Synopsis: Reporter
Chuck Browning (Peter Fonda) is contacted by a man known only as "Frenchy", who
claims to have a big story for him. The two meet, but Frenchy staggers and falls, having
time to utter only the word "Delos" before dying. Browning takes a large
envelope from his hand…. Browning attends a meeting between the representatives of
the IMC news network and Dr Duffy (Arthur Hill), the spokesperson for the futuristic Delos
resort. Duffy explains that in the two years since the "Westworld" disaster, the
entire resort has been completely rebuilt and expanded. He adds that while business at
Delos is good, it is not what it should be; and offers IMC exclusive, behind-the-scenes
access in exchange for a fair - and hopefully favourable – report on the resort. TV
presenter Tracy Ballard (Blythe Danner) is furious when she learns that her partner on the
assignment will be Browning, for whom she worked as a rookie reporter – and who fired
her. Network president Arthur Holcombe (Charles Krohn) insists, saying Browning has
"an angle". On the plane to Delos, Browning is puzzled by their fellow guests,
most of whom are politicians and international businessmen. Tracy argues that no-one else
could afford to go. As the passengers disembark, they are unaware that they are being
monitored from within Delos – particularly the Russian General Karnovsky (Bert
Conroy), Japanese minister Takaguchi (John Fujioka) and the two reporters. While Karnovsky
and his wife travel to "Spaworld", and Takaguchi to "Medievalworld",
Browning and Tracy prepare for the simulated space shuttle launch that will carry them to
"Futureworld" – a space platform. At "Spaworld", the general and
his wife undergo the "Waters Of Youth" ritual, after which they sees themselves
as young again. Meanwhile, Takaguchi battles the Saxon Knight at
"Medievalworld". Duffy is reproved by Delos’s scientific director, Dr
Schneider (John P. Ryan), for spending too much time in the main control room. Schneider
makes his way into a second, hidden control room, where the data collected on the guests
is being processed…. After playing hologram chess with Tracy, Browning questions a
robot bartender about Frenchy. The robot denies knowing him. Later, however, when Browning
asks to have his picture of Frenchy returned, the bartender falsely insists he gave it
back. Duffy takes the two reporters into the control room to demonstrate the running of
the resort. Becoming suspicious, Browning asks Tracy to flirt with one of the technicians,
which she reluctantly does, to absolutely no response. Browning demands to know what is
"wrong" with the silent, emotionless technicians, and is stunned to learn that
they are all robots. Schneider explains that one of the main reasons for the
"Westworld" disaster was human error. By eliminating humans, they eliminate one
potential danger. Duffy shows Browning and Tracy the ruins of Westworld. Browning slips
off on his own, and discovers a manhole that leads into the resort’s underground
passages. That night, the dinner that is served to Karnovsky, Takaguchi and the reporters
is drugged. As the four lie unconscious, they are collected by Delos employees and taken
to a secret control room where every single aspect of their physiology is analysed and
recorded….
Comments: Though
fundamentally flawed in its conception, Westworld is nevertheless a hugely
enjoyable movie, with its humour and its thriller aspects disguising the outlandish and
insufficiently thought through nature of its premise. Futureworld, on the other
hand, is poor science fiction that fails both as an "ideas" film and as a
thriller. The only feature of this film in which it matches – or to be fair,
surpasses – its predecessor, is its concept of Delos. In my review of Westworld,
I spent some time arguing that the Delos resorts were simply not the kind of attraction
for which people would be willing to pay the requisite $1000 per day. In Futureworld,
a bit more thought seems to have gone into this. For one thing, the screenplay totally
abandons the silly harping on the "authenticity" of the Delos experience that
did so much damage to Westworld. Here, they are willing to acknowledge that
everything is a "simulation". The resorts are now populated by robots that not
only know they are robots, but admit to it quite readily. (When an obnoxious guest hits on
a female robot, she repulses him with a cheerful, "Oh, no, sir – I’m not
built for sex!") Westworld, where the disaster that almost destroyed Delos was
triggered, has been allowed to fall into ruins. Romanworld and Medievalworld are still
standing (as are my objections to them), and "Eastworld" is in the works; while
two new resorts have been added, both of which seem considerably more likely to lure
people into parting with large amounts of cash than their fellows. At Spaworld, guests go
through a ritual called "The Waters Of Youth", and come out of it restored to
youth and health. (It’s a form of hypnosis, but the guests don’t know that.)
Futureworld, where Chuck Browning and Tracy Ballard spend much of their time, has a
"space shuttle flight" to a "starship"; and a visit there includes
such activities as a space walk, skiing on Mars (red snow, one-third gravity) and a
journey to "the caves of Venus". The starship itself, I must point out, comes
equipped with a "Space Safari Lounge" – exactly the kind of
"futuristic", too-cool-for-words setting that enlivened so many science fiction
films (predominantly Italian science fiction films) of the sixties. While the
Futureworld guests are encouraged to "request the host or hostess of your
choice", Chuck and Tracy opt for a more cerebral past-time: hologram chess. (This
sequence is rather enjoyable, even though Fonda and Danner aren’t exactly Steve
McQueen and Faye Dunaway.) The other main attraction of the starship, which the reporters
also throw themselves into with gusto, is a game of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots
– and life-sized, at that. Now, all of this is rather fun. The problem is that,
unlike Westworld, this film isn’t supposed to be "fun", but
rather, a chilling, suspenseful thriller. That concept, unfortunately, lasts about
twenty minutes. Futureworld has many flaws, but the big one – the killer
– is that it tips its hand far too early. From the moment the guests arrive at Delos,
the viewer is well aware of what’s going on. While it is, of course, quite possible
to generate tension by having an audience conscious of things that a film’s
characters are not, here the result is a deadened, rather dreary atmosphere that
doesn’t lift until the final, admittedly intriguing sequence.
Like so many films of its era, Futureworld
is a story of paranoia, of an evil conspiracy being conducted just outside the vision of
everyday people. Also typical of its era (this was released the same year as All The
President’s Men, remember), our hero is a crusading reporter, determined to
expose "the truth" regardless of the difficulties or dangers in store for him. Futureworld
starts badly, with a clichéd "killed before he can talk" sequence followed by a
refresher course in "what went wrong at Westworld", consisting of clips from the
film masquerading as security camera footage. (Although I should be fair here and point
out that in this pre-video time, it would have been three years since viewers saw Westworld.)
As real people are slaughtered indiscriminately by the malfunctioning robots, the
representatives of the IMC media network look on unperturbed – which is as close as
we ever get to "realism". Our "cute meet" follows – or rather,
"re-meet" – as Chuck Browning and Tracy Ballard renew a professional
acquaintance terminated abruptly some years earlier when the former sacked the latter.
Chuck further antagonises his erstwhile employee by using her hated nickname,
"Socks". "I can’t help it!" he protests. "The first time I
was with you, you had those outrageous red socks on!" Wow, radical! Actually,
I’m still not entirely sure whether this line is a subtle reference to Ms
Ballard’s politics, or an intimation that she and Browning were, ah, personally
acquainted as well. For a moment during this scene, Futureworld promises to be a
satire on the state of the media, as Tracy, secure in her "fifty-five million viewers
worldwide", dismisses the print reporter with a contemptuous, "Nobody reads."
Sadly, this proves to be a dead end. The two reporters agree to try and work together, and
are next seen on their way to Delos. Chuck becomes suspicious of their fellow guests,
noting that they consist primarily of "oil ministers, rocket experts, heavyweight
electronic types". Tracy dismisses this, arguing, "At $1200 a day, who else
could afford this?" (My Westworld objection, that this couldn’t possibly
cover operation costs, also still stands.) As the guests disembark and are taken to the
resort itself, we cut into the second, hidden Delos control room, where Dr Schneider
orders his technicians to "open the SR grid for file recording". As we watch,
General Karnovsky, Mr Takaguchi, and the two reporters come under scrutiny, and
information on each of the four begins to be recorded.
Okay – hands up anyone who hasn’t
figured out what’s going on. Anyone? No, I didn’t think so – and there you
have the problem with Futureworld in a nutshell. So much of what comes after this
scene plays like padding, rather than story, that the film struggles to hold its
audience’s attention.
The actual "Futureworld" sequence
follows, and is moderately entertaining. (Oh, and if the shuttle sequence looks authentic,
there’s a reason: it was shot at the Houston Space Centre.) Less so is the Dramatic
Revelation scene that follows, with Schneider retreating to his secret control room, where
he oversees the analysis of the data gathered on the four targeted guests. As various
shots of the four flash up on the technicians’ computer screens, we hear an hilarious
series of Ominous Pronouncements, with references to "prosthetics" and
"cosmetic analysis". We also see a close-up of Chuck Browning’s face,
accompanied by an electronic voice intoning, "….subject’s eyes and
lachrymal apparatus, printing….twenty-four millimetre sphere….checking
cornea….". Subtle, this ain’t. Meanwhile, Browning and Tracy are invited
into Delos’s inner workings, and the film falls into a fairly irritating pattern that
will fill up a considerable amount of screentime, with Browning being hostile and
suspicious of everything, and generally behaving like a jerk, while supposedly
"startling" disclosures about the nature of Delos are made one by one. In an
embarrassing scene, Browning has Tracy hit on one of the technicians, who pays absolutely
no attention to her. Humiliated, Tracy suggests that "he doesn’t like
girls". (That her come-on was about as subtle – and attractive – as a punch
to the gut might have had something to do with it.) Browning then turns on
Schneider, accusing him of keeping the technicians "drugged, or hynotised". We
then get another Dramatic Revelation: that almost all of Delos’s employees are
robots. If we look carefully at Schneider at this point, we’ll see a maniacal glint
in his eyes; one last seen in the eyes of Dr Alex Harris, of Demon Seed, as he
extolled the superiority of the computer over the human being. "They have no ego, so
they have no hang-ups," gloats Schneider, explaining that the main cause of the
Westworld disaster was "human error". At this point, Duffy invites the reporters
to tour the remains of Westworld (a set which, it is impossible not to notice, bears no
resemblance to the original set). Browning slips off on his own, and discovers an entrance
to the underground workings of the resort (ditto this set). Schneider slips down to
his secret laboratory, and is reassured by a technician that "we start molecular
studies in one hour" – which at that distance, is a mighty clever trick.
Schneider warns the technician that he wants "all thermal x-ray and electrochemical
studies finished by tonight", since "our Mr Browning is getting much too
curious". Hmm….well, perhaps you shouldn’t have invited him in there, hey?
As Schneider moves away, we see computer simulations of those stick-and-ball chemical
models. The first one reads "papain", the second one "ribonuclease".
Ah – well, ribonuclease I’m willing to go along with, but papain? One of
those four guests is in big trouble….
That night, drugged food is served to the
four endangered guests, and they are carried off from their rooms by red body-suited Delos
employees. (Either Mrs Karnovsky was drugged too, or she’s a mighty sound sleeper.)
What follows is doubtless intended to be the film’s highpoint, a dramatic showcasing
of state-of-the-art computer graphics. Well, of course, they’re not quite so
state-of-the-art any more; but I’m not going to criticise them for that. For one
thing, I was infinitely more interested in the pseudo-scientific babbling that accompanies
the scene, which is more of what we heard earlier, only much, much funnier. As the four
are poked, probed, analysed and downloaded, various electronic voices say things like
"carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen readings up" and "I have readings of
cytoplasmic structure now" and my personal favourite, "pinocytotic
channels….microvilliar [sic.]….mitochondria….endoplasmic readings
are recording". For those of you who like that kind of thing, we also get medical
footage of someone’s intestine, and down an oesophagus; not to mention a fairly silly
shot of a barium meal. Meanwhile, Schneider either contemplates the scene over his
touching fingertips, or wanders around saying things like, "Helium count?"
From this sequence, we cut directly to Tracy
having a nightmare. Three guesses how she comes out of it? Yup. She also belts out of her
room yelling for Browning, only to find him dressed and on his way out. Learning that
he’s about to go snooping, she insists on accompanying him. Together, they penetrate
the bowels (eww! – there’s an expression!) of the complex. Chuck tries to turn
some lights on and, among other things, activates a mysterious chamber. Here the film goes
completely haywire, as within the chamber three gentlemen of Asian appearance materialise
out of thin air These samurai types track down Our Heroes, who somewhat improbably
manage to out-fight and/or evade them until rescued by one Harry Croft, one of the very
few remaining human employees of Delos. (We learn that Harry is necessary as the Higher
Ups have not yet learnt how to overcome the problem of wet areas – humidity,
you perverts! – where the robots consequently cannot go. Which, you would think,
would throw a considerable wrench into the Delosian plans for world domination. [Oops!
Hope I didn’t give anything away there!]). Harry takes the reporters back to his
underground lair, which he shares with "Clark", an obsolete robot rescued from
the scrap-heap. (The relationship between Harry and Clark owes rather too much to Silent
Running.) Hearing that Harry knew the late, unfortunate Frenchy, Chuck tries to talk
him into telling what he knows. However, Schneider has discovered the reporters’
absence and tracked them down, having them escorted back to their rooms. When the two are
alone, we get another Dramatic Revelation, as Chuck shows Tracy what he took from Frenchy:
a bundle of newspaper clippings on various world leaders and industrial heavyweights, all
of whom have visited Delos since its re-opening.
All of which comes as rather more of a
surprise to Tracy than it does to the audience.
It is during the film’s next sequence
that Futureworld hits rock bottom. Clearly, the film-makers felt they couldn’t
have a sequel to Westworld without Yul Brynner putting in an appearance as The
Gunslinger – but oh! – how I wish he hadn’t! In a wholly ludicrous
plot twist, it turns out that the Delosians have developed the technology for recording
people’s dreams on video. Tracy agrees to undergo the process, and The Gunslinger
shows up as her "fantasy lover". Ah….no, sorry, I’m just going to skip
over this bit. Yecchh!! Meanwhile, Chuck sneaks off to talk to Harry. When Harry
learns of Frenchy’s fate, he agrees to help, and shows Chuck a secret research
facility to which only the highest echelon robots have access. After figuring out how to
break in, the men join up with Tracy and infiltrate the facility, where to their utter
horror, they see duplicates of not only Karnovsky and Takaguchi, but themselves.
Recalling Frenchy’s clippings, Chuck realises that a plan is afoot to take over the
world by replacing the real human beings with Delosian-controlled duplicates.
All of which comes as rather more of a
surprise to Chuck, Tracy and Harry than it does to the audience.
The three plan to flee Delos ASAP and
separate. Chuck and Tracy are cornered by Duffy, however, before they can escape their
rooms. "You’re one of them?" Chuck says in dismay, and Duffy laughs.
"Of course!" He then goes on, in best Supervillain fashion, to expound on the
Delosian plan. Human beings, he explains, are violent, irrational, unpredictable creatures
who if left to their own devices will probably destroy the world. How much safer to
have things in the control of the Delosian duplicates. Then follows something of
staggering idiocy. As if the ability to visually record dreams isn’t quite
unbelievable enough, we now learn that the Delosian duplicates aren’t robots
– or as Duffy puts it, "mere robots. They are not machines!" he continues.
"They are living beings produced by the genetic material in your own cells! There are
no mechanical parts!" Anyone swallow this? No, I didn’t think so. Chuck, in
honour bound, gives the "you won’t get away with it" speech. Then Tracy
creates a diversion, allowing Chuck to jump Duffy. As the two struggle, Duffy’s gun
flies loose. The fight ends with Duffy staring down the barrel of his own gun, which is
clutched in Tracy’s shaking hand. (Blythe Danner has a nice moment here, as Tracy
visibly psyches herself into pulling the trigger.) Tracy fires, and we learn that Duffy
was indeed One Of Them, as he explodes in a shower of sparks, rather than blood.
All of which….ah, forget it.
The film’s climactic sequence follows,
and it is a marked improvement over anything that has come before, as Chuck and Tracy must
face off against their duplicates, both of which have been programmed to destroy their
originals. (By the way, the little matter of where the duplicates get their memories
from is never touched upon. We assume that the "dream recording" equipment has
something to do with it, but the screenplay offers not even a hint of explanation.) Chuck
discovers that his double is on the loose in the worst way: he sees him/it murdering poor
Harry. An extended game of cat-and-mouse follows, as the two Chucks pursue each other
through and up the shuttle launch area scaffolding. The battle ends in hand to hand combat
at the top of the scaffolding – from which one of the Chucks falls to his
death…. Tracy’s confrontation, on the other hand, is far more psychological
(more cinematic indebtedness here, this time to the ending of The Stepford Wives).
When her double confronts her, she/it has a gun in her/its hand, as does Tracy herself -
and she/it tells Tracy that she/it knows everything that she knows, thinks everything that
she thinks. Knowing that she cannot elude her assailant, Tracy must stand and fight –
and somehow outwit her/it…. The film’s final scene sees Chuck and Tracy –
calm, unemotional – passing Schneider at the exit from Delos. The screenplay has one
twist left – and it probably isn’t the one the audience was expecting.
If Westworld was hard to swallow, with
its "perfect" robots, its heat-dodging bullets and its all-night repair shop, Futureworld
is simply ridiculous. A conspiracy to replace world leaders with their robotic duplicates
might have been one thing, but biological duplicates!? It is hardly surprising that
no explanation for the technology on display here is ever offered. Still more glaringly
obvious is the total absence of any indication as to who "we" might be. We
rebuilt Delos after the Westworld disaster, at a cost of $1.5 billion. We want to
save the world by replacing its leading citizens with unemotional, Deloisian-controlled
duplicates. Who the hell is "we"?? A country? A cartel? A band of
renegade robots? Who knows? Not Mayo Simon and George Schenk, that’s for sure.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of this film is
that we never get a scene revealing that Schneider, too, is One Of Them. As it stands,
maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. He might well be a robot. Or a biological duplicate. Or
one of those cold-blooded scientists who prefer technology to mankind. Or a Mad Scientist
bent on World Domination. Or perhaps he’s simply a man suffering from Advanced Taren
Capel Syndrome. (Whew! How’s that for an obscure reference?) It’s good to
see John P. Ryan again, but from the very first moment we lay eyes on him him, he is just
all too obviously the film’s villain. (Throughout, he wears glasses, a lab coat, and
a tie. If that doesn’t scream "EEE-ville!" I don’t know what does.)
Peter Fonda is rather too wooden as Chuck Browning (amusingly, he is substantially more
convincing as his own evil doppelganger), but Blythe Danner is genuinely good as Tracy
Ballard, who proves to have unexpected depths in times of crisis. (However, there are
times when she looks so much like her daughter that it gave me the creeps.) Stuart
Margolin and Arthur Hill lend good support as Human and Robot, respectively (the other
thing to look out for, cast-wise, is a brief appearance by Robert Cornthwaite); while the
film’s production design is always imaginative (if occasionally uncomfortably
"seventies-ish"). But all of this counts for little in the face of such an
idiotic storyline. Speculative science fiction is one thing; downright impossible
science fiction is just annoying. You know - I’m quite tempted to call Futureworld
a modern science fiction movie: it went to the trouble of coming up with an
interesting premise; it assembled a talented cast; and it spent a lot on production design
and special effects. And then – it simply threw it all away with an asinine
screenplay full of gaping plotholes and rank stupidities. As such, it is a film that would
fit comfortably amongst most of what passes for science fiction today.
Check out all
the details of this movie on the IMDB |
Director: Richard
T. Heffron