Trots att den andra säsongen av HBO:s megahyllade TV-serien Westworld snart har premiär vet vi inte särskilt mycket om den. Nu är det ungefär två år sedan vi tog farväl till Anthony Hopkins och gänget i den robotbefolkade västern-världen. TV-serien är baserad på en film från sjuttiotalet där karaktärerna besökte flertalet olika världar, alla med sitt eget tema, och nu står det alltså klart att den andra säsongen ska lägga en del fokus på en Shogun-värld - komplett med samurajer och annat åbäke. I en intervju med EW sade manusförfattarna och producenterna Jonathan Nolan och Lisa Joy detta:
"Part of the reason we're going to Shogun World instead of to Roman World or Medieval World is, yes, you saw those in the original film. But also if you're doing a theme park, you wouldn't limit it to the Western European or North American experience. You'd try to reach a global audience. So the idea is you have a texture here that's totally different.
And selfishly, it comes down to being obsessed with Japanese cinema as a kid and earnestly wanting to make an homage to Akira Kurosawa and the other films I grew up watching. My older brothers and I watched Sergio Leone Westerns and Kurosawa's classic samurai films and were fascinated to discover they had the same plot. You had this wonderful call and response between these two genres — with the gunslinger and the ronin. They have identical tropes but are set within different cultures. Frankly, this was just a great excuse to go and make a samurai movie with all the trimmings.
In addition to Kurosawa films, which are plenty bloody, I grew up watching the Sonny Chiba films — those are the ones Tarantino is riffing on in his films with the superfluidity of gore and mayhem; this sense of an alternately brutal and beautiful world that raises the volume on what the guests might be looking for. It wasn't just about gore, it's also about being immersive. We wanted to feel like our story dropped into a totally different world. Basically, we have a whole episode in Japanese."
Ser du fram emot andra säsongen av Westworld?
Cowboys mot samurajer. En barndomsdröm går i uppfyllelse?