(Spoilers for the movie Westworld. Though if you haven't seen that, heaven only knows why you're watching this).Back in the day, studios didn't really take sequels seriously. It wasn't uncommon for the stars, director and writers of a major hit to all jump ship from the sequel, leaving a bunch of second-stringers to pick up the slack, and the resulting product was almost always inferior. Even by those standards, though, Futureworld is a godawful mess. The plot doesn't really matter, and it's similar enough to Westworld anyway. So let's just list some of the more jaw-droppingly stupid moments in this mess:1) So they're just re-opening the resort, huh? After about 150 people died last time round. And people are just lining up to visit the place? Yeah, I don't see that happening in the real world, somehow.2) Apparently these events where a load of people died are so obscure in this universe that people need a refresher course in what happened, all of two years later.3) If you invite an investigative reporter to your theme park, you can't really act all surprised when he wants to investigate stuff.4) 'Meet me 10 minutes from now in the Hyatt'. On the 50th floor, no less, though Fonda doesn't specify where, in this enormous hotel, he wants to meet his source. He doesn't even ask where the source is calling from - he might have been in LA or Australia for all Fonda knew, but luckily he was at most a couple of minutes away from that hotel.5) Judging by how the bystanders react, a guy being stabbed to death in front of you is perfectly unremarkable.6) So, uh, you're just going to leave the ruins of Westworld like that, huh? Not clear up, or build over it or anything? You're even going to leave body parts lying around? That's just icky.7) The main bad guy is so nice and avuncular that he might as well have 'EVIL' written on his head in neon.8) Good lord, Blythe Danner is useless in this movie. I know it was the 1970s, and attitudes were different back then, but surely she could do something other than stand around and scream helplessly? 9) Yes, robot ninjas are an excellent way to get rid of those pesky reporters. 'Crusading reporters killed by rampaging robot ninjas' is a headline that'll make page 9, at best. No possibility of bad publicity there.10) Should I mention the dream sequence, or shall we just all look the other way in stunned embarrassment and pretend that none of that ever happened? That absurd sequence is the only time that the 'star' of this movie, Yul Brynner, appears in anything other than flashback footage. He didn't act again after this, and I don't blame him.11) Almost none of the movie takes place in actual Futureworld, and you'll see much more of air-conditioning ducts and boiler rooms than futuristic wonders. It's probably because they had a tighter budget this time around, leaving the whole thing looking very, very cheap. In short, this is not a good movie, and not even an entertainingly bad one. It's not unwatchably bad, but if you can get through without using the fast-forward button a couple of times, you're more patient than I am.

As "Futureworld" opens, the Delos Corporation is determined to make up for all of the bad publicity they received when the robots of their Westworld environment malfunctioned. They invite several dignitaries, as well as reporters Chuck (Peter Fonda) and Tracy (Blythe Danner), convinced that they've eliminated the bugs in their program. Well, Chuck is suspicious from the start, even more so when he makes contact with a former Delos employee who wanted to spill some vital information. So when he arrives at Delos's vacation resort, he does a lot of snooping around before finding out that there's a nefarious plan being hatched by resort employees. As one can see from this synopsis, this sequel is more in the conspiracy thriller vein than the action movie vein. The summary in the Leonard Maltin paperback is quite accurate when it says "short on action, but intelligently done". It's an interesting plot, to be sure, not developing in the way one might expect it to. The pacing is deliberate, and things never really build to a fever pitch, which could disappoint those viewers hoping for a more exciting experience. It also reduces the memorable character of the robot Gunslinger (Yul Brynner briefly reprises the role) to an afterthought; it's truly disappointing to see it reduced to starring in a dream sequence. Still, this is pretty entertaining stuff that benefits from very good performances. Fonda and Danner are both appealing as always, generating some good chemistry. (One amusing touch is having Chuck always address Tracy as "Socks"!) The excellent supporting cast includes Arthur Hill as Delos employee Duffy, John P. Ryan as stiff and humourless scientist Dr. Schneider, Jim Antonio as upbeat guest Ron Thurlow, and the highly engaging Stuart Margolin as blue collar worker Harry, with bit parts played by the likes of Robert Cornthwaite, Darrell Larson, John Fujioka, and 'Password' host Allen Ludden. The film also has a good look going for it thanks to art director Trevor Williams and cinematographers Gene Polito and Howard Schwartz; the rousing music is courtesy of Fred Karlin. All in all, "Futureworld" isn't going to appeal to people who love a fast pace and major set pieces, but those looking for a more low key sci-fi flick just might want to give it a look. Seven out of 10.

Futureworld (1976) *** (out of 4) Sequel to WESTWORLD picks up a couple years after the events in that film as Delos plans on opening Futureworld. A pair of reporters (Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner) are invited into the new theme park but soon they discover that the owners have plans to replace various government officials with lookalikes. FUTUREWORLD doesn't quite reach the levels of the first film but I really give the filmmakers credit for doing something different with the story instead of just delivering a rehash of the first film. With that said, I think the film takes way too long for this story to take place as it really doesn't start to happen until around the 70-minute mark or so and so much of that early running time has us sitting there just waiting for something to eventually take off. It seems that the first half of the film spends a bit too much time with the reporters looking at how good everything in the place is and it just takes too long to get going. I will say that many of the early scenes in the picture are extremely good and especially the stuff dealing with people using the theme park. The jokes about robots that can handle sex were good and I thought there was some other nice humor as well. The performances were also really good with both Fonda and Danner turning in nice work and having some good chemistry together. Yul Brynner is basically here as a cameo but it was still nice seeing the gunslinger again. FUTUREWORLD runs a tad bit too long but the special effects are good and there are several good ideas throughout it.

This sequel was kind of pointless and defied logic and reason.The movie picks up where the film "Westworld" left off. The Davos corporation has reopened the park, or at least the sections with Roman World and Miedeval World, along with a cool new place called "Futureworld". Despite the robots going crazy and killing the guests last time, and apparently every trial lawyer in the world drinking Roofies, this apparently doesn't bug anyone.We find out the robots have taken over, and are cleverly replacing real people with robots.There are a few scenes that defy logic, like the magically generated samurai and the dream sequence to get Yul Brenner (who played the killer robot in the last film that made sense) into the film.You have Peter Fonda, who obviously didn't get the thespian gene in his family, trying to stretch out 30 minutes of plot into a 90 minute feature.