The Dark Tower ****Spoilers**** (in the second half)
 

Alrighty guys, a quick review. The movie was good. Its getting bombed by the critics and in some cases, it should be. From the standpoint of the source material, it is a bad adaptation. They took far too many liberties, they changed things that didn't need to be changed to work in a cinematic universe. The acting was good, and it was fun to see some of my favorite characters on screen, but the story was disjointed. I think for fans it misses by not following close enough to the store or diving deep enough into the lore. For newbies it misses by not injecting enough of the lore into the movie to make it all make since. There is little back story. My final word is this, go see the movie, if your a fan go with fresh eyes and enjoy what will unfortunately be the only time you see Roland, Jake, and The Man in Black on the big screen. If you go without knowing the back story, be prepared for a couple of nice action sequences, and some cool fight scenes, but know that this isn't the real Dark Tower, and please read the books.

****************** The Spoiler Divide ****************

The movie plays some fan service by putting "The Tet Corporation" in the middle of the beginning credits roll while introducing the production companies. I was a little disappointed when the first line of the movie wasn't "The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed..." But it popped up slightly further in. This movie is basically the story of Jake's being drawn from Keystone Earth to Mid-World. That is exactly how they should have played it. Instead of making it the Dark Tower Movie, it should have been the first Dark Tower Movie: The Drawing of Jake. They essentially skipped the first book, almost entirely. I was hopefully when Jake found the house with the portal and the house demon attacked him. That plays into the books, granted the third book. But when he came through and began wondering the desert, it would have been just as easy for him to stumble across the way-station and have the gunslinger find him there. Instead he wonders into the gunslingers camp. Idris Elba plays Roland well. I enjoyed the acting through the entire movie. Had they made the same movie, but left in the way-station, left in the their time under the mountain and the the battle with the slow mutants, and not changed Jake's back story, it would have worked perfectly. Instead of Jake being a rich kid whos parents are never home and he is being raised by his nanny, hes a normal kid whos mom loves him and whos dad was killed in a fire as a fireman. It was a unnecessary change that took me out of the movie because I wasn't expecting it. I have other grievances, but my biggest is the fact that they skipped the gunslingers time in Tull. I have been chomping at the bit to see that play out on screen for years. He slaughters an entire town of rabid villagers as they spill through a doorway. It helps to show how cold and hard Roland is, how little he cares about anything but reaching the tower, and how the man in black will set crazy traps for him along the way.

OHHH and there is way too much Mathew McConaughey in this. Not that he doesn't do a good job, but the Man in Black is supposed to be this elusive sorcerer. Hes in like every other scene.

Ouch. This makes me think the movie is even worse, since I'm sure Jake was sitting there trying to will the movie to be good. So it's neither fun for diehard fans or the casual viewer. That is the kiss of death for a film adaptation.

I was working hard to enjoy it... Really hard. It was fun to see the characters come to life. They casted and acted well. It was just a bad script. Its a little jumbled. They almost tried too hard to inject elements of the King universe. My heart is broken that it wasn't what I wanted. Its even more broken because I am generally lenient and enjoy things a lot of people dont. And even more so, because it could have easily been made correctly without costing any more, and been an incredible movie. They should have stuck to the first book and saved the depth and back story for follow ups. I mean ***Book Spoiler*** Jake has to die. Its the most intense part of the first book. And it bears the most iconic line in the series, that they used in the advertisements but not once in the movie. "Go then, there are other worlds than these." people would have cried, they would have applauded, im depressed.

I thought it was all right, but seemed a bit cliché and generic in my book. MM was good as Walter/The Man In Black, reminding me a lot of The Purple Man from Jessica Jones. I'd risk Elbe did the best he could but Roland wasn't nearly as Intresting on screen as he was in the book.

I dont think the acting was the problem. It was a bad script. They did what they could with what they had. This needs to be a series on HBO, Netflix, or Starz. It needs to be violent when it should be and it needs to be absolutely lonesome and dreary when it should. It just wasnt what it should have been...

That said, Dermot Mulroney should have been Roland. Have you seen The Rambler? He is damn near Roland in that.

My View
 

I have been a Dark Tower-enthusiast for 10 years, read all 8 books multiple times. The movie is not an adaptation, it's not the story of Ronald and the tower as told in the books. Maybe it's a later, or earlier cycle of Ronald's quest. This may account for the significant differences, e.g. Jake's backstory, the fact that Walter has the complete set of Wizard glass, etc. So maybe try to accept the fact that you are not going to see the story from the books come to life in a literal way, and then you can actually enjoy the movie. And especially enjoy the things you do recognize from the story you read.

If you have not watched it yetl; here you go:-

https://whereyouwatch.com/movies/the-dark-tower/

You can thank me later. ::cool::

I've been reading the Dark Tower for some time and with a friend who was also a fan of El Pistolero we watched this and boy were we naïve to hope that anything good could out of this.

The Roland character is a betrayal, a disgusting poser, and well… did I see him stop bullets with his ******** gun ? But the guy is no superhero, his story is dark and tragic and it ends badly. Yet they made “yet another action packed teenager movie with lots of fights and a cool invincible hero”. It reminds me of the adaptations of Max Payne and Silent Hill (the second one of course, that was an insult.)

I like directors who take some risks and try to be creative but here it’s far from being this. Please remember that the boy DIES in the novel. Twice. Roland is broken. He loses all his friends. Twice. And yet they made a Hollywood action movie that you could (almost) watch with your whole family.

Good for you if you liked this, but it should not be called after the novel.