Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 10 (The Dark Tower)

What in the hell was that?

I shoots the shots that makes the people fall down.

I want to stress that I'm not coming to this out of dislike, or anger that it wasn't a rote following of the books. It's an adaptation and I get that... but I'm honestly sitting here in utter confusion at what I just put in front of me for 90 minutes. Really, I think that number is the best place to start. 90 minutes isn't enough time for the Tower. There was no real way they were going to get any of the grand scale, endless adventure, or wild prophecy that drew me in to the gunslinger's world in 2003. So they took another approach. They made it a movie about stopping the forces of darkness from bringing about the end of the world. They blended together elements from a bunch of the Dark Tower books (favoring the later ones) and made a 90-minute film of Dark Tower stew. Admirable. It doesn't work, though. Nerds like me who have devoured all the books will just sit there and wonder what in the name of God they've done to blend the story into this bizarre melange. Newcomers are going to be completely baffled as to what in the fuck is going on. Broad strokes are clear, sure, but the finer points will be lost. I will give the movie credit where it's due, though; for an adaptation of a book series with several references to other King novels, they at least change things up so the references are all visual Easter eggs. I caught a few fun ones on my watch. The exception is referring to psychic powers in kids as "shine", which is textual... but you know what, we'll let it slide. You don't need to know about the Overlook to get what is happening here. There's a mean old man in black who wants to blow up the lynchpin of reality, the Dark Tower, and let nightmares from outside the universe reign over ours. To do it, he harnesses kids with psychic powers to make them blast at the Dark Tower and try to blow it up. That's your plot, summarized. As to why he, or any of his cohorts want to do this... I don't know. Neither does the movie. The iconography of the Crimson King is there, but there's no explanation. He's a footnote. An Easter egg for us Tower junkies.


Really, the Man In Black is a bit of a letdown here. No ill will to Matthew McConaughey, of course... but this version of the character is lacking when compared to his book counterpart. I don't just mean in backstory or motivation or anything, I'm talking personality. The Man In Black was always an evil bastard, but he was an evil bastard with a sense of humor. McConaughey's lacks that humor and he just struts around in his suit, casting spells with a raspy voice and killing with but a thought. There's one exception which comes when we discover a character he's killed offscreen, and he's left a little "Hello there" message on the wall with a smiley face below it. THAT'S the Man In Black from the books! That's the one great moment of the original character as written shining through. Idris Elba as Roland is... well, he's Roland. I buy it, even with this gonzo adaptation. With the movie being such a cut-down epic, the standout scenes revert to his gunslinging prowess. Christ almighty, it's a Dark Tower movie, the thing that inspired me and set my imagination on fire... and the best parts are Idris Elba doing shooty shots? What the fuck happened here? Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers is... fine. The differences in character are prominent, of course, but this version does what he can. It's a well-acted production with a handful of great action beats, especially the penulimate shootout.


I really am at an utter loss here. I swear. The Dark Tower is just a passive thing out there that's in danger, and it gets saved by blowing up a bunch of bad people who wanted to blow it up. Even the idea of things from outside the universe could have been expanded on. The Crimson King, for instance. You could have had him out there in the Void as the nightmare thing wanting to get in. Instead it's just big snarly monsters. Is that what we've been reduced to? A grim and dour man in a black suit who wants to bring monsters into our world? Christ. The movie's drowning in King mythology, but none of it means anything. The number 19 is prominent, just like it was in the books... but there's no payoff to it. I know the reason for it in the books, and I didn't expect that to show up again... but I expected something! They've blended the mythic import of the books, but they haven't given it mythic import for the adaptation! In the end, this is a movie that doesn't have an audience, I feel. Dark Tower fans will be baffled or, worse, hate the hell out of it for being such a blended-together mess of Tower iconography. The average viewer will just get a half-hearted dark epic fantasy with muddled fleeting things that feel like references. I don't hate this movie. I'm just baffled by it. If I saw this in 2003, it wouldn't have set my imagination alight. I wonder if it did that for anyone in 2017...