FILM · 1973 · USA
Westworld
35 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
26 Interesting Facts About Westworld
- #001
Westworld (1973) featured the first use of computer-digitized images as part of a feature film (not merely monitor graphics), in the Gunslinger's point of view. Once the process had finally been refined enough to produce satisfactory results, each ten seconds of footage for the Gunslinger's pixelated point of view took only eight hours to generate.
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Michael Crichton re-edited the film's first cut because he found it long and boring. The deleted scenes include: the bank robbery and sales room scenes, the flying vehicle in which passengers initially fly over the desert, additional and longer dialogue scenes, more scenes of the robots going mad and killing guests (including a scene in which a guest is tied to a rack and killed when his arms are pulled), a longer chase scene in which the Gunslinger pursues Peter, and the Gunslinger washing his face with water after throwing acid at Peter. Crichton's assembly cut also had a different ending; a fight between the Gunslinger and Peter (staged and cut because it looked silly) and an alternative death scene in which the Gunslinger is killed with the same rack used to kill one of the guests.
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Michael Crichton would later use a similar plot about a theme park going terribly wrong and tourist attractions malfunctioning for his 1990 novel "Jurassic Park", which became the hit film Jurassic Park (1993) 20 years after this film. Crichton also wrote the screenplay for the Jurassic Park film adaptation.
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The park recreates three eras of history: the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages and the Wild West. This is a nod to the early films made about gladiators, knights and cowboys. The later Warner Bros. Television-Home Box Office (HBO) series Westworld (2016) would expand the size of the overall Delos Park and add additional "Worlds" to the original Michael Crichton story universe.
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Although John Blane is supposed to be a "seasoned" guest returning to the park, he is consistently a bad shot with a gun. He misses when shooting at a rattlesnake and is later shot by the Gunslinger. Peter Martin, by contrast, states that he has never fired a gun before yet successfully hits the Gunslinger multiple times.
- #032
The success of Westworld (1973) inspired the 1976 sequel Futureworld (1976), whose plot also takes place at Delos. This time, however, the robots figured in a world-domination conspiracy planned by a Delos engineer. Although Yul Brynner played a brief role in the film, "Futureworld" was a pale imitation of the original and effectively ended a potential "Westworld" film series. There was, however, a 1980 television spin-off called Beyond Westworld (1980) that lasted only one season.
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The plot focuses on Westworld (1973) and Medieval World guest interactions, except for the final moment when Roman World robots attack the guests with swords. However, the middle-aged woman character shown riding the tram to Delos for the first time is seen dead in a single shot after the Roman World massacre. Yet she had no scenes in Roman World as part of the story.
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On the film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film received mixed reviews from critics (84% of 45 reviews) and users (70% of more than 10,000 votes). Compared with the average of Michael Crichton's six feature films, this film's score is considerably higher than both the overall critics' score (57.7%) and the average of all users (49.2%).