Review of The Dark Tower (2017) by Vreynauld — 05 Aug 2017

Absolute garbage. Let me set the stage: My wife is a huge fan of the books while I had read the first three and fell out of favor with the series. Going in, we had two completely different schools of thought on what to expect. We BOTH walked out disappointed and annoyed. My wife was annoyed that, even though she understood it was after book 7, they fundamentally changed the structure and the world so much that it, in her words, "felt like a cheap young adult movie about Jake and not enough about the Roland or Randall Flagg". For me, I walked out feeling more confused than when I went in because the movie runs at a break neck pace, barely takes time to explain anything, and blows from action scene to action scene. Jake, good. Flashbacks! Roland, good! Man in Black, bad! Cross dimensional conflict, oh no!

Idris Elba is literally the only good thing about the movie, a fact on which both of us agreed. It's a shame his talent is wasted on such bad writing, a poorly designed plot, lousy cinematography, and poor CGI. McConaughey was AWFUL, almost a caricature of an actor playing a role. So, so bad. It became quite apparent that this movie was stuck in development hell - to use software terminology - for all 10 years of its supposed creation, especially with a running time as short as made-for-TV movies. If this is the best they can do, no one will mourn when the franchise is left to die. It's just a shame that Idris Elba is still chasing after his own summer blockbuster franchise. Here's hoping he at least gets a fair shake to play Bond after Daniel Craig.

After walking out of the theater following this mess I felt less annoyed about spending money to see Valarian the weekend before.