Futureworld

Saw Futureworld, the less-well-known sequel to Westworld. It was sort of interesting. It picks up after the disastrous robo-revolt of the previous film. The lab-coats who run the robo-vacation resort have fixed the robots and, thankfully, disaster comes from a different vector this time. The plot is much more expansive than last time. The visuals are amped up a great deal. The opening sequence is this surreal slow zoom into a man's eyeball. There's also a dream sequence so hold on to your butts, ladies and gentlemen. This film comes from the depths of the 70s, where sexism ran free. The female protagonist is called honey, lead by nose by her male companion, and generally buffaloed throughout the film. It's kind of embarrassing. Also, although the titillating idea of sex-bots is brought up, only lip-service is payed to the existence of male sex-bots (only one is shown and he looks kind of John Kerry-esque. I was deeply disappointed.)

Strangely, this film has a lot of hypnotism in it. Two guests are hypnotized into some kind of fantasy. The robots are programmed via a set of hypnotic suggestions. The whole thing is very strange. Hypnosis has utterly fallen out of vogue as far as I can tell. The robots in general are treated like easily controlled humans. At one point, a robot mourns the absence of it's friend. This is an interesting little event, but the intriguing nature or reality of the robot's feelings is left in the background of the heroes running about and shooting laser-lugers at each other. The film is okay. It's not bad but kind of old and weird and not really, I think, worth my time.