Review of The Dark Tower (2017) by Kaptenvideo — 13 Aug 2017

The last Gunslinger (Idris Elba) is locked in eternal battle with mysterious Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), determined to prevent him from toppling the Dark Tower, which holds the universe together.

Stephen King has released a lot of books already (most of them fiction), and there’s also a big number of screen adaptations of his work. But this is the first fruitful attempt to bring his „Dark Tower“ saga to the cinemas, which has already disappointed and/or made angry a lot of fans and critics.

Controversy was to be expected. King himself and many of his admirers find „Dark Tower“ series his crowning achievement and magnum opus, so there was probably never going to be a way to adapt even part of the eight novels into a movie. At least not in a way that would satisfy both constant readers and those who just came to see a sci-fi/action movie alike.

The project was in pre-production hell for quite some time and the various parties had several different approaches to make it all happen.

I am not sure what was the motivation behind using the script that they finally used, but to call this a „Dark Tower“ adaptation, or even King adaptation, is kind of stretching it.

What they did was to take some elements of the whole big DT mythos, including three of the major characters, and then change it whatever the hell way they wanted.

I am not against remixing King per se, and some new things are pretty cool to see on the screen at last – concentration camp for „shining“ children“ and the mentioning of Keystone Earth, for example. But the new story, which is replacing King’s stories, is underwhelmingly shallow to say the least.

In 94 minutes, there’s no room on any world, story, character and relationships building that King has famous for. Most of the events happen and pass fast, just because it is supposed to happen, not that it develops organically from what has come before.

It’s not a satisfying solution, not for King lovers, not on its own.

The only good thing I have to say about the screenplay is that you can follow it without having read any of the King’s work. But then again, it also makes the ending too definite and clear-cut which was never the aim of the series.

Matthew McConaughey is good too, ruthless and menacing, although they have changed his character in ways that I don’t quite like, making him kind of boring. If the nemesis has lost much of the mystery surrounding him and has become almost unbeatable, it’s quite hard to hold suspense when he’s around.

I also like that Idris Elba has gotten another starring part in major project, but it’s far from his more memorable work such as in „The Wire“. We don’t get to know enough of gunslinger to care about him deeply – I would say it’s actually part of the problem with the book series too.

Elba gets to shoot a lot and growl some lines (on screen, he’s actually chattier than in books) but I can’t say he comes across as terribly charismatic or memorable. Still, some call him one of the best things in the movie.

As a long-time King fan, I am still kind of glad to have seen a „Dark Tower“ movie, and the visual side is enjoyable enough – mostly locations, some of the action scenes feel a bit generic.

But this is not the movie we’ve been waiting for. At best, we can call it a piece of fan fiction, in the form of long-waited movie.

Oh, almost forgot. As a long-time fan, I have read almost all of King’s many novels and collections, and consider „Dark Tower“ series not among his best work. Especially limp are the last two parts (6 and 7), and „Keyhole“.

The movie is not limp, at least, just not enough fleshed out to justify all the hype and waiting.