A novelist and a robot gunslinger walk into a saloon, and accidentally make a classic science fiction movie. By his own account, Michael Crichton’s first cut of the 1973 sci-fi Westworld was “boring, contrived, self-indulgent and slack,” and yet the final product holds up as one of the more brilliant titles of the decade. Today, the original Westworld is overshadowed by the HBO reboot series, but it’s possible the film will have the stronger legacy. Revisiting it 50 years later is not only fun, but fascinating.
