'The Dark Tower' comes from the series of novels by author Stephen King. The film adaptation stars Idris Elba as Roland Deschain who is a Gunslinger a group of people sworn to protect the titular Dark Tower from the forces of evil. The Tower this time is under the threat of destruction from a sorcerer known as the Man in Black who is played by Matthew McConaughey but in order to complete his task, he must seek out a young boy named Jake Chambers who has 'The Shine' and whose power can be used to destroy the Tower completely.
Going into this film, I have to say that I and likely many others were not expecting a great movie, or even an average movie to be honest. Stephen King is a great author and one of my biggest inspirations for wanting to write in the first place, but I'd be lying if I said his adaptations are very poor more often than not. 'The Dark Tower' did surprise me however by being an entertaining, if forgettable film that does no real harm but doesn't wow like it should either. I think the biggest problem here and one that many other critics will be talking to death about is that this film has very little resemblance to its source material. The 'Dark Tower' book series consists of 8 stories in total, each quite a large tome in themselves so adapting them was always going to be a challenge for any filmmaker up to the task. However, you may notice that the film is only an hour and a half at most which is pure insanity given the massive amounts of material they could have brought to the table.
The film has elements from all the novels, but primarily takes its story from the first and third books which leads to many sub-plots, characters, or overall story just left a confusing mess for those who haven't read them. One of the biggest issues is that the movie makes reference to the novel's true big bad, which I won't spoil here out of respect but the fact that they frequently show his name on the walls but never explain it in any capacity just stinks of lazy filmmaking. You also learn very little about the characters that do get screen time, with Jake Chambers being almost completely different than his novel counterpart, The Man in Black gets no real backstory or explanation as to who he truly is or what he means to the whole Stephen King universe, and Roland even gets nothing other than a few tidbits about his father here and there.
It just feels like something is missing here, like about another hour of film left on the cutting room floor for instance. I knew that they couldn't realistically adapt 8 novels in one film but come on, they don't even adapt 1 novel all the way in this film. I get the feeling that when this comes to DVD later we will indeed see deleted footage of some kind but I still think there isn't enough of that even to justify so much missing content here. Now after all that, is there things to like about 'The Dark Tower'? Yes, for instance the action is really well done, the film is shot well and looks very nice, the cast gives its best given the anemic material with McConaughey being my favorite out of the bunch. He is clearly enjoying the role of the evil sorcerer and it shows in his performance. He is also the most interesting to watch, which makes his lack of backstory and motivation more frustrating. I also got a giggle or two out of the various references to King's other works, such as The Overlook Hotel picture, or the Pennywise Amusement Park. It's just a shame that these smaller things couldn't keep 'The Dark Tower' from becoming something better than it is.
Do I think the film is total garbage however? No, but I have honestly not read every novel in the series so I cannot base my review completely on that. As a film, it's just okay a perfectly competent action fantasy with no real special qualities to it. I don't really recommend it that much, but it could have been a lot worse (and trust me, if you've seen the likes of 'Golden Years' 'The Tommyknockers', and 'Sleepwalkers' then you know that this is far from King's worst.) I'm just so bummed that they couldn't make this more epic. One can only hope that the long-awaited adaptation of 'IT' will satisfy King fans and give them a better feeling than 'The Dark Tower'.
( C - )
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