Share your thoughts after viewing the movie **DEFINITE SPOILERS**

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Demeter

Well-Known Member
Apr 23, 2008
538
1,424
Great review!

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Thanks! I hope so too. I'd love to see him on the screen.
 

Neil W

Well-Known Member
May 27, 2008
1,203
2,592
Isle of Wight UK
There was this bloke who wanted to build a mansion. He had the plans and they were wonderful. But the planning authority kept messing about for years over the exact plans and all the permissions he needed, plus he couldn't borrow the money he needed. It dragged on and on until he eventually succeeded in building his mansion.

Well, I say "mansion" - it's more a tent. It's a very nice tent, though.

Lots of details were right. But several things were very, very, wrong. One - this wasn't about the Dark Tower, it was about revenge. Roland was NOT on a single minded quest for the Dark Tower even though this was what drove him through the entire cycle of novels. Two, the huge re-writing of the central story was clearly done with the cinema audience in mind, people who had (mostly) never read the book, yet there were so many unanswered questions in the film where you needed to know the books in order to have the answers. You had to be a Dark Tower reader to fully appreciate it, which more or less guaranteed that you wouldn't! Plus there were questions which still remained unanswered - why did Walter's magics not work on Roland?

The casting, performances and visuals were all very good, and I even forgave the absence of Roland's bombardier blue eyes.

But I doubt this will have the box office success to merit any revisiting in the near future. Consequently I regard this as a massive missed opportunity and a severe disappointment.
 

osnafrank

Well-Known Member
Jan 24, 2017
7,121
50,822
47
Germany
A Person,who has no clue about the Books, watching this Movie, is completely perplexed.

After the Movie, my Escort said "Hmm, It was thrilling but also Confusing"
Compress a whole Universe into 90 Minutes...and use Fast Forward....what do u get ?
 

R'Lee

New Member
Sep 1, 2017
1
10
72
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" I
ll never forget the first time I read those words. The Gunslinger had just been published and I had bought it along with a number of other books from a very small book store in the Tenderloin, in San Francisco.
After reading it from cover to cover in about 4 hours, I was hooked. I had never read anything, that had grabbed me like that book.
Nearly 30 years later I have finally been able to watch the movie. I have to say this. From the very opening sceens, it is all wrong. I am so disappointed that I may just cry. Yes the movie has a gunslinger with what seems like magical abilities. Yes there is a boy named Jake and a guy named Walter. Other that that, I couldn't find any of the books at all. It's all just like toferky. Substance, with a little flavoring and something to give it a little texture but it sure isn't turkey and it sure as hell ain't the Dark Tower
 

kingricefan

All-being, keeper of Space, Time & Dimension.
Jul 11, 2006
30,011
127,446
Spokane, WA
Thanks I better go pre-order
Linda- I'd wait to see if they're going to do any type of special packaging as this is only for the bluray and an ultra violet copy. They may do something really cool and maybe have a Director's Copy (which they should as I think they trimmed off at least a half hour's worth of footage). Plus there's not even a release date on it yet.
 

king family fan

Prolific member
Jul 19, 2010
33,133
117,741
south
Linda- I'd wait to see if they're going to do any type of special packaging as this is only for the bluray and an ultra violet copy. They may do something really cool and maybe have a Director's Copy (which they should as I think they trimmed off at least a half hour's worth of footage). Plus there's not even a release date on it yet.
Ok keep me posted on updates please.
 

Chelle71

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2009
827
3,193
Brisbane, Australia
I have to say I loved the casting, Idris Elba was amazing, however I didn't love the movie...I went with a friend who hasn't read the books and he found it hard to follow. Will there be more? I keep hearing that this is the only one...I think it would have been a great trilogy at the very least.
 

Mugwomp

Well-Known Member
Aug 24, 2006
110
250
54
Lodi, CA
artandmusicbyrv.godaddysites.com
Well, I finally saw it.

I don't know what to say. I was pretty heartbroken. Outside of it feeling absolutely nothing like a "Dark Tower" movie, it just seemed like a production that didn't know what it was trying to be. As if the producers, writers, and director all had different visions - and none of those visions included actually trying to adapt/interpret/retell Roland and his Ka-Tet's adventures (I'm looking at you, Akiva). So many scenes felt truncated, the way it was edited seemed like just an arbitrary stab in the dark at a structure (let's show everybody the bad guy first, then let's focus on Jake to appeal to teenagers, then we'll jump to Roland's backstory with his father in a scrambled mess of a 2 minute scene that barely establishes anything).

The scene with Jake and the house demon seemed like they forgot to finish tweaking the edit. That scene could have been allowed to breath and create suspense, they could have used little bits of CGI to show the house slowly coming to life, just outside of Jake's vision. Instead, the whole scene just... happens. The house demon attacks Jake and he - screams? Hard to tell - the house creature just drops Jake. Definitely not established well by the way they shot and edited it. Scene after scene - there's never a well-directed moment that milks the best out of the drama of the moment. Heck, is there one GREAT scene that I'd actually want to sit down and analyze and enjoy again? A great movie is FILLED with well thought out, memorable moments. Seemed like they were too busy to go through the motions to create anything exceptional. So much great material a better director and writer could do wonderful things with.

Roland has the Horn of Eld now, so absolutely NOTHING from his previous adventure, including eye/skin color, is the same? From what I gathered by reading the books, Roland's adventure starts just like it did every other time; "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed", not "The hack who ruins every novel he touches sped through his adaptation and Dark Tower fans wallowed."

The mind boggles! Such an epic book series and the movie feels so small. Like one review I read suggested, for such a sprawling story, the movie's sets feel like all of the New York scenes are shot in one city block. In the book, we have an epic chase and adventure that goes for miles and years - in the movie, we have the MiB hanging out in his Bad Guy Lair while easily warping around with his convenient Stargate system.

And oh, man; anything involving Matthew McConaughey and his House of Henchmen was too silly for me. "Hate"? "Stop breathing"? Bad casting and bad writing. Just such a strange and generic way to turn the mystical and ancient Man in Black into a forgettable bad guy.

I wound up walking out in the final third, somewhere during the Dixie Pig/Matrix generic action shootout scenes. The whole middle of the film dragged, I couldn't find any character or storyline that compelled me to sit through the rest of the movie. I wanted to finish the movie because I'm dying to find out what this "hot dog joke" is, but I'll wait until the clip is on YouTube. Not sure I ever see myself sitting through the whole movie.

I DID think the Jake actor was pretty darn good, though. I thought Idris' performance was fine but I never really thought of him as the Roland I know and love from the books/comics. The Jake actor is already starting to grow up quickly - you could see a difference in some reshot scenes. If they don't move ahead with more movies or the TV show, I don't see how they can keep him as Jake. Time's a tickin'.

I really hope they pass on the rumored TV show and further movies and just let this experiment be forgotten.

Give me Frank Darabont working with Warner Bros. and HBO or one of the other channels that has produced some good content (AMC, Showtime, Netflix, Amazon?) 3 movies, 2 seasons of cable. Use movie actors to bookend first/last cable episodes for each season, focus mostly on young Roland/father/mom/Cort backstory for first season, Wizard and Glass for 2nd. Focus on books 1+2 for movie #1, books 3+5 for movie #3, books 6+7 for final film. Release the movies in the summer, the series in the winter.

Anyways, I CAN dream!
 

Ebdim9th

Dressing the Gothic interval in tritones
Jul 1, 2009
6,137
22,104
Either the Horn of Eld makes a world/time-reboot/alteration of difference, or it makes no difference. If the world you live in, keystone Earth, changes at all by repeating its timeline altered in any way, the butterfly effect would guarantee drastic changes. I went to the movie with a friend who had never read the books, and he got it. With no explanation from me. They pretty much encapsulated the entire plot in two sentences at the beginning. The Dark Tower holding the universe together and it being said the mind of a child could bring it down. What's more, he, as a fan of many action movies, thought that, far from pedestrian, the action scenes were exceptional. He couldn't believe the movie wasn't far more well-known, and yes, a big hit. He knew Stephen King, but not the Dark Tower series. Now he wants to read it. And, I know him, he will. But hey, let's bomb this movie into the basement and keep more people like him from hearing about it, by all means.

As Jake entered the house and went toward one of the portals that were posted where the thinnies were, definitely from the books, I watched the boards jump as though something were following him through the rooms. Walter himself explained why Roland was immune to his magic. They imply Roland's multiple hundreds of years of age by the doctors gathering to meet him in disbelief as he should already be dead from radiation poisoning and several different venereal diseases, much less his wound. He has been imbued by the Tower, as it's champion, with some pretty potent magic, as what he is, a gunslinger, not a wizard. There's a lot more to this adaptation/variation on a theme, with shortcomings and points in it favor, but there was definitely plenty of room for follow-ups. The graffiti saluting the Crimson King, and, for us, the knowledge that Walter is Randall Flagg, and like in the Stand he will return from the dead to start his mischief all over again. I liked the movie. It moved fast, wasted little time, crammed exposition in in the sparest, sparsest and yet, quite easily understandable conversations that came through like campfire stories, slipping unobtrusively into the viewer's consciousness. As I said, my friend got it. He had a couple of questions, they were easily answered, and he was enthusiastic to go and read the books, and brag about the movie on Facebook.