Review of The Dark Tower (2017) by Al F — 03 Aug 2017

As a standalone film, The Dark Tower is a generic YA action film about a teenager who is roped into a conflict between good and evil with poor pacing, uninteresting dialogue, and vague characterization with a "by-committee" feel (which with 5 credited headwritters is most likely the case). The film introduces the audience to McConaughey's Walter O'Dim/The Man in Black as he is using children to power a device to break The Dark Tower, which sits at the center of existence and keeps the Darkness at bay. These attacks on the Tower then translate into earthquakes felt throughout existence. When then cut to our film's protagonist Jake (played by Taylor) who has been having dreams about Walter and his adversary the Gunslinger Roland (played by Elba). These dreams turn out to be a manifestation of psychic abilities referred to as the Shine. Jake, being our protagonist, possess the Shine to the point where he alone could provide the energy needed to topple the tower (in actuality he doesn't have enough to finish the job but details) which makes him a target for Walter. When Walter's goons show up under the guise of intake specialists for a clinic in upstate New York for children with psychosis (totally not an obvious child kidnapping ring we promise) he escapes to a house in Brooklyn where he finds and activates a portal to another world known as Midworld (It won't be explained so don't question it) where he finds Roland on the hunt for Walter. After proving that Jake has had dreams of Walter and that he is meant to find Roland, the two set off to a settlement with Seers to get Walter's location from Jake's dreams.

As it is the middle of the film, this goes as well as is expected with Walter's forces attacking the settlement after they find out that the leader of the child kidnapping ring for weaponization purposes in New York is most likely in New York, prompting the two to return to Jake's world. After some fish-out-of-water moments and bonding Jake is kidnapped by Walter and taken to his base causing Roland to chase after him to rescue Jake and kill Walter. One relatively decent action scene later, Walter and Roland have their shootout leaving Walter dead, Jake rescued, and the device used to break the Tower destroyed. So Jake, having nothing left on Earth due to his mom and stepdad being killed by Walter, leaves with Roland for Midworld for what can assumed to be future adventures.

The plot of this film is quite generic with very little of the world being informed. Walter and Roland's motivations are not explored and are only given base details. Walter wants to destroy the Tower, because reasons, and Roland wants to kill Walter to avenge his father. Beyond this nothing of the two is explored and the movie jumps from setpiece to setpiece with little time for character development and backstory. With a rushed pace and little explanation of the plot of world, the film was left to stand on decent acting and passable cinematography. As a standalone film, it is technically passable but does not do much new to set it apart from other YA films about a chosen teenager who is needed to save the world, but leaves you with almost no questions answered and character you know very little about.

However, here is where the issue lies. As a work The Dark Tower series is not a YA work, instead being a 5000+ page eight book series that weaves through multiple genres (western, science fiction, horror, drama, and more) with a wide variety of characters and locations that ties into nearly every single one of King's works. This is the expectation that the audience will come in with if they had read the books. This film fails as an adaptation. Not only is the narrative of the film vastly different covering several major events from across the entire series, it requires the audience to know the source material to understand the plot, world, and characters beyond what is directly stated in the film, which is almost nothing. For example, I was the only person in a group who went to see this movie that had read the books and those who did not in this group were confused about everything, requiring me to explain key aspects of the world, characters, and the events of the story. As the film covers the action oriented scenes of several books (the movie opening with a scene from the 6th) plot details and information related to these events were skipped over meaning that the events that do take place in the film feel quite disjointed.

The film requires viewers to know the source material to fully understand the reasoning behind plot events and characters and without it you are left with a very mediocre action film. There is also the additional issue of this film technically being a sequel to the book series, which is something that only those familiar with the source material would be able to catch onto and is barely referenced or used to effect within this film. Having to explain how this is not only a first movie (which covered so many of the major events of the series that very little is left for a sequel movie) but simultaneously a continuation of the material it is adapting, caused further confusion among my group (additionally it seems somewhat suspicious that this is meant to be a continuation is not addressed in film and was only brought up during production after news of issues such as filming/script delays and casting and scripting decisions and post-production studio-notes and adaptation changes that would make future productions either extremely difficult or impossible came about, but that is neither here nor there). The film's overrelaince on the audience coming in with prior information is not helped by the much too quick pace and the short runtime., meaning that there was barely any time to establish the characters and their motivation effectively anyway.

Long story short, adaptations of lengthy works that cannot decide if they are continuations or poor retellings of events that cobble together random pieces of it source with an extremely generic approach to storytelling that does not mirror the ideas and tone of the material it is adapting while having the audience rely on outside sources to the final product result in a bland generic work that does little to stand out at best and gains the ire of fans of the original work at worst. The Dark Tower feels like nothing other than your run of the mill YA action film that's bogged down by an unexplained world and characters rather which is a shame considering that its source is far from that. After writing this review, all I have left to say is who thought it'd be a good idea to crunch 8 books worth of material into an hour and half with most of the characters and context missing when they could have simply adapted the completely straightforward and pretty-well self-contained first book. With how this movie is being received, I would not expect this becoming a large scale movie franchise anytime soon.