seemed like it was going to bring it back, and now it's cancelled! 😭 Rip Westworld 😓

[verityprincess]

Westwood got cancelled because by the final season it had 1/4th the audience and cost over 100 mill per season. Just wasn’t worth the squeeze.

[matiasrocha]

I think westworld is going to be a movie to wrap things up after the cancellation 💯

[alexgeorge]

I liked the first season the most but I think they lost their way and will not be sorry to see it gone.

[discoveringthei]

Warner Bros which now owns HBO is like 50 Billion in debt, they can't afford to do shows for awards. They need to do shows that drive revenue. And Westworld wasn't driving revenue.

The problem people have with J. J. Abrams is several things. I've been personally diving into the Go Woke, Go Broke crowd of reviewers that are out there, those conservative bastions that think shows fail because they put gay characters, or minorities in the roles, and blame that for the crappy writing, bad plotting, and poor pacing of shows.

J.J Abrams is hated for 4 reasons I've been able to discern.

1) His mystery box storytelling philosophy.
2) His subversion of expectations and lack of fan service.
3) His lack of ability to stick a landing most of the time.
4) He's Begun To Make Men Stupid To Make Women Strong.

1) Mystery box storytelling an interesting idea and makes for great television. Netflix Dark is great mystery box narratives. So to is Fringe. But Mystery Boxing Rings of Power was idiotic (and remember Payne and McKay got the position, largely and in part to J.J Abrams calling and vouching for them). His problem with several of his Mystery Box shows is that he himself didn't know the solutions to all the mystery boxes, and didn't deliver proper resolution to all the mysteries. This was the case with Lost, many things in Westworld (and I like Westworld somewhat) has many of those same problems. He had course corrected for Fringe, which I absolutely loved from episode 1 to the final episode. Everything, from the movie theme, to the final episode, was used. It was a great narrative that never got the props it deserved.

2) Turning Star Trek into whiny teenagers, fighting and screaming at each other on the brig, in loud verbal conflicts, was far removed from the idea of showing a real military unit, who struggle on their missions, and do so with integrity, honor, and a belief of what's right. Their men and professionals, doing what they have to do, and willing to make the sacrifices. Now they're children, bickering, literally fighting on the brig. Don't get me wrong, as a popcorn movie, my wife and I enjoyed them a lot, and went to see them in theaters, and didn't leave displeased with the experience we had. As Star Trek, as it was imagined, as it was originally, it was incredibly poor and incredibly juvenile..

But what really soured J.J Abrams to millions of nerds and geeks, was the Star Wars Trilogy, and this was the biggest failure of his Mystery Box philosophy in storytelling. He misunderstood what made Star Wars so great. And instead of paying fanservice and making sure fans had a scene with Han, Luke, and Leia, something that seems to be a real point of contention and pain for a lot of fans. He instead deconstructs these heroes that created all of this. Turning Han Solo back into the scoundrel of the man he was, running from a fight, losing his ship, and owing people money. He didn't respect a single bit of the hero's journey he went on, nor the journey of Luke Skywalker, who became the greatest Jedi to ever live, and brought balance to the force. Instead, turning him into a green milk drinking, depressed and defeated man, who hates that which he once was so proud of. All in service of Rey, a provincial Mary Sue, who we truly never witness struggle, face defeat, or be trained by anyone. He tries to course correct by the third one, but at that point, he's running full mystery box, with plots and conspiracies and impossibilities and going back on the writing of the previous film, so there's no consistency across the three narratives.

Again, I'm a fan of the First one in the trilogy, and I enjoyed the second, the third I thought I was pretty garbage. But it is what it is.

3) All this is to say that for as awarded as he is, Lost disappointed people in the end and left people with so many unanswered questions they were outright furious and it lost a huge amount of cultural significance for that failure (a bad final season can destroy all the work and accomplishment of prior seasons, just ask Game of Thrones). Star Trek has consistently continued diminishing returns, creating a new timeline and overriding old stories, for hopes of capturing nostalgia, but becomes nothing more than a McGuffin Hunt with mystery boxes spread along the way. As shown in his biggest disaster, Star Wars Trilogy.

West World has it's moments, but it forgets to take the audience along with it a lot of the times, and feels like its playing to the critics to show how clever and smart they can be. Also, several narratives start to revolve around strong women at the cost of the intelligence of male characters. This is something else that has been constant in J.J Abrams writing.

4) Whether it's the complete deconstruction of Finn from a trained stormtrooper standing up against Kylo Ren with the lightsaber, to a bumbling cartoonish character, getting his butt handed to him to everyone. Galadriel and most of the males she meets. West World which takes the strongest male antagonist and turns him into nothing but a pawn for a female robot. These things, for the geeks and nerds, feel like an attack on men, and specifically white men.

I don't know how I fully feel about this one. I think at some points its really warranted. At others, I think people read too much into it. And I'm indifferent. I'm a black male though, so, maybe I'm not seeing it. Wondering what you think Renfail on this one, if you can think back on his work from a white male perspective.

I'm always willing to check out a J.J Abrams production, but have found the quality constantly going down. With the exception of Damon Lindelof, I've not been impressed with most of the creators that come out of Bad Robot productions. And J.D Payne and Patrick McKay may be the absolute worse to ever come out, and that alone, might be a mark against J.J Abrams.

[nemomarc]

HBO has canceled one of my best series again 😡 WESTWORLD there will be no season 5, even if this cancellation was predictable! the last shot of the last episode Dolores returns to Westworld Park. The circle is already complete season 4 felt the end of this story. After the Raised by wolves series they remove WESTWORLD the two best SF series.

[BubbleoniaRising]

JJ aside because I am not a fan of his style, pacing, dialog, etc, the show was easy to understand when it was about a wild west theme park with robots you could kill or have sex with. That's easy for humans to grok and go along with. Once the show entered into a more philosophical story about what it means to be human (which I love) it started to lose the audience. In general, people enjoy ruminating over/about things that have already happened. Most aren't too keen on deep questions about events that have yet to happen because they are present or present/past oriented at the macro social level and only think about the future when they can see themselves in it (and on top). The future sells, but only if it bears a strong resemblance to and grapples with philosophical issues that don't challenge the future-tense aversion. That's why shows like Blade Runner and games like Eclipse Phase or critically acclaimed but niche compared to fantasy, cops or hospitals.

[pegah_di]

I honestly had no idea the show was still going! Stopped watching after season one.

[SarcasticPlotRecaps]

Haven't seen S4 yet - is it any better than S2/3?

[steelewindelliii]

And make a sequel to garbage on thrones aha

[johnkost]

I thought Season 5 was really just rewatching Season 1 and starting the iterative process of the simulation. Damn, fooled again..

Maybe they will bring back Lost. Here's hoping!

[SA-bqus]

It was a wounded duck put out of its misery

[Yoshixandir]

I say good cause apparantly it only attracted 350000 views that's abysmal especially when season 1 had roughly 1.2 million