Sony Pictures presents The Dark Tower.
Premise:
There are other worlds than these. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, the ambitious and expansive story from one of the world’s most celebrated authors, makes its launch to the big screen. The last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), has been locked in an eternal battle with Walter O’Dim, also known as the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), determined to prevent him from toppling the Dark Tower, which holds the universe together. With the fate of the worlds at stake, good and evil will collide in the ultimate battle as only Roland can defend the Tower from the Man in Black.
The cast is:
Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, The last of the Gunslingers.
Matthew McConaughey as Walter Padick, the Man in Black. A ruthless ageless deceiver and sorcerer who seeks to reach the tower and rule over its seemingly infinite kingdoms.
Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers, a young boy whom Roland must call upon to complete his journey, and a son-like figure to Deschain.
The Dark Tower is based on the Stephen king novels of the same name and this is first time we are seeing it on the big screen. Leading up to this movie I was excited to see because of the cast and from the trailer it looked like it was going to be a fun shoot out but at the same time I was worried about the final product because I heard there was a lot of behind the scenes drama during the production.
Overall, I felt the movie was very flat and lacked any personality. It wasn’t a horrible movie but it could have been better. I heard this movie was a condense version from all 8 books, taking highlights from each book and mixing it all together, which I was shocked to hear. I thought it would be better to maybe make a film based on each book, that way you can set up a new movie franchise and let the story develop over time and let these characters grow from movie to movie. This movie was only an hour and half long and it felt very condense. This movie had so much potential but failed on telling a fun/dramatic story.
I felt lost at times. This movie was so condense, it felt to fast paced, in doing so, many characters didn’t get enough backstory. They rushed through the mythology and didn’t explain how certain characters powers exist or how the different universes work with one another. It was very straight forward story but they struggled telling it. Keep this in mind, Stephen King books are known for being weird and out there and this movie didn’t follow that theme, instead it was very watered down. I wished there was more action scenes and more gunslinging/shoot outs. The first real one was about 45 minutes into the movie.
Since the origin of this story stems from books, I really felt this would have been better told via a television series instead of a movie. There is so much content to choose from, you can totally spread it out over many episodes.
The Dark Tower did have that The Never Ending Story and/or Lords of the Rings vibe to it but with a Stephen King twist. Idris Elba was great as the gunslinger. Tom Taylor, the child actor, was also very good. They’re were some great moments between Idris Elba and Tom Taylor. Matthew McConaughey was over the top in his role but did come off very menacing.
I would rate the movie 5/10.
Go see The Dark Tower when the movie hits theaters on Friday, July 28th.
Check out the trailer below.
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