Review of The Dark Tower (2017) by Buck L — 02 Aug 2017

In my opinion, the tower did not fall.

(That said, Sony did a crap job marketing this and didn't give it the budget it needed, but the filmmakers did what it could.).

Now... allow me to elaborate. This movie should have been called The Dark Tower, Volume 8: Jake's Story. It is a slim, trim, stripped down movie that says what it is on the tin. When the reviewers are saying that this movie's protagonist is Jake, a kid from Earth, and not Roland, they are stating a fact there. This movie depicts a Roland who lost his way, and when he meets Jake, it's Jake who manages to get him back on track. You could almost say he's who makes Roland a Gunslinger again.

This is a film that loves to wink at the audience. It knows what it is. At its heart, it's fan fiction. Fan fiction by its nature is divorced from its creator. So I am not angered by how it is not a slavish retelling of any of the books in the series. Stuff is shuffled and changed, for both Roland and Jake. After one viewing, I have to say I loved what they did, even if it could have used a little more Roland and gone into hard R territory.

The plot is not nonsensical if you recall how much of a cultural blender the books were. Midworld has a strange dreamlike quality where anything can happen, even if it is a place that's moved on. The movie doesn't spend a lot of time there, but it does a serviceable job of showing us what it can.

So what of the seven (eight if you count Wind through the Keyhole which I don't) books of source material from which the movie is drawn?

That was Roland's story; this is Jake's. If people are kind, maybe we'll meet the rest of the ka-tet down the road. Eddie Dean, Susannah, and a little billy bumbler named Oy.

But if we don't, we got this. Roland gets a little bit of justice, Jake's gained a new father, and today the tower stands.

Long days and pleasant nights.

If you're not a King or a Dark Tower fan, I'd rate it a 75%. If you are a Dark Tower fan that can understand this is a sequel to the novels and not a straight, "adaptation", I'd rate it at 90%. If you go in wanting what the books were, you'll just end up disappointed.