What makes it different from others?

Well Deserved Praise

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The year is 1985. It's been 2 years since the events in Westworld. The owners have spent $1.5 billion to rebuild the park and added Futureworld, a rocket space-based theme park. Newspaper reporter Chuck Browning (Peter Fonda) receives a tip but his informer fails to show up. He is teamed up with fame TV personality Tracy Ballard (Blythe Danner) to attend the park's reopening. Unbeknownst to them, something even more sinister is going on this time around.I like premise. It's a nice continuation from the original premise. It injects enough difference to be a compelling sequel. I don't really like how the premise is revealed. Essentially, it is revealed openly, all at once, and without any mystery or tension. There are ways to reveal it slowly, with mystery, and with shock. Being the more famous one, Tracy should be the obvious target. While investigating the park, Chuck could notice something different about Tracy and it could climax into finding the park's secret. That would be a more compelling way to tell this story. This is one of Yul Brynner's last roles. He has a few scenes in the second half as the voiceless robotic gunslinger. The first half builds up to the intriguing premise. After the reveal, the second half bogs down a bit.

I remember watching this film back when I was a kid, and while I knew about Westworld I was never particularly interested in it namely because it was set in the wild west and I really was not a huge fan of the western. Well, I'm still not a huge fan of the western, though there is something interesting about the whole concept, but that is another thought for another time. However, I was interested in Futureworld because that had much more of a science-fiction feel to it, though the only thing that I could actually remember about the film was the holographic game of chess.Anyway, since I have just watched Westworld, and also finished watching the series, I decided that I might relive my childhood and rewatch this film as well. As it turned out this movie was rubbish, and pretty boring as well. It certainly wasn't one of my favourite films as a kid, but it had robots in it, and it was set in the future, so it did keep me entertained for a while. Okay, calling it rubbish is probably a little harsh because it wasn't as bad as some films that I have seen, however putting it up against the likes of Westworld does make it feel very inferior.So, Futureworld is, obviously, the sequel to Westworld, and set a few years after the previous film. The owners of the park have fixed up all the problems, and reopened it, and have invited a couple of journalists to report on the new theme park. Mind you, the fact that the robots have previously gone haywire and proceeded to kill all of the patrons sort of undermined the suspension of disbelief – I simply could not see how a theme park could have survived something like that. Okay, theme parks have survived instances where a ride has malfunctioned resulting in fatalities, however I sort of can't accept it happening in this particular case.While I'm not all that phased about revealing the plot of this film, I won't, just in case you insist on watching it. It is sort of okay, and while they suggest that they attempted not to simply do a remake of the original film, a part of me felt that basically it was, just a lot more subtler. As such there is a lot more interaction between characters, and of course the protagonists are attempting to find out what is going on. As such Futureworld is more like a mystery than a simply sci-fi action film. However, it does drag on a bit, and the scene where the female protagonist dances with the Gunslinger from the first film is simply ridiculous and completely out of place. In the end if you insist on watching it then maybe you will like it, but I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to get your hands on a copy.

Westworld is one of my favourite sci-fi films. When I heard there was a sequel, I rushed to track it down convinced it couldn't be that bad a film. What I wanted to see in this film were more robots, and more great action scenes but what I actually saw was quite different. Here are my complaints: Two bland lead characters about whom I couldn't care less. The man was too smarmy and smooth and seemed to be suspicious the whole time. I wanted to see someone who was surprised the resort was bad to add some suspense. The woman was annoying as well and the way the man kept calling her "Socks", ugh what a horrible nick name for someone he barely knows.Harry. Harry is some sort of mechanic who lives in the basement with his pet robot who has no face (one of the few robots we see). His character is unbelievable and he's portrayed as some sort of nincompoop.The evil scientist and the ludicrous conspiracy. There's some sort of evil scientist who wants to replace every world leader with a clone (not a robot but actual clones) so that the world will not shut down the resort. Words cannot express the sheer cartoonishness of this plot: it's completely nonsensical.Where are the robots? The only robots we see are all the workers who are robots whom we only know to be robots because they either say "I'm programmed for blah-de-blah etc..." or because our bland hero says they are. We aren't treated to much of the inner-circuitry at all. There is a cameo from Yul Brynner but it's in a dream sequence and absolutely forgettable.Yes there's a machine that can record dreams and our hero perversely watches a dream described as a fantasy lover or something.The ending. We're supposed to be kept in suspense by not knowing whether the clones or the real versions of the two lead characters got away at the end but I knew the real ones had won. We're then treated to the hero giving the mad scientist the middle finger and that's the end. Why didn't the scientist go after them?This film is nothing like the original and seems to be an amalgamation of various 1970s sci-fi clichés such as cloning, dream sequences, space, mad scientists and ridiculous conspiracies.The special effects are terribly outdated. The original didn't need that good effects because the acting and directing were so good. The cloning machine, the dream machine and the horrid chess set sequence are all examples of this.I absolutely detest this film because it offered so much promise and it sullies the original so much.

Although "Futureworld" is considered by many to be a poor excuse for a sequel,it has its own cult followers.After the tragic deaths of several guests at the hands of robots in "Westworld," Delos decides to invite reporters Tracy and Chuck to the rebuilt resort. Delos representatives want to prove to the public that their new vactioning spots are completely safe and their robots are under control and harmless. As Tracy and Chuck investigate "Futureworld," they begin to suspect there's something sinister behind Delos' welcoming embrace.Judging "Futureworld" on its own merits, I found it to be a mildly entertaining slice of 1970's sci-fi. The movie's warnings against allowing machines and computers too much control and relying on them too heavily seems prophetic in hindsight. For 1976, I'm sure it felt fresh and was terrifying for a world that was just barely embracing electronics and the technology we take for granted today. Director Richard T. Heffron and writers George Schenck and Mayo Simon don't really do much more here besides expand on the concepts Michael Crichton came up with for "Westworld."The only actor to return from "Westworld" for this sequel is Yul Brenner. He isn't given much to do here. He basically walks around and has an awkward love scene with Blythe Danner. Honestly, it's uncomfortable to watch. Peter Fonda is great as a chauvinistic wisecracking 1970's reporter that could never get away with his treatment of Danner's character in modern times."Futureworld" is a fun and nostalgic journey back into the 1970s. Its interesting to see what the state of science fiction cinema was even a year before "Star Wars" breathed life into a dying genre. You'll not find any of the carefree advetnure and joy we found in "a Galaxy Far, Far Away" in the dystopic and doomed "Futureworld" of our making.