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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