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Movie Review: The Dark Tower
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In a word, disappointing.

The Dark Tower is the movie adaptation of Stephen King's 8 novel series of the same name. Jake Chambers is a troubled young teen who sees visions of a man in black, a dark tower, monsters, and the destruction of the world. Jake's parents and teachers think he's experiencing psychological problems resulting from his father's death, but Jake knows his dreams are something more. One day, the monsters from his dreams come into his world, and he must flee into another, where he meets Roland (Idris Elba) the gunslinger. Roland is the last of an ancient orders of gun slinging knights, sworn to defend The Dark Tower, lest all universes fall into chaos. Unfortunately, Roland has abandoned his oath to get revenge on the man in black (Matthew McConnaughey). Jake must avoid being captured by man in black's monsters, help Roland regain his faith, and help to save The Dark Tower from destruction.

This movie simply isn't very good. I'll set aside, for a moment, comparisons with the novels. This film feels like an extended TV special. The plot is extremely simplistic, and it follows the same beats as a long Dr. Who special or any of a thousand movies you've already seen. Hero has lost his faith. Kid comes along and hero must protect the kid from the bad guy while learning to get his faith back. In the end, bad guy dies and all his stuff blows up. The end. The acting is mediocre, and McConaughey is terribly cast as the baddie (I call him "the man in black" in lower case, because he's not good enough to get capitalization). He's not convincing, his Southern lisp just doesn't sound sinister, and it's as if the makeup people couldn't decide what to do with his hair, so sometimes he seems to be wearing a wig. The movie hits cliche'd action beats, like "kid crawls under something while monster/bad guy stabs through from on top consistently hitting just in front of kid" and "hero sits behind cover as he focuses on all the sounds around him, reaches a magical sense of calm, and then jumps out and shoots all the bad guys." The CGI is ok, but not spectacular, and the action scenes are not particularly awe inspiring either. The one good thing I can say is that at least the director didn't make it 90mins of Matrix style gun fights. Despite the trailers, which make it look like it's all about Roland shooting things, there's really only one big set piece that revolves around Roland showing off his gunfighting skills.

Now, if you've read the books, and enjoyed them, that adds an entirely separate layer of disappointment. None of the magic of the books is found in this film. The plot and characters are so overly simplified, that it's hardly recognizable as the same intellectual property. As the movie winds up, it has almost turned into a buddy cop movie, with Jake and Roland joking together, and the film making fun of Roland's "country boy in the big city" mannerisms. The tone is just not the same as the books. Not entirely surprising, since this is apparently a stand alone movie, and not part of an intended series, and they're actually supplementing this with a TV series instead of fleshing out more of the novels on the big screen.

There's no nudity or really any foul language. There's plenty of violence, although it's not overly gory. It's not really a kids movie, but a solid PG-13. Unless you're determined to see this movie for yourself, or are a particular fan of Elba, I can't really recommend this movie. And if you're a big fan of Elba, just be warned that this isn't his best.

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)
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Re: Movie Review: The Dark Tower [slowguy] [ In reply to ]
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Dammit. Pretty much confirms my fears.

Having Jake's father dead is bad enough, but portraying Roland as abandoning his quest for the Dark Tower? Did the movie makers even bother reading the books? WTH.








"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
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Re: Movie Review: The Dark Tower [slowguy] [ In reply to ]
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My brother sent me a text last night after seeing it. He said the movie had little to do with the novels.

Really was disappointing to hear, but I was expecting that after seeing the trailer.

.
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Re: Movie Review: The Dark Tower [Endo] [ In reply to ]
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I'm addicted to books on tape. I've always been a pretty serious bookworm. Back when I was oriented on hardcopy books, I used to go thru them pretty fast. Often a book/day. I'm getting to my point, really. One of the charms of books on tape is that they slow you down. The Dark Tower series of books is something one can't zoom thru. There's complexities and illusions that one will miss. Heck, there's things that are just plain hard to understand. Can't imagine trying to turn the whole series into a single movie.

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"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart
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