It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a movie The Week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Keith Phillips here again with Tasha Robinson.

Genevieve Koski.

Scott Tobias.

In the first half of this conversation, we talked about Westworld, Michael Crichton's 1973 film about an amusement park filled with robots and murder.

In the second half, we'd like to talk about

Westworld, a new HBO series that uses a movie as a foundation for an ongoing narrative. The show's

been a long time coming for the network, which has struggled to find a successor for Game

of Thrones, which will end soon. Three episodes end, Westworld is looking like it could fill

that void. It bears the stamp of two creative teams who, from all appearances, seem to be working together harmoniously. Jonathan Nolan, who co-created the series with Lisa Joy, is revisiting some of the issues of memory and identity raised by the story that inspired Memento. Joy, who is Nolan's wife, is a bit less well-known at this point, having mostly worked on series like Burn Notice and Pushing Daisies.

JJ Abrams and Brian Burke serve as executive producers, and, like Lost, the series has teased

a number of mysteries and taken only baby steps toward answering them. Abrams loves his mystery

boxes, and the setup so far has suggested this one will take a while to unlock.

We could probably eat up the rest of our time talking

through the plot. So let me say this. Westworld to date plays like a series in which all involved

have decided to deeply consider a lot of the issues the original film breezes past on its way

to the killer robot carnage, the lives of the engineers, the motives of the organization behind it,

the draw of the park, the inner lives of the robots, the particular allure of the Old West, and the philosophical implications of subjugating

creations indistinguishable from humanity. Access your current build, please. What is your name?

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