Project Brief 1

Prompt: I watched Westworld and it got me thinking about…

So I finally got around to watching Westworld and it got me thinking about the concepts of ‘worlds within worlds’ or WWW for short (sorry) and how an overall narrative structure would play out. This came to mind when our table was discussing ‘small and contained worlds’ and the consequences it might have on the real world following events that occur within it. When I think of WWW there isn’t a huge collection of relevant media. The Truman Show comes to mind. One or two episode of Rick and Morty come to mind but that’s all I can really think of at this point.

To me, WWW’s (oh my god so sorry) involves the idea that there are two or more (but primarily) two ideas of world in one screenwork and that there is one main/primary world that aims to represent the greater understanding of the screenwork’s world and how the real/natural characters interact within it. This over-arching world contains the second/subsidiary world inside of it. Much like in real life when we conceptualise, write and create stories, we create worlds, the characters in the screenwork have also created a world, just in a more literal sense.

Using Westworld as an example here’s what I think a natural arc within a complete screenwork employing the WWW theme looks like:

Act I

The screenwork starts with the primary world having all agency over what happens in the subsidiary world. The obvious reason being that the characters in the primary world made the subsidiary world with the sole purpose to be able to control it. (reflections of Religion and Politics that we don’t have the word count to get into.)

Westworld is an interactive theme park, built by Dr. Robert Ford and his business partner Arnold. It features a world of autonomous androids (called hosts) set in the wild west where people from the real/primary world can pay to enter and do all kinds of depraved primal desires that they can’t do out in the real world.

Act II

The conflict arises when characters that belong in the subsidiary world begin to wrestle control away from the primary world. The primary world wants to oppress this action but the subsidiary world keeps fighting back.

Certain hosts in the park begin to become self-aware and figure out who and what they are.

Act III (spoilers for Westworld BEWARE)

The characters in the subsidiary world reach a point where they can no longer be controlled or contained and as result they escape into the primary world where their actions and effects on the primary world are left to be interpreted by the audience.

The main hosts achieve full sentience. Ford concedes that they are more than robots and becomes a martyr, dying to redeem himself for the torturous existence he has created for the hosts and allowing them to be free if they choose to.

Assessment declaration.