The Dark Tower

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed…er…stumbled rather. More like face planted actually.

Based on (if you can call it that) the epic Stephen King saga of the same name, The Dark Tower follows the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), as he hunts down the dark sorcerer, Walter Padick aka the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), as he tries to destroy the Dark Tower, a nexus of sorts that binds all of the different universes together while keeping the evil outside of its sphere of influence at bay. Enter Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), a young boy who has visions of the fall of the Dark Tower, the evil Man in Black, and the journey of the Gunslinger via his uncanny psychic ability called “the shine”. With his unique power in tow and Roland’s near supernatural ability to use his firearms, Jake must help Roland stop the destruction of the Tower before Walter can gear up for his final attempt at accomplishing his master plan. But will Roland and Jake be enough to stop the Man in Black, save the world, and *gasp* even the universe? Will they be able to restore order and protect the Tower at all costs?? Will the Man in Black be defeated and banished into the darkness from whence he came, never to bother the balance of the universe again???

My answer to that is “who the fuck cares???”

This movie is a disappointment, there’s no way around it, and as both a huge fan of the series and a filmmaker, I’m doubly upset about how this all turned out. I can, with 99.999% certainty, tell you that almost nothing from the books have been brought to life onscreen with any sense of coherency or faithfulness to a point that the powers that be that finally pulled this project out of development hell should have either left it there, or changed the name of the project to something totally different and unique and just ran with it. Maybe then this wouldn’t have been such a travesty to the source material, and, in my mind, to one of the first “shared universe” works in all of entertainment (might be slightly off with that claim but you get the point).

Shit like this always happens when the focus on getting the project greenlit in order to make cash money trumps the creative process at every turn. For the life of me I can’t understand what in the actual hell the filmmakers were thinking when it came to adapting this book series into movie form, because the final product is so unrecognizable from where it all began that it literally makes no sense to have slapped the Dark Tower name on it. The action is bland, the story is paced terribly, and for all the good that slowly starts to form at certain points in the film, it all comes crashing down seconds later like the Dark Tower ought to. I almost wanted to cheer on the Man in Black to hurry up and get his plan over with so I could be rid of what I was seeing and move on with my life.

Deep breaths…deep breaths…

ANYWAY, outside of some terrible scripting, dialogue, exposition and the pure lunacy of why half of what’s going on is actually happening, the only reason I didn’t give this film and even lower score is because I absolutely love the book series and felt some sort of odd joy in seeing even a fraction of it up on the big screen. I can tell you that almost none of it makes sense when comparing it to the books, and almost none of it is accurate even in the smallest sense of the word, but knowing what could have been put up on screen had me at least at arms length the entire film, hoping something awesome from the books would pull through by the end credits, but alas, nothing ever did. Other than that, the only other tolerable part of this film is Idris Elba, who I think was a perfect pick for the role of Roland, regardless of the way he was portrayed in the books. I have an actual man-crush on Mr. Elba, so in my eyes he can do no wrong even if what he had to work with in this script pushed him to his limits (in a bad way), but you can tell that he gave it his all, and for the few scenes that he was firing on all cylinders like a gunslinger is wont to do, it was all totally worth it. On the villain side of things, even though McConaughey seemed like an odd choice for the role, he was kind of fun even if he had maybe three scene with anyone other than himself, again the script letting him down more so than his actual casting. This just goes to show that if the filmmakers actually tried to make a good film, they would have had a relatively strong base to start with, but for whatever reason nothing came together the way it should have, not by a long shot.

Whether you’re a fan of the books or are just bored and want to see a movie, I’m gonna have to divert you away from seeing this film unless, like me, you don’t want to believe how bad this was going to turn out and want to experience it first hand. The Dark Tower is a terrible script wrapped in an even more terrible final product that only gets points based on the fact that it’s a Dark Tower movie and Idris Elba is in it, but other than that, steer clear of this one if you can. Roland and his ka-tet would be ashamed.