“I’m Yul Brenner, and I’m dead now.” That was how comedian Bill Hicks only slightly misremembered the actor’s eerie, posthumous anti-smoking ad broadcast after his 1985 demise.
In 1973, Brenner played a killer Android, not a human ghost, in sci-fi Master Michael Crichton’s directorial debut, Westworld. Much like his other franchise about a theme park gone wrong, Westworld concerned the radical proposition that building fake people was bad for real ones.
Despite enough acclaim to spawn a movie sequel and a TV series, the spin-off “Beyond Westworld” got the ax from CBS three episodes in, even though five were produced. So far, for whatever reason, audiences had had enough. The ratings spelled Doom, until, that is, “Westworld” was resurrected by HBO in 2016.
Much like its serially abused robo-slaves, once again the dystopian tale seized our imaginations. Audiences wanted more, and they got it: Four seasons, with a fifth on the way.
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