Michael Crichton Congo Reading Level: Fill & Download for Free

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.Michael Crichton (1942 – 2008)This man was really my hero. He was the creative genius behind so many amazing books and films. His creative mind was a powerhouse, an irrepressible force of nature. Anyone alive in the 90s knew his work, but he was actively producing books and films long before that.Remember Westworld? That 70s sci-fi movie about a theme park of human-looking robots that went haywire? That was Crichton: he wrote and directed it. How about The Andromeda Strain? Crichton (directed the film based on his own novel). He continued to write and direct movies through the 80s, but it was 1993 when Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park was released did he suddenly become world-famous. He's written dozens of novels, including numerous ones made into big budget feature films (he's responsible for Twister, Disclosure, Congo, The Lost World, Rising Sun, Sphere and numerous others).Clearly best-selling novels and revolutionary films weren't enough, though. In 1994 he created and co-executive produced the television show E.R., which lasted 15 seasons and won over a hundred awards during its run.In 1994, Crichton became the first person to have a #1 movie (Jurassic Park), a #1 television show (E.R.) and a #1 bestseller (Disclosure) simultaneously.When he died it was a huge shock, as his lymphoma was not known to the public. I was very sad to hear the news. I'd been an admirer of his work and a big fan my whole life. I've read seven of his novels and Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies ever. I was even a fan of the obscure 1984 Tom Selleck film Runaway, which was also written and directed by Crichton. Losing Michael Crichton was a big loss to the entertainment industry and those of us who are inspired by compelling science fiction.

Jonathan Brill, thanks for your request for my answer on this question. I am just getting around to responding now because I only just had the opportunity to watch the pilot episode.After the initial viewing (and I will watch it again), my first reaction echoes other answers already posted. While I do think the series has potential, when considering the show in the context of your question I think it is important to consider the juggernaut that GoT has become. And, in that context, I do not think WW will reach the level of GoT in terms of either commercial success or critical acclaim.Let’s consider a couple of facts that influence my answer. First and foremost, WW does not have even a measurable fraction of the original source material to work with that the GoT folks have. WW has a premise and no matter how interesting and fertile that premise might be, it is never going to match what GoT had (has) in terms of story development. WW is a World that was created for one film by legendary novelist, Michael Crichton, in the form of a screenplay that eventually made it to become a feature film. I do love Michael Crichton (I am currently re-reading his novel, Congo), and he is an amazing storyteller, which is probably one reason why this one-off screenplay was picked up as a series by HBO in the first place. His stories are unique, but mostly singular in scope. He has some serious TV credibility having been a creator and writer on ER, but to look at that successful run, you still have to weigh that against the work of George R.R. Martin if you want to make a comparison, in which there is none. Both are prolific novelists and MC has probably sold more than GRRM over his successful career, but GRRM mainly focused on his GoT World. The WW World is tiny in comparison and thus, no match for potential story lines.Secondly, and tied to the first, is character development. What makes a long-term series viable and profitable is when audiences care enough about certain characters to come back to the show week after week, year after year. Again GRRM has the backlog of that in spades, even if he does tend to kill some of them off rather abruptly. And, that latter point is important, too. The GoT people were totally on board with lopping off Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) head in the first season of GoT. Bean was their star power and they killed him off because GRRM had whacked his main man in the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire. That is some gutsy stuff for a new series that is trying to create a new World out of whole cloth. Point being, Westworld is tiny and limited in scope in terms of both story and character development in comparison to Westeros.There are promising notes to what I saw in the pilot episode, though. They have a great cast and formidable line-up running the show and the first episode showed that. They also have a reported $100m budget behind them, which matches GoT’s current one. In purely analytical terms, the show is being produced with everything HBO can muster in terms of top talent.I saw the most intriguing promise in some more subtle ways, and I’ll have to go back and watch again to see what I missed. I think I caught some subtle hints of subtext that I am interested to see if it is bult upon or drawn out. One thing that caught my eye (and ear), was the use of music and color. We all are accustomed to the theme of the good guys wearing the white hats and the bad guys wearing the black. That is classic good guy/bad guy costuming in cowboy movies. My ears pricked up when I heard Soungarden’s “Black Hole Sun” played in the saloon on the player piano, then heard The Rolling Stones’, “Paint it Black”, play during the gunfight in the street. The connection with the color black sort of galvanized when the end credits rolled with “Ain’t No Grave”, by Johnny Cash (the Man in Black).Maybe I’m experiencing a bit of mental pareidolia (seeing a pattern that doesn’t exist), or just maybe JJ Abrams is doing his usual thing of using music popular reformatted from earlier eras. Still, the white milk being featured so prominently when the first aggressive robots go off script and the vats of what looks a lot like milk featured in the scenes when the robots are being created gives me an itch to see the next episode.So, short answer: No, I don’t think it will be as big as GoT in any sense of the word. But, I do think it has potential to have a great run and I am looking forward to watching this season to see how far they can go with it.Cheers from Istanbul!

— “Yeah, so basically, there’s this totally large amusement park, right? It’s, like, full of artificially engineered creatures, you know? And people come to visit the place for a vacation or something. But the creatures, they go bad, totally out of control and stuff! It’s so amazing, let me tell you!”— “Er, yes, I know that one. ‘Jurassic Park’, right? That was quite original, back in the nineties.”— “No, no, you got it all wrong. It’s this new TV show I’m talking about, you gotta see it, it’s totally cool. They’ve got robots dressed up as cowboys in this yuge theme park called ‘Westworld’.”— “Ah, yes, ‘Westworld’! I’ve seen that movie on TV as a kid, and I really loved it. Robots AND cowboys, what more could a boy dream of? Plus, Yul Brynner was iconic as the android gunslinger. And now you’re telling me there’s a new HBO series based on the concept? I have to check it out.”And so I did. But what I saw was HBOring, because I had seen it all before — and not just once. Michael Crichtons’s original Westworld idea from the early seventies had already been rehashed in his 1984 dud Runaway with Tom “Magnum, P.I.” Selleck and Cynthia “Dirty Dancing abortion girl” Rhodes:In the near future, a police officer specializes in malfunctioning robots. When a robot turns out to have been programmed to kill, he begins to uncover a homicidal plot to create killer robots... — plot description on IMDbIn 1990, Crichton rewrote the whole thing again, but with dinosaurs instead of robots. Why ‘instead’, I wonder now. Think about it: robots and cowboys and dinosaurs. That might have been quite interesting, sort of like mixing pride, prejudice and zombies.image source: Would You Buy A Game With Cowboys And Zombie Dinosaurs?Anyway, in 1993, the Spielberg-directed Jurassic Park came out — with innovative CGI that still paled in comparison to Terminator 2: Judgment Day — and suddenly Crichton’s books were “hot property” in Hollywood. The rest is history: the books were quickly turned into some of the most ridiculous movies of the nineties: Disclosure (1994), Congo (1995), Twister (1996), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Sphere (1998), The 13th Warrior (1999). So much wasted talent. So many wasted hours at the cinema. Then, luckily for all of us, The Matrix came along and redefined action science-fiction for the 21st century.But I digress.If I say here that I watched the pilot episode of Westworld, the series, without prejudice (nor zombies), you probably wouldn’t believe me, but it’s the truth. For the first couple of minutes, at least.In an episode an hour long — which felt like three — this feeling of déjà vu crept over me. The characters reset each day like in a Groundhog Day time loop. The “Man in Black” is obviously a Lost soul. The corny dialogue is probably supposed to be a Western parody, but rings hollow.And there were so many questions I couldn’t quite answer: When did Hannibal Lecter get so old? What’s the Danish prime minister doing with that fake accent? Why do they have to work so hard in what must be the late 21st century to make things real? With their level of technology, wouldn’t it be much easier to make a Matrix-like brain s(t)imulation or even a Star Trek-like Holodeck? Lots of questions, but no answers yet — probably never — because apart from sci-fi/western, Westworld also wants to be a mystery series.I am aware that people — not least on Quora — are saying “Wait, it gets better after episode 4”, but that’s what “they” said about HBO’s Game of Thrones and The Leftovers, both of which I abandoned after being passably entertained for one season each.Not this time, folks, I’m not going to watch the rest of it. Instead, I’ll go back to season three of Black Mirror that I haven’t finished yet, then immediately follow that up with season three of The Affair. See you there, if you like.EDIT (a few days later): I've finished season 3 of Black Mirror, and I highly recommend it: How would you rank the episodes of Black Mirror, season 3?PS: OK, there’s one good thing about Westworld after all: the music. I’ll give one bonus point for using “Paint It, Black" as an Ennio Morricone-like instrumental. Very classy!EDIT (after reading the other reviews, which, on purpose, I didn’t do before posting mine): It feels like I’m the only one who liked the use of this song. Many of you hated the very idea. I could not foresee this thing happening to you.