Thursday, November 9, 2017

THE DARK TOWER: DARK INDEED



When Stephen King fans learned that a movie was being made about the series of books he wrote involving a hero called Roland Deschain called THE DARK TOWER they were wary to say the least. The end result wasn’t received as well as the producers had hoped. The fans ended up unhappy but how could they have been anything but? The series of books was 8 volumes and over 4,000 pages long. No way could that be condensed into a 90 minute movie. And yet they tried. Maybe not the whole story but a good portion of it.

Jake (Tom Taylor) is a New York City pre-teen who is seriously troubled. His father has died, his mother’s new boyfriend isn’t fond of him and to top it off he keeps having bad dreams revolving around a man in black, a dark tower and a gunslinger. Passed off as having emotional issues his mother intends to send him off to an institute for troubled youth but Jake realizes the two people sent to pick him up are part of the group he has been having visions of. He escapes and finds his way to a home he sees in his visions, one that provides a portal into the other world he keeps seeing.

Making his way there is one thing, knowing what’s going on another. Fortunately he runs into the gunslinger in his visions, a man named Roland Deschain (Idris Elba). Roland is the last of a group of warriors known as gunslingers, pistol packing fighters whose job it was to protect this land and the Dark Tower from being toppled. Should that happen evil will be unleashed upon all worlds.

Roland is well aware of the Man in Black, Walter Padick (Matthew McConaughey). Walter killed Roland’s father and helped to wipe out the gunslingers. A master sorcerer Walter also has plans for the Dark Tower. As Jake has seen in his visions, he is harnessing the minds of young children to create projectiles to destroy the tower. His hope is to make himself a god by doing so.

Jake and Roland set off on a path to prevent this from happening. At first somewhat adversarial the two eventually become friends. With the combined desire to take down Walter they unite with that common goal, bonding in the process. But can their combined efforts achieve the success they seek? And what is it about Jake that Walter finds necessary to achieve the goals he has in mind?

The movie isn’t near as bad as the fans might have you believe but it is lacking a bit. While I’m always one to say that Hollywood needs to cut back on the length of their movies it actually does this one harm. The movie doesn’t allow enough time to develop the characters, to understand them and their motivations or to present enough background on them. Fortunately for me I was able to look online to understand the movie better by looking into who and what they are.

Watching the film you’re not quite sure if Walter is a sorcerer, a demon or the devil himself. Roland is not near as effective as he is in the books by what I read. And Jake isn’t the central focus of the books and yet takes center stage here.

In addition to that the movie does present an ending. For a movie based on 8 books you would think it would be an introduction rather than a finale. I mean look at the Lord of the Rings movies, 3 separate films that were well over 2 hours each that combined to tell the story of three books. This one could have been, and actually was intended to, tell a much bigger story. From what I’ve read it was supposed to be an introduction to a series on TV (I’m guessing cable due to violence) rather than a complete tale.

Still, as someone who came in never having read the books and interested in seeing what it was all about, the movie plays out in an entertaining enough manner. The shortcomings are smoother over by the professional look and feel of the film. The CGI isn’t overly used to the point of being annoying but getting there. Elba, McConaughey and Taylor all do a good job here. The end result is a movie to enjoy on its own merits, setting aside the book series and potential TV series. That being said you might enjoy this one.

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